Posted on 01/10/2014 5:48:26 PM PST by dynachrome
To understand 20th Century warfare you must study the Battle of Stalingrad, the absolute deathstruggle of the worst of totalitarianism. Read “Life and Fate” by Vassily Grossman. He was a Red Army News reporter during the war and followed the Red Army all the way to Berlin. After the War the KGB attempted to confiscate all copies including typewriter ribbons of this book. This, because he was the first to equate Hitler and Stalin as co-equal Demons.
One of the main characters is a particle physicist; much of the book deals with his theories and how the Party Apparatus attempts to suppress him. It is chilling.
Thousands of them died in the bulge.
Own three and have read a few more. None of the later stuff though more the classics. Reading anything by Victor-Hansen is a good start.
I have read that we lost more men in the battle of the bulge than in the entire Pacific campaign. I have no idea if that is right or not.
Actually I don’t think we fought them to a standstill in the Bulge unless you consider the combat engineers to have stopped them by blowing bridges, often just before the Germans were to cross them.
Running out of fuel also helped to stop them but that was because they got behind on their timetable.
At first they were planning on by-passing Bastogne but after it got so much publicity, Hitler ordered them to take it. Of course they never did but they went way beyond it.
Great homepage, by the way.
FRegards
A different kind of war book.
>> I have read that we lost more men in the battle of the bulge than in the entire Pacific campaign. I have no idea if that is right or not.
Good question.
Battle of the Bulge: 19,000 killed,47,500 wounded,23,000 captured.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge
Pacific war: 111,606 killed, 253,142 wounded, 21,580 POW.
Source: http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/C/a/Casualties.htm
So it appears that we did NOT lose more men in the BotB than in the Pacific campaign.
I read many of the ones in the article, but...his tastes are clearly different from mine. I’ve read Art of War, The Influence of Seapower Upon History, The History of The Peloponnesian War, Gates of Fire and more, but...those books were, to my taste, very dry and I had to work at them.
These books below are some that I have read that had a lasting effect on me because I didn’t have to work as hard to absorb what they had in them.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
No True Glory
Once an Eagle
Cold As Hell
P.O.W.: A Definitive History of the American Prisoner-of-War Experience in Vietnam
The Last Battle
Neptune’s Inferno
The Two Ocean War
Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle
The Second World War Series (by Winston Churchill)
Reach For The Sky (Douglas Bader)
When Hell Was In Session
In Love and War
At Dawn We Slept
Halsey’s Typhoon
Phase Line Green: The Battle for Hue
1776
The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire,
Yeager: An Autobiography
The Guns of August
The Longest Day
Guadalcanal Diary
Airwar (Volumes 1-4 by Edward Jablonski)
Escape From Coldiz
With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa
Goodbye Darkness
Blackhawk Down
The Pacific Campaign (van der Vat)
One Day In A Long War
Breakout
Lemay
Fighter Pilot (Robin Olds)
The Admirals
Patton
Band of Brothers
I Cannot Forgive
Lone Survivor
The Caine Mutiny (Okay, this is a novel, but...it has a lot of lessons)
Thanks for that info. I probably should have looked it up myself at some time.
I had an issue with that one as well. Also, Charlie Wilson’s War, Junger’s War, On Killing, and a few others like those that the author listed.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
“Army 1st Brigade photo 1stBDEArghandabAfghanis.jpg Mackinlay Kantor produced so many books including the one made into the film, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. It was a great story of servicemen adjusting to civilian life after WWII. Kantor was from Iowa and thus a Yankee but I can almost forgive him for that...Ha!”
I saw that movie in our neighborhood theater the year it came out. Yep,I’m old.
By the way,I’m from MA and don’t consider an Iowan a bona fide Yankee. :-)
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You’re welcome.
Note that it’s interwebz quickie “research”, so weight the outcome appropriately. :-)
Ah! I forgot that one...GREAT book. What a trial...also, there is a book “The Raft: The Courageous Struggle of Three Naval Airmen against the Sea” which is along the same lines...
Excellent book!
Reading more than three is informative, but like beating a dead horse.
Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
Clausewitz' On War
Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture.
The underlying essence is irrefutable :
Any war ever not fought to win by all means necessary, has failed.
Including, most likely, cultures which failed to learn the obvious, and consequently left no historical trace.
“The Best Years Of Our Lives” is my all time favorite movie.
Timeless.
bump
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