Lessons from World War II
591017
Mr. Obermayer brings vividly alive a GI's life in the final years of World War II in Europe and the occupation that followed. But he also finds lessons in that period that inform us today-- especially his insights into the ongoing conflict between the United States and France that had fertile roots in 1944 and 1945.
4725388
This is a resourceful and handy guide of the history of World War II and the maps show the troop, air, ship, submarine movements during battles and the rise and fall of the Imperial Japanese Empire during World War II.  The height of the Japanese Empire during World War II encompassed literally millions of square miles of sea and land.  From China almost to Australia and New Zealand going eastward almost to American Islands of Midway and Hawaii, the Japanese Empire was vast.  This atlas shows the Japanese War machine at their peak.  When the United States entered World War II after December 7, 1941, the Japanese Empire held its own for a little while and slowly began to recede after the "island hopping" maneuvers and campains of U.S. Forces in the Pacific, Western Pacific and Southern Pacific under General Douglas MaCarthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz.
The maps and history highlight the important battles, either by land or by sea, the routes of the ships on both sides, the troop movements, and the interesting history from the early 1930's to 1945.  This is an essential resource for World War II historians.  The maps are easy to understand, the history of the battles with the maps are interesting, and this book gives an excellent overview of the War in The Pacific during World War II.  Highly recommended!
2738389
I really enjoyed this book. The characters are very interesting. It was interesting learning about the resistance to WW2 from the Polish perspective, which is seldom written about. It was also interesting to learn about attitudes of Americans before France was invaded. I recommend this book.
2473216
Kenneth Allard presents a succinct analysis of some of the challenges of operating in peace keeping deployments.  He traces lessons learned through the planning, deployment, operations and support phases of the three different Somalia missions from August 1992 to March 1994.  Relying on joint military doctrine, he compares the actual reports generated during and after the missions to the theoretical and doctrinal concepts of how operations should occur.  Although his emphasis focuses on the military aspects of the Somalia missions, it includes ideas on interactions with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's) like the Red Cross, coalition partners, and belligerents.  The focus on civil military operations is especially relevant to civil affairs and psychological operations professionals.
Useful aspects of the book are the appendices which include a listing of humantiarian relief organizations that were in country, as well as the missions and structure of the Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC).  The book also includes charts which outline the command relationships within the different Joint Task Forces (JTF's) established.  Notably absent from Somalia Operations: Lessons Learned are footnotes and an index.  Although Allard includes a selected bibliography in appendix A, it mainly serves to direct the military leader to sources of further reading.  The lack of footnotes prevents scholars from reviewing the exact location of sources quoted within the book.  Regardless, the book admirably draws heavily from quotes of senior leaders and after action reports.
This is a must read for any military professional who will deploy into a peace keeping environment like the Balkans.  Also, leaders working within multinational humanitarian relief agencies and coalition forces will benefit from reviewing U.S. lessons learned in Somalia.  These lessons are bound to be repeated if we don't learn from past mistakes.
Highly recommended.
2873622
I enjoyed reading this book. I was born September 9, 1945.  There were many questions that I had about world war two that were never shared in school,or by the media at that time. I found that this book explained  a lot of  those questions.
660943
I am a fan of World War 2 history and I learned a lot from this book. We'll written and educational.
1717913
Gregor Dallas' book is about World War II in Europe, mainly focusing on the strategies and politics of the European conflict.  It does occasionally discuss events in North Africa, but references to the war in East Asia and the Pacific are rare.  Mostly it is about the leadership, political and military of Britain, the USSR, France and the US.  There is limited discussion of the principal Nazi leaders, but nothing much about events and people in the rest of the Axis, particularly Italy and Japan.

On the other hand, the politics within the French Resistance and how Charles de Gaulle managed to neuter the French communists are presented in great detail.

The fate of the Polish resistance and the Holocaust receive some attention.  There are worthwhile sections on other cruelties of the War, including the effects of bombing on civilians, the vast numbers of displaced persons and refugees, and the forced repatriations to the USSR.  There are vivid descriptions of life in the USSR and the organized terror that Stalin enforced.  In most cases these cruelties are illustrated with the stories of individual persons.

For me, the greatest value of this book is as a refreshing counterpoint to the point of view in patriotic books and documentaries on the subject that are familiar to Americans.  The point of view is distinctly pro-British.  It describes events and figures without adulation and without obscuring or minimizing the most unflattering aspects.  For Americans the mistakes and weakness of FDR, Eisenhower and Patton are particularly worth knowing.  The malign influence of Communist moles within the Treasury and State Departments, such as Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White is not papered over, and the narrative makes clear it was the unexpected ascent of Harry Truman to the Presidency that ended their public careers.

Overall it is well worth reading.
2880767
A wonderfully written book that was a joy to read.  I am not well-versed in history, and this book provided a perspective helped me to visualize World War II much more effectively than lessons in school.
4260922
A good story and good learning for me - an aviation buff - on the B-26 and medium bombers in WWII.  A good reminder of how brutal the air war was for the aircrews.
4430428
I read this book, in a translation to the portuguese, here in Brazil. About this subject, this book is concise, good and very easy to read. The best is when this book, talks about economies in World War II.The USA, to exemple, produced about 96,000 aircrafts in 1944. The biggest aircraft's production in human history.

The problem in this book is the lack of details about many battles and weapons used in World War II.
1606252
Stephen G. Fritz takes an even-handed look at the war between National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union.  There are 7 maps and 54 pages of bibliography, so he's done his homework.
He contends that as of December, 1941, Adolf Hitler "certainly understood that his original concept of the war had failed, that the Soviet Union would not be defeated in 1941, that Germany did not yet possess the economic or armaments ability to fight a sustained war, that the intervention of the United States was only a matter of time, and that Germany could not win a two-front war against the United States and the Soviet Union." p. 195.
Fritz claims that Hitler had vastly underestimated the industrial potential of both the USSR and the US; that as of December 1941 he didn't stand a chance (if he ever did) of winning the war against either.  With many charts and his bulging bibliography, he shows that Soviet industry manufactured far more tanks, artillery, etc. than Germany, and that the Soviet reserves of manpower were much, much bigger than Germany's.  Thus, a Soviet victory was only a matter of time.  The superiority in resources, Fritz claims, was the major factor in the Soviet victory.  The Soviets used massive assaults, and almost always sustained far greater casualties than the Germans, even in the battles the Soviets won.  He uses many statistics to back that up, but I found the most telling to be that a "total of 3,554,000 Germans (67 percent of total losses) thus died in combat with the Red Army." p. 470.  Soviet military deaths, however, he puts at 11.5 million. p. 471.
Given the subtitle of this book, I expected more information on how the Ostheer (German Eastern armed forces) assisted the Schutzstaffel in their crimes against civilians.  There is little information about that, and Fritz claims that only a small percentage (perhaps only 5 percent of the entire Ostheer, p. 482) of the Ostheer were involved in serious crimes.
I found Fritz' description of the Ostarbeiter (eastern workers) policy worth reading.  Because the war was such a drag on manpower, Germany had to rely on men and women from the occupied territories to work in the Reich.  In 1941, "[t]hrough wild and ruthless manhunts in which people were seized off the streets, in churches and theaters, and from villages that were then burned to the ground, Sauckel's [Fritz Sauckel, Plenipotentiary for Labor Development] men engaged in a brutal hunt for slave labor." p. 221.  There were 8.5 million forced laborers in Germany at the end of the war.p. 332 Fritz relies very heavily for information about forced laborers on Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction:<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Wages-of-Destruction-The-Making-and-Breaking-of-the-Nazi-Economy/dp/0143113208/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy</a>
That's one problem I have with Fritz; although he's got 54 pages of bibliography, he relies very heavily on books almost anyone could take out of the library: Tooze, Ian Kershaw's Nemesis, Gotz Aly's Hitler's Beneficiaries, Christopher Browning's The Origins of the Final Solution, and Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire figure prominently in the endnotes.
Another disappointment is how Fritz deals with Hitler's attitude toward the United States.  He says several times (pp 35,476, 479, 487) that Hitler either intended to wage war on America, or saw such a fight as inevitable.  His only source is Hitler's Second Book(p. 474), which he doesn't even list in his bibliography.
Overall, though, a worthwhile and interesting, if upsetting, read for anyone interested in World War Two.
3889140
Common wisdom says that we should learn from all our experiences, including our mistakes.  Over time individual memories fade, so the lessons learned might not be the lessons that should have been learned.  Detzer gives his readers a chance to ponder the lessons of our involvement in Korea's civil war by concentrating on the first days of the conflict and the conflict's precursors.
The first four chapters of the book are devoted to understanding the backdrop for the war.  Detzer does not present the reader with a bunch of dry facts, but weaves a captivating tale about people and their lives in June of 1950.  He tells us what some average Americans were doing and were thinking.  He paints a word picture of President Truman with insider insights and the view from the average Joe.  Detzer adds background on General MacArthur and the peacetime Army, especially those stationed in Asia in 1950.  Further, Detzer provides insights into Korea itself:  the leaders, the soldiers, and Americans in Korea.  As expected, the "invasion" itself is covered.  Detzer continues the story through the retreat of American forces from Osan and the political ramifications that followed.
All in all, Detzer is a wonderful storyteller.  The facts are in there, but they are not the dry facts of history loathed by public school students.  Instead, Detzer paints a masterpiece for the reader: a human portrait both terrifying and compelling.
562848
Keegans book deals with military intelligence, as distinguished from espionage: little glamour is involved, as these stories are wartime experiences. John Keegan was a military historian. His eight chapters, mostly war stories, provide meaningful lessons about types of military intelligence, where it can be successfully applied, and how it is limited.

The book is well organized. Keegan prefaces each episode with rich background, so that the main activities are clearly understood in context. The background is itself, a short history lesson. Keegan then describes the type of intelligence featured and how it was applied. At the episodes conclusion, Keegan analyzes the value of the intelligence in that particular situation.

Keegans episodes span across history from Napoleonic times through World War II, revealing the wide applicability of his lessons. Keegan then adds a chapter on intelligence since World War II. He concludes with an overall analysis on the value of military intelligence.

Surprisingly, Keegan concludes that in war, intelligence often fails its expectations. Information about the enemy, his location, and his plans is often either difficult to obtain, misleading or misinterpreted, or less important than the forces being employed. Even in the Battle of Midway, a near-perfect case where broken codes revealed the Japanese fleets intentions, the ultimate victory owed much to chance.

Not everyone will be tolerant with Keegans thorough development of his episodes, but few will be disappointed with his attention to detail. His lessons are instructive and his revelations bring his scenes to life.
2726222
Most of Americans know of the ending of WWII in Europe. This book tells how it ended in Japan. It explains some of the culture that was Japan in the 1940's < There are lessons to consider in the 21 St century.
4419997
Well rounded start for people interested in learning about World War Two and the brave men that fought in it
3805278
I found this book very valuable for presenting aspects of the II World War which are only dimly known or appreciated, especially the assistance and help given to the Jewish community by Catholic religious leaders during the Holocaust.  Combines real history and personal tragedy and growth in a very positive and thought provoking manner.
4418269
Living the life of Norman Robinson, from Indianapolis Indiana, as he experiences the riggers of World War II is an eye opening experience for those of us who want an understanding of what went on, face to face. at the ground level on a daily basis.
Norman was a school teacher who became personally affronted and down right angry, to the point that he joined up to do what he could personally do, to fight and make it right, following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. As an active journal writer, he documented his daily activity religiously, The result is a very personal look at the everyday activity of war, from the  boringly mundane routine to the excruciatingly exciting battle sequences, both at a distance as well as in bloody, hand to hand, encounters. Norman has demonstrated exquisitely the sacrifices, both small and ultimate that he and his fellow Marines made for our country during this worldwide time of crisis. Sarah E Weber is commended for her dedication to reporting Norman's experience and how it affected his family.