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Скачивание или чтение онлайн электронных книг.The Blitzkrieg Legend
Here, for the first time in English, is an illuminating new German perspective on the decisive Blitzkrieg campaign of 1940. Karl-Heinz Frieser's account provides the definitive explanation for Germany's startling success and the equally surprising and rapid military collapse of France and Britain on the European continent. In a little over a month, Germany decisively defeated the Allies in battle, a task that had not been achieved in four years of brutal fighting during World War I.First published in 1995 as the official German history of the 1940 campaign in the west, the book goes beyond standard explanations to show that German victory was not inevitable and French defeat was not preordained. Contrary to the usual accounts of the campaign, Frieser illustrates that the military systems of both Germany and France were solid and that their campaign planning was sound. The key to victory or defeat, he argues, was the execution of operational plans—both preplanned and ad hoc—amid the eternal Clausewitzian combat factors of friction and the fog of war. Frieser shows why on the eve of the campaign the British and French leaders had good cause to be confident and why many German generals were understandably concerned that disaster was looming for them.This study explodes many of the myths concerning German Blitzkrieg warfare and the planning for the 1940 campaign. A groundbreaking new interpretation of a topic that has long interested students of military history, it is being published in cooperation with the Association of the U.S. Army
The U.S. Coast Guard in World War II
The intimate view of the U.S. Coast Guard’s dramatic World War II record has long been considered a classic. First published in 1957 and out of print for years, it is now available in paperback. Handsomely illustrated with more than 200 photographs, the book serves as a unique memento of one of the most illustrious periods in the Coast Guard’s 200-year history.The author offers a story replete with incidents of devotion far beyond the call of duty?daring rescues, adventurous high-sea missions, heroic combat action?to clearly demonstrate the vital role the service played in the Allied war effort. A seasoned World War I veteran who joined the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve in 1942, Malcolm Willoughby draws not only from firsthand experience but fro years of research and writing as a Coast Guard historian.His narrative covers every aspect of the Coast Guard’s involvement in the warat sea, in the air, and at home. From the invasion of Normandy, where Coast Guardsmen landed thousands of Americans and rescued some 1,500 stranded in the surf, to Guadalcanal, where they rescued three companies of Marines trapped on the beach, this chronicle vividly recounts these well-documented operations and little-known stories of individual triumphs and tragedies as well.
The Zimmermann Telegram
By the winter of 1916/17, World War I had reached a deadlock. While the Allies commanded greater resources and fielded more soldiers than the Central Powers, German armies had penetrated deep into Russia and France, and tenaciously held on to their conquered empire. Hoping to break the stalemate on the western front, the exhausted Allies sought to bring the neutral United States into the conflict.A golden opportunity to force American intervention seemed at hand when British naval intelligence intercepted a secret telegram detailing a German alliance offer to Mexico. In it, Berlin’s foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, offered his country’s support to Mexico for re-conquering “the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona” in exchange for a Mexican attack on the United States, should the latter enter the war on the side of the Allies. The British handed a copy of the Telegram to the American government, which in turn leaked it to the press. On March 1, 1917, the Telegram made headline news across the United States, and five weeks later, America entered World War I.Based on an examination of virtually all available German, British, and U.S. government records, this book presents the definitive account of the Telegram and questions many traditional views on the origins, cryptanalysis, and impact of the German alliance scheme. While the Telegram has often been described as the final step in a carefully planned German strategy to gain a foothold in the western hemisphere, this book argues that the scheme was a spontaneous initiative by a minor German foreign office official, which gained traction only because of a lack of supervision and coordination at the top echelon of the German government. On the other hand, the book argues, American and British secret services had collaborated closely since 1915 to bring the United States into the war, and the Telegram’s interception and disclosure represented the crowning achievement of this clandestine Anglo-American intelligence alliance. Moreover, the book explicitly challenges the widely accepted notion that the Telegram’s publication in the U.S. press rallied Americans for war. Instead, it contends that the Telegram divided the public by poisoning the debate over intervention, and by failing to offer peace-minded Americans a convincing rationale for supporting the war. The book also examines the Telegram’s effect on the memory of World War I through the twentieth century and beyond.
The Measure of a Man
Maj. Roger G. B. Broome, USMCR, died from wounds received on Saipan before his daughter had a chance to know him. Now a well-known naval historian and author of award-winning books, that daughter, Kathleen Broome Williams, has turned the research skills she honed studying naval technology to find her lost father. For this biography, she makes full use of an extensive collection of her father’s colorful and articulate letters along with the testimony of surviving Leathernecks who served with Major Broome, backed up by official records.The book reconstructs her father’s life as a University of Virginia Law School graduate who obtained a commission in the Marine Corps despite his colorblindness and eventually won the combat command he lobbied for. In April 1944 Broome took command of the Regimental Weapons Company, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division. But his pursuit of glory came to an abrupt end just twenty-four days into the Saipan invasion when he sustained the wounds that condemned him to a lingering death. The author not only found a hero who was awarded the Navy Cross for his courageous actions, but also uncovered a profoundly human individual with strengths as well as obvious faults. In unfolding Broome’s story, she takes significant world events from seventy years ago and places them in an intimate context, to show how they affected Americans on and off the battlefield. Her efforts provide an inside look at the U.S. Marine Corps during the pivotal years of World War II, including recruit training, amphibious assaults, high casualties, and, not least, the personal feuds and rivalries that shaped it.
Back from the Deep
This epic World War II saga follows the USS Squalus and Sculpin as they play out their dramatic destinies in the Pacific. The author, a seasoned journalist, re-creates their entire perilous journey. The Squalus sank during a test dive in 1939, but thirty-three trapped crewmen were saved thanks to the revolutionary use of the McCann diving bell. The Sculpin's role in that historic rescue is just the first of many incongruous twists of fate that brought the two subs together after the Squalus was salvaged and rechristened the Sailfish.Carl LaVO skillfully weaves together the tragic loss of the Sculpin to a Japanese destroyer with the frenetic wrath of its sister sub. Their intertwined fates come to an eerie climax as the Sailfish unleashes a ten-hour attack on the Japanese aircraft carrier Chuyo amid a raging typhoon, unwittingly killing twenty-two of the forty-three Americans captured from the sunken Sculpin. The saga comes to a close with a moving description of the surviving Sculpin crewmen as they face incredible hardship, torture, and disease as POWs in Japan. This book is certain to instill a renewed appreciation for the intrepid men and stealthy boats that were the soul of the Pacific campaign's silent service.
Capturing Jonathan Pollard
Jonathan Pollard, an intelligence analyst working in the U.S. Naval Investigative Service's Anti-Terrorist Alert Center, systematically stole highly sensitive secrets from almost every major intelligence agency in the United States. In just eighteen months he sold more than one million pages of classified material to Israel. No other spy in U.S. history has stolen so many secrets, so highly classified, in such a short period of time. Author Ronald Olive was in charge of counterintelligence in the Washington office of the Naval Investigative Service that investigated Pollard and garnered the confession that led to his arrest in 1985 and eventual life sentence. His book reveals details of Pollard's confession, his interaction with the author when suspicion was mounting, and countless other details never before made public. Olive points to mistaken assumptions and leadership failures that allowed Pollard to ransack America's defense intelligence long after he should have been caught.
Good to Go
So perfectly executed was the mission to rescue Capt. Scott O'Grady that it amazed even the men responsible. Just five hours after radio contact was first made with Basher 52 – O'Grady's call sign the Air Force captain was safely on board the USS Kearsarge. The downed F-16 fighter pilot's rescue from a Bosnian mountainside by Col. Martin Berndt's 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit electrified the nation in June 1995 and renewed many Americans' faith in the military. This book tells the story of the mission in the words of the men who commanded, planned, and carried it out. To get the inside account, Mary Pat Kelly traveled throughout Europe to conduct more than one hundred interviews, visiting U.S. ships and bases and UN posts in Croatia and Bosnia where participants were stationed. Admiral Leighton W. Smith Jr., commander in chief of U.S. naval forces in Europe and head of NATO forces in the Southern European theater, provides the framework with his day-to-day commentary on the efforts to find Captain O'Grady and a nearly minute-by-minute record of the rescue itself. In concert with Lt. Gen. Michael E. Ryan, commander of U.S. and NATO air forces, the admiral reveals the decision-making process that led to the «Good to Go» order. Readers then hear from the Tactical Recovery of Aircraft and Personnel (TRAP) team-the Navy and Marine Corps commanders, pilots, crew chiefs, and grunts who made it happen. Speaking for the Navy are Capt. Christopher Cole, skipper of the Kearsarge, Commo. Jerome Schill, and their staffs, from the intelligence officers to the grapes who fueled the aircraft. Captain O'Grady puts his own experiences in the context of overall events.
Potomac Fever
After a highly successful career in investment banking with his own firm and a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, J. William Middendorf became restive and looked for new challenges. Having “learned how to make money,” he writes in this memoir, he “wanted to learn how to make a difference.” Thus he became actively involved in politics, first at the local level in Connecticut and then with the presidential campaign of Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964 and as treasurer of the Republican National Committee. There followed a series of challenging public service appointments: ambassador to the Netherlands, Under Secretary and later Secretary of the Navy, ambassador to the Organization of American States, and ambassador to the European Community.Middendorf is a first-rate storyteller and has many tales to share–from his World War II Navy service, to his first job wearing a string of pearls in a bank vault, to a failed effort to bring a U.S.-style constitution to post-Soviet Russia. He recounts tales of villains and heroes, of narrow legislative victories on vital programs, of efforts to forestall war in the Falklands and to counter growing Communist control of the island of Grenada, as well as how the Navy won narrow but vital victories on such important programs as the Aegis missile system and the Trident submarine. Writing with the authority of someone who held a number of key government positions, his lively and revealing memoir is filled with many behind-the-scenes stories of critical events of the Cold War.
My Men are My Heroes
My Men Are My Heroes introduces its readers to a living standard of Marine Corps esprit de corps and military decorum. Sergeant Major Bradley Kasal, the pride of Iowa, is a small town boy who wanted to be a United States Marine even before a poster perfect Marine recruiter marched into his high school gym and offered him a challenge Kasal couldn’t resist. Two decades later Kasal stood stiffly at attention, one leg literally shot in half, while the Navy Cross was pinned to his chest. Kasal is currently the Sergeant Major of the Infantry School at Camp Pendleton, CA until he retires in May, 2012.After a brief visit to his childhood Kasal’s story quickly gathers steam, introducing the reader to his early Marine career; adventure filled years that earned him the name “Robo-Grunt” from men who don’t offer accolades easily. Kasal uses his experience climbing the ranks to illustrate how Marines grow, and how they are shaped by the uncompromising attitudes of the officers and non-coms charged with turning young Marines into tigers.Kasal’s adventures culminate in Iraq. By now he is 1st Sergeant Kasal, ramrodding Kilo Company, 3/1, a rifle company in 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, the mighty “Thunder Third” that would cover itself with glory in 2004. Two days into Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003 Kilo is ordered to hold open a critical road between two bridges that Saddam’s fierce Fedayeen Saddam were just as determined to take away. Kasal makes in his stand on that road, literally standing tall amidst fierce gunfire, demonstrating the kind of leadership Kilo Company needed to get the job done. Kilo’s fight was part of the first big test of Marine Corps combat capabilities in the second Iraqi War and the only major engagement the Marine Corps fought during the heady days of the “Drive Up” to Baghdad. When it was over the so-called “Ninjas” of the Fedayeen Saddam were smashed. A week later Kasal was in Baghdad, welcomed with open arms by the exuberant population.A year later 3/1 was back to Iraq, in Anbar Province, the epicenter of the brutal war now raging in the former tribal stronghold of Saddam and his henchmen. The smiling faces that had greeted 3/1 the year before were gone. Kasal is the 1st Sergeant of Weapons Company, 3/1, the armored fist of a light infantry battalion. After four months of ambushes, IEDs, and deadly skirmishes 3/1 is ordered into Fallujah, to take the ancient city back from Al Qaeda and the foreign fighters who had turned the ancient “City of Mosques” into a fortress. It is there, in November, 2004 that the “Thundering Third” entered into Marine Corps legend and Kasal into the Pantheon of Heroes for his actions during the most savage battle the Marines fought in the Iraq War.At a non-descript house in a walled neighborhood in Fallujah Kasal, at the time accompanying a squad of Kilo’s riflemen into a contested house, becomes involved in a close-quarter duel with fanatical Chechen fighters. The fight rages throughout the house, at times Marines and the foreign fighters were exchanging rifle fire and grenades at ranges of less than 10 feet. For almost two hours the squad is trapped inside the house. During the brawl Kasal is shot seven times, almost loses his leg when it is nearly severed from his body, and sustains 47shrapnel wounds when he used his body to shield a wounded Marine laying next to him from an enemy grenade. In the skirmish, forever known as the “Hell House” fight, Kasal was awarded the Navy Cross, the nation’s second highest award for heroism.
The King Bee
Ben Moreell was the first non-Naval Academy graduate to be awarded the four stars of an Admiral. He is still the only staff corps officer to be promoted to Admiral. The history of the U.S. Navy Seabees and the biography of Admiral Ben Moreell are inseparable. Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he began forming the construction units that ultimately became known as the Seabees. The first battalion of Seabees deployed from the U.S. on 27 Jan. '42. This instantaneous effort to recruit, train, organize, equip and deploy a military unit is still recognized as an amazing achievement. Ultimately over 300,000 Seabees were involved during WW II. The Seabees built and operated the equipment needed to get troops, equipment and supplies ashore in every amphibious landing of WW II. Beginning in North Africa and continuing to Sicily, Italy and Normandy, they were an essential element of the invasions of Europe. But their island hopping campaign throughout the Pacific with the Marines really made their reputation.They participated in every Pacific invasion together with the Marines with the exception of Guadalcanal, where they arrived about three weeks after the First Marines went ashore. Following the invasions, the Seabees built every sort of facility required by the Marines and the Navy; piers, runways, fuel storage, hospitals, ammo storage, dry docks, and more. The accomplishments of the Seabees continued through Korea, Viet Nam and the middle east. The unique aspect of the fighter-builder Seabees generated a need for a command structure that could respond to both elements at any time. Recognizing this critical feature Moreell achieved a major change to Navy Regulations and obtained the authorization for Civil Engineer Corps officers to be given command of the Seabees. They are still the only staff corps officers who enjoy the privilege of commanding fleet units.Moreell also directed the massive mobilization and construction effort for the Navy and Marine Corps throughout the war as well as dealing with unions, congress, manufacturers, and an ever growing federal bureaucracy. His open and honest dealings were recognized by all and contributed to the successful accomplishments of the Bureau of Yards and Docks during that time.But it Seabees remain his crowning military achievement.Their success in W W II was recognized by Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz in a Seabee birthday anniversary letter to Moreell in which he stated, «....without them we could not have beaten the (Japanese).»An advisor to four Presidents, Ben Moreell's actions forever placed the Civil Engineer Corps and the Seabees solidly in Navy history and tradition.