Историческая литература
Различные книги в жанре Историческая литератураIn Final Defense of the Reich
In April 1945 the American 71st Infantry Division exacted the final vestiges of life from the Reich's 6th SS Mountain Division in central Germany. On Easter weekend, the bypassed German division fought to the very end as they were first surrounded and then destroyed as a fighting force. Rusiecki argues that the battle demonstrates that the Wehrmacht’s last gasp on the Western Front was anything but a whimper as some historians charge. Instead, many of Germany’s final combat formations fought to the very end against a chaotic tableau of misery, destruction, and suffering to exact every last bit of pain upon their soon-to-be conquerors. In recounting this final, desperate act of Germany’s once great Wehrmacht, In the Final Defense of the Reich follows the histories of both the German 6th SS Mountain Division and the American 71st Infantry Division from their inceptions until their ultimate and fateful confrontation in Germany in the wake of Patton’s advancing Third Army. The history of this undiscovered and overlooked battle is not simply an archival chronicle of the action, but a testament to the human experience in war – both from the perspective of the soldiers involved and the civilians who must suffer the brunt of the fighting. The battle not only details one of Nazi Germany’s final military campaigns but also serves as a timeless and cautionary tale of the horrors of war and the price mankind pays for such demonstrations of national power.This book is published in cooperation with the Association of the U.S. Army.
Fallujah Redux
The city of Fallujah, Iraq will long be associated with some of the worst violence and brutality of the Iraq war. The battles to retake the city from insurgent fighters in 2004 have already indelibly carved its name into the historic annals of the U.S. military and occupy a revered place in the storied history of the United States Marine Corps. Initially occupied by U.S. forces in 2003, it eventually served as the headquarters for numerous insurgent groups operating west of Baghdad, including al-Qaeda in Iraq and its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, until forcibly retaken at the end of 2004. Once the city was finally cleared, U.S. forces concentrated on trying to prevent it from returning to insurgent control by waging a counter insurgency campaign against both nationalist and extremist Islamist insurgent forces. It was a long, frustrating and, at times, brutal fight for control of the population with the eventual goal of setting the conditions for eventual Iraqi Government control and enabling U.S. forces to leave. Even though Coalition Forces were winning tactically, the initial policies of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which had deeply alienated the Sunni Arab population, negative press coverage of the ongoing violence, as well as the often clumsy and ineffective efforts of the developing Iraqi Security Forces served to make winning over the population a difficult process at best. The people of the area still strongly supported the nationalist insurgents and, although they often allied with the Islamists to push Coalition Forces out of Iraq, were frequently more terrified of the extremist Islamist insurgents than supportive. There seemed to be little U.S. forces could do to change the situation. By the middle of 2007, four years after the initial invasion of Iraq, the city of Fallujah and its surrounding countryside remained mired in a seemingly intractable cycle of violent action and counteraction between government security forces, assisted by U.S. forces, and the various insurgent groups. It was an unstable and chaotic time. It had even gotten to the point that some on the coalition side were beginning to wonder if Fallujah was being lost all over again. All of this began to change in 2007.Progress up to that point had been slow, difficult to assess, and occurred in fits and starts. The hardest aspect of the counter-insurgency effort was maintaining a sense of enduring security for the population so that Iraqis would not have to live in constant fear of retribution from the different insurgent groups. Lacking an adequate Iraqi partner, this task was beyond the resources of U.S. forces in Anbar Province – something needed to change. Beginning in June 2007, local security conditions in Fallujah were fundamentally altered due to a concerted U.S. pacification campaign in the city, increased cooperation from local tribes, and greater efforts by Iraqi Security Forces. This campaign took advantage of the tide of the Al Anbar Awakening Movement that was sweeping the province from west to east as the tribes in the area and the broader Sunni Arab community began to turn against al-Qaeda in 2006 and 2007. As this movement gained momentum, Fallujah’s residents were waiting for it to push eastward in order to help them eliminate al-Qaeda from their own communities. Even though the local population had not yet risen up against the terrorist group, they were keen to do so and needed the help of U.S. forces. The campaign described in this book gave them this opportunity.
From Kabul to Baghdad and Back
From Kabul to Baghdad and Back provides insight into the key strategic decisions of the Afghan and Iraq campaigns as the United States attempted to wage both simultaneously against al-Qaeda and its supporting affiliates. It also evaluates the strategic execution of those military campaigns to identify how well the two operations were conducted in light of their political objectives. The book identifies the elements that made the 2001 military operation to oust the Taliban successful, then with combat operations in Iraq as a standard of comparison, the authors analyze the remainder of the Afghan campaign and the essential problems that plagued that effort, from the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2002, through the ill-fated transition to NATO lead in Afghanistan in 2006, the dismissal of Generals McKiernan and McChrystal, the eventual decision by President Obama to make the Afghan campaign the main effort in the war on extremism, and the final development of drawdown plans following the end of the war in Iraq. No other book successfully compares and contrasts the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan from a national strategic perspective, analyzing the impact of fighting the Iraq War on the success of the United States campaign in Afghanistan. It is also the first book to specifically question several key operational decisions in Afghanistan including: the decision to give NATO the lead in Afghanistan, the decisions to fire Generals McKiernan and McChrystal and the decision to conduct an Iraq War-style surge in Afghanistan. It also compares the Afghan campaigns fought by the Soviet Union and the United States, the counterinsurgency campaigns styles in Iraq and Afghanistan and the leadership of senior American officials in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the final chapter, the key lessons of the two campaigns are outlined, including the importance of effective strategic decision-making, the utility of population focused counterinsurgency practices, the challenges of building partner capacity during combat, and the mindset required to prosecute modern war.
Requiem for Battleship Yamato
A young ensign on the bridge of the fabled battleship Yamato during her final battle, recounts his experience.
In the Hands of Fate
Patrol Wing Ten was the only U.S. Navy aviation unit to fight the Japanese in the early weeks of World War II, and the daring exploits of its PBY scout-plane pilots offer a dramatic tale of heroism, duty, and controversy. Poorly equipped and dead tired from flying back-to-back patrols with no fighter cover, the men lost sixty-six percent of their aircraft in just eight weeks as they took on an enemy that outnumbered them nearly 1,000 to one. This forceful narrative places the reader right in the midst of their courageous battle. Dwight Messimer's aggressive research on the topic has resulted in a work that provides moving details to their desperate but valiant acts against the seemingly invincible Japanese juggernaut that swept across the southwest Pacific at the opening of the war.By Christmas Day in 1941, Patrol Wing Ten was forced to split into two groups, one fighting an air and sea campaign in Java, the other fighting as infantry on Bataan and Corregidor. Moving back and forth between the two groups, Messimer skillfully interweaves their experiences with the major events of the overall war. He uses material from the fifty survivors he managed to track down and deftly captures their ability to maintain a sense of humor in the face of overwhelming danger. The more than one hundred personal and official documents uncovered during years of research reveal new information relating to technical points about the planes, facts verified by the PBY crews that do not agree with popularly accepted ideas. To those who believe the wing accomplished nothing–and this group includes many pilots–Messimer argues that while attempts to bomb the Japanese fleet proved futile because the PBYs were unsuitable for such a task, the wing's rescue and evacuation missions saved many lives. The airdales themselves were not so lucky. When Corregidor fell, nearly half of them were captured and many died in captivity.
Hunter-Killer
The pursuit of German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic has long been considered one of the most exciting stories of World War II. This definitive study takes readers into the cockpits and onto the flight decks of the versatile and hardy U.S. escort carriers (CVEs) to tell of their vital, yet little-known contribution to the anti-U-boat campaign. Sailing apart from the Allied convoys, the CVE captains had complete freedom of action and frequently took their ships on «hunt and kill» missions against the enemy. The German submarines were allowed no respite and no place to relax without the fear of discovery.World War II historian William Y'Blood explains that in the eighteen months between the spring of 1943, when the escort carriers began to prowl the Atlantic, to November 1944, the average number of U-boats in daily operation was reduced from 108 to a mere 31. Though land-based aircraft, various support groups, and the convoy system itself helped win the Battle of the Atlantic, the escort carrier groups' influence was profound. In addition to documenting the escort carriers' exciting operational history, the author also traces the CVE's development and construction and examines its tactical and strategic uses.
Bankrupting the Enemy
Award-winning author Edward S. Miller contends in this new work that the United States forced Japan into international bankruptcy to deter its aggression. While researching newly declassified records of the Treasury and Federal Reserve, Miller, a retired chief financial executive of a Fortune 500 resources corporation, uncovered just how much money mattered. Washington experts confidently predicted that the war in China would bankrupt Japan, not knowing that the Japanese government had a huge cache of dollars fraudulently hidden in New York. Once discovered, Japan scrambled to extract the money. But, Miller explains, in July 1941 President Roosevelt invoked a long-forgotten clause of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 to freeze Japan s dollars and forbade it to sell its hoard of gold to the U.S. Treasury, the only open gold market after 1939. Roosevelt s temporary gambit to bring Japan to its senses, not its knees, was thwarted, however, by opportunistic bureaucrats. Dean Acheson, his handpicked administrator, slyly maneuvered to deny Japan the dollars needed to buy oil and other resources for war and for economic survival.Miller's lucid writing and thorough understanding of the complexities of international finance enable readers unfamiliar with financial concepts and terminology to grasp his explanation of the impact of U.S. economic policies on Japan. His review of thirty-seven studies of Japan's resource deficiencies begs the question of why no U.S. agency calculated the impact of the freeze on Japan's overall economy. His analysis of a massive OSS-State Department study of prewar Japan clearly demonstrates that the deprivations facing the Japanese people were the country to remain in financial limbo buttressed its choice of war at Pearl Harbor. Such a well-documented study is certain to be recognized for its significant contributions to the historiography of the origins of the Pacific War.
The Fast Carriers
This classic study is considered essential reading for its analysis of fast aircraft carrier development in WWII. It provides a fascinating record not only of the U.S. Navy's metamorphosis from a battleship-oriented to a carrier-centered fleet, but also of the heated debates that took place over the changing naval strategy. With an insider's grasp of the famous individuals involved, award-winning naval historian Clark G. Reynolds takes readers from the war rooms of Washington to the flight decks of the Pacific. He vividly describes the battles over the concept of fast carriers between the air admirals and battleship admirals and offers little-known details gleaned from personal interviews and private diaries.
Making War, Thinking History
In examining the influence of historical analogies on decisions to use–or not use–force, military strategist Jeffrey Record assesses every major application of U.S. force from the Korean War to the NATO war on Serbia. Specifically, he looks at the influence of two analogies: the democracies? appeasement of Hitler at Munich and America's defeat in the Vietnam War. His book judges the utility of these two analogies on presidential decision-making and finds considerable misuse of them in situations where force was optional. He points to the Johnson administration's application of the Munich analogy to the circumstances of Southeast Asia in 1965 as the most egregious example of their misuse, but also cites the faulty reasoning by historical analogy that prevailed among critics of Reagan's policy in Central America and in Clinton's use of force in Haiti and the former Yugoslavia.The author's findings show generational experience to be a key influence on presidential decision-making: Munich persuaded mid-twentieth-century presidents that force should be used early and decisively while Vietnam cautioned later presidents against using force at all. Both analogies were at work for the Gulf War, with Munich urging a decision for war and Vietnam warning against a graduated and highly restricted use of force. Record also reminds us of the times when presidents have used analogies to mobilize public support for action they have already decided to take. Addressing both the process of presidential decision-making and the wisdom of decisions made, this well-reasoned book offers timely lessons to a broad audience that includes political scientists, military historians, defense analysts, and policy makers, as well as those simply curious about history's influence.
Before Jutland
Before Jutland is an effort to understand what happened at sea in northern European waters in 1914-15 when the German High Sea Fleet faced the Grand Fleet in the North Sea and the Russian Fleet in the Baltic. The book is an extensively revised and extended version of the author’s 1984 work The King’s Ships Were at Sea. It covers the first six months of the First World War because very important things occurred in that time and, despite the loose ends that inevitably remain with four more years of conflict to follow, important things can be said. The focus is primarily on the British, but both the Germans and the Russians are integral to the study because neither the British nor the Germans’ North Sea activities can be fairly assessed without giving due weight to the Baltic theatre of operations. This is an operational history, which balances coverage of the major incidents with treatment of the continuum of activity. The intent within the scene setting chapters is not to attempt a complete survey of the events of the previous decade, but to situate each navy within the environment of 1914. Before Jutland includes the battles of Heligoland Bight and the Dogger Bank, as well as the shock of the submarine and its effect on the operations of all the protagonists. In analyzing these events, it seeks to provide the context within which the protagonists were actually working, without the application of excessive hindsight, because in 1914 so much was new and experimental. Observers are inclined to consider what is known as the ‘Fisher Era’ as a continuum from Admiral Fisher’s accession as First Sea Lord in the British Admiralty in 1904; in reality the pace of operational development not only accelerated but became truly multi-lane only after about 1909, just before the great reformer went into his first retirement. The pressures at all levels within navies were therefore intensifying in the years immediately before the outbreak of the war in ways that were not fully understood, nor necessarily recognized. In short, those involved were struggling to learn a new language of naval operations and warfare with an incomplete dictionary and very little grammar. In all, Before Jutland tries to show not only what happened, but how the services evolved to meet the challenges that they faced at the opening of the Great War and whether or not that evolution was successful.