kevinkin Posted July 6, 2015 Share Posted July 6, 2015 I am about to take a plunge into the books below. Any thoughts? What are you guys reading?Anything new from the Soviet perspective?KevinHitler's Army: The Evolution and Structure of German ForcesTank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1942: SchwerpunktWhere the Iron Crosses Grow: The Crimea 1941-44Ghost Fleet (modern novel) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim1954 Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Haven't read those but if you happen to enjoy air warfare, try The Sudden Sky, B.Michelaard.. 1930's aviation in Germany up to Korea. Covers Spain, WW2, Palestine and Korea. Told from Axis and Allied sides. It is a novel, but a very good read. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sublime Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 I read Where the Iron Crosses Grow its pretty good 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 (edited) The Tank Warfare book is good. You get the perspective of a modern armor officer, who gets things like logistic limits and readiness etc. He is objective about the occasional lack of realism of German side commanders etc. As for what I'm reading, Stahel's three volumes on the critical phases of Barbarossa, Kiev 1941, Operation Typhoon, and the Battle fir Moscow. Also reading (just finished, actually) an interesting US infantry school publication from between the wars, overseen by George Marshall when he was just a colonel, called Infantry in Battle. Full of short WWI AARs and their lessons, and a model of doctrinal realism IMO. Especially good on things like control, direction, the time things really take, and the ways commanders screw up by underestimating the difficulties of such things in real combat conditions. A ,ot of training or doctrine documents are infected by perfectionism and idealization - this one very determinedly is the opposite, realistic. With examples of doing things wrong at least as important as doing them right, drawn from real history. Also a model of clarity and knowing what it wants - no hemming and hawing with one the one hand, one the other hand etc. Examples taken from US, French, British, and German experiences, which also gives a picture of the professionalism of officer corps between the wars, studying WWI and determined to pass on lessons etc. I believe it is a available on the web in PDF, through the "Trenches" WWI website. I'll see if I can find a link. (reading it in hardback myself...) FWIW. Edited July 8, 2015 by JasonC 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Here is a link to the PDF version of Infantry in Battle - http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/pdf/InfantryinBattle.pdf 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinkin Posted July 8, 2015 Author Share Posted July 8, 2015 Thanks guys. Thanks for the PDF link. JasonC - how does Stahel's work compare with Thunder on the Dniper? I guess 3 volumes would men more research / detail. I have not read Thunder in a few years. But it seems the central thesis is the same regarding August 41 and AGC.Kevin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Stahel is interested in the logistic limits the Germans faced, and in the command appreciations of each side at every stage of the campaign. He makes much of the political interference with the military pros, and substantiates e.g. how dumb Stalin's interventions were, compared to e.g. Zhukov's quite accurate and realistic appreciations, which the Russian high command resisted as defeatist etc. I haven't read all of them, so I can't give you more of an assessment than that - yet. But I can share further thoughts on his "take" as I read more of him. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
niall78 Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Just finished - The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 by Richard Overy. Very good read that details the strategic bombing campaigns across Europe during WW2. Why and how they were conducted, how successful they were and how they were countered and survived by civilians and the regimes they were aimed at. Would recommend to anyone interested in WW2 history. Should be a dry enough subject but Overy keeps it very interesting throughout. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 niall78 - have my copy, but its down in a stack and haven't had a chance to read it yet - thanks for the "review"... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
niall78 Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 niall78 - have my copy, but its down in a stack and haven't had a chance to read it yet - thanks for the "review"... I've always had an interest in the European air war and this is the first comprehensive history of it I could find. Highly readable. Very detailed on every aspect of the conflict - the attackers, defenders and those caught in the middle. The morality arguments and strategic justifications for incinerating 600,000+ human beings - many of them completely innocent. The effects and results - I found this most interesting. It made me wonder if the Russian rejection of strategic air-power and concentration on tactical air-power was the correct decision - I think for many air-forces it would have been. The only country that attained a hugely influential result with there strategic force was the US. After much delay and near complete ineffectiveness it finally focused on coherent tactics - air-superiority and transportation - and with that helped decisively in shortening the war. Strategic bombing was an abject failure in most cases expect the one case where it was decisive. Even then a quarter of the US wartime expenditure went into strategic bombing so as the author points out - could this expenditure have shortened the war anyway with less American and civilian deaths if directed into other areas - say improved armour forces. Turns some ideas I had on my head and reinforced others. Arthur Harris comes off as an even bigger nut than I thought he was - the mind boggles at the wasted resources the UK poured into burning cities for little real long term results except lots of burnt people. The madness of Italy ever entering the war and its sheer unpreparedness when it did. The usual German mix-ups and flights of fancy that never really understood what they wanted to do with strategic bombing or how to achieve it. The story of their heavy bomber development mirrors every other botched weapons program Hitler got involved with. There dozens of other though provoking issues raised - the main one I struggled with was the sheer pointlessness of much of the strategic air war. A pointlessness that many of those involved at the time seem to feel but with the resources involved in setting the strategic campaign lose must continue on the chosen path till the bitter end. I'd recommend digging it out. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinkin Posted July 9, 2015 Author Share Posted July 9, 2015 Thanks. Was there any comparisons made to the air war over Japan or how nuclear (the wait for) technology factored into the conductstrategic bombing? I am not sure if the Manhattan project was widely known and influenced military decisions prior to August 45.Kevin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 niall78 - thanks. Much of that I already know and agree with, though I would remark in passing that anyone shocked to find pointlessness in war hasn't thought about the matter very clearly. Pointless destruction is war's leading characteristic. I agree that strategic bombing was quite inefficient as a use of massive military resources. OR efficiency thinking was even more in its infancy in WW II than strategic air power was, and military theories in the matter were dominated, frankly, by science fiction. That said, exchange efficiency thinking is a quite demanding discipline, and most who approach it get practically everything about it wrong, including later historians who could be better informed. Too often they are satisfied with reporting the silliest things they can find among the conceptions of the day, letting hindsight make them look so much wiser - but without having the tools, data, or objectivity to assess the reality of the matter and put that reality in place of the misconceptions of the contemporaries. I am seeing something similar in Stahel, for example, of a "moving the goalposts" variety, revisionism. Great operational victory X is a defeat because it didn't win the war and someone at the time hoped it would; since it couldn't and didn't, it was a crushing strategic defeat that it didn't immediately win the war. Um, no. Major operational victories are still victories even if unrealistic expectations of what they might accomplish didn't pan out. The standard is the reality of the whole war as a process and a competition. Not what men thought about it. And the measure against which accomplishments need to be ranked are first of all those of the enemy (the war - it is a competitive thing and doing better than the other guy kind of matters), and second, alternate uses of the same resources (the efficiency question). But not, what some contemporary dreamed it might do. Anyway... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinkin Posted July 13, 2015 Author Share Posted July 13, 2015 Anyone read the Stalingrad Trilogy by Glantz and House? I am seeing the level of detail may just get in the way of a readable history. Tour de Force Glantz?Kevin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
76mm Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 I found the Stalingrad Trilogy pretty tedious, so would give it a pass unless you are really, really interested in Stalingrad. For something with a bit more color, I'd recommend either Enemy at the Gates (Craig) or any of Jason Mark's books (I read Island of Fire). Stalingrad, the City that defeated the Third Reich (Hellbeck) and Stalingrad, How the Red Army Triumphed (Jones) were also interesting. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinkin Posted July 14, 2015 Author Share Posted July 14, 2015 Enemy at the Gate was my perhaps first military history book purchased as a tiny paperback during the summer around 1973. The author was interviewed on US Public TV which I began watching earlier for their coverage of Fischer Spassky. It was that interview, and the song "Roads to Moscow" released about the same time, that got me started on east front WWII.KevinPS So, funny as it may seem, "Enemy" was on my summer reading list 42 years ago! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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