Currently reading in 2016

Happy New year! Still digging out from the great blizzard here in Maryland.

Recollections of a Maryland Confederate Soldier and Staff Officer Under Johnston, Jackson and Lee, new titile: War at the End of the World: Douglas MacArthur and the Forgotten Fight For New Guinea, 1942-1945 --good book on an obscure topic. Reread: MacArthur's New Guinea Campaign...author very critical of "Field Marshal" MacArthur.

Just received Long Left Flank ...the Canadian army in Northwestern Europe; a subject I know very little about.

Burma Road ... another little Osprey.

I am currently reading How War Came by Donald Cameron Watt, which is very impressive so far (just 2-3 chapters in).

I am also reading The Sharp End: The Fighting Man in World War II by John Ellis, while still working on the Watt book. I'd recommend both quite highly.

Finished Wing To Wing: Air Combat in China, 1943-45 by Carl Molesworth. Not a bad book, but just not very interesting to read.

Operation Market-Garden 1944 (1): The American Airborne Missions (Campaign) ..I always like Steven Zaloga's writing. I was lucky enough several years ago while stationed in Germany to Visit Eindhoven, Nijmegen & Arnhem.

Besieged: The Epic Battle For Cholm, by Jason D. Mark.

#8, interesting volume, little known battle.

Finally bought a copy of H. M. S. Ulysses, excellent novel capturing the Arctic Convoys.

I've just started The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945 by Max Hastings.

Just finished the revised & expanded edition of When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Modern War Studies). You just cant go wrong with this one if you have an interest in the Russian Front. Recommended.

Deadly Sky.

Reading something a little different for me, Tanks in Hell: A Marine Corps Tank Company on Tarawa.

I've started Snow and Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45 by Peter Caddick-Adams.

Finished a short but interesting The Seabees of World War II by Edmund L. Castillo.

False Flags...German raiders in Australian waters.

The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 by Richard Overy.

Monte Cassino by Matthew Parker.

I'm about halfway through McCampbell's Heroes: The Story of the U.S. Navy's Most Celebrated Carrier Fighters of the Pacific War by Edwin P. Hoyt. It's providing an interesting history of the later stages of the war in the Pacific, but so far the history of McCampbell's fliers themselves is basically a recitation of individual dogfights which becomes fairly numbing after a while.

I'm about 3/4 of the way through The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant. All in all, the book is very well done. It was published in 1986, though. I don't know if there's been further research on the topic since then.

Finished Target London: Under Attack from the V-Weapons During WWII by Christy Campbell. Decent book, although rather tedious due to the inclusion of all the politics surrounding who in the British government was in charge of what aspect of the hunt for the weapons.

All good afternoon!
I addict to military history. I am from Ukraine. I very want to get a book "United States Army Group Forces: Infantry Division, 1940-1945 Volume 1i. Tables of Organisation and Equipment World War II" J. J. Hays ISBN: 9780854208135. I can not buy her unfortunately, it very for me expensive. Who does can will prompt, how to get the electronic copy of this book?

With kind regards, Igor Chub.

Reading Operation Dragoon: The Allied Invasion of the South of France. So far, for a short book, a tad too much emphasis on the paratroop drops.

I'm now reading Winston Churchill: the Valiant Years by Jack Le Vien and John Lord. Le Vien was an American documentary maker who produced a 36-hour documentary series for the BBC about Churchill and World War Two. This book was published soon after as a follow up. The book is basically a survey of the events of the war through British, and specifically Churchill's, point of view. In fact the author's make liberal use of quotations from Churchill's own memoirs (with permission, obviously, and clearly demarcated with italics). There's more than a little hero worship going on here, but certainly the fellow was in fact a hero, and given the era (early 60s) when there was still plenty of hero worship to go around regarding WW2, I'm fine giving some slack in that regard. At any rate, the writing is snappy if a bit breathless, and, about halfway through, I've had a few gaps in my knowledge filled in, as well.

>25 rocketjk: I just recently finished The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson and one thing I recall is the distinct impression that the invasion of Anzio was a mistake since the Allies really didn't have the manpower to pull it off and that it only happened because Churchill wore everyone down. I'm wondering how The Valiant Years deals with that issue.

>26 jjwilson61: I will let you know. I'm just up to the invasion of Sicily, now.

Just finished Iron Cross Brigade - The Story of Werner Gösel and Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 244 by Werner Gösel which is an autobiography of an officer in a Sturmgeschutz battalion on the Russian front from 1942 until 1944 . It also is a unit history of Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 244 which was in action in Stalingrad, Kursk, Bobruisk, and the Bulge. Very well written and contains good insights into the assault guns' support of the German infantry.

Just finished another book on the Russian Front - Stormtrooper on the Eastern Front: Fighting with Hitler's Latvian SS by Mintauts Blosfelds It was good and had interesting insights, one of which was the Latvians spent the final months of the war digging trenches in the rear areas. Most likely the Germans were nervous about them switching sides and fighting for the Russians; if so, that was an unfounded fear. Not much in the way of combat details in the book. I then started Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWS by Sönke Neitzel . Made it through the first fifty pages or so, as the psychological underpinnings discussion was painful to me, at least. On reaching the transcripts portion, it got a little better, but still seemed rather heavy handed. It looks like others have enjoyed this book; as for me, I needed to shelve it as there's so many other books I have to read.

>26 jjwilson61: Well, I finished Winston Churchill: the Valiant Years. There is not very much detail about Anzio. The only mention of Anzio's planning stages, vis a vis Churchill, is the following:

"Such is the power of his will that, aided by expert and devoted medical care, he is back in control {having recovered from pneumonia - rjk} by the middle of December. His first concern is Italy, where the fighting has reached a deadlock. He beings in earnest to champion Eisenhower's dream of breaking it by another amphibious landing, thrusting behind the German lines."

Note that this is referred to as "Eisenhower's dream." At any rate, there is no further mention of the idea until the actual Anzio landing itself, and no mention of any contention regarding it among the Allies.

On the other hand, much is made of Churchill's despair over Operation Anvil, the second landing in France via the Mediterranean. Churchill's objection to this undertaking was that the troops were taken from the Allied force in Italy. Churchill's strong desire was to conquer Italy in all haste, because he wanted the Western Allies to beat the Russians to Vienna and to as much of Eastern Europe as possible. But Roosevelt want to engage the Germans on as many separate fronts as possible, and Churchill couldn't make FDR share his distrust of Stalin's motives, and couldn't win over the generals, either. So Anvil took place and the Italian offensive slowed down.

This is all according to this one particular book, which is certainly, and avowedly, Churchill-centric. I wouldn't be at all shocked to learn that there were contrary perspectives and/or new research.

>30 rocketjk: I've returned The Day of Battle to the library so I can't double-check Eisenhower's wishes, but about the conquest of Italy, Atkinson suggests that given the numbers siphoned off to the Normandy landings and given the trouble they had in the mountains around Cassino that any effort to continue the fight into the Alps would have been pointless.

>31 jjwilson61: Jeff, The Valiant Years has the troops being siphoned off from Italy to Anvil, the French Mediterranean landing, rather than to Normandy. There is no mention of troops being taken from Italy for Overlord. At any rate, I don't have a super amount of confidence in this book's accuracy, so Atkinson may well be right on that score. As to the rest, I can certainly see the point about the Alps. The Valiant Years describes the issue thusly:

"The British point of view, conceived and prosecuted by Churchill, is that the thrust at the spine of Italy should continue with all expedition. The most urgent reason s that such a maneuver is likely to draw down from France a greater force of Germans than would a landing in the South of France. The second is the outcome of penetrating political insight, as General Sir Oliver Leese, commander of the Eighth Army in Italy, explains. He is visited by the Prime Minister: 'It was fascinating to hear Winston talk. Eventually we spoke of the South of France. I think it had been a bitter blow to him that the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington had decided to denude us of so many of our troops and make it impossible for us to break into the mountains. And the more I listened to him talk, the more it became confirmed in my mind that if only we'd been left as we were and I had been allowed to sweep over the plains of Venezia with my five great armored divisions, we would have been able to get into Austria and capture Vienna long before the Russians got there.'"

I have certainly not studied the subject enough to have an opinion about whether "breaking into the mountains," as Leese put it, would really have done the Allies any good. But that's clearly how Churchill felt about it prior to the Anvil landings.

Again, as to your original question, there's no indication in this book that there were disagreements regarding Anzio. That's not to say they didn't happen, just that this book doesn't describe them.

>32 rocketjk: Thank you for your comments. I'll have to find some biographies to help me flesh out my understanding of the strategies of WWII. I'd have to say one of the problems with The Day of Battle and it's prequel, An Army at Dawn, was that it tried to cover everything from the strategies of the top Generals to the life of the soldiers on the battlefields, and so it seemed to jump around a lot and was sometimes hard to follow.

About siphoning off troops from Italy, I probably misstated that. There was a fair bit of siphoning of leadership to Overlord but to actually move a large number of troops to England would have exceeded the transport capabilities of the Allies. The effect of Overlord on Italy was more that the flood of new American troops were going to England and not replenishing the troops in Italy.

It's odd though that the invasion of Southern France was barely mentioned in The Day of Battle. Were the Americans not involved in that? Since the Atkinson series is about the Americans involvement in the war.

>33 jjwilson61: I don't recall whether it was British or American troops or a mix of both involved in the Southern France invasion. As to Anzio, your comments gave me incentive to look up the invasion on wikipedia. The explanation there does indeed describe that operation as Churchill's idea, and one that he had to force down the throats of the Allied commanders. But there also seems to be blame to go around regarding the costliness of the operation itself.

Here's the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Anzio

I'm sure there are plenty of members of this group who know all of this history in great detail already. To all of those folks I say, thanks for your patience!

Finished Spies In The Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence during World War II by Taylor Downing, my last book of 2016. A pretty interesting read, although more of a popular narrative history than a definitive account.