By August of 1942 reinforcements sent to assist Army Group B's drive on Stalingrad had transformed the German Sixth Army from a potent assembly of men and machines to the most powerful army in the world, with 22 divisions and supporting units under the command of General Friedrich Paulus. Facing the Sixth Army, and Fourth Panzer Army's seven German and four Romanian divisions, was a Soviet Stalingrad Front that had been decimated in July.
Photographic research can be a powerful adjunct to primary documents and secondary sources such as operational military history, memoirs, journal articles, and other such publications. The Battle of Stalingrad: Then and Now is a great example of that idea.
Early in 1945 the Japanese war machine was in a sorry state: “American submarines and aircraft destroyed in four years almost all of Japan’s merchant fleet. It was radically defeated even before American bombs incinerated the cities and Roosevelt obtained the entry into the war of the Soviet Union.”(1) Immediately after the surrender, the Japanese government confessed that shipping losses were the main reason behind defeat.(2) Japanese failure to protect its merchant fleet and thwart the U.S.
The Germans And The Dieppe Raid is well worth your time. James Shelley's reasearch is thorough and comprehensively explains how the Wehrmacht defeated Operation JUBILEE in spite of relying mostly upon a second-rate "static" infantry division to do the heavy lifting in terms of defeating a well-trained and equipped Allied raiding force. The book also provides considerable analysis as to what this victory meant for the more important fighting in France that would come two years later in 1944.
By July of 1944 (with the Allied success of D-Day coupled with the even bigger Soviet success of Bagration) it was obvious Germany had lost the Second World War. The German military commander-in-chief of the western front was Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. By that point in the war Rundstedt had acquired a reputation for saying and doing what he saw fit, regardless of the consequences.
So, perhaps it was no surprise that on July 1, 1944 he bluntly informed Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (the head of the German armed forces high command - OKW) that they had no choice but to make peace
The largest armored battles of the Second World War's Normandy campaign took place on the eastern side of the Allied bridgehead. These battles, fought by the Germans in defense against the British and Canadian attacker's seeking to liberate France, were the key to understanding the outcome of this crucial campaign. Bloody VerrieresVolumes I and II offers unprecedented insight into how the Germans ultimately prevailed against the major Allied Operations Goodwood, Atlantic, and Spring.
The Desert Air Force In World War II offers readers an interesting first-person perspective on what it was like to fight with the Allies in the skies of the Mediterranean theater of operations during 1940-1942. For my review please see here.
Lend-Lease is certainly in the news given the ongoing shipment of weapons from NATO countries into the Ukraine. This isn't the first time this was done. Author Vladimir Kotelnikov's Lend-Lease And Soviet Aviation In The Second World War offers a superb look into the delivering, modifying, and employing in combat of the various Allied aircraft shipped to the Soviet Union.
Given current events it is hard to find a more timely look at how much effort is involved in arming another country with war material at the same time it is actually engaged in conventional warfare against a peer
The footage coming out of the Ukraine is truly overwhelming. The ubiquity of smart phones and social media have enabled all of us to see things happening in real-time that previous generations couldn't imagine. However, that is not to say the information we are being presented is as consistently accurate. In fact, from the perspective of trying to understand in an operational military sense what is happening on the ground...well, let's just say that's another story.
There are alot of agendas being pushed. This creates a distorted view of the military situation in the Ukraine.
