Regardless of technological and doctrinal advances; final mastery of any battlefield ultimately depends upon the tight-knit group of soldiers trained to direct fire; move; take ground and hold it. This book examines the infantry combat methods of World War II. It draws on the training manuals of the time and first-hand accounts of frontline action and covers the organization and tactics of squad; platoon; company and battalion. It identifies the differences between German; American; British and Japanese approaches and demonstrates how these evolved in the face of changes in the battlefield environment. Motorized infantry tactics are also covered together with each army's responses to the continuously growing challenge and shifting patterns of anti-tank combat and combined operations with armor.
#544714 in Books 2012-11-20 2012-11-20Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.20 x 1.22 x 6.02l; 1.54 #File Name: 1844677702422 pages
Review
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful. A wonderful work!By Donald PellesThis book makes sense of American history and the American present: race relations in this country and the very concept of "race" itself: how it developed in Virginia in the 17th and early 18th Centuries and how it has played out every since; not only here but in Europe and the rest of the world as well.The nitty-gritty is in Volume II; examining in detail how contracted servitude in the beginnings of the Virginia colony developed into chattel bondage. Then in the years after Bacon's Rebellion - in which European- and African-descended bond servants made a common cause against their planter masters - the planter class invented "whiteness;" dividing the working population into slaves; the Africans; and "whites;" the Europeans; an insidious piece of social engineering that created stratum of poor "whites" to control the black slave population; allying that stratum to the planters themselves and against their natural allies; the slaves.Volume I discusses British oppression and control in Ireland; a very similar system and mechanism but where both oppressor and oppressed were light-skinned Europeans. The latter part of Volume II treats the period right after the Civil War; and how the promise and possibilities embodied in breaking up the plantations and distributing the land to poor whites and former slaves ("forty acres and a mule") were dashed and a new regime of slavery without the name was put in place instead.14 of 15 people found the following review helpful. The most truly "radical" American history ever writtenBy Sean AhernHow and why did white supremacism establish itself in colonial Virginia in the late 17th century? Who benefited? Who lost? And why even now in the 21st century is it still a defining feature of our political and economic life? World War II and the post war Civil Rights movement pulled back the veil of American democracy to reveal to the world a sordid reality uncomfortably similar to the race supremacism practiced by Nazism and Japanese militarism. The resistance to Jim Crow posed a challenge to American historians to account for this defining feature of US society. White supremacism was enshrined in the 3/5 clause of the Constitution but even after a civil war and ten years of Reconstruction why was it resurrected in the form of Jim Crow? Theodore W Allen devoted the last 35 years of his life looking for answers. Among his numerous published and unpublished works; The Invention of the White Race (2vols) is his magnum opus. Volume II in particular; subtitled The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo America; is increasingly acknowledged as a ground breaking definitive work and the foundation for a much needed and truly radical history of America1 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Vitally important information for understanding society todayBy Gina M. HarrisAllen proves his case. It took two volumes; and studying years of history beyond 17th-century Virginia; but it all works out. There is so much information it is hard to know what to say about it; but I feel there is understanding here that is vitally important to how we need to proceed today.
