with the Roman army as the theme, tbh there's not many who write as well or better. or so says Bernard Cornwell, someone else who writes many a good book
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Wellington’s Guns: The untold story of Wellington and his artillery in the Peninsula and at Waterloo. I can recommend it to anyone interested in the Peninsular War and Waterloo campaign.
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Wellington’s Guns: The untold story of Wellington and his artillery in the Peninsula and at Waterloo. I can recommend it to anyone interested in the Peninsular War and Waterloo campaign.
another good one is Peter Snow's To War with Wellington, From the Peninsula to Waterloo
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The Peter Snow book above looks interesting - as does the Wellington's Guns. I'll think about those. Meanwhile I was going to go with Nelson and Napoleon - The Long Haul to Trafalgar (Lee) but, not for the first time, I'm struggling....
So I've shelved that for the mo and am instead going to give Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini - Totalitarianism In The Twentieth Century (Pauley) a go.
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
quote:
ORIGINAL: warspite1
At long last I’m getting round to reading Shattered Sword again. Three chapters in and this is every bit as brilliant as I remember it.
One of the best! Solid choice!
warspite1
It's funny the things one forgets. But I had completely forgotten about the plan for Operation AL. As I'm reading it I'm thinking "is this true? Surely this is just made up?".........
Nurse!
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The biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Jobs was really a strange person. I watched the movie by Danny Boyle, and it does a good job in showing the flaws and the quirks of Jobs - even if the context is fictitious (the backstage of three products’ launch).
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@Wodin
I saw Grey Bastards on the new books shelf at my public library and remembered your recommendation.
This book is every bit as good as you indicate. I, like you, am waiting for a continuation. The book is profane, and vulgar, but if you are an adult go for it. The author himself says it will be years before he lets his young son read it. It is a dense story, but the author does a good job of keeping the threads weaving. I found it easy to care about the characters.
Give it a try, maybe especially, if it a genre you do not normally read. Fantasy is not an area I am well read in, but I will be watching for this author.
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Annoyingly I'm having to temporarily shelve Shattered Sword for a couple of weeks or so. I've ordered (and should have delivered on Tuesday) Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II.
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ARMAGEDDON The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 Sir Max Hastings Author. I've read a few of his books: Falklands, Bomber Command and Overlord.
He really lifts the lid off the warm fuzzy feeling about the Allied effort in the last year and a half of the war in Europe. A comment Marshal Zhukov hit it on the nail, when when the Allies landed in Normandy, ..Eleven months before the end of a six year war was only to prevent Stalin from reaching Paris. Hastings has been critcized as being too 'Harsh' in his books, but he covers it well, all warts n' all, how the Red Army surged over Prussia and Eastern Europe like a Mechanised Medieval Army hell bent on Bloody revenge of rape and pillage to the Fiasco of Arnhem. This one, Armageddon is a bloody 'Good Read' but then I've found all his books are.
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quote:
ORIGINAL: HeinzBaby A comment Marshal Zhukov hit it on the nail, when when the Allies landed in Normandy, ..Eleven months before the end of a six year war was only to prevent Stalin from reaching Paris.
An interesting take, to be sure. I suspect that Zhukov may have been rather downplaying the role of the British, Canadians and Americans in Western Europe to buttress their own claims of superiority. Stalin wasn't best known for his embrace of free expression amongst his generals, you know. Any fantastic claims of Zhukov or the like need to be taken with a bit of a grain of salt.
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
quote:
ORIGINAL: HeinzBaby A comment Marshal Zhukov hit it on the nail, when when the Allies landed in Normandy, ..Eleven months before the end of a six year war was only to prevent Stalin from reaching Paris.
An interesting take, to be sure. I suspect that Zhukov may have been rather downplaying the role of the British, Canadians and Americans in Western Europe to buttress their own claims of superiority. Stalin wasn't best known for his embrace of free expression amongst his generals, you know. Any fantastic claims of Zhukov or the like need to be taken with a bit of a grain of salt.
warspite1
+1
As I mentioned in the thread about India, Hastings is seemingly trying ever harder to remain relevant.
I certainly have great respect for what the ordinary Soviet achieved in World War II and there is no doubt the Red Army broke the Wehrmacht. But very little in life is simple.
What if the Allied generals had been able to treat the lives of their men with the total disregard for life that the Soviet generals treated theirs when attacking or defending.
It would be interesting to see where the Soviets would have been without (amongst other things):
- lend lease - the air war in west and in the Mediterranean. There were more German aircraft in these theatres than in the East where they were desperately needed and where the war would be won or lost. - the huge numbers of men and artillery pieces defending the homeland against the bomber offensive. Again that artillery would otherwise have been in the east where it was needed. - the numbers of troops tied down fighting in Italy and later France
Hastings can re-visit history all he likes (it's not always a bad thing to question accepted versions of events) but I think he oversteps the mark too often of late.
< Message edited by warspite1 -- 12/1/2018 2:17:16 PM >
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
quote:
ORIGINAL: HeinzBaby A comment Marshal Zhukov hit it on the nail, when when the Allies landed in Normandy, ..Eleven months before the end of a six year war was only to prevent Stalin from reaching Paris.
An interesting take, to be sure. I suspect that Zhukov may have been rather downplaying the role of the British, Canadians and Americans in Western Europe to buttress their own claims of superiority. Stalin wasn't best known for his embrace of free expression amongst his generals, you know. Any fantastic claims of Zhukov or the like need to be taken with a bit of a grain of salt.
The Soviets edited out lots of US, or British, made equipment from their photos in order to downplay the importance the received equipment played. So I am not going to take the word of a Soviet Marshal. No matter how good he might have been at his trade.
I've read that USSR even edited out things that can signal that Soviet soldiers had looted...
< Message edited by Orm -- 12/1/2018 2:09:06 PM >
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... - the huge numbers of men and artillery pieces defending the homeland against the bomber offensive. Again that artillery would otherwise have been in the east where it was needed. ...
as an aside to this, it wasn't just artillery pieces. Something like 70% of the German shell production was for AA guns, and that was of course mostly used up against Western Allied aircraft. Its a huge diversion of effort and resources.
Geoffrey Wawro The Austro-Prussian War - not something I knew anything about apart from how it is treated in wider 19C European History. Decided I wanted to know more after wading through Gat (History of Military Thought) in the summer as he argues it was the moment when Jomini fought Clauswitz (by proxy) and that everyone drew the wrong conclusions.
Its well written but the maps could be better.
Few bits that stood out. Europeans looking down on the performance of American Armies in the Civil War were really missing the point. All of Italy, Austria, the secondary German states and Prussia faced massive in-battle desertion rates as the lethality of rifle fire became obvious. he cites a battle in the Rhineland where about 25% of a Prussian brigade deserted. Prussia was as bad operationally and logistically as everyone else. For all Benedict's endless failings, there were about 4 hours at Sadowa when he could have won the war simply by a sustained frontal attack.
In terms of games, makes me wish that Brother against Brother will be revived and extended. From this, its the perfect rendition of mid-19C combat at the regimental/tactical level. Also increases my respect for Frank Hunter's Campaigns on the Danube - the only game where your corps can get spread out over 50 miles of roads while you are working out how to actually fight a battle.
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