The Second World War
John Keegan (Auteur)
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In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the U.S. Army. Defying all known accepted military practice - and indeed, the laws of physics - they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren’t joking. What’s more, they’re back and fighting the War on Terror. With first-hand access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades and shows how they are alive today within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in postwar Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners of war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Why have 100 debleated goats been secretly placed inside the Special Forces Command Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina? How was the U.S. military associated with the mysterious mass suicide of a strange cult from San Diego? The Men Who Stare at Goats answers these and many more questions. Ronson's Them: Adventures with Extremists, a highly acclaimed international bestseller, examined the paranoia at the fringes of hate-filled extremist movements around the globe. The Men Who Stare at Goats reveals extraordinary - and very nutty - national secrets at the core of George W. Bush’s War on Terror.
In 1938 Adolf Hitler directed two paramilitary labour organisations – the Reichsarbeitsdienst, recruits undergoing pre-military training; and Organisation Todt, a unique mobilisation of private construction firms – to support the armed forces (Wehrmacht) in their duties. Hard-pressed transport and supply units were further aided by the NSKK, the Nazi motoring organisation, and, from 1944, with military defeat looming, all manpower with any military potential was drafted into the Deutscher Volkssturm. The total strength of these organisations peaked in 1944 at about 3,800,000. Although units were generally inferior to their armed forces equivalents, their contribution to the war-effort was far from negligible.
A thrilling new appraisal of Horatio Nelson, the greatest practitioner of naval command the world has ever seen.
Robert Leckie, one of America’s greatest military historians, was both an eyewitness and participant to some of the greatest battles in the Pacific. Helmet for My Pillow is his vivid account of combat and survival in World War II. In January 1942, in the aftermath of the infamous Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. From boot camp in Parris Island to the bloody war in the Pacific, Robert Leckie experienced it all — the booze, the brawling, the loving on sixty-two-hour liberty; the courageous fighting and dying in combat as the U.S. Marines slugged it out, inch by inch, island by island across the Pacific to the shores of Japan.
Paladin is now offering the most up-to-date version in print of the famed U.S. Army Ranger Handbook. This manual draws from bloody lessons learned from two centuries of special operations combat. Crammed with info on demolitions, booby traps, communications, patrolling, tactical movement, battle drills, combat intelligence and much more.
From 1893 Laos remained a relatively peaceful French protectorate until the Second World War, when it was seized by Japan. As the war drew to a close, the Japanese encouraged the growth of nationalist movements to forestall the return of French power. Despite these efforts the French re-entered Laos. Soundly defeated, the Free Laos moved to Thailand. In 1949 a splinter fraction made its way into northern Vietnam and contacted the anti-French Viet Minh forces. Commonly as the Pathet Lao, and trained and equipped by the Viet Minh, these forces would eventually plunge Laos into another bloody war.
"Fredericksburg to Meridian" is full of the life of the times--the elections of 1863, the resignations of Seward and Chase, and the inescapable resolution that the war must go on. Told entirely through the lives and actions of the people in