We Accept Death, We Hand Out Death II

The forty-three-year-old Gruppenführer Hermann Priess commanded the I SS Corps, formerly Sepp Dietrich’s old formation, which contained 1st and 12th Panzer Divisions, totalling around 240 panzers on 16 December. We have seen via Dietrich’s career how the Leibstandarte expanded from a motorised regiment in 1939 to the largest division in the armed forces by December […]

via We Accept Death, We Hand Out Death II — Weapons and Warfare

The Deadliest Marksman’s Cold, Brave Stand

The Deadliest Marksman’s Cold, Brave Stand

Who gives two shits about the number of kills? 500 or 200, it’s BEYOND AMAZING the guy did it with IRON SIGHTS in Below Zero temps!

This is one of the most amazing stories of partisan resilience on historical record. Let’s all learn something from it.

Stay Alert, Armed and Dangerous!

 

World War II History: The Butcher Bird Blitz

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Why Remembering Midway Matters

Why Remembering Midway Matters

Never Forget World War Two was a two front war for the United States: Germany in Europe and Japan in the Pacific. Midway was the turning point for the War in the Pacific against the Japanese Empire.

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A World War Two Book Pairing

Every once in a while I come across a Non-Fiction and Fiction book that need to read together.

Jeff Shaara made a name for himself with Civil War Historical Fiction titles such as Gods and Generals and The Killer Angels but his WW2 offerings are just as good IMHO. The Rising Tide is the first in Shaara’s World War Two Quadrilogy.  It recounts the North African Campaign and the early days of the Sicilian campaign as seen from Allied and Axis Viewpoints. One of the beauties of Shaara as a writer is his ability to give the reader a broad perspective of the war while a the same time constructing solid, personable characters that give you exacting details.

Rick Atkinson’s An Army at Dawn, the first book in his Liberation Trilogy. It Recounts the Allied North African campaign in stark detail, covering strategy and tactics, biographical data on Field Commanders and eye witness accounts of such famous battles as El Alamein and Kasserine Pass.

Read together, these two books compliment one another in fantastic ways. So often people think of military history books as boring, plain or tedious, and granted, some of them are. But when you combine Rick Atkinson’s flowing narration style along with Jeff Shaara’s descriptive prose, you get an experience that not only will inform and educate but entertain and delight as well.

Happy Reading!

Stay Alert, Armed and Dangerous!