Books about Battalions from Amazon.com

Shocking as it is, this book--a crucial source of original research used for the bestseller Hitler's Willing Executioners--gives evidence to suggest the opposite conclusion: that the sad-sack German draftees who perpetrated much of the Holocaust were not expressing some uniquely Germanic evil, but that they were average men comparable to the run of humanity, twisted by historical forces into inhuman shapes. Browning, a thorough historian who lets no one off the moral hook nor fails to weigh any contributing factor--cowardice, ideological indoctrination, loyalty to the battalion, and reluctance to force the others to bear more than their share of what each viewed as an excruciating duty--interviewed hundreds of the killers, who simply could not explain how they had sunken into savagery under Hitler. A good book to read along with Ron Rosenbaum's comparably excellent study Explaining Hitler. --Tim Appelo.
Price: $8.09 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War. Now E. B. Sledge’s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation.

An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division–3d Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic.

Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater. Here is what saved, threatened, and changed his life. Here, too, is the story of how he learned to hate and kill–and came to love–his fellow man.


From the Trade Paperback edition..
Price: $4.02 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts is retired Colonel David Hackworth's account of his tour of duty in Vietnam commanding the 4/39th, an infantry battalion operating south of Saigon in the Mekong River delta. Poorly led (the previous commander had based the battalion in the middle of a mine field), with frightfully high casualties (40 percent during the six months prior to Hackworth's arrival), and fighting in the most dangerous of terrain, the 4/39th was a dispirited and demoralized group when Hackworth assumed command in January, 1969. Upon arrival, Hackworth fired many of the senior officers and then put the 4/39th through "Combat 101," which made him so unpopular that at one point Hackworth was warned of a bounty some of his men had put out on him. Over the next five months, however, Hackworth would transform the 4/39 from "hopeless to hardcore," dramatically reverse the casualty rate, score some spectacular victories over the Viet Cong, and earn the undying respect of his troops. Here's a gung ho and earthy firsthand account of the Vietnam War that fans of We Were Soldiers Once... will appreciate. --Harry C. Edwards.
Price: $2.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For some, Hill 488 was just another landmark in the jungles of Vietnam For the eighteen men of Charlie Company, it was a last stand. This is the stirring combat memoir written by Ray Hildreth, one of the unit's survivors.

On June 13, 1966, men of the 1st Recon Battalion, 1st Marine Division were stationed on Hill 488. Before the week was over, they would fight the battle that would make them the most highly decorated small unit in the entire history of the U.S. military, winning a Congressional Medal of Honor, four Navy Crosses, thirteen Silver Stars, and eighteen Purple Hearts -- some of them posthumously.

During the early evening of June 15, a battalion of hardened North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong -- outnumbering the Americans 25-to-1 -- threw everything they had at the sixteen Marines and two Navy corpsmen for the rest of that terror-filled night. Every man who held the hill was either killed or wounded defending the ground with unbelievable courage and unflagging determination -- even as reinforcements were on the way.

All they had to do was make it until dawn.....
Price: $3.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent These are the heroes who helped end a war." -Ronald Reagan, June 6, 1984, Normandy, France

Acclaimed historian and author of the "New York Times" bestselling Tour of Duty Douglas Brinkley tells the riveting account of the brave U.S. Army Rangers who stormed the coast of Normandy on D-Day and the President, forty years later, who paid them homage.

The importance of Pointe du Hoc to Allied planners like General Dwight Eisenhower cannot be overstated. The heavy U.S. and British warships poised in the English Channel had eighteen targets on their bombardment list for D-Day morning. The 100-foot promontory known as Pointe du Hoc -- where six big German guns were ensconced -- was number one. General Omar Bradley, in fact, called knocking out the Nazi defenses at the Pointe the toughest of any task assigned on June 6, 1944. Under the bulldoggish command of Colonel James E. Rudder of Texas, who is profiled here, these elite forces "Rudder's Rangers" -- took control of the fortified cliff. The liberation of Europe was under way.

Based upon recently released documents from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the Eisenhower Center, Texas A & M University, and the U.S. Army Military History Institute. The Boys of Pointe du Hoc is the first in-depth, anecdotal remembrance of these fearless Army Rangers. With brilliant deftness, Brinkley moves between two events four decades apart to tell the dual story of the making of Reagan's two uplifting 1984 speeches, considered by many to be among the best orations the Great Communicator ever gave, and the actual heroic event, which was indelibly captured as well in the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan".

Just as compellingly, Brinkley tells the story of how Lisa Zanatta Henn, the daughter of a D-Day veteran, forged a special friendship with President Reagan that changed public perceptions of World War II veterans forever. Two White House speechwriters -- Peggy Noonan and Tony Dolan -- emerge in the narrative as the master scribes whose ethereal prose helped Reagan become the spokesperson for the entire World War II generation..
Price: $3.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Tiger and King Tiger tanks gained legendary status during World War II. Numerous tank commanders attained phenomenal tallies of kills and accomplished extraordinary feats during combat in these tanks, building the legend to near mythic proportions after the war.

During WWII, the Germans created eleven Army and three Waffen-SS heavy tank battalions. These heavy tank battalions were employed in nearly every part of Europe against almost every enemy of Germany. As vast in breadth and scope as the employment of Tiger battalions themselves, Sledgehammers provides historical examples and analysis of heavy tank battalions' actions in North Africa, Normandy, Italy, the Ardennes Offensive, and numerous battles on the Eastern Front including Operation ZITADELLE/the Battle of Kursk, Operation BAGRATION, the battle of the Cherkassy Pocket, late war attacks to relieve Budapest, and many other more minor engagements.

Although a great deal has already been published about Tiger tanks' technical details and some of the units which used them, until now, very little has been written concerning the organization and tactical employment of these tanks throughout the German armed forces and across the theaters in which they were employed. Sledgehammers provides an in-depth look at heavy tank battalions' organizations and tactics, including the tactical doctrine by which these elite units were supposed to fight and how they were actually employed on the battlefield by their commanders and crews.

Even given the Tiger's reputation, many readers will be amazed by the fearsome casualties inflicted by the crews of many of these behemoth armored vehicles. It is safe to say that no other armored vehicle of the war wreaked as much havoc among enemy formations as Tigers. Many will, however, also find it equally stunning to learn of the Tigers' many technical and tactical vulnerabilities. Through the systematic use of extremely detailed primary source and other impeccably reliable research, Sledgehammers demolishes several major myths about Tigers in World War II.

Meticulously researched and written with the perspective and respect for Tigers' crews that only a professional tanker can bring to the subject, Sledgehammers synthesizes information to provide new and definitive insights into the strengths and flaws of World War II's most feared and legendary tanks.

Prologue by famed Tiger ace Otto Carius. Epilogue by Tiger killers Viktor Iskrov and Ray Holt.

35 original maps. 42 photos..
Price: $12.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book tells, with firsthand accounts as well as numerous, never-seen-before photographs, the combat history of German Tiger Tank Battalion 503, the senior Tiger battalion of the German Army, equipped with both the Tiger I and the King Tiger. The battalion saw action in the attempted relief of Stalingrad, the tremendous tank engagements at Kursk, and the bitter fighting to relieve German units encircled at the Tscherkassy Pocket. It then defended against the Allies in Normandy in 1944, and ended the war with desperate fighting in Hungary and Austria..
Price: $18.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Although the history of armor in World War II has captured the attention of countless authors, no one has yet chronicled the extensive use of tanks in the Pacific, until now. In comprehensive detail Gene Eric Salecker describes the exploits of American tanks on the jungle islands where troops engaged in savage combat and encountered unforgiving weather and terrain. Stationed in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked the islands in 1941, the U.S. Army s independent tank battalions fought from the very start of the war. From New Guinea and the Solomons to the Ryukyus, American armor proved instrumental in winning World War II in the Pacific..
Price: $22.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

On April 10th, 2003, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, faced with the task of seizing the presidential palace in downtown Baghdad, ran headlong into what Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North called, "the worst day of fighting for U.S. Marines." Hiding in buildings and mosques, wearing civilian clothes, and spread out for over a mile, Saddam Hussein's militants rained down bullets and rocket propelled grenades on the 1st Battalion. But when the smoke of the eight-hour battle cleared, only one Marine had lost his life. Some said the 1st Battalion was incredibly lucky. But in the hearts and minds of the Marines who were there, there was no question. God had brought them miraculously through that battle.

As the 1st Battalion's chaplain, Lieutenant Carey Cash had the unique privilege of seeing firsthand, from the beginning of the war to the end, how God miraculously delivered, and even transformed, the lives of the men of the 1st Battalion.

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Price: $3.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]