re: Can we get a WWII content megathread going?

If you research the Wehrmacht general staff, you’ll begin to understand why they were successful. They realized, when Prussia was defeated by Napoleon, that they needed to institute excellence into their command structure. That way, they had a system to counteract a genius, like Napoleon. Prussia/Germany was the first army to transition from an aristocratic officer corp to one based on merit.

The secret to their success was two fold. One was training their junior officers to take the initiative when it presented itself, and was wildly successful. The other was elevating the importance of logistics to primacy. Bread and bullets.

Their biggest flaw was the political leadership that didn’t understand how to wage war. Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler were fools.

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If you research the Wehrmacht general staff, you’ll begin to understand why they were successful. They realized, when Prussia was defeated by Napoleon, that they needed to institute excellence into their command structure. That way, they had a system to counteract a genius, like Napoleon. Prussia/Germany was the first army to transition from an aristocratic officer corp to one based on merit.

The secret to their success was two fold. One was training their junior officers to take the initiative when it presented itself, and was wildly successful. The other was elevating the importance of logistics to primacy. Bread and bullets.

Their biggest flaw was the political leadership that didn’t understand how to wage war. Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler were fools.

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WWI German army>>>>>>WWII German army

WWI German army wasn’t shackled to an idiotic ideology.

Never Call Me A Hero by Dusty Kleiss. This badass SOB hit two carriers at Midway. 1 of only two people in history to do this.

I second the WWII Museum. Started out as a D-Day museum and took off. Steven Ambrose (UNO history professor) got the idea after writing Eisenhower’s official biography.
After that, he realized that the WWII vets were starting to die. He started an oral history project and recorded any veterans stories. Even a few German and Japanese.
That’s how he got the info to write Band of Brothers. Easy Company had stayed pretty close after the war and they all told him their stories.
My Dad was a USCG Pharmacist Mate (medic) on a troop transport. They saw action in the invasion of southern France and D-Day. He didn’t storm the beach but he always told us a story of an LST that had been hit by German fire and drifted next to his ship as it was sinking. He and other medics and stretcher bearers scrambled down the cargo nets onto the LST and recovered the wounded.
Years later, at the opening of the D-Day Museum in 1995? 96? He attended and wore his USS Samuel Chase cap. During the festivities, 2 veterans wearing LST caps came up to him excitedly. They were a couple of the sailors who had been rescued that day by the Samuel Chase. It was really something to see a “tall tale” confirmed.
There are photos of the rescue in the permanent D-Day exhibit.

Well you can’t just jump straight into a WWII thread. First you have to set the background, how we got to WWII. This means you’ll need a WWI thread first. But there again you’ll have to fill in background with a thread on the Franco-Prussian War and Baltic Wars, at the very least. Really you could also have threads all the way back to the Napoleonic Wars, and the French Revolution.

A great book on the American aspect of the campaign in Africa is Rick Atkinson's, An Army At Dawn. Learned a lot from that one.

Yes, Hornfischer is really good too. I've read Neptune's Inferno and The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. I have to check out the other one you mentioned when they finally open the library again.

Just remembered his book, Ship of Ghosts, about the heavy cruiser, USS Houston, was really good too.