This massive (about 2,000 words) trilogy (An Army at Dawn, The Day of Battle and The Guns at Last Light) detailing the U.S. led coalition which fought in North Africa, Italy, and Western Europe to help defeat Hitler.  It offers not only a strategic view of the war, but many interesting human stories of the men who both led and did the actual fighting.  They certainly are not all saints; all the human emotions are evident in the telling, including arrogance, lust for glory, stupidity, cruelty, humanity, and anger.  Despite the length of each book (and their weight), they are easy to read and difficult to put down, even for a reader with knowledge of the subject.

Why would a man join the French Foreign Legion?  For some, it is to hide, to escape a wife, a prison sentence, bad debts.  For Simon Murray, at the age of twenty, it was simply because he could not think of anything else to do with his life.  Thus, he signed a contract for five years in what is often considered the most disciplined military in the world.  The Legion needs to be disciplined given the nature of the recruits, the location of its bases, the brutality of the wars it wages and the harshness of its discipline.

Legends die hard and when this book originally came out, there still existed a legend of the golden time when John F Kennedy was President; youthful, good looking with a glamorous wife, he represented to many a time of idealism and vigor before the Viet Nam war.  Those who were with him in the White House during those famous “thousand days” wished to make sure that his image, and thus theirs was preserved for they had been called “the best and the brightest”.  They all worked hard but had a hardy manly mystique and wherever they went, people could feel their energy and purpose. But was the reality close to the legend?

During the Second World War, Grossman was an outstanding war correspondent for the Soviet Union and did his part to create the waves of patriotism which helped the Soviet Union defeat Germany.  After the war, Grossman became disillusioned with the system; his visits to the death camps in the Occupied Lands and the refusal of the official State organs to portray the millions of Jewish victims as having any special place in the memory of the war, plus the move towards anti-Semitism once the war was won helped to make him created his greatest novels.

This massive-almost nine hundred pages-book is an almost day by day, detailed record of her ten- and one-half years in office.  It is an amazing record of battles won and lost, almost impossible accomplishments set against her own country’s deep state, bureaucracy, entrenched interests and ossified political thinking.  Her record of successes on the foreign front is also detailed as she fought for the primary interests of her nation against European neighbors by  reducing uneven payments (in short, cutting welfare payments to France, Germany, etc.), a successful war with Argentina, leading the way in punishing Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait, etc.  Plain spoken, sure of her goals, she was, in my opinion, a pre-tweet version of Donald Trump.

Considered by many to be the founding father of the Panzer concept in pre-war Germany, Guderian was forceful, stubborn, opinionated and driven; all the virtues that would put him at odds with most traditional militaries around the world.  Fortunately for him, he caught the eye of Hitler and Guderian’s concepts represented exactly the type of bold thinking that Hitler sought to enable him to carry out his military goals. From that point, it was a love/hate relationship between the two, with Guderian being cast aside, brought back, ignored by Hitler, apologized to by Hitler and finally once again sent into the wilderness.

Starting in the late 1920’s the author began prowling the back streets and alleys of Paris, going where tourists dare not go and would not be welcome.  He mingled and took photos of the underside of Paris; the whores, pimps, cesspool cleaners, madams, opium dens, thieves, gays and gang leaders who lived in the dark alleys and byways of Paris at that time.  His was not an easy journey for those who he wished to talk too and photograph were often wanted by the police and they lived in a world where there was little honor and every outsider was view with suspicion and was also seen as an easy “mark”.

For years, Albert Seaton’s “Battle for Moscow” has been the gold standard for reviews of that famous and brutal battle. This work is a welcome addition to any library on the subject as it is lighter and raises several points which are worth examining. Michael Jones uses eyewitness accounts of actions to bring a personal touch which was missing from Seaton’s and thus the reader is drawn not so much by the technical aspect of the battle as by the personal.

This was the first Glasnost biography to come out of the then Soviet Union using many new resources and archives.  The author, the son of an agrarian specialist who was purged in 1937, went on, despite his questionable background, to become a Colonel General of the Soviet Army. Dedicated to his profession, he was shocked by the 1956 denunciation of Stalin by Khrushchev and began to gather material for this book at this time.  In addition to early access to archives, the author also was able to speak to many individuals who were associated with Stalin; although Stalin did not have any close relationships after the suicide of his second wife, these individuals were able to provide tidbits of information about Stalin’s habits, techniques, etc.

Mr. Bradley has written a number of excellent histories, including Flyboys and Flags of our Fathers.  This volume covers the interesting history between the United States and China, from the time of the Yankee Clippers through the “opening of China” by President Nixon.  In this book he unveils many interesting facts such as:

• That much of the money of the Eastern Establishment was made selling opium to the Chinese.  In fact, the fortune that propelled Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the White House was based on the illegal trade of opium.
• The fabled “China Lobby” which helped to guide our Asia policy was based on an idealized vision of the average Chinese peasant wanting to be an American, believing in democracy and wanting to have a nice house with a beautiful lawn, etc.
• That due to the “China Lobby”, the U.S. spent billions to prop up the corrupt regime of Chiang Kai-shek and that he and his circle were responsible for the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars while not contributing to the war against Japan
• Finally, that U.S. Presidents, from Teddy Roosevelt to FDR to Truman were fooled by the Chinese, the “China Lobby” and their own ignorance of the world into believing that they could remake China into a western democracy.