Camp that held Rommel's men surrenders its secrets

I’m sure many of you have heard of Infantry Attacks, a book by Erwin Rommel in the interwar era. It is about Rommel’s experiences in World War 1 as a mountain infantry commander mainly in Romania and Italy, but he also fought in France for the first year of the war, as part of a regular infantry unit. Throughout the book, especially in Romania and Italy, Rommel assumed higher and higher commands, ending in the command of the Rommel detachment of the Wurttemberg Mountain Battalion. This also doubles as a military textbook, with the English translator and the US army writing an introduction at the start of the book. I finished it and it is a great book.

One of the highlights is the Tolmien offensive in Italy, where the Rommel detachment of the Wurttemberg Mountain Battalion destroyed five Italian regiments and took 9000 prisoners in three days, the most successful of Rommel’s career.

I highly recommend it, but it’s quite a long and complicated book. It really shows you Rommel’s power as a commander. A sequel, Tank Attacks, was planned but never completed, due to Rommel’s suicide in 1944. It was meant to be based on Rommel’s experiences in North Africa. What was written can be found in the Rommel Papers. I just don’t recommend it because it was edited by Liddell Hart, a British general who edited the works to make it seem like Rommel was his “pupil”, and that Liddell Hart taught Rommel what he knew. It was also edited by one of Rommel’s staff in North Africa, and his wife and son.

If you have read this book, what are your thoughts on it? Thank you!

Thank you both for the story and adjustment. Missed it, when first posted.

I voted for the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.

Prior to the dropping of the first atomic bomb, the Japanese were already willing to agree to a conditional surrender.

The Soviet Union was fundamentally hostile to the Western democracies. Some Japanese leaders hoped for an alliance between Japan and the Soviet Union–an alliance against the U.S. and Britain. Their hope was that the Soviet Union would enter the war on Japan’s side.

The Soviet invasion of Manchuria demonstrated that any kind of diplomatic arrangement with the Soviet Union was no longer an option. With its diplomatic options exhausted, Japan’s only way of avoiding the Americans’ demands was to achieve some kind of military victory. There was a shortage of Japanese military victories from '43 - '45, and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria only made things worse. That invasion was regarded by both sides as a prelude to the invasion of Japan itself. The quick collapse of Japan’s Manchurian forces inspired little hope that Japan would do well in a follow-up Soviet invasion of its home islands. Still less did it seem possible for Japan to defeat a combined invasion of American and Soviet forces. At that point, it was concluded that it was better to unconditionally surrender to the Americans, than to have unconditional surrender imposed anyway by a combined Soviet-American force.

Why wasn’t Stalin interested in joining Japan’s war against the U.S. and Britain? I see two main reasons: 1) He wasn’t yet ready for such a war, and 2) By 1945, Japan’s military had little left to offer. By the early '50s, Stalin may have felt himself ready or close to ready for war against NATO. Some historians feel that Stalin permitted the Korean War to proceed because he wanted to test American military readiness. The results in that war were such that Stalin felt comfortable moving forward with his plans for WWIII. However, he died before putting those plans into effect.

Well said frimmel, my wife surprised me by saying she wanted to see it.  I found it a rather mild movie, but enjoyable none the less.  I must admit, I had to go home and watch the second half of Pearl Harbor to get a lil action fix.

Go see it though, They got all the period vehicles right…even the Russians and to that I say bravo!

Haile Selassie’s words were to ring true. Four more years the Western Powers allowed Hitler, Mussolini and Japan  to take what parts of the world they wished.
It was only arrogant errors by those same leaders that saw them reversed after some years and millions of deaths.

It is early yet Garg.
The Civil War was lost in the West, starting with Nashville and Vicksburg was a greater loss than Nashville.  I agree that a Southern victory at Gettysburg would not have equated to the fall of Washington or an armistice, despite Lee’s hopes for one.

all the best NATO military testing facilities

Canada should get an award for that. Most important thing ever!

A year since the last post