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I would give this very interesting and well-documented work 4.5 stars; it falls just short of "outstanding" due to the somewhat plodding writing style employed by the author. The facts and the analysis are all there; it's just the delivery is a little sluggish. When originally published, Mr. Mansoor was a career Army officer just winding a tour of duty at the United States Military Academy as an instructor in history. He later retired from the U.S. Army as a full colonel in July 2008 after 26 years active duty, primarily as an armor branch officer, serving as both a brigade commander and senior level staff assignments. Mr. Mansoor wrote this publication initially stemming from his thesis (or perhaps dissertation) in history, earning both the M.A. and Ph.D degrees from Ohio State University. The book is an outgrowth of that concept or core idea that the U.S. Army was not "out-fought" by the Germans in WWII or that the industrial base of the United States simply overwhelmed the Wehrmacht. Rather, Mansoor posits, the American soldier - once properly trained and properly led - was the equal and then some to the German forces. That issue will be debated for a long time, just as the relative fighting skills of Union versus Confederate soldiers have been debated for the past 150 years. What is remarkable is Mansoor's very skillful use of records and historical data to show the United States Army had to overcome significant inertia in solving the problem of building the 90 division Army, and barely pulled it off. The systematic siphoning off the best men, as determined by IQ scores, physical abilities, and mental attitude, to the Army Air Corps, to the U.S. Navy, to the U.S. Marine Corps, and even select units within the U.S. Army, such as the five airborne divisions and most of the headquarters units, left the regular infantry with the residue of the less intelligent, less fit, less aggressive, and less risk-taking. Even so, the 'low-number' divisions, such as the famed First Infantry and Third Infantry divisions, all performed exceptionally well after their initial baptism of fire. It was in the 'high-number' divisions - those created after mid-year 1943 - that saw the most trouble in accomplishing combat missions, the most difficulty in carrying out complex operations due to weak or sub-par leadership, and not surprisingly, a very high casualty rate. Mansoor does a very credible job in counter-arguing the long-held belief that other than the paratroopers and Rangers, the average G.I. Joe was not the equal to their German counter-part.
I think the best part of Mansoor's book is his very careful and exact analysis of showing how the veteran divisions of 1942 and early 1943 were simply stripped of key leaders, especially in the mid-grade officer or senior NCO ranks, to create or train the newly forming 'high-number' divisions. The mid-grade NCO showing inherent leadership was often shipped off to OCS to become a platoon leader, thus removing the much needed experienced squad leader or platoon sergeant from the ranks, only to be replaced by a less than capable junior enlisted man. This continual stripping of company leadership had a significant deleterious effect in the subsequent 1944-45 ETO campaign. The individual replacement system was an unmitigated disaster for the U.S. Army and Mansoor is heavily critical of this "widget" concept borrowed from the 1930s automobile assembly line and adapted to the needs of the U.S. Army. [Side note: The U.S. Army never got away from the individual replacement policy during WWII or Korea or Vietnam, and it was not until after the Vietnam War when it was finally, belatedly, recognized that an infantry unit is only as good as the cohesion and the soldier's "glue" of taking care of your buddy that holds it together, and the unit must be formed, trained, and deployed as a well-trained unit before entering combat. ] Overall, a very useful book and a key reference work that will certainly aid in understanding the U.S. Army in WWII.
- Series: Modern War Studies (Paperback)
- Paperback: 360 pages
- Publisher: University Press of Kansas; New edition edition (June 6, 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0700612262
- ISBN-13: 978-0700612260
- Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Customer Reviews: 24 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,011,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #258 in Military Regiment History
- #34745 in Engineering (Books)
- #10169 in World War II History (Books)
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