World War II
The vicious aggression of Adolf Hitler and Japanese militarists caused this, the world’s most dreadful war, made worse by democratic leaders who appeased these killers while they were still weak and hesitant.
The Dixie Mission to the Chinese Reds
Excerpt from The Strange Connection: U.S. Intervention in China, 1944-1972, by Bevin Alexander, pages 18-19
The Dixie mission [sent to the Chinese Red capital of Yan’an in July 1944] was an agglomeration of talented but very junior American officers. It included military men like [army Colonel David D.] Barrett and foreign-service officers like [John Stewart] Service, some Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operatives, and apparently an informer for Navy Group China under Captain Milton (Mary) Miles that had connections with Chiang Kai-shek’s secret service chief, Dai Li. Read more >>
The Deathly Division of China
Excerpt from The Strange Connection: U.S. Intervention in China, 1944-1972, by Bevin Alexander, pages 1-2
Ever since an unnatural alliance between the Chinese Reds and the Nationalists had collapsed in 1927 in the wake of a great massacre of Communists ordered by Chiang Kai-shek, China had been divided between the two sides. Read more >>
Stalin Calls the Chinese Reds “Margarine Communists”
Excerpt from The Strange Connection: U.S. Intervention in China, 1944-1972, by Bevin Alexander, pages 4-6
[U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union W. Averell] Harriman passed on to [Vice President Henry A.] Wallace the views Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin had related to him on June 10, 1944. Stalin said Chiang Kai-shek was the best man available to run China under existing circumstances. Read more >>
The Locust Years
Excerpt from How America Got It Right, by Bevin Alexander, pages 103-04
Winston Churchill called the 1930s “the locust years,” an apt and eloquent phrase. He was referring to the terrible losses, mistakes, and failures that devoured all hope of peace during that tragic decade. The words came from the Old Testament Book of Joel [2:25], which described a period of calamity in ancient Israel as “the years that the locust hath eaten.” Read more >>
The French Want to Refight World War I
Excerpt from How Hitler Could Have Won World War II, by Bevin Alexander, page 15
While the Germans were placing their faith in a new type of warfare based on fast-moving tanks supported by dive bombers, the French (and to a large degree the British) were aiming to fight World War I all over again. Read more >>
The New German Military System
Excerpt from How Hitler Could Have Won World War II, by Bevin Alexander, pages 6-8
The Polish campaign [beginning September 1, 1939] should have tipped off the Allies to new uses for two weapons in the German arsenal. But it did not, and they hit the Allied forces in the west like a bolt out of the blue. The weapons were the airplane and the tank. Read more >>
The Victory Strategy Raeder Proposed to Hitler
Excerpt from How Hitler Could Have Won World War II, by Bevin Alexander, pages 49-52
[Erich] Raeder [chief of the German Navy] felt that the senior army generals had a "purely continental outlook," did not understand the war-winning opportunities that had opened up on the south shore of the Mediterranean, and would never counsel Hitler correctly. Read more >>
Rommel’s Recipe for Success in Africa
Excerpt from How Wars Are Won: The 13 Rules of War—From Ancient Greece to the War on Terror, by Bevin Alexander, pages 174-75
Shortly after [German General Erwin] Rommel landed in Libya on February 11, 1941, he grasped the essential nature of desert warfare: everything depended upon mobility. Read more >>
Rommel’s Strategy at Kasserine Pass
Excerpt from How Wars Are Won: The 13 Rules of War—From Ancient Greece to the War on Terror, by Bevin Alexander, pages 144-43
When [German General Erwin] Rommel pulled his beaten panzer army into Tunisia [in early 1943], he realized he had landed in the central position between the Americans and British in Tunisia and Montgomery’s British 8th Army in Libya. Read more >>
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