John S. D. Eisenhower – författare

Dwight D. Eisenhower once remarked that "the history of alliances is a history of failure." This provocative, absorbing work, based on a study by the General and written by his son, is a history of one of the great exceptions, the most successful military alliance the world has ever seen,the Anglo-American military alliance of World War II. At once a study of the prodigious undertaking that brought millions of men and women together to defeat the Axis and a portrait of the great personalities who built and sustained the alliance, Allies offers vivid glimpses of war at the working level: on a convoy crossing the Atlantic, with a secret landing party on the coast of northern Africa, and with armored units in Tunisia. Eisenhower has crafted a powerful narrative and a most valuable contribution to the literature of World War II.

In May 1916, six American soldiers led by Lieutenant George S. Patton, Jr., surrounded a building near Rubio, Chihuahua. When the occupants burst out of the door, guns blazing, Patton and his men cut them down. A month later seventy American troopers charged into a strong Mexican position at Carrizal; ten were killed and twenty-three taken prisoner. In 1914, a powerful American naval force seized Mexico's principal seaport, Veracruz, and occupied the city for six months. Yet, all the while, Mexico and the United States were technically at peace.The United States began its involvement in the Mexican Revolution in 1913 with President Woodrow Wilson's decision to remove Victoriana Huerta, leader of a military junta that overthrew and murdered Mexico's president, Francisco Madero. Diplomatic actions failing, Wilson occupied Veracruz, cutting off Huerta's supplies of arms from abroad. When in 1916 the legendary bandit Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, Wilson sent General John J. Pershing into Chihuahua to capture him.This story leads readers to increased respect for the people of Mexico and its revolutionary leaders—Zapata, Obregon, Carranza, and Pancho Villa. It shows that, while American troops performed well, U.S. intervention had no effect on the outcome of the Mexican Revolution. The American army had a taste of battle and Pershing went on to become the greatest American hero of the First World War.

The hero of the War of 1812, the conqueror of Mexico City in the Mexican-American War, and Abraham Lincoln's top soldier during the first six months of the Civil War, General Winfield Scott was a seminal force in the early expansion and consolidation of the American republic. John S. D. Eisenhower explores how Scott, who served under fourteen presidents, played a leading role in the development of the United States Army from a tiny, loosely organized, politics-dominated establishment to a disciplined professional force capable of effective and sustained campaigning.

Italy, from the toe to the Alps, was the scene of the longest, bloodiest, most frustrating, and least understood series of battles fought by the Western Allies during World War II.        Now, John S. D. Eisenhower offers a new look at the Italian campaign, emphasizing the Anzio offensive—an operation pushed by Winston Churchill that fell largely to American troops to carry out. It was visualized as an amphibious landing of two Allied divisions behind German lines that would force the Wehrmacht to evacuate all of Italy. But the Germans held on and, with the arrival of reinforcements, nearly wiped out the Allied troops pinned down at Anzio Beach.By portraying that struggle from the perspectives of both commanders and foot soldiers, this prominent military historian focuses on the experiences of the individuals who fought in the Italian campaign to reveal what the battle at Anzio was all about. But more than the account of one operation, They Fought at Anzio covers the entire Italian campaign, from the landings at Salerno to the capture of Rome.Eisenhower brings a trained eye to reconstructing the difficult terrain of battle, approaching the Anzio campaign as a contest between opposing commands striving to anticipate and counter the opponent’s moves—not as a field exercise but as a deadly struggle for survival. He analyzes the command decisions that brought about the Anzio stalemate, interspersing his account with personal experiences of the men in the trenches, the nurses of the 56th Evacuation Hospital, and the young officers witnessing the horrors of war for the first time.As a study in command, Eisenhower’s narrative gives new credit to generals Lucian Truscott and Fred Walker and assesses both the strengths and weaknesses of General Mark Clark, allowing us to grasp the situation as it appeared to those in command. He also offers compelling portraits of German commanders Field Marshal Albert Kesselring and General Frido von Senger und Etterlin.It has been said that Anzio was a soldier’s battle, remembered more for blood shed than for military objectives achieved. By focusing on the experiences of the soldiers who fought there and the decisions of commanders in perilous circumstances, They Fought at Anzio offers a new appreciation of the contributions of both and a new understanding of this unheralded theater of the war.