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USAREUR: The United States Army in Europe
Book by Skinner, Michael
144 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 28, 2020
A short, excellent book! And a huge nostalgia trip. Published in 1989 (evidently before the fall of the Berlin Wall), if you want to know about the 1980s US Army in Germany, this is the book for you. Extremely well-written - with warmth and humour - and with excellent photos, it covers tactics, doctrine, hardware, and lots of words from and about soldiers, sprinkled with journalistic editorial.
I was struck how different the US Army of the 1980s was to that in the 1970s, and how quickly it changed - quite remarkable. I was also struck with the differences to today(-ish). Haircuts aren’t very military, moustaches abound, no one is particularly beefy, and American flags are conspicuous by their absence. Patriotism is very muted. NATO is bigged up (with quite a lot written about the Bundeswehr in particular - described as the backbone of NATO), and the US is described as a secular country. It struck me as describing happier, more internationalist times generally. At one point I reflected on the international defence projects, and how Britain would never now sign up to develop an aircraft called the Eurofighter.
I was struck by the talk of the doctrine of AirLand Battle, and how that would be put into devastating effect two years later. I was also struck by how prescient this 1989 book was, talking about Rand studies on the future of war, predicting the Balkans wars of the 90s. More unnervingly, Rand forecast that future wars would be urban guerrilla-style wars involving car bombs more than any conventional combat, and that wars “will cease to be finite”, and “hostilities will be endless”, eerily foreshadowing the forever wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.
But read it for the nostalgia trip into 1980s NATO Germany! It’s a gem of a book.
I was struck how different the US Army of the 1980s was to that in the 1970s, and how quickly it changed - quite remarkable. I was also struck with the differences to today(-ish). Haircuts aren’t very military, moustaches abound, no one is particularly beefy, and American flags are conspicuous by their absence. Patriotism is very muted. NATO is bigged up (with quite a lot written about the Bundeswehr in particular - described as the backbone of NATO), and the US is described as a secular country. It struck me as describing happier, more internationalist times generally. At one point I reflected on the international defence projects, and how Britain would never now sign up to develop an aircraft called the Eurofighter.
I was struck by the talk of the doctrine of AirLand Battle, and how that would be put into devastating effect two years later. I was also struck by how prescient this 1989 book was, talking about Rand studies on the future of war, predicting the Balkans wars of the 90s. More unnervingly, Rand forecast that future wars would be urban guerrilla-style wars involving car bombs more than any conventional combat, and that wars “will cease to be finite”, and “hostilities will be endless”, eerily foreshadowing the forever wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.
But read it for the nostalgia trip into 1980s NATO Germany! It’s a gem of a book.
November 24, 2020
Published in 1989, 'USAREUR - The United States Army in Europe' tells you with remarkable clarity about the role of the US Army in Europe at the height of the Cold War. This covers such areas as how the troops feel about what they are doing, how they get on with the local populace, weapons, tactical doctrine - all in all quite a lot for such a small volume and backed up by some terrific well captioned photos. Looking at this 30+ years later makes great nostalgic reading, especially with the hindsight of knowing that the Cold War came to a close so soon afterwards. Fantastic.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews