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Summary
Summary
WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL SKIING HISTORY ASSOCIATION'S ULLR AWARD, the epic story of the US Army's 10th Mountain Division, whose elite soldiers broke the last line of German defenses in Italy's mountains in 1945, spearheading the Allied advance to the Alps and final victory.
At the start of World War II, the US Army had two cavalry divisions--and no mountain troops. The German Wehrmacht, in contrast, had many well-trained and battle-hardened mountain divisions, some of whom by 1943 blocked the Allied advance in the Italian campaign. Starting from scratch, the US Army developed a unique military fighting force, the 10th Mountain Division, drawn from the ranks of civilian skiers, mountaineers, and others with outdoor experience. The resulting mix of Ivy League students, park rangers, Olympic skiers, and European refugees formed the first specialized alpine fighting force in US history. By the time it deployed to Italy at the beginning of 1945, this ragtag group had coalesced into a tight-knit unit. In the months that followed, at a terrible cost, they spearheaded the Allied drive in Italy to final victory.
Ranging from the ski slopes of Colorado to the towering cliffs of the Italian Alps, The Winter Army is a saga of an unlikely band of soldiers forged in the heat of combat into a brotherhood whose legacy lives on in US mountain fighters to this day.
Author Notes
MAURICE ISSERMAN, PhD, is the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History at Hamilton College. His prize-winning books include Fallen Giants , which won the prestigious Banff Mountain Book Festival prize for best mountaineering history.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hamilton College history professor Isserman (Continental Divide) chronicles the U.S. Army's first mountaineering unit from inception to its decisive role in the Allied invasion of Italy in this exhilarating account. Inspired by the "hit-and-run attacks" Finnish ski troops launched against Soviet forces, National Ski Patrol System founder Charles Minot "Minnie" Dole believed that specially trained mountain soldiers could help protect North America from Nazi invasion. He prodded President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Army chief of staff Gen. George C. Marshall, and other military leaders to train and deploy such a force. Thousands of recruits, including mountain climbers, forest rangers, and Ivy League skiers, underwent rigorous training in Washington State and the Colorado Rockies before being shipped to Italy, where they broke through Germany's defensive line in the North Apennine mountains. Drawing from letters sent by 10th Mountain Division soldiers to family and friends back home, Isserman provides frontline views of such famous battles as Riva Ridge and Mt. Belvedere, and relates how the unit's veterans took part in the postwar rise of the American ski industry. The result is an entertaining, well-sourced blend of military and sports history. Agent: Sandra Dijkstra, Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency (Nov.)
Kirkus Review
A pioneering military unit's history, culminating in its breaking the German hold on Italy's mountains during World War II.Isserman (American History/Hamilton Coll.; Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering, 2017, etc.) traces the story of the 10th Mountain Division from its inception at a meeting of four skiers in 1940, when Finnish ski troops were resisting the invading Germans. One of them, Charles Minot Dole, decided to take the idea of training and equipping an American ski regiment. At first met with indifference, he managed to convince the War Department to take the idea seriously. The Army set up a training facility in mountain country and began to recruit trained skiers to man the new unit. Eventually, the training camp was located at Camp Hale in the Colorado Rockies, and the soldiers also took lessons in mountain climbing. At first, there was no obvious mission for the 10th Mountain. A mission to the Aleutian Island of Kiska turned out to be a fiasco when the Japanese occupiers evacuated before the U.S. troops arrived. Men were transferring to other units in order to find combat somewhere. It wasn't until late in the warDecember 1944that the stalled front in the Italian mountains presented a perfect spot for their skills. While the Germans were already in retreat elsewhere in Europe, Hitler ordered them to hold the line in Italy. The 10th Mountain took the critical peaks and ridges to which they were sent; they also endured heavy casualties in the process. Isserman draws on the division's extensive archives, including personal accounts by many of the surviving soldiers. He focuses on several individuals from their induction to the end of the war, giving the book the feel of an old war movie with a cast drawn from all parts of the country. The division's long time in training makes the narrative a slow build, but once the 10th Mountain gets to Italy, there's plenty of payoff.A solid military history focused on an elite division that made its mark in the final stages of World War II. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
It seems strange that a nation with so many mountains would not, until the eve of its entry into WWII, maintain a military unit that was trained and equipped to fight in them. Isserman (Continental Divide, 2016) chronicles the genesis of the U.S. Army's ski troops from inception through their successful, if short, campaign in Italy which helped achieve the decisive breakthrough of the German lines. The Tenth Mountain was populated with a diverse cast of volunteers, including Ivy Leaguers, European refugees, and other stars and instructors from the budding American skiing community. Isserman recounts their journey to war in Italy, beginning with training at Mount Rainier and Colorado's Camp Hale, to bureaucratic purgatory as the army decided what to do with this unique combat division before finally deploying the division to do what it trained for. Isserman has created a fascinating study of this branch of specialized American soldiers during WWII, a bit of military history that will be of interest to WII buffs and readers who have been on the slopes or gazed in wonder at mountains' majesty.--James Pekoll Copyright 2019 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Isserman (Fallen Giants) combines his interests in World War II and mountaineering by chronicling the creation and deployment of the 10th Mountain Division during WWII. While the war in Europe seldom entered the mountains, the creation of a division that would be expert in skiing and mountain climbing seemed essential to Americans with knowledge of the Nazi offenses in Norway. Convincing the War Department that mountain troops would benefit the war effort was an uphill battle. The Division was created in 1941, but it was several years before the troops were sent to the European theater. The bulk of Isserman's text recounts the creation and training of the mountain troops, including the recruitment of wealthy white Americans who were already experienced skiers or climbers. The last part of the book chronicles the battles that the 10th Mountain Division engaged in during the final months of the war. While the deeply entrenched Nazi army in the Apennine Mountains continued to offer resistance to Allied forces, the perseverance of the mountain troops proved their creation was worth the effort. VERDICT This work will appeal to World War II buffs and fans of nonfiction adventure or sports.--Danielle Williams, Univ. of Evansville
Excerpts
Excerpts
"Soldiers Out of Skiers" It is more reasonable to make soldiers out of skiers than skiers out of soldiers. -- Charles Minot Dole to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, July 18, 1940 On a blustery evening in February 1940, four skiers took refuge inside the Orvis Inn in Manchester, Vermont. Like many other weekend visitors to nearby Bromley Mountain, they had enjoyed a crisp day on the slopes. But their leisure had been cut short by a gathering storm and the descending darkness, which settled over the town shortly after 5 p.m. The inn did good business, and the four friends were lucky to find seats before the roaring fire. There, in line with New England tradition, they sipped hot rum, tired but satisfied after a good day's skiing, talking casually. The men were royalty among the American skiing community: Roger Langley, athletic director of a Massachusetts prep school and president of the National Ski Association of America, was there, along with Robert Livermore, a member of the US Olympic ski team in 1936, and Alex Bright, another veteran of the 1936 team and founder of the exclusive Ski Club Hochgebirge of Boston. The fourth member of the group, destined to become the most important civilian figure in the history of the 10th Mountain Division, was Charles Minot "Minnie" Dole, the forty-year-old founder and director of the National Ski Patrol System. The conversation that evening eventually turned from the storm outside to the storm in Europe, that is, the war that had begun six months earlier with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and a separate conflict in Finland, invaded by the Soviet Union's Red Army on November 30, 1939. With a tense quiet prevailing for the time being on the western front separating the German Wehrmacht from its French and British opponents, the only active European battlefront that winter was in Finland. The Finns, despite being vastly outnumbered by their Soviet foes, put up a doughty defense of the Karelian Isthmus in what was dubbed the "Winter War," winning international admiration--although, ultimately, not the war. In March 1940 Finland was finally forced to capitulate, making territorial concessions to the Soviet Union. In February, however, the Finns were still resisting the invaders. "Finns Beat Back a Quarter of Million Russians in Biggest Offensive of War" was the lead story on the front page of the Burlington Free Press , Vermont's best-known newspaper, on February 9, 1940. Dole and his companions, possibly the very next evening, were particularly impressed by the performance of white-camouflage-clad Finnish ski troops, who, in a signature tactic, launched devastating hit-and-run attacks on lumbering columns of Soviet soldiers and vehicles before swiftly and silently disappearing into the snowy vastness of the surrounding forests. In Dole's recollection, the four skiers agreed that this was "a perfect example of men fighting in an environment with which they were entirely at home and for which they were trained." The Finns, the four skiers agreed, were obviously well prepared to fight a winter war. They wondered, however, what might happen if the United States were engaged in a similar conflict--if, hypothetically, Germany, having defeated Great Britain, then invaded Canada, followed up that conquest by sweeping down from the north into New England or other regions of the United States that were under snow a good portion of the year. How well would American soldiers fare if they had to face a determined enemy in conditions similar to the storm blowing outside that night in the snow-clad Vermont hills? From the Italian Corpo Alpini to the French Chasseurs Alpins and the Austro-Hungarian Gebirgsbrigaden, European armies had long maintained specially trained alpine units for mountain and cold weather fighting. Such soldiers had proved their valor and their worth in the World War of 1914-1918, when fighting between Italians and Austrians in the Alps cost tens of thousands of lives. Geography dictated that Europeans needed to take alpine fighting seriously, since so many borders ran along the crests of mountains. In continental European armies, accordingly, service in mountain units could be a springboard to distinguished military careers. Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox" of the North African campaign in the Second World War, commanded a battalion of German mountain troops in the First World War, taking part in the 1917 offensive that broke through the Italian front at Caporetto--an epic defeat immortalized, for American readers, in Ernest Hemingway's 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms . Bob Livermore and Alex Bright had gotten a close-up view of German prowess in winter sports at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Bavaria. The Germans took home three gold medals, while the United States claimed one. Excerpted from The Winter Army: The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America's Elite Alpine Warriors by Maurice Isserman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.