(Part 3) Top products from r/CombatFootage

One major point that people should know about Pakistan is that they are culturally, religiously, historically and linguistically tied to India and to an extent, Bangladesh and Afghanistan (the latter tie being stronger than the former).

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were once a single entity under the British Raj. Most Indian nationalists at that time, and some (though a smaller component) of Greater India nationalists see these three countries as one entity.

There are many reasons as to why India and Pakistan split, some of them are very legitimate concerns, whereas there are some issues that were very clearly motivated by personal interests of several leaders.

There is more to the split between India and Pakistan aside from the Republican split from the British Raj, there are other factors playing into the division of India into India and Pakistan, such as those that pertain to the treatment of the many Princely States.

Here are some solid recommendations as far as reading is concerned on this particular part of the world:

Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah and the Battle for Pakistan by Qutubuddin Aziz & Katherine Wang

Makers of Modern India by Ramachandra Guha

A Concise History of Modern India
by Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf

The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan
by Yasmin Khan

Shooting for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum by Stephen Cohen

https://www.amazon.com/Crusades-Authoritative-History-Holy-Land/dp/0060787295

There's so much information to convey so this book is very broad strokes. But it does a great job of covering both the Christian and Muslim worlds equally. I love it.

https://www.amazon.com/FREEFALL-Tom-Read/dp/0316643033

He was Rafik Hariris body guard for a few years. Tried to break Felix Baumgartners free fall skydive record. Had some sort of psychotic break and was institutionalised. Really really fascinating read. Very different the "then I slotted three tangos and drank beer" SAS stories you usually get.

Well if we're recommending books on Tactics, in addition to the above mentioned books here are two more that I've read which are quite good:

Infantry in Battle - this is a .pdf version.
Stormtrooper Tactics

There is a thread where someone asked for a list of good books and there were a ton of responses.

Penguin recently released this edition which I had pre-ordered

Storm of Steel: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143108255/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_l9a7xbQ4251BF

The art is gorgeous

And LSTs (landing ship, tanks)! https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Neptune-Landings-Allied-Invasion/dp/0190462531

Short version, LSTs were the largest beach capable vessels and were seaworthy so were used to transport the bulk of allied supplies after D-day, their number was the limiting factor in operations until a deepwater port was opened over a month later.

I recently read Story of A Secret State by Jan Karski - an absolute blinder and a must read if you're interested in the subject area and haven't already come across it.

In fact, it's a must read.

Gotta be Patrick Bishops's 3 PARA (amazon UK, amazon US) or The Junior Officers' Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey (amazon UK, amazon US)

3 PARA is a British journalist's account of the 2006 tour of Afghan, focussing on the operations of the 3 PARA battle group, while The JORC is a semi-biographical account of the early career of Patrick Hennessey, detailing his time in training at Sandhurst and Brecon, going on to multiple tours as a Pl Comd with the Gren Guards.

Both well worth a read.

One of the best that I've read about combat in Afghanistan is by Jake Tapper, called The Outpost.

The story is about COP Keating in the Nuristan region of Afghanistan, also known as the battle of Kamdesh.

It's a long read though very descriptive about the 173rd Airborne Brigades fight for the base.

I think that someone is going to produce a movie about the battle, if it turns out to be half as good as the book then it will be one of the better movies about Afghanistan.

Here's a story on NPR from Jake Tapper called The outpost that should have never been.

Vietnam: A History, by Stanley Karnow.

It was made into a PBS series in the 1980's, and is in my opinion the best account of the country, their history, and the war.

https://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-History-Stanley-Karnow/dp/0140265473

Blood Year - David Kilcullen

Tim O'Brien "If I die in a combat zone" is the best one I've read recently.

Definitely Generation Kill, to look into the dynamics of modern war. It's a seriously good, impartial, truthful and entertaining account of the first stages of the second Iraq war seen from the eyes of a battalion of first recon marines. Very well written, too.

War Nerd. Gary Brecher is a tongue-in-cheek military amateur analyst. His views on modern and past warfare are very lucid, albeit controversial and leftfield. His writing style is pretty original, kinda like the Hunter Thompson of war pundits. A backlog of his articles is also available online.

Making A Killing. It's the first person account of a British private security contractor in Iraq. I was expecting the worst when I read it, but it's actually very well written, informative and entertaining. Some of the lingo and drills described in the book actually helped me understand a lot of these videos.

Das Boot is my favourite war book, and it's an embedded reporter's account of a year in a german U-boat during the second world war.

How to lose World War II - Bill Fawcett

Roll Me Over: An Infantryman's WW2 by Raymond Gantter. Easily one of the best personal accounts I have read about the war in Europe.

My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd Another personal account but of the war in Bosnia.

If you read this

http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208

Hitler needed the Russians' resources - he couldn't just sit on the territory he had before the invasion of Russia because in the long run he wouldn't have been able to defend it from the US/UK and Russia.

Actually the whole Nazi thing was flawed from the start - the territory they conquered didn't actually help them. In fact it made their resource problems even worse.

Yes. That is: I recall there were two - fundamentally different - schools of thought within the RN/FAA's SHAR-units as of 1982.

• Skipper of HMS Invincible-based NAS.801, Nigel 'Sharkey' Ward, was convinced the SHAR is fully developed and an excellent platform, and taught his pilots to make use of its nav/attack system - including the Blue Fox radar. They acted correspondingly. They also flew CAPs at low altitude, where the Argentinean fighter-bombers operated. Correspondingly, they repeatedly caught and destroyed entire formations of incoming Argentinean fighter-bombers before these could cause any harm.
  
  
• Most of other RN/FAA officers haven't held the SHAR FRS.1 in high esteem. Indeed, it seems there was deep mistrust for its nav/attack systems within the HMS Hermes-based NAS.800 (to which Dave Morgan was assigned, too). Between others, SHARs from that squadron flew their CAPs at medium altitude - which is one of reasons why they missed the first formation of the Skyhawks that 'caused' the 'Catastrophe of Bluff Cove', and why Morgan then missed the second one too (arguably, he and his wingman then at least killed three from that second formation, 'but only after' these could've caused even more damage to British naval and ground units).
  
  For related discussions, see Ward's Sea Harrier over the Falklands.
  
  Curiously, Morgan didn't even try to discuss this issue in his Hostile Skies.

I haven't read too many books about the subject, but one that I really like is 'Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001', by Steve Coll. It's incredibly illuminating and a fascinating read.

Robert Pape's 'Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It' is also one of my favorites.

I'm going to recommend this book:

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society from Dave Grossman

The book is based on SLA Marshall's studies from World War II, which proposed that contrary to popular perception, the majority of soldiers in war do not ever fire their weapons and that this is due to an innate resistance to killing. Based on Marshall's studies the military instituted training measures to break down this resistance and successfully raised soldier's firing rates to over ninety percent during the war in Vietnam.

Grossman points out that there are great psychological costs that weigh heavily on the combat soldier or police officer who kills if they are not mentally prepared for what may happen; if their actions (killing) are not supported by their commanders and/or peers; and if they are unable to justify their actions (or if no one else justifies the actions for them).