WW2 Army History Bookset

Hello, Last week I went to a yard sale and bought a 71 volume 'U.S. Army in World War II' By the Office of the Chief of Military History Dept. of The Army. They were published in the 50's and belonged to a US Army unit. All this for $20.00. It had 3-4 missing and 2-3 duplicates. They contain different sets: The Army Ground Forces The War in the Pacific The Euro. Theater of Operations The War Department War in The Mediterranean Middle -East Theater China-Burma-India Theater Defense of the Western Hemisphere Techincal Services Pictoral Record Special Subjects I'm 15 and a major World War 2 history buff. Does anyone know where I could get the books I'm missing? The Books are awesome and I'd really like to have a complete set. Thanks Sean Wilson

They are still in print, and you can get them at or through a Government Printing Office bookstore.

How come I never find these at yard sales?

Regards, TSB

Bill Walker...Producer and Cohost of The Shooting Bench radio program....General Manager, WDIS-Radio, Norfolk, Massachusetts.

Not ALL volumes are in print at any given time. The Govt printing Office also prefers to churn out PAPERBACKS over hard-cover. Then too, the GPO prices are not tiny. These, presumably, are the set known as 'the Green Books'. They are by no means 'perfect' or the 'whole story', but they ARE the OFFICIAL 'truth'

Are they also usefull when I am mainly interested in the organizational history of US-Forces? I want to know more about this topic, also for the USAAF, the Navy and the Marine Corps too. Not so much details about certain campaigns (not yet), but about the organization of the different types of units, especially the small and independent ones, when formed or disbanded, reorganizations and so on.

Robert Stuhr

The books, or what I've looked through so far, don't have anything about the other branches of the military, since it was published by the Army. They do have things about the organization of the Army, though -Sean Wilson

I found a set of the basic three in a chain bookstore several years ago. There are MANY in the set. The Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks has a whole section of shelves in their Reference section for them.

Producing them was an interesting project, involving the military attempting to organize a group of academics. . . frustrating for both - for the military, akin to hearding cats.

The prose of the books is rather dry. It's very straightforward, 'this happened, Col so-and-so in charge; followed by a reorganization putting Unit 'B' under Group '2', Maj so-and-so temporarily in charge...'.

The books do have a bibliography. I suspect reviewing original memos likely on file at the National Archives would be quite informative.

In reading various volumes of the series, I do find that it frequently uses text such as 'while in most cases the goals of the Army were achieved, there were some cases of unsatisfactory performance, especially in the ....' [This in discussing any number of varied Army efforts].

That is a bit of a vague reference to performance. First, one wonders whether the Army's goals were reasonable in the first place, and secondly, exactly how far off the goals they came in.

For example, this newsgroup recently mentioned army transportation trains. The army set various goals for troops to get sleeping cars (2 men sharing a lower berth, 1 to an upper), for trains over a certain length. There was a serious shortage of sleeping cars, so this goal was never met. And