GI Ingenuity: Improvisation, Technology, and Winning World War II

(Hardback)

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World War II saw the first generation of young men that had grown up comfortable with modern industrial technology go into combat. As kids, the GIs had built jalopies in their garage and poured over glossy, full-color issues of Popular Mechanics; they had read Buck Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century comic books, listened to his adventures on the radio, and watched him pilot rocket ships in the Saturday morning serials at the Bijou. Tinkerers, problem-solvers, risk-takers, and day-dreamers, they were curious and outspokena generation well prepared to improvise, innovate, and adapt technology on the battlefield. Since they were also a generation which had unprecedented technology available to them, their ability to innovate with technology proved an immeasurable edge on the field of combat. This book tells their story through the experience of the battle of Normandy, bringing together three disparate brands of history: (1) military history; (2) the history of science and technology; and (3) social, economic, cultural, and intellectual history. All three historical narratives combine to tell the tale of GI genius and the process by which GI ingenuity became an enduring feature of the American citizen-soldier. GI Ingenuity is in large part an old-fashioned combat history, with mayhem and mass slaughter at center stage. It tells the story of death and destruction on the killing fields of Normandy, as well as the battlegrounds that provide the prologue and postscript to the transformation of war that occurred in France in 1944. This story of GI ingenuity, moreover, puts the battles in the context of the immense social, economic, scientific, and technological changes that accompanied the evolution of combat in the twentieth century. GI Ingenuity illustrates the great transition of the American genius in battle from an industrial-age army to a postmodern military. And it does it by looking at the place where the transition happenedon the battlefield.

Reviews

Carafano investigates the battles that followed D-Day in Normandy through the prism of improvisation that came, in his opinion, to characterize the American GI. Nine chapters blend together military, technological, and social histories as a means to prove that the U.S. soldier had a unique genius to adjust to new combat conditions. Carafano's knowledge shines when he recounts the battles, and enthusiasts will appreciate his asides. Recommended. General, graduate, researcher, professional collections. * Choice *
Although its subtitle ties GI Ingenuity to World War II, it presents those battlefield vignettes within a framework convincingly built on the lessons of World War I and even earlier conflicts. Specifically, several of Carafano's earliest threads extend all the way back to the 1830s and what he identifies as Prussian Gen. Carl von Clausewitz's indifference to technology. In creating his own foundation for this excellent book, Carafano builds on Clausewitz's vision of general military genius. The scope and creativity covered in GI Ingenuity go well beyond material solutions. An important aspect of GI Ingenuity is the credit given to many of the Army's individual leaders, throughout the 20th century, who left their unique marks on the constructed edifice of GI ingenuity. Moreover, Carafano's individual highlights are followed by reasonable assessment of a continuing leadership legacy that is already being proven during the first decade of the 21st century. * Army *
Military historian Carafano describes how the US Army (his old outfit) transmuted from an industrial-age to a postmodern military on the battlefields of Normandy in the summer of 1944. The soldiers drew on the inspiration of their fathers' way of war, he explains, added the ingenuity of the The Greatest Generation, and presaged the military of the 21st century. * Reference & Research Book News *
For the serious student of World War II, GI Ingenuity: Improvisation, Technology and Winning World War Two, by James Jay Carafano, is a devotee's study of American combat adaptation and creativity. GIs in Iraq continue the tradition. * Lowell Sun (Massachusetts) *

Author Bio

James Jay Carafano is a fellow at the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He has served as an Assistant Professor of History at the U.S. Military Academy, a military historian at the U.S. Army Field Artillery School, and Director of Military Studies at the Army's Center of Military History. He has been a Fleet Professor at the U.S. Naval War College, a visiting professor at the National Defense University and Georgetown University, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Before retiring as an Army Lt. Colonel, he served as Executive Editor of Joint Force Quarterly, the Defense Department's premiere professional military journal. Dr. Carafano has written Waltzing into the Cold War: The Struggle for Occupied Austria and After D-Day: Operation Cobra and the Normandy Breakout, a Military Book Club selection.