These are as old as Thucydides, and watching them play out on a contemporary battlefield, I think, really gives me, personally, a clearer understanding of exactly how it works. Sleep discipline is if you're so tired you're making poor decisions, it means that you've not been disciplined about your sleep - making sure there aren't lights burning so that the enemy can't see you. But things like sleep discipline, light discipline. He's not fighting the Battle of the Bulge, as he would readily acknowledge. David Petraeus and the 101st Airborne Division, and I think spending a couple of months at his elbow watching him grapple with all of the stresses of command. On how his coverage of recent wars has influenced his historical writing All of that comes in a very direct way out of World War II.' Almost everything about American society is affected by World War II: our feelings about race our feelings about gender and the empowerment of women, moving women into the workplace our feelings about our role in the world. 'It's 70 years later, but it so imprints us. On how World War II is still a part of our culture today You can test their mettle because their mettle's being tested under the most adverse stresses of combat.' The stresses of war reveal character: You can see what they're made of. I found that it got into my imagination in a way. So I always had an interest in both the war and in European politics and European warfare. I was born in Munich my father was an army officer. I was a foreign correspondent in Berlin in the mid-'90s. On what inspired Atkinson to write about World War II 'The description that he has of that horrific scene in Dresden, with the firestorm that destroys this fabulous baroque city and kills thousands and thousands of Germans, is because he was there.' He was captured, along with most of his division, actually, and he ends up in Dresden, of all places, and he's in Dresden two months later when the terrible firebombing occurs. 'One of the young soldiers in the 106th Infantry Division was a fellow from Indiana named Kurt Vonnegut - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

On the famous writer who was there for the Battle of the Bulge There were other units that managed to fight a pretty good rear guard action, and it very quickly disrupted the German timetable, both in Belgium and farther south in Luxembourg, and I'd say within 72 hours the senior German commanders, other than Hitler, believed that it was going to be impossible.' There were units that were overrun and massacred, essentially. They blew through the front lines rather quickly. Very heavy firing of all sorts, from machine guns to heavy artillery to tank fire.

The guns at last light by rick atkinson