May 22, 2006

From Hippocrene Books: When Ralph Hauenstein became a reserve officer, he thought the skills he’d gained as a newspaperman might be useful. Indeed, he spent World War II gathering information from sources as diverse as soldiers reluctantly reporting on one another and codebooks pulled from downed German planes. The story of Colonel Hauenstein’s war is also the story of the European Theater of U.S. Operations, the American command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who spun between ETOUSA and his international position at Allied headquarters, SHAEF, with dizzying speed. SHAEF dominates histories of the time; ETOUSA is comparatively little studied and understood, but as Hauenstein explains, it is a major factor in the Allied victory in Europe.