"As the US Army faces new and uncertain challenges across the globe, the need to create new capabilities in organizations, doctrine, and equipment is critical. As new threats in the sea, air, land, space, and cyber domains appear, it is vital for the Army to produce capable and well-equipped formations that are prepared to adapt and meet any challenges. This work examines the relationship between peace-time innovation and combat adaptation. It uses the history of the 10th Mountain Division as a historical example of how the Army faced threats in multiple areas of the world. In response, it innovated to create a new capability to fight in the mountains. Using new techniques, it recruited highly experienced volunteers, then developed training and equipment to build a new capability for the US Army. As a result of this innovation, the 10th Mountain Division exemplified a highly adaptive and successful formation in combat. The War Department's ability to leverage innovation to create an adaptive organization is relevant to the contemporary Army and how it looks at the current challenges of multi-domain battle and Army War Fighting Challenges"--

The storied history of the US Army's elite 10th Mountain Division is presented here in precise detail by Dennis Chapman, a former officer in the division. The reader will first learn of the outfit's 1943 activation, then the dramatic story of their famous WWII Italian campaign. After successfully storming the near-vertical slope of Riva Ridge (thought unclimbable by their German opponents) and then seizing the strategic heights of the Mount Belvedere massif, the men of the 10th Mountain Division battered their way through the Apennine Mountains. Breaking out into the Po Valley, the 10th Mountain Division raced across the lowlands to the foot of the Austrian Alps, slamming the door shut on thousands of retreating Axis troops. The reader will also learn about the heroism of the 10th Mountain Division troops at the Battle of the Black Sea in Mogadishu—the famous story of "Black Hawk Down"—as well as its exploits during the early years of the global war on terror. Unlike most books of its kind, this book goes beyond those famous exploits, bringing together all the threads of the division's history. Chapman also recounts the history of the 10th Mountain Division in its Cold War incarnations at Fort Riley, Kansas, and in Germany. He also tells the story of the 87th Infantry Regiment, the last remaining of the division's three original regiments, and the only element of the division to continue in existence from the division's deactivation in 1958 until its reactivation in 1985.

In 1942, at the beginning of World War II, the US Army built its most unusual military post for its most unusual division in a high, remote, Rocky Mountain valley 100 miles west of Denver, Colorado. Located at 9,250 feet above sea level, Camp Hale was the training home of the famed 13,459-man 10th Mountain Division, which trained in mountain warfare techniques for two years--and almost missed the war. After they were finally deployed for combat in early 1945 in the Northern Apennine Mountains of Italy, the young men of the 10th never lost a battle or gave up a foot of ground. And, after the war, many of the veterans returned home to create America's ski and winter sports industry. Building Camp Hale was an incredible feat of wartime engineering and construction. To transform the wild, alpine meadow into an Army camp, 10,000 civilian construction workers were hired to scrape away the vegetation; level the valley floor; install roads and water and sewer lines; build 1,000 structures and two ski areas; and relocate a highway and railroad line--all within seven months and at a cost of $31 million (over a half billion dollars in today's money). Yet Camp Hale was demolished two years after it was built.

Mountains, Carl von Clausewitz said, introduce a “retarding element” into warfare. To fight in mountains, armies must overcome this challenge via survival strategies and mobility. But the techniques and technologies for doing so are best found in civilian skiing and mountaineering communities, a situation almost unique to mountain warfare. Ski, Climb, Fight looks at how the 10th Mountain Division of World War II met this challenge and how the U.S. military does so today. The first military history of that storied division, the book is also the first general history of U.S. mountain warfare. With a focus on strategy and doctrine, Lance R. Blyth explores how the military has adapted civilian gear and skills for surviving and moving in mountainous terrain to effectively conduct operations. He traces the long-standing but largely unexamined relationship between the civilian outdoor recreation industry and the military—a relationship that figures in almost every aspect of military operations in mountainous terrain. Intertwining the history of the World War II 10th Mountain Division and U.S. mountain warfare with the history of American skiing and mountaineering, Ski, Climb, Fight is at once an unprecedented, in-depth account of one of the most celebrated military units of World War II and a fresh look at U.S. mountain warfare from its inception eighty years ago.

A blend of memoir and history detailing the story of soldier-athletes who comprised the 10th Mountain Division during World War II.

A detailed study of Italy's long-ignored tank force Explores the intersection of technology, war, and society in Mussolini's Italy Second only to Germany in number of tank divisions, first to create an armored corps Though overshadowed by Germany's more famous Afrika Korps, Italian tanks formed a large part of the Axis armored force that the Allies confronted--and ultimately defeated--in North Africa in the early years of World War II. Those tanks were the product of two decades of debate and development as the Italian military struggled to produce a modern, mechanized army in the aftermath of World War I. For a time, Italy stood near the front of the world's tank forces--but once war came, Mussolini's iron arm failed as an effective military force. This is the story of its rise and fall.

The Boys of Winter tells the true story of three young American ski champions and their brutal, heroic, and fateful transformation from athletes to infantrymen with the 10th Mountain Division. Charles J. Sanders's fast-paced narrative draws on dozens of interviews and extensive research to trace these boys' lives from childhood to championships and from training at Mount Rainier and in the Colorado Rockies to battles against the Nazis.