Paraquedistas

by F.O. Miksche, Alberto Aprá (Translator), Alexandre de Moraes (Translator)

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Ferdinand Otto Miksche was an officer in the Czechoslovakian Army, the British Army, and ultimately the French Army; and was also a prolific author on politico-military subjects. He attended the (Austro-Hungarian) Imperial Military College, and also the Ludovika Military Academy in Budapest; he began his service with the Czechoslovakian Army in 1927. After serving with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, he returned to Czechoslovakia. He escaped his fallen country at the end of the 1930s, and spent WWII in various positions with the Allied Forces. He served for some time during the war on the personal staff of General de Brigade Charles De Gaulle, and became advisor on central European affairs to SHAEF in 1945. After the war, he was appointed Czechoslovakian Military Attaché for both France & Belgium, but after the communist regime took power in Czechoslovakia in 1948, he accepted a commission in the French Army. In 1950, he became a professor at the Portuguese Insituto de Altos Estudos Militares. In 1955 he went back to France and was posted as a Military Engineer Officer in the French Army Defense Office, DEFA (Direction des Etudes et fabrication d'Armements). He continued to write on politico-military affairs right up to the late 1980s, and his widely read & influential books were eventually published in at least ten different languages.

Reviews

[Luis C.]

Escrito em plena segunda guerra Mundial, "Paraquedistas" é um livro que explica e desenvolve a aplicação das tropas paraquedistas e aerotransportadas na guerra. A conquista de Creta pelas tropas paraquedistas alemãs era até então a missão de maior envergadura e com resultados sensacionais. A conquista de França era por esta altura crucial para efectuar bombardeamentos em Inglaterra e consolidar uma supremacia aérea.

Sobre o autor, MIksche foi igual checoslovaco, combateu na guerra civil espanhola, na brigada internacional, onde viu o emprego pela primeira vez em guerra de paraquedistas e força aérea modernizada. Durante a segunda guerra Mundial participou como oficial no exército francês e já depois da guerra e após a Checoslováquia cair nas mãos do comunismo, em 1948, regressa ao exército francês. De 1950 -1955 deu aulas no centro de altos estudos militares em Portugal. Após este período regressou a França e ao exército francês.