Antonio Sapienza Livres

A compelling account of a neglected but intense air campaign of the interwar period.

"Two very different military concepts faced each other: the German General Hans Kundt, a First World War veteran, hired by the Bolivian Government, was a proponent of the typical Prussian tactics of front attacks regardless of cost, but also of the strategy of taking and controlling as much territory as possible without annihilating the enemy.The Paraguayan Lieutenant-Colonel José Felix Estigarribia (later promoted to Colonel, and then General), took his specialization courses in Chile and France, and was a proponent of tactics of using trench warfare for defense, and flanking the enemy when in the offensive.Eventually, Estigarribia's ideas proved their worth - partially because his forces managed to capture huge stocks of Bolivian arms and ammunition throughout the war."

From 1954 Paraguay was held in the grip of a Right-wing dictatorship under General Alfredo Stroessner. In the years that followed, a number of opposition groups resorted to armed struggle in order to achieve their aims. Government countermeasures were brutal, with torture and extra-judicial killings being routinely employed.COIN Operations in Paraguay is the first detailed English-language account of these armed opposition groups, their aims, their structures and their campaigns against the Stroessner government. It also details the ruthless government reaction and the support and opposition of other Latin American governments to the situation in Paraguay at this time. In addition to these conflicts within Paraguay, the 1980 assassination on Paraguayan soil of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the exiled last dictator of Nicaragua, is examined in detail.COIN Operations in Paraguay includes over 190 photographs and 18 specially commission full-color artworks.

The aerial operations during the Revolutions of 1922 and 1947 in Paraguay, covering all the recce, light bombing missions, as well as the few dogfights.

A detailed description of the coup in question, and how Stroessner was driven into exile in Brazil, is the centerpiece of this narrative.