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Author: David R. Higgins
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1935149598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
An account of the ups and downs of a six-month-long WWII campaign with “a well detailed chronological order of the battles [and] interesting photographs” (Armorama). A selection of the Military Book Club. Following the Allied breakout from the Normandy beachhead in July 1944, the vaunted German Army seemed on the verge of collapse. As British and US forces fanned out across northwestern France, enemy resistance unexpectedly dissolved into a headlong retreat to the German and Belgian borders. In early September, an elated Allied High Command had every expectation of continuing their momentum to cripple the enemy’s warmaking capability by capturing the Ruhr industrial complex and plunging into the heart of Germany. After a brief pause to allow for resupply, Courtney Hodge’s First Army prepared to punch through the ominous but largely outdated Westwall, the Siegfried Line, surrounding Aachen. But during the lull, German commanders such as the “lion of defense,” Walter Model, reorganized depleted units and mounted an increasingly potent defense. Though the German Replacement Army funneled considerable numbers to the front, they too often strained an overburdened supply system and didn’t greatly enhance existing combat formations. More importantly, the panzer divisions, once thought irretrievably destroyed, were resupplied and reinvigorated. When the Allied offensive resumed, it ran into a veritable brick wall—gains measured in yards, not miles, if any were made at all. While both sides suffered equally in an urbanized environment of pillbox-infested hills, impenetrable forests, and freezing rain, the Germans were on the defensive and better able to inflict casualties out of proportion to their own. For the US First Army, what was originally to be a walk-through turned into a frustrating six-month campaign that decimated infantry and tank forces alike. The “broad front,” as opposed to a “Schwerpunkt” strategy, led to the demise of many a citizen-soldier. Drawing on primary Wehrmacht and US sources, including battle analysis and daily situation and after-action reports, The Roer River Battles provides insight into the desperate German efforts to keep a conquering enemy at the borders of their homeland. Tactical maps down to battalion-level help clarify the very fluid nature of the combat. Combined, they serve to explain not just how, but why decisions were made and events unfolded, and how reality often differed from doctrine in one of the longest US campaigns of World War II.
Author: David R. Higgins
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1935149598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Get Book Here
Book Description
An account of the ups and downs of a six-month-long WWII campaign with “a well detailed chronological order of the battles [and] interesting photographs” (Armorama). A selection of the Military Book Club. Following the Allied breakout from the Normandy beachhead in July 1944, the vaunted German Army seemed on the verge of collapse. As British and US forces fanned out across northwestern France, enemy resistance unexpectedly dissolved into a headlong retreat to the German and Belgian borders. In early September, an elated Allied High Command had every expectation of continuing their momentum to cripple the enemy’s warmaking capability by capturing the Ruhr industrial complex and plunging into the heart of Germany. After a brief pause to allow for resupply, Courtney Hodge’s First Army prepared to punch through the ominous but largely outdated Westwall, the Siegfried Line, surrounding Aachen. But during the lull, German commanders such as the “lion of defense,” Walter Model, reorganized depleted units and mounted an increasingly potent defense. Though the German Replacement Army funneled considerable numbers to the front, they too often strained an overburdened supply system and didn’t greatly enhance existing combat formations. More importantly, the panzer divisions, once thought irretrievably destroyed, were resupplied and reinvigorated. When the Allied offensive resumed, it ran into a veritable brick wall—gains measured in yards, not miles, if any were made at all. While both sides suffered equally in an urbanized environment of pillbox-infested hills, impenetrable forests, and freezing rain, the Germans were on the defensive and better able to inflict casualties out of proportion to their own. For the US First Army, what was originally to be a walk-through turned into a frustrating six-month campaign that decimated infantry and tank forces alike. The “broad front,” as opposed to a “Schwerpunkt” strategy, led to the demise of many a citizen-soldier. Drawing on primary Wehrmacht and US sources, including battle analysis and daily situation and after-action reports, The Roer River Battles provides insight into the desperate German efforts to keep a conquering enemy at the borders of their homeland. Tactical maps down to battalion-level help clarify the very fluid nature of the combat. Combined, they serve to explain not just how, but why decisions were made and events unfolded, and how reality often differed from doctrine in one of the longest US campaigns of World War II.
Author: William C. Sylvan
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813138663
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 571
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Book Description
This annotated edition of General Hodges’s WWII diary offers a unique firsthand account of the First US Army from D-Day to V-E Day: “a fascinating book” (Bowling Green Daily News). During World War II, General Courtney Hicks Hodges commanded the First US Army, taking part in the Allied invasion of France, the liberation of Paris, and the ultimate Allied victory in 1945. Maintained by two of Hodges's aides, Major William C. Sylvan and Captain Francis G. Smith Jr., this military journal offers a unique firsthand account of the actions, decisions, and daily activities of General Hodges and the First Army throughout the war. The diary opens on June 2, 1944, as Hodges and the First Army prepare for the Allied invasion of France. In the weeks and months that follow, the diary highlights the crucial role that Hodges's command played in the Allied operations in northwest Europe. The diary recounts the First Army's involvement in the fight for France, the Siegfried Line campaign, the Battle of the Bulge, the drive to the Roer River, and the crossing of the Rhine, following Hodges and his men through savage European combat until the German surrender in May 1945. This historically significant text has previously been available only to military historians and researchers. Retired US Army historian John T. Greenwood has now edited the text in its entirety and added a biography of General Hodges as well as extensive contextual notes. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title Winner of the 2009 Distinguished Writing Award from the Army Historical Foundation
Author: Edward G. Miller
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585442584
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
The book examines uncertainty of command at the army, corps, and division levels and emphasizes the confusion and fear of ground combat at the level of company and battalion - "where they do the dying." Its gripping description of the battle is based on government records, a rich selection of first-person accounts from veterans of both sides, and author Edward G. Miller's visits to the battlefield. The result is a compelling and comprehensive account of small-unit action set against the background of the larger command levels. The book's foreword is by retired Maj. Gen. R. W. Hogan, who was a battalion commander in the forest.
Author: Derek S. Zumbro
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
"Derek Zumbro chronicles this key military campaign from a unique and fresh perspective - that of the defeated German soldiers and civilians caught in the final maelstrom of the war's western front." "Zumbro chronicles the relentless assault on the Ruhr Pocket through German eyes, as the Allied juggernaut battered the region's cities, villages, and homes into submission. He tells of children pressed into service by a desperate Nazi regime - and of even more desperate parents trying to save their sons from sacrifice at the eleventh hour. He also tells of unspeakable conditions suffered by foreign laborers, POWs, and political opponents in the Ruhr Valley and of the mass graves that gave Allied soldiers a grisly new understanding of their enemy." "Zumbro also recounts the story of Field Marshal Walter Model's final hours. His eventual suicide effectively ended the existence of the Wehrmacht's once-formidable Army Group B after being pursued, methodically encircled, and finally destroyed by U.S. and British forces. Through interviews with surviving members of Model's former staff, Zumbro has uncovered the attitudes of beleaguered officers that official records could never convey." "Other interviews with former soldiers reveal the extent to which Allied bombing contributed to the rapid deterioration of German combat effectiveness and tell of civilians begging soldiers to abandon the war. Zumbro's research reveals the identities of specific characters discussed in previous works but never identified, describes the final hours of German officers executed for the loss of the bridge at Remagen, and offers new insight into Model's acquiescence to Hitler in military affairs."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Mark Stout, Harry Yeide
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781616739652
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
This is the story of the Allied forces--the U.S. 6th Army Group and French 1st Army--that landed in southern France on August 15th, 1944. The book follows the action from the French beaches to the Vosges Mountains, where the first Allied penetration along the entire Western front reached the Rhine River. First to the Rhine covers the vicious fighting during the German Nordwind counteroffensive in January 1945 and the French-American offensive to clear the Colmar Pocket. It then pursues the forces of the Third Reich across the Rhine to their ultimate destruction. Unlike the forces landing in Normandy, these American divisions were hard-bitten veterans of the war in Italy, and, in the case of the 3d Infantry Division, North Africa. The French units included many veterans of the Italian campaign and comprised Frenchmen and Africans in almost equal numbers. As the campaign went on, the French ranks were swelled by tens of thousands of Free French Forces of the Interior, the famous maquis. The German forces arrayed against the Allies included the famed 11th Panzer Division, an Eastern front veteran known as the "Ghost Division," which would hit the Allied advance time and again only to slip away before it could be pinned and destroyed. This is the harrowing story First to the Rhine tells, from the strategic plane-down through the corps, division, and regimental levels to the personal experience of the men in combat, including the likes of Audie Murphy, Americas most decorated infantryman of the war. The book features little-known battles, including one at Montelimar, when an ad hoc American armored command and the 36th Infantry Division came within a hairs breadth and several days of hard fighting of cutting off the entire German 19th Army. This is the first popular work in English to explore the French role in the fighting and the relationship between the U.S. Army and the French forces fighting under American command.
Author: Micheal Clodfelter
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078647470X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 825
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Book Description
In its revised and updated fourth edition, this exhaustive encyclopedia provides a record of casualties of war from the last five centuries through 2015, with new statistical and analytical information. Figures include casualties from global terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fight against the Islamic State. New entries cover an additional 20 armed conflicts between 1492 and 2007 not included in previous editions. Arranged roughly by century and subdivided by world region, chronological entries include the name and dates of the conflict, precursor events, strategies and details, the outcome and its aftermath.
Author: Grant T. Harward
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501759973
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359
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Book Description
Romania's Holy War rights the widespread myth that Romania was a reluctant member of the Axis during World War II. In correcting this fallacy, Grant T. Harward shows that, of an estimated 300,000 Jews who perished in Romania and Romanian-occupied Ukraine, more than 64,000 were, in fact, killed by Romanian soldiers. Moreover, the Romanian Army conducted a brutal campaign in German-occupied Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, and civilians. Investigating why Romanian soldiers fought and committed such atrocities, Harward argues that strong ideology—a cocktail of nationalism, religion, antisemitism, and anticommunism—undergirded their motivation. Romania's Holy War draws on official military records, wartime periodicals, soldiers' diaries and memoirs, subsequent war crimes investigations, and recent interviews with veterans to tell the full story. Harward integrates the Holocaust into the narrative of military operations to show that most soldiers fully supported the wartime dictator, General Ion Antonescu, and his regime's holy war against "Judeo-Bolshevism." The army perpetrated mass reprisals, targeting Jews in liberated Romanian territory; supported the deportation and concentration of Jews in camps or ghettos in Romanian-occupied Soviet territory; and played a key supporting role in SS efforts to exterminate Jews in German-occupied Soviet territory. Harward proves that Romania became Nazi Germany's most important ally in the war against the USSR because its soldiers were highly motivated, thus overturning much of what we thought we knew about this theater of war. Romania's Holy War provides the first complete history of why Romanian soldiers fought on the Eastern Front.
Author: Hugh Marshall Cole
Publisher: U.S. Government Printing Office
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 762
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Book Description
Author: Charles B. MacDonald
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812218312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
An account of the first setback suffered by the Allies following the invasion of Europe.
Author: Harry Yeide
Publisher: Zenith Imprint
ISBN: 9780760321553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
In the early afternoon of September 12, 1944, an American patrol entered Nazi Germany southwest of the ancient city of Aachen. Three months after the landing at Normandy, the Allies were finally within reach of the enemy on his home turf. Among the troops there was even talk of getting home for Christmas. What followed, though, was one of the most grueling campaigns of the war—the nearly six-month-long battle fully recounted for the first time in this powerful work. Combining stirring narrative and meticulous historical detail, The Longest Battle provides a complete and compelling account of what happened after the first breach of the Third Reich by Allied ground combat forces: of the troops’ terrible struggle across the Siegfried Line, Hitler’s vaunted West Wall, through the benighted Hurtgen Forest, and across the Roer. The strategic decisions and setbacks, the incremental advances, and catastrophic losses that marked this still-controversial but critically important battle unfold in all their historical, military, and human significance in Harry Yeide’s book—finally filling a gap in our understanding of World War II.
