Download or read book Vercors 1944 written by Peter Lieb and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-20 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly illustrated account of the conflict between the German Army and security forces and the French resistance in the Alps. Fighting insurgents has always been one of the greatest challenges for regular armed forces during the 20th century. The war between the Germans and the French resistance, also called FFI (Forces Françaises d'Intérieur), during World War II has remained a near-forgotten chapter in the history of these 'Small Wars'. This is all the more astonishing as agencies like the British SOE (Special Operations Executive) and the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services) pumped a good amount of their resources into the support of the French resistance movement. By diversionary attacks on German forces in the occupied hinterland the Allies hoped the FFI could provide assistance in disrupting German supply lines as well as crumbling their morale. The mountain plateau of the Vercors south-west of Grenoble was the main stronghold of the FFI, and in July 1944 some 8,000 German soldiers mounted an operation on the plateau and destroyed the insurgent groups there. This compact volume examines the battle of the Vercors, the largest operation against the FFI during World War II, and shows how the Germans' suit and crushing victory has caused traumatic memories for the French that persist to the present day.
Download or read book Kohima 1944 written by Robert Lyman and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Osprey's Campaign title for the Battle of Kohima during World War II (1939-1945), which saved India from Japanese attacks. In March 1944 the Japanese Army launched Operation U-Go, an attack on Assam in India intended to inspire a rising by the Indian populace against British rule. The Japanese plan would rely on mobility, infiltration and captured supplies to maintain the momentum of the attack. A month earlier the Japanese had launched Operation Ha-Go, which was intended as a feint to draw British attention away from the Imphal area where the brunt of the U-Go attacks would take place. But British forces employed new defensive techniques to counter the Japanese infiltration tactics; forming defensive boxes, supplied by air, they held out against determined Japanese assaults until the Japanese were forced to withdraw, short of supplies. These tactics were again employed on a larger scale when Imphal and Kohima were surrounded during Operation U-Go. Kohima (the 'Stalingrad of the East') was the crucial key point to the successful defence of Imphal, and took place in two stages. From 3 to 16 April the Japanese attempted to capture Kohima Ridge, which dominated the road along which the British and Indian troops centred on the Imphal plain were supplied. As the small garrison held out against fierce and repeatedly desperate attempts by the Japanese 31st Division to destroy them, so the British 2nd Division fought to break through and relieve them. Then for over two months from 18 April, British and Indian troops counter-attacked in an effort to drive the Japanese from the positions they had already captured that blocked the road to Imphal. The battle ended on June 22 when British and Indian troops from Kohima and Imphal met at Milestone 109, thus ending the siege.
Download or read book British Armour in the Normandy Campaign written by John Buckley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-07-22 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The popular perception of the performance of British armour in the Normandy campaign of 1944 is one of failure and frustration. Despite overwhelming superiority in numbers, Montgomery's repeated efforts to employ his armour in an offensive manner ended in a disappointing stalemate.
Download or read book Battle of the Bulge 1944 1 written by Steven J. Zaloga and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of the Bulge was the largest and most costly battle fought by the US Army in World War II. The Ardennes fighting was Hitler's last gamble on the Western Front, crippling the Wehrmacht for the remainder of the war. In the first of two volumes on the Ardennes campaign Steven Zaloga details the fighting in the northern sector around St Vith and the Elsenborn Ridge. The Sixth Panzer Army, containing the bulk of German Panzer strength, was expected to achieve the breakthrough here. It was the failure around St Vith that forced the Germans to look south towards Bastogne.
Download or read book The Normandy Campaign 1944 written by John Buckley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-07-29 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With essays from leading names in military history, this new book re-examines the crucial issues and debates of the D-Day campaign. It tackles a range of core topics, placing them in their current historiographical context, to present new and sometimes revisionist interpretations of key issues, such as the image of the Allied armies compared with the Germans, the role of air power, and the lessons learned by the military from their operations. As the Second World War is increasingly becoming a field of revisionism, this book sits squarely within growing debates, shedding new light on topics and bringing current thinking from our leading military and strategic historians to a wider audience. This book will be of great interest to students of the Second World War, and of military and strategic studies in general.
Download or read book When the Odds Were Even written by Keith Bonn and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In three months of savage fighting, the U.S. Seventh Army did what no army in the history of modern warfare had ever done before–conquer an enemy defending the Vosges Mountains. With the toughest terrain on the Western Front, the Vosges mountain range was seemingly an impregnable fortress, manned by German troops determined to hold the last barrier between the Allies and the Rhine. Yet despite nearly constant rain, snow, ice, and mud, soldiers of the U.S. Seventh Army tore through thousands of pillboxes, acres of barbed wire, hundreds of roadblocks, and miles of other enemy obstacles, ripping the tenacious German defenders out of their fortifications in fierce fighting–and then held on to their gains by crushing Operation Nordwind, the German offensive launched in a hail of steel at an hour before midnight on the last New Year’s Eve of the war. Keith Bonn’s fascinating study of this little-known World War II campaign offers a rare opportunity to compare German and American fighting formations in a situation where both sides were fairly evenly matched in numbers of troops, weapons, supplies, and support. This gripping battle-by-battle account shatters the myth that German formations were, division for division, superior to their American counterparts.
Download or read book Ultra in the West written by Ralph Bennett and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Walcheren 1944 written by Richard Brooks and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Osprey's study of the Walcheren campaign of World War II (1939-1945). Walcheren is a saucer-shaped island in the estuary of the river Scheldt, commanding maritime access to Antwerp, the largest port in Western Europe. The Allies captured Antwerp intact on September 4, 1944, but their eyes were on the Rhine crossings at Arnhem, not the lower Scheldt. The failure of Operation Market-Garden later that month brought home the Allies' logistical weakness. As autumn gales drew near, every shell and petrol tin had still to be landed at Cherbourg or across the Normandy beaches. Complete US Army divisions were immobilized for lack of transport. It was vital to re-open Antwerp. The continued German presence on Walcheren, however, prevented Allied shipping from entering the Scheldt. In the fall of 1944, Walcheren had the most heavily fortified coastline in the world. Its seaward defences consisted of 30 coastal and field batteries, mounting 50-60 guns from 75mm to 220mm in caliber, manned by high quality naval personnel behind massive concrete emplacements. Supporting strongpoints had anti-aircraft guns, flame-throwers rocket-launchers and Goliath remote controlled demolition vehicles. The sand dunes protecting the low-lying island from the North Sea were laced with barbed wire, mines and dragon's teeth. Defending infantry came from Generalleutnant Wilhelm Daser's 70.Infanterie-Division, a 'white bread division' consisting of men with gastric problems. Allied intelligence estimated the total garrison at 4,000, but 8,000 eventually surrendered. On November 1, 1944, in a double-pronged attack, the men of 52nd (Lowland) Division plus No. 4 Army Commando seized Flushing (Infatuate I) while in the west 4th Special Service Brigade with three Royal Marine Commandos and No. 10 Inter-Allied Commando would take Westkapelle, and fight their way north and south along the dunes, taking the coastal batteries as they went (Infatuate II). All this was to be supported with HMS Warspite and two 15-inch gun monitors; the Support Squadron Eastern Flank (SSEF) with 25 specialized Landing Craft with guns and rockets; 350 Army guns south of the Scheldt, most of them heavier than 25-pounders; and the Typhoon and Spitfire fighter bombers of 84 Group RAF. In fighting described by one survivor as 'worse than Dieppe and D-Day put together' the Army and Royal Marines forced their way ashore, supported by specialized armour and tracked vehicles, and over the next eight days cleared the positions of their German defenders in bitter street fighting. The first Liberty ships unloaded at Antwerp on December 1, just over a fortnight before the Ardennes offensive began. If Walcheren had not fallen when it did, opening Antwerp just in time, the Allies would have been hard pressed to withstand the German attack, or replace the fuel stocks lost in its opening days, let alone cross the Rhine in the following spring, and meet the Russians on the Elbe. The Walcheren campaign was not merely a dramatic combined operation pulled off against the odds; it helped determine the course of the war and the shape of the post-war world.
Download or read book Ardennes 1944 written by Antony Beevor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prizewinning historian and bestselling author of D-Day, Stalingrad, and The Battle of Arnhem reconstructs the Battle of the Bulge in this riveting new account On December 16, 1944, Hitler launched his ‘last gamble’ in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes in Belgium, believing he could split the Allies by driving all the way to Antwerp and forcing the Canadians and the British out of the war. Although his generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from the east. Many were exultant at the prospect of striking back. The allies, taken by surprise, found themselves fighting two panzer armies. Belgian civilians abandoned their homes, justifiably afraid of German revenge. Panic spread even to Paris. While some American soldiers, overwhelmed by the German onslaught, fled or surrendered, others held on heroically, creating breakwaters which slowed the German advance. The harsh winter conditions and the savagery of the battle became comparable to the Eastern Front. In fact the Ardennes became the Western Front’s counterpart to Stalingrad. There was terrible ferocity on both sides, driven by desperation and revenge, in which the normal rules of combat were breached. The Ardennes—involving more than a million men—would prove to be the battle which finally broke the back of the Wehrmacht. In this deeply researched work, with striking insights into the major players on both sides, Antony Beevor gives us the definitive account of the Ardennes offensive which was to become the greatest battle of World War II.
Download or read book Ultra in the West written by Ralph Francis Bennett and published by Scribner Book Company. This book was released on 1980 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ralph Bennett, who spent his war years decoding German signals at Bletchley Park, here reconstructs what really happened behind the scenes in the campaign for Europe's liberation.
Download or read book Invasion 1944 Rommel and the Normandy Campaign written by Lt.-Gen. Hans Speidel and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lieutenant-General Hans Speidel’s Invasion 1944 tells the story, from the German viewpoint, of one of the most critical periods of World War II. Indeed, to most Americans the summer months of 1944, highlighted by the battles on the Normandy beaches, represent the climax of the world convulsion. Every detail of this epic struggle is today of interest not only to those Americans who participated personally in the battles on the beaches and in the Normandy countryside, but to that still greater number who sweated and bled in Italy, on South Pacific isles, or in the Philippines, or were forced to stay at home. For the Norman beaches have now become a keystone in the arch of American military tradition—worthy to stand alongside Chancellorsville, Appomattox, Château-Thierry and the Meuse-Argonne. Our curiosity, therefore, cannot but be piqued as to what went on in the Château La Roche Guyon, the headquarters of the German Army Group opposing the Allied Normandy armies, as, day by day, American and British pressure brought Hitler’s doom nearer. Invasion is by no means merely military history, a record of the estimates and orders of the German Command during the Normandy struggle. This book tells a double story. The battles are the background, while the foreground is dominated by the narrative of another climactic struggle, that between the commander of the Army Group, Erwin Rommel, “the Desert Fox,” and his overlord Adolf Hitler. “A notable contribution to the...literature on the Normandy campaign. The author was Chief of Staff successively to Rommel, Kluge and Model.... What he has to say about the German defeat is authoritative and of high interest.”—New York Herald Tribune Book Review
Download or read book Bagration 1944 written by Steve Zaloga and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2004 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On June 22, 1944, three years to the day after the beginning of the German invasion of Russia, the Red Army launched a massive offensive in Byelorussia. Code named Operation Bagration, it proved to be one of the most destructive battles of the Second World War.
Download or read book The Wehrmacht s Last Stand written by Robert M. Citino and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 1943, the war was lost, and most German officers knew it. Three quarters of a century later, the question persists: What kept the German army going in an increasingly hopeless situation? Where some historians have found explanations in the power of Hitler or the role of ideology, Robert M. Citino, the world’s leading scholar on the subject, posits a more straightforward solution: Bewegungskrieg, the way of war cultivated by the Germans over the course of history. In this gripping account of German military campaigns during the final phase of World War II, Citino charts the inevitable path by which Bewegungskrieg, or a “war of movement,” inexorably led to Nazi Germany’s defeat. The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand analyzes the German Totenritt, or “death ride,” from January 1944—with simultaneous Allied offensives at Anzio and Ukraine—until May 1945, the collapse of the Wehrmacht in the field, and the Soviet storming of Berlin. In clear and compelling prose, and bringing extensive reading of the German-language literature to bear, Citino focuses on the German view of these campaigns. Often very different from the Allied perspective, this approach allows for a more nuanced and far-reaching understanding of the last battles of the Wehrmacht than any now available. With Citino’s previous volumes, Death of the Wehrmacht and The Wehrmacht Retreats, The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand completes a uniquely comprehensive picture of the German army’s strategy, operations, and performance against the Allies in World War II.
Download or read book Our Army at War written by George C. Marshall and published by . This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a new release of the original 1944 edition.
Download or read book Italy s Sorrow written by James Holland and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2008 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Holland's ground-breaking account expertly documents the German advance to the stalemate of the Gothic line and a segment of Italian history that has been largely neglected. The war in Italy was the most destructive campaign in the west as the Allies and Germans fought a long, bitter and highly attritional conflict up the mountainous leg of Italy during the last twelve months of the Second World War. While the Allies and Germans were slogging it out through the mountains, the Italians were fighting their own battles, one where Partisans and Fascists were pitted against each other in a bloody civil war. Around them, civilians tried to live through the carnage, terror and anarchy while, in the wake of the Allied advance, beleaguered and impoverished Italians were forced to pick their way through the ruins of their homes and country and often forced into making terrible and heart-rending decisions in order to survive.
Download or read book The Siegfried Line Campaign written by Charles Brown MacDonald and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Eisenhower s Lieutenants written by Russell Frank Weigley and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 838 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " . . . the best account we have of the World War II campaigns from Normandy to the Elbe." -American Historical Review"
