Download or read book The Falaise Pocket World War II Allied Encirclement Of The German Armies written by Major Braden DeLauder and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By Aug. 1944, the Allies had broken out of the Normandy beachhead and were rapidly exploiting a breakthrough in the German lines. In early Aug., Hitler ordered a heavy single pronged attack to the west toward Avranches to cut off the US forces to the south. With the ‘Ultra’ intelligence, Bradley recognized this as an opportunity to encircle the German Army in France. By turning Patton’s Third Army, in the south, north towards Argentan, Bradley formed the lower jaw of a pincer movement while Montgomery ordered Crerar’s First Canadian Army south to push towards Falaise to form the upper jaw. Connecting the Allied armies between Falaise and Argentan would completely surround the German army. The encirclement of the German forces would be known as the Falaise pocket. To the north, Montgomery’s forces struggled to push south against the German defensive line. Patton’s Third Army, in concert with the XIX Tactical Air Command, was making extremely rapid progress. Late on the 12th of Aug., Bradley stopped Patton’s forces from moving north of Argentan. The decision to stop Third Army’s movement north allowed many German personnel to escape from the Falaise pocket. I will analyze the leadership decisions, command relationships, and what I think to be a lack of communication between the Allied leaders. Why did Montgomery, who was commander of the Allied ground forces in France, not close the pincer from the south? Why did Bradley stop forces at Argentan? Why didn’t Eisenhower get involved? The Allied leadership failed to capitalize or exploit the mistake made by Hitler driving the German Army westward. By not closing the pocket’s gap at Falaise, the Allied forces lost an opportunity to destroy a large percentage of the enemy in France. The major factor for this failure was conflicting commander personalities.
Download or read book The Falaise Pocket World War II Allied Encirclement of the German Armies Failure Or Success of the Allied written by Usmc Command and Staff College and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-03-30 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By August 1944, the Allies had broken out of the Normandy beachhead and were rapidly exploiting a breakthrough in the German lines. In early August, Hitler ordered a heavy single pronged attack to the west to cut off the US forces to the south. Bradley recognized this as an opportunity to encircle the German Army in France. By turning Patton's Third Army, in the south, north towards Argentan, Bradley formed the lower jaw of a pincer movement while Montgomery ordered Crerar's First Canadian Army south to push towards Falaise to form the upper jaw. Connecting the Allied armies between Falaise and Argentan would completely surround the German army. To the north, Montgomery's forces struggled to push south against the German defensive line. Patton's Third Army, in concert with the XIX Tactical Air Command, was making extremely rapid progress. Late on the 12th of August, Bradley stopped Patton's forces from moving north of Argentan. The decision to stop Third Army's movement north allowed many German personnel to escape from the Falaise pocket. The failure of the Allied forces to close the Falaise Gap was the result of lack of communication directly linked to the type of personalities of the commanders.
Download or read book The Falaise Pocket written by Yves Buffetaut and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This WWII military history explores the dramatic turning point of the Battle of Normandy—illustrated throughout with archival photos and maps. On June 6th, 1944, the Allied forces embarked on Operation Overlord with the first wave of Normandy landings. But it wasn’t until August of that year that the tide of the battle—and the entire war—began to turn. The decisive moment came at the Battle of the Falaise Pocket. The German Army had managed to hold back the Allies for months, but its resources were running out, and the Allies ruled the skies. As the Allies began to push South and East, Hitler refused to permit Field Marshal von Kluge, the commander of Army Group B, to withdraw. General Montgomery ordered the Allied armies to converge on the Falaise area on August 8th, and by August 21st they had some 50,000 Germans surrounded. While many German soldiers did escape the encirclement, the losses were catastrophic. By the end of the month, Army Group B had retreated across the Seine, ending the battle of Normandy. This illustrated account examines the battle from the failed offensive at Mortain, looking at both German and Allied perspectives, using maps, diagrams and profiles to complete the story.
Download or read book The Falaise Gap Battles written by Simon Forty and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-08-19 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A great book” on the decisive engagement of the Battle of Normandy in the series that brings World War II battles to life (Army Rumour Service). The denouement of the battle of Normandy, the fighting around Falaise and Chambois in August 1944, and the pursuit of the retreating German armies to the Seine provided the Allies with an immense victory—all made possible by Operation Cobra . . . As US First Army and British Second Army squeezed the western and northern edges of the German salient, so Third Army rushed headlong eastwards and then north to create the lower of two pincers—the other formed as the Canadian First Army and the Polish 1st Armored Division pushed south of Caen. As could be expected, the Germans did not simply give up: they fought furiously to keep the pincers from closing. When they did, attacks from inside the pocket to break out and outside the pocket to break in led to fierce fighting between Chambois and Argentan. When the dust settled, between 80,000 and 100,000 troops had been trapped by the Allied encirclement. Estimates vary considerably, but it seems safe to say that at least 10,000 of the German forces were killed and around 50,000 became PoWs. The Past & Present Series reconstructs historical battles by using photography, juxtaposing modern views with those of the past together with concise explanatory text. It shows how much infrastructure has remained and how much such as outfits, uniforms, and ephemera has changed, providing a coherent link between now and then.
Download or read book Falaise Pocket written by Paul Latawski and published by Spellmount, Limited Publishers. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: Stroud: Sutton, 2004.
Download or read book Fighting The Breakout written by David C. Isby and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2004-01-03 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating volume charts the progress of the Allied breakout of Normandy through German eyes. Beginning with Operation COBRA and ending with the offensive which led to the liberation of Paris, this critical phase of the war in the west is examined and described by senior German officers. These, from staff officers at OKW to divisional generals on the ground, critique their performance, examine Allied superiority, and evaluate their own efforts to contain Allied forces in Normandy. They look at such key events as the counter-attack at Mortain, the American offensive, British and Canadian efforts and the sequence of events that led to the fighting around the Falaise gap. The German officers originally submitted the reports presented here to Allied intelligence efforts as part of post-war debriefing sessions. The current volume, which follows on from Fighting the Invasion and Fighting in Normandy, consists of carefully selected and edited material. Fighting the Breakout gives a broad picture of German hopes balanced with the realisation that they could not hope to contain the Allied efforts for long. With supplementary material by David C. Isby, Fighting the Breakout is a fascinating glimpse into how a defeated army sought hard to turn the tide of defeat.
Download or read book Death of a Nazi Army written by William B. Breuer and published by Stein & Day Pub. This book was released on 1985 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the battle between the Allied and German forces in Falaise, France, and examines the reasons for the defeat of the Germans
Download or read book Death of a Nazi Army written by William Breuer and published by Scarborough House. This book was released on 1997 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For seven weeks after D-Day, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were bottled up along the landing beaches. Finally, 3,000 American and British planes bombarded a narrow path into enemy territory, and the Allies surrounded 100,000 die-hard Germans at Falaise. Breuer's stirring reconstruction of the battle as seen from both sides makes this one of the best WWII books of recent years.--JOHN BARKHAM REVIEWS. 34 photos.
Download or read book General Bradley s Decision at Argentan 13 August 1944 written by Martin Blumenson and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Battle of the Generals written by Roy L Griggs and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Normandy Battlefields written by Leo Marriott and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Normandy Battlefields details what can be seen on the ground today using a mixture of media to provide a complete overview of the campaign. Maps old and new highlight what has survived and what hasn't; then-and-now photography allows fascinating comparisons with the images taken at the time. The Normandy Battlefields: D-Day & the Bridgehead ended as the Allies fought to expand their D-Day foothold. In Bocage and Breakout, Leo Marriott and Simon Forty take the story forward as the success of the invasion continued into the Cotentin, with Cherbourg falling on 29 June, before it bogged down in face of determined German defense and the bocage countryside--innumerable small fields surrounded by hedgerows, each one hiding anti-tank weapons, mortars and machine guns. As US First Army fought its way south, on the eastern edges of the bridgehead, British and Canadian forces were fighting a war of attrition around Caen facing the bulk of the German armor as division after division was fed into Normandy. Like a pressure cooker, the fighting intensified until, seven weeks after D-Day, Operation 'Cobra' broke the German line. Quickly Patton's Third Army, operational from 1 August, flooded through the gap exploiting the German confusion, encircling what was left of the German armies in the Falaise Pocket and advancing quickly through into Brittany. Three weeks later, the Battle of Normandy was over, the routed German Army--without most of its heavy weapons left in the Falaise Pocket or on the banks of the Seine--was retreating helter skelter back towards Germany and the Low Countries pursued by the Allies in a reverse of the 1940 Blitzkrieg campaign. The three months of war in June-July 1944 were brutal, with losses of front-line troops as heavy as in World War I. The German defense was tenacious, particularly in face of Allied air supremacy. The Allies struggled to get into a position to allow their more mobile forces room for maneuver and and the fighting was ferocious. When victory came, it came at a cost: 209,672 casualties among the ground forces, including 36,976 killed and 19,221 missing. The Allied air forces lost 16,714 airmen. The corresponding German losses were even more significant: some 450,000 men, of whom 240,000 were killed or wounded. More important to the Germans were the losses of heavy equipment--tanks, assault guns, artillery, personnel carriers. As an example, 12th SS Panzer Division had lost 94% of its armor, nearly all of its artillery and 70% of its vehicles. With c20,000 men and 150 tanks before the campaign, after Falaise it had 300 men and 10 tanks. Mixing text, maps and images, many of them specially commissioned including aerial photography, The Normandy Battlefields: Bocage and Breakout explains and interprets the complexities of the Normandy campaign in an original and cohesive package.
Download or read book Falaise The Flawed Victory written by Anthony Tucker-Jones and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The destruction of the trapped German forces in the Falaise pocket in August 1944 is one of the most famous episodes of the Normandy campaign. But myths have grown up around accounts of the battle, and its impact on the course of the war is sometimes misunderstood. In this meticulously researched and perceptive study Anthony Tucker-Jones dispels misconceptions about the battle, describes the combat in graphic detail and reassesses the outcome in the context of the campaign to liberate Europe. He takes a broad view of the sequence of operations that culminated in the battle at Falaise, tracing the course of the campaign mainly from the panzers' viewpoint. For two bloody months the panzers held the Allies at bay following the D-Day landings, but then they were blocked in at Falaise and the area became a killing ground. Some liken the event to Hitler's defeat at Stalingrad, while others argue the victory was flawed because so many German troops escaped.
Download or read book The Battle of Normandy the Falaise Gap written by James Sidney Lucas and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of the Falaise Pocket was a disaster for the Germans in August 1944. This books sets the battle in the context of Allied Strategy in Northern Europe. Having set the scene, the readers is led through each phase of the action. The particular strength is that it draws heavily on German sources giving the reader a penetrating insight into an army trapped in a killing ground.
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 Fighting the People s War written by Jonathan Fennell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 967 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.
Download or read book Falaise 1944 written by Ken Ford and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2005-03-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The battle around Falaise in Normandy during August 1944 saw the destruction of the German Seventh army. This book details the chain of events which led to the German retreat and the ensuing liberation of France during World War II (1939-1945). The British and American breakout battles had released motorised units to wage a more mobile war against the German static defensive tactics. At Falaise, the armoured units of US Third Army encircled the German Seventh Army, squeezed them into an ever-smaller cauldron of chaos and crushed them against the advancing British Second Army. The results were devastating: those troops able to escape the disaster fled, those who remained were killed or captured and vast quantities of armour and equipment were lost.
Download or read book Fighting the Breakout written by Freiherr von Luttwitz and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This gripping volume charts the progress of the Allied breakout of Normandy through German eyes. Beginning with Operation COBRA and ending with the offensive which led to the liberation of Paris, this critical phase of the war in the west is examined and described by five senior German officers. From staff officers at OKW to divisional generals on
