Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/December 2015/Book reviews


 * By Hawkeye7

For those whose MilHist German is a little rusty, rückzug is an orderly retreat, as opposed to a rout. This book was first published in German by the German Military History Research Institute in 1994, and is based on Ludewig's 1990 PhD thesis. That it was originally written in German shows in a few places. Fortunately, a military historian has gone over the translation. This is part of a growing body of work that German military historians have generated from German primary sources that gives us fresh new perspectives, not just on the German Army, but on their opponents as well.

The book covers the period from the middle of August 1944 to the middle of September. The Germans Army faced total defeat in the Battle of Normandy, coupled with the double threat of Operation Dragoon, the Allied landings in the south of France. Somehow, it managed to extricate itself from the Falaise pocket and the positions in the south of France, and form a new line on the German border.

This book explains how, in a month, this was accomplished. After years of fighting in the Soviet Union with astronomical casualties, the German Army of 1944 was not what it was in 1941. There were a number of foreign units, such as the 360th Cossack Regiment and the 950th Indian Regiment. The German command was also hamstrung by orders from Hitler and OKW that were frequently outdated or unrealistic. The book shows that the German strategy was sound, its equipment was good, and its leadership, while sometimes faulty, was often excellent.

In the end, the Germans did better than they expected to, even managing to save formations like the Fifteenth Army on the channel coast and the Nineteenth Army in the south of France that they had written off. How and why is the subject of this book. The day-by-day retelling makes the reasons clear - something no other account I have read has managed to. Put simply, the Allied command, tactics, logistics did not allow them to move fast enough. Like the French Army of 1940, the United States Army had failures of leadership, but more importantly, of doctrine. The Germans did not allow the windows of opportunity to remain open long enough.

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