The Americans At Normandy: The Summer Of 1944--The American War From The Normandy Beaches To Falaise

The Americans at Normandy: The Summer of 1944--The American War from the Normandy Beaches to Falaise

In The Americans at D-Day, the first volume of this series, John C. McManus showed us the American experience in Operation Overlord. Now, in this succeeding volume, he does the same for the Battle of Normandy as a whole. Never before has the American involvement in Normandy been examined so thoroughly or exclusively as in The Americans at Normandy. For D-Day was only one part of the battle, and victory came from weeks of sustained effort and sacrifices made by Allied soldiers.Presented here is the American experience during that summer of 1944, from the aftermath of D-Day to the slaughter of the Falaise Gap, from the courageous, famed figures of Bradley, Patton, and Lightnin' Joe Collins to the lesser-known privates who toiled in torturous conditions for their country. What was this battle really like for these men? What drove them to fight against all sense and despite all obstacles? How and why did they triumph?Reminiscent of Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day, The Americans at Normandy takes readers into the minds of the best American strategists, into the hearts of the infantry, into hell on earth.Engrossing, lightning-quick, and filled with real human sorrow and elation, The Americans at Normandy honors those Americans who lost their lives in foreign fields and those who survived. Here is their story, finally told with the depth, pathos, and historical perspective it deserves.From Publishers WeeklyLong on engrossing combat vignettes but short on historical perspective, this fine-grained narrative covers some 80 days of the American campaign in France, from the bloody stalemate in the hedgerows to the decisive breakout and defeat of the German army in Normandy. In line with the Stephen Ambrose school of populist historiography that sees the campaign as the Greatest Generations finest hour, military historian McManus (The Americans at D-Day, etc.) challenges historians who have characterized the U.S. Armys performance as sluggish, tactically inept and dependent on a colossal superiority in numbers and firepower over its German opponents. He does so by focusing on the battlefield exploits of small infantry units and individual GIs, whom he feels displayed plenty of drive and tactical ingenuity. These well-paced and often moving stories, based on veterans first-hand reminiscences, are full of blood and guts, squalor and heroism, pathos and despair, and they add up to an indelible portrait of the horror of war. But McManuss conclusion that the Americans were "better soldiers" than the Germans is both unfair and untenable. The details of his account make clear that American infantry tactics did indeed rely on the crushing assistance of tanks, artillery and airpower. Meanwhile, he avoids meticulous comparisons of front-line strengths that would reveal how hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned the Wehrmacht was, while his exclusive interest in the American side neglects the tactical achievements German soldiers pulled off with incomparably skimpier resources. The many war stories McManus offers make for a gripping read, but they add up to a seriously biased picture of the Allied victory.Copyright