A powerful German counterattack in Normandy in August 1944 might
have been one of the Wehrmacht's great shining moments in the
Second World War. The odds were certainly in their favor.
Determined to drive the Allies back to the English Channel,
elements of four combat-hardened panzer divisions faced off against
a single American infantry division near the town of Mortain.
Instead, the Americans held their ground, enabling the Allied
armies to secure the invasion and ultimately liberate France.
In a vivid recreation of this pivotal battle--less celebrated
than the encounter at the Falaise Pocket but just as decisive--Mark
Reardon tells how the 30th Infantry Division held off the German
panzer juggernaut, which was designed to drive a wedge between
Allied forces. In recounting this showdown, he offers a new
perspective on the German defeat in Normandy and a convincing
counterpoint to the conventional view of most military analysts
that Germany lost the war as a result of Allied materiel
superiority or Hitler's strategic meddling.
Through vigorous prose laced with compelling anecdotes, Reardon
reconstructs the battle from both sides of the firing line to
explain why it evolved and ended as it did. He reveals how
professional rivalries and lack of accurate battlefield information
hampered the efforts of German generals to execute a successful
counteroffensive. He also tells how the U.S. Army profited from the
bitter lessons of hedgerow fighting to gain superiority in ground
maneuver, fire support, and the use of airpower, logistics,
communications, and reconnaissance in the face of more experienced
and better armed opponents.
Reardon's riveting tale reveals that Americans GIs could fight
as well as their more vaunted opponent, which gave the U.S. Army
the confidence it needed to take the war into the enemy's homeland.
Equally important, their victory prevented the Germans from
retaking strategic points that would have kept the war bottled up
in Normandy.
Drawing not only on exhaustive research in Anglo-American and
German archives but also on firsthand accounts by more than two
hundred American soldiers, Reardon's detailed reconstruction fills
an important gap in the history of World War II combat that has
existed for more than half a century.
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