Standard books for Normandy, the breakout and drive into Germany

[Der Alte Fritz]

Hi

Can you recommend standard works to read on the ETO, both British and American and from the German side as well.

cheers

[The_Enigma]

If your looking for books ....

Ive just bought a book which was highly recommended to me called:

Colossal Cracks: Montgomery's 21st Army Group in Northwest Europe 1944-45

The Synopsis off Amazon.co.uk

A reinterpretation of the British Army's conduct in the crucial 1944-45 Northwest Europe campaign, this work examines the Colossal Cracks operational technique employed by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group. Rooted in concerns about morale and casualties, Colossal Cracks was a cautious, firepower-laden approach that involved the concentration of massive force at points of German weakness. Hart argues that Montgomery and his two senior subordinates handled this formation more effectively than some scholars have suggested and that Colossal Cracks represented the most appropriate weapon the British Army could develop under the circumstances.

Ive seen some great reviews for it and as i said it was highly recommended to me, although i have yet to read it.

Going for the Official Historys could also be a good idea, British and American ones are available to buy iirc and am sure some dude mentioned on the forum a few weeks back that a German one is in the works.

The British one is called:

Victory in the West: Volume I: The Battle For Normandy

Volume II: The Defeat of Germany

Both can be found here.

I found 'The Struggle For Europe' which covers the entire ETO and also gives a bit of a background story, i.e. covers dunkirk and the years of fighting alone briefly, to be very intresting. Am a bit of a slow reader but this book gripped me and i read it in a few weeks (which is good for me ).

'Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy' and 'Armageddon: The Battle for Germany' by Max Hastings are supose to be real good works. I only have the latter, which i didnt quite like but its been so long since ive read it i cant actually remember why lol

For a German Point of View, ive read some memoirs:

The Rommel Papers by Erwin Rommel,

Grenadiers by Kurt Meyer

Panzer Commander by von Luck

... all touch on Normandy and the fighting across France into the Low Countires and Germany. Meyers book from Normandy on, while covering the fighting from a German point of view reeked of propaganda. The Rommel Papers section on the invasion and onwards was actually wrote by Lt.Gen Fritz Bayerlein, although it still contains Rommels letters home.

The "Usual suspects" for the ETO, which seems to be books everyone has read are:

'The Longest Day' and 'A Bridge Too Far' by Cornelius Ryan (although theres allot more books out there now on both subjects, which will probably update what he wrote quite a bit. Iirc there was one book on Arnhem which was made up of quite allot of Vets describing what happened or something like that)

'D-Day' and 'Band of Brothers' by Steve Ambrose (there are a few others by him which cover different parts and subjects of the eto too).

Hope that helps somewhat. Thats only the tip of the iceburg as you have probably guessed, theres a lot lot more out there. For example Brian Reid is doing books detailing each Canadian Operation in detail, he has done Operation Totalize and ive read hes working on one for Tractable.

I guess another two which could be usful would be:

Defeat in the West and Why the Allies won not to mention the countless other memoirs and dairys by soldiers of all ranks which are in print.

One last point, any book published before the 70s iirc will not mention the Ultra information. Iirc that was pretty obvious in the struggle for europe as opposed to other books wrote later which cite it.

Am currently reading through the British Official Histories for the Middle East, they just go around it by stating something along the lines of 'it was known' but never state how it was.

[ September 01, 2007, 02:40 PM: Message edited by: The_Enigma ]

[Antman]

Two that I found very informative and readable:

'Caen: Anvil of Victory' by Alexander McKee

and

'Rhineland: The Battle To End The War' by

W.D and & S. Whitaker

As well,if you can find them, certain

volumes of Ballantine's Illustrated History Of

The Violent Century" (!)cover the ETO:

e.g 'Battle Of The Reichswald'by Peter Elstob,

'Battle Of The Ruhr Pocket'

'Bradley';both by Charles Whiting,

plus many others, including 'Bastogne'

and 'Normandy Breakout' these are nicely detailed

accounts, each covering a campaign or leader...

Cheers,

Matt

[Antman]

I should perhaps add the caveat that these

are fairly old books...McKee was writing in

the 1960's, the Ballantine series was (?)

early 1970's, and the Whitaker's late 1980's...

Wilmot ('The Struggle For Europe')is the grand

daddy of them all...

[Sirocco]

The Battleground Europe books are compact and good reads, focussing on small parts of the Normandy campaign and beyond.

Beyond the Beachhead is also a fine read, and one I'd heartily recommend.

[JasonC]

The US army green books. You can find most of them here in etext form, free -

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/html/bookshelves/resmat/WW2-EAME.html

Hugh Cole is especially noteworthy as a military historian. He did the volumes on the Lorraine and the Bulge, which are masterpieces.

Breakout and Pursuit is the volume covering the drive from Normandy to the German frontier, specifically. It is solid but a slightly higher unit level than the more detailed volumes on Utah Beach, St. Lo, the Cole ones above, etc.

Charles MacDonald - The Mighty Endeavor (whole campaign) and A Time for Trumpets (the Bulge). Also Company Commander (his own tactical experience), The Siegfried Line Campaign (Hurtgen), and The Last Offensive (battle for Germany).

Cornelius Ryan, A Bridge Too Far (Market-Garden). (He also has the Longest Day and The Last Battle, but this is his best).

John Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy

Trevor Dupuy, Hitler's Last Gamble (the Bulge). This also includes a set of appendices on the design of the US force in the ETO, quite useful, and available on the web.

Actually, Rich Anderson is responsible for the present, expanded form of this - he was at the Dupuy institute - and you can find it (on a useful site, more broadly speaking) here -

http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/usarmy/infantry.aspx

Another useful website is Lone Sentry - it has the short unit history pamphlets released at the time as a well as some lessons learned and enemy threat assessment documents used for training, and the like. You can find that site here -

http://www.lonesentry.com/

There is also Hyperwar, a guide to sites on WW II

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar

And another like it called history of war online

http://www.historyofwaronline.com/WW2-1.html

There are several good book-length unit histories. Among the best are -

Hell On Wheels (2nd armored division)

The Super Sixth (6th AD, under Patton)

Patton and Ridgeway both have interesting autobiographies (The war as I knew it and Soldier, respectively), though the operational coverage is thin compared to the above.

The French general, De Lattre de Tassigny, wrote a good history of the First French Army, mostly about its role in the ETO (South of France, Vosges, Colmar).

Harry Yeide has a solid book on the southern part of the front in First to the Rhine, with Mark Stout, and a good history of the Hurtgen, the Longest Battle.

Zetterling and Carlo D'Este each have useful books on Normandy (Normandy 1944 and Decision in Normandy), though with clear bias (German and Brit focus respectively). Useful though because a US bias is more common, and is more readily seen by the contrast with these. Zetterling (for the book) also collected irreplacable detail on the German OOB, also available on the web.

http://web.telia.com/~u18313395/normandy/gerob/gerob.html

I hope these are helpful.