|
An Excellent Summary of the Great Breakout, Tuesday, October 16, 2001
There are certain authors that readers can trust to deliver excellent military history, and Steven J Zaloga is one of them. In his latest title for Osprey, Zaloga covers the American-led breakout from the Normandy bridgehead in July-August 1944 that sent Hitler's armies reeling back across France. While Zaloga has done a good job summarizing the main points of Martin Blumenson's authoritative official history of Operation Cobra, he has provided additional value by including input from more recent scholarship on specific facets of the campaign, such as the impact of tactical air power. In accordance with the Osprey Campaign series format, the book starts with a section on the background to the campaign and includes a campaign chronology. Zaloga provides good insight into the debilitated state of the Wehrmacht units and the rising competence of US units in the section on opposing forces. The section on opposing commanders is adequate, but French General Leclerc who made a contribution in the campaign is omitted, while non-involved characters such as Montgomery are included. On the German side, Panzer Lehr's Fritz Bayerlein should also have been included. The section on opposing plans is adequate but more mention of how ULTRA shaped Allied planning should have been included. The order of battle is a bit skimpy because it only addresses division-size units from both sides that participated in the initial phase of Cobra; American non-divisional assets such as independent tank, tank destroyer and artillery units should have been added. Nevertheless, Zaloga succeeds in providing fresh insights into material that is well worn, if not always well covered. Certainly he makes good points on Allied superiority in communications and logistics which are not viewed as "sexy" by some armchair historians who prefer to stress comparative tank statistics and such. The maps are quite good in this volume. There are five 2-D maps, depicting: the theater situation on 24 July 1944, the plan for Cobra, the breakthrough on 25-30 July, the race through Brittany and the pursuit to the Seine. Unfortunately, there were no 2-D maps of the Mortain counterattack or the Falaise pocket. There are only two 3-D Birds-eye-view maps in this volume: the carpet-bombing of the Panzer Lehr Division and the Mortain counterattack (which is too small and difficult to understand). There are three excellent battle scenes: the carpet bombing of Panzer Lehr, US tanks in the breakout and Panther tanks in the Mortain counterattack. The photographs provided are also excellent, particularly if one enjoys viewing destroyed German vehicles and their dead occupants (there are no photographs of US casualties). Overall, the text is cleanly-written and the campaign narrative fits well together. Zaloga also makes a good connection between Operation Cobra's breakout and the landings in southern France; often Operation Dragoon gets short shrift in the Normandy saga, but Zaloga effectively points out the inherent linkage between the campaigns and how it precipitated the German collapse in the West. Zaloga has marshaled the available facts well and there is little controversy in this book, although there are a few issues open to some debate. First, the actual effect of Allied airpower on the campaign was clearly significant but difficult to quantify. Zaloga seems to lean toward accepting all or most Allied claims for destruction of German vehicles, whereas some new research suggests the direct losses were not as large. Zaloga also accepts claims that most of the German divisions retreating from Normandy were "virtually destroyed," when this usually only refers to the combat elements. In each case, Zaloga might have advised the reader that other sources disagree with the extent of damage to German units. Another issue concerns the culpability for the defeat on the German side; Zaloga places most of the blame squarely on SS General Paul Hausser for poorly deploying his units and then making a hash of the withdrawal. Field Marshal von Kluge and the rest of the German leadership - aside from Hitler - appear almost blameless. This interpretation looks like the creation of an SS scapegoat by Wehrmacht officers, particularly given that Operation Cobra occurred only five days after the failed plot to kill Hitler. While Hausser's leadership of 7th Army was probably not the greatest, the German defeat in Operation Cobra was not due only (or mostly) to his mistakes. Additionally, the lack of any information on US losses in the campaign also appears to deprive this account of some balance. There is also one mistake in the text, when Zaloga states that, "the 2nd SS Panzer Division commander was killed by a US patrol near his command post." In fact, Heinz Lammerding, commander of "Das Reich," was wounded in late July but returned to duty later in the year. Aside from these points, this is a fine summary volume.
Rating: 5 out of 5
|
