From a leading military historian comes a thrilling and richly detailed account of the two most critical offensives in World War II's western theater after D-Day--the Allied airborne assaults on the Rhine.
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From a leading military historian comes a thrilling and richly detailed account of the two most critical offensives in World War II's western theater after D-Day--the Allied airborne assaults on the Rhine.
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Seller's Description:
New in new dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 416 p. Contains: Illustrations, black & white, Maps. Audience: General/trade. BOOK IS NEW
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Seller's Description:
Very good in Very good jacket. xxviii, [2], 415, [1] pages. Illustrations. Minor red soiling at front edge. Includes Acknowledgments, 10 black and white maps, Introduction, Dramatis Personae, and Prologue. Topics covered include The Strategy of Exploitation, The Allies: 25 August-17 September 1944; Withdrawal: The Germans: 25 August-17 September 1944; Chasing the Dream: Airborne Warfare and its Soldiers: The Birth of Parachuting to Summer 1944; Stitching things Together: Planning, 10-17 September 1944; Jumping the Rhine (1), Operation Market Garden: 17-18 September 1944; Perimeters, Operation Market Garden: 19-21 September 1944; Touching the Rhine, Operation Market Garden: 21-26 September 1944; Riposte, The Ardennes and Advance to the Rhine, October 1944-March 1945; The Deluge, Planning and Launching Plunder Variety, 10-24 March 1945; and Jumping the Rhine (II), Operation Varsity: 24-28 March 1945. Lloyd Clark is a senior academic in the Department of War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Professorial Research Fellow in War Studies, Humanities Research Institute, University of Buckingham. One of the UK's leading military historians, he is the author of several books, including The Battle of the Tanks, Crossing the Rhine, and Anzio. In September 1944, with the Allies eager to break into Nazi Germany after Normandy but conflicted about how to do so, Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower is forced to arbitrate a power struggle between two rival subordinates: Lieutenant General George Patton, commander of the U.S. Third Army, and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who leads the British Twenty-first Army. The attack will go down in history as the most ambitious--and disastrous--airborne assault of all time. After nine days of brutal fighting, the Allies suffered massive casualties and were forced to retreat. Several months later, after the allies repulse Germany's last-ditch attempt to extend the war with the Battle of the Bulge, Montgomery orchestrates another airborne attack on the Rhine. This time they prevail and begin their march into the heart of the third Reich. Derived from a Kirkus review: Well-told accounts of Allied airborne operations Market Garden and Plunder Varsity, conceived to break across the Rhine into Germany after the Normandy invasion. In September 1944, British Field Marshal Montgomery designed Operation Market Garden, a bold plan to use parachute troops behind enemy lines to help secure bridges across the lower Rhine. Clark lays out the political headaches Allied Supreme Commander Eisenhower had in running a massive, multinational war effort whose principle battlefield commanders continuously lobbied to get their attack proposals approved. Clark ably disproves the widely held notion that Market Garden was Montgomery's wholly owned operation, which doomed thousands of soldiers' lives for leadership glory. On the contrary, many Allied field commanders had confidence in Market Garden as "a calculated risk which would be interesting and revealing, whatever happened." But the plan was fraught with logistical problems from the beginning, and the Allies underestimated German tenacity. Six months later, in March 1945, Operation Plunder Varsity proved they had learned from mistakes made with Market Garden's airborne assault. Better timing, clear supply lines and airborne troops kept in tight units made this push across the Rhine decisive. Nazi generals knew the end was near. Clark is best when narrating battle scenes at a rapid pace. Personal narratives gleaned from soldiers on both sides of the battle lines bring home small-scale episodes of grunt fighting, heroism and pitiful death. The fighting spirit of Allied paratroopers comes through with exciting clarity.
