Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/February 2020/Book reviews
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Mortain 1944 - Steven J. Zaloga |
- By Nick-D
This book by prolific Osprey Publishing author Steven J. Zaloga covers Operation Lüttich, a failed German counter-offensive against the US Army forces breaking out from Normandy in August 1944. It is the 335th book in Osprey's vast 'Campaign' series.
As well as being prolific, Zaloga is one of Osprey's best regular authors, and regularly produces books featuring good quality original research and solid critical analysis. This book is a bit of a disappointment though. As Operation Lüttich failed almost as soon as it started, I got the feeling that the author struggled to fill the book's 96 pages. The background to the battle and order of battle are dealt with fairly briefly but adequately, with the worn-out but sizeable German forces being contrasted against the fresh and confident Americans. The description of the battle is somewhat lacking though, the focus being on a somewhat confusing series of battalion-level actions. There's a detailed map of the first day of fighting which greatly helps to explain what happened, but the lack of similar maps for the subsequent fighting is a shame.
I was particularly disappointed with the limited analysis of why the attack failed. It seems surprising that four German armoured divisions (albeit in bad shape) were stopped almost cold by a single US Army infantry division which had only just taken up its defensive positions, and while a wide variety of factors which led to this are discussed these are never really brought together. The main things seem to have been the poor condition of the German units, the lack of preparation for the attack, and Allied air superiority, but this doesn't seem to explain just how badly this attack failed. The poor morale of the German troops in what were relatively elite units (who are described as often hiding in undergrowth whenever Allied aircraft approached in any numbers) seems to have been an important factor, but this isn't really explored. Likewise, the lack of basic competence which bedevilled the attack, such as artillery units not being brought forward, could have been discussed given that this suggests that the German forces were starting to fall apart - as they did almost completely over the next few weeks. On the plus side, and consistent with his other writing, Zaloga at no stage takes a 'romancer' point of view towards the Germans, and portrays the operation as being shambolic rather than a glorious failure as some of this type of literature does.
Overall, this book provides a good summary of this battle and will make a very useful reference for relevant articles. However, it feels like it was written to fill a gap in Zaloga's work on the Normandy Campaign and isn't up to his usual standards.
Publishing details: Zaloga, Steven J. (2019). Mortain 1944: Hitler's Normandy Panzer offensive. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 9781472832528.
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