The Blitzkrieg Myth: How Hitler and the Allies Misread the Strategic Realities of World War II
John Mosier
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 0060009772
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A bold reinterpretation of some of the most decisive battles of World War II, showing that the outcomes had less to do with popular new technology than old–fashioned, on–the–ground warfare.
The military myths of World War II were based on the assumption that the new technology of the airplane and the tank would cause rapid and massive breakthroughs on the battlefield, or demoralization of the enemy by intensive bombing resulting in destruction, or surrender in a matter of weeks. The two apostles for these new theories were the Englishman J.C.F. Fuller for armoured warfare, and the Italian Emilio Drouhet for airpower. Hitler, Rommel, von Manstein, Montgomery and Patton were all seduced by the breakthrough myth or blitzkrieg as the decisive way to victory.
Mosier shows how the Polish campaign in fall 1939 and the fall of France in spring 1940 were not the blitzkrieg victories as proclaimed. He also reinterprets Rommel's North African campaigns, D–Day and the Normandy campaign, Patton's attempted breakthrough into the Saar and Germany, Montgomery's flawed breakthrough at Arnhem, and Hitler's last desperate breakthrough effort to Antwerp in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. All of these actions saw the clash of the breakthrough theories with the realities of conventional military tactics, and Mosier's novel analysis of these campaigns, the failure of airpower, and the military leaders on both sides, is a challenging reassessment of the military history of World War II. The book includes maps and photos.
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Cities—testimony to the potency of wartime propaganda. In my judgment the attack was an error, whose root cause was a genuine confusion about what time it was, since the Dutch followed an absurd time system. Robin Neillands, who is not shy of apportioning blame to the Germans whenever possible, believes it was simply an error: The Bomber War (New York: Overlook, 2001), 41–42. 9. Perhaps unwisely, because it would appear that those countries occupied by Hitler whose monarchs stayed on appear.
Prewar German fortification belt (known to the Germans as the Westwall) as well as some of the French fortifications from the Maginot Line (notably at Bitche). As in Brittany, Bradley’s staff simply had no conception of the ground over which they were planning to fight. See, for example, among the many photographs of the terrain now on file in the National Archives, SC111 (WWII), Box 52, picture 197774; Box 61A, pictures 203387, 202879, and 202955. 21. McKee, one of the relatively few.
Britain, where it is popularly believed that American troops simply broke and ran in the face of the German attack. Several British correspondents who wrote me complaining bitterly about my account of the British army in The Myth of the Great War (New York: HarperCollins, 2001) concluded their missives by saying that it was the height of impertinence for an American to be critical of the British Army. What about Kasserine? What about Bastogne? Apparently these incensed gentlemen had never heard.
. Journalists and diplomats, even historians, thrive on such fantasies; I have, in the exercise of my profession, aired many, not one of which had the slightest validity. —MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE1 Each month since October 1939, the Allies had anticipated an attack in the west. And now, at the end of April, they received another notice, this one from the British Embassy in Rome, which was followed by—if we are to believe Lord Halifax—information from the Vatican that seemingly confirmed the threat.
Combat for which they were totally unprepared. On their left Montgomery was marginally more successful, in that his army was able to tie down the bulk of the German armor. But his troops had been unable to secure the area around Caen in the first few days, as the original plan called for, and the fighting there degenerated as well. Moreover Montgomery was now operating with a great handicap: the British army, with substantial combat forces tied down in Italy, did not have enough manpower.