Overview

Heavily illustrated title covering the advance of the US, Canadian and British Armies west into Germany in 1945. The last rites were administered to the Third Reich from the west by a massive concentration of Allied forces and firepower. With France secured, Hitler's vain counterattack in the Ardennes held and the Channel and North Sea ports cleared, little stood in the way of the Allies other than the dominant geographical feature of western Europe: the mighty Rhine River stretching from the North Sea almost to Switzerland. In the north, the 21st Army Group executed one of the largest operations of the war: a huge airdrop backed up by an amphibious crossing that made full use of 79th Armoured Division's specialized armour including the Alligators of 4th Royal Tank Regiment. Further south, until it collapsed under the pressure, the Ludendorff Bridge, captured intact at Remagen allowed US First Army to create a bridgehead. They would use it to good effect, wheeling north to surround the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heartland. Further south, where the river was narrower, Patton's Third Army vaulted the Rhine with its customary elan, as did Devers' Sixth Army Group. Ahead of the Allies were the remains of the German forces, often no more than Volkssturm or Hitlerjugend, determined to resist for as long as possible so that their Fu hrer had time to unleash his super weapons. In the end, these proved figments of Hitler's imagination and the defenders crumbled in the face of units that, after nine months of training, had become deadly proponents of the art of aggressive warfare with modern, new equipment - such as the M26 Pershing and Comet - being rushed to the front in the hope it could see action before the war finished. AUTHORS: Simon Forty has been working in publishing as commissioning editor and author for 35 years. He has co-authored with Leo Marriott a series of books on the Normandy Campaign, including The Normandy Battlefields: D-Day & the Bridgehead (2014) and Hitler's Atlantic Wall (2016). A keen cyclist he has toured the Normandy battlefields many times. Tom Timmermans lives and works in the south of the Netherlands. An enthusiastic historian of WW2 subjects, he is the brains behind battledetective.com.

Full Product Details

9781612008509

Table of Contents

Reviews

This is very much a complete look at the crossing of the Rhine, and the end game in Germany on 1945. * Britmodeller.com * This book is good value and recommended for those seeking a very well-illustrated, broad overview of the campaign in North West Europe in the closing months of the War. * Military Historical Society Bulletin *

''As well as well written, informative text, the book is heavily illustrated not only with archive photos but with plenty of maps and a lot of modern day colour photos showing many of the places as they are today. So much to see for the historian and plenty of inspiration for the modeller with the details we see illustrated. Another very good book in this series, and together with the others in this series a very good collection to keep on your reference bookshelves.''-- Military Model Scene ''This is the penultimate title in what has to date been an exceptionally good series of historical guides to the campaigns in the West. The format and narrative are straightforward and themselves to tour planning and research and tracking individual formations. The chapters flow chronologically and in geographic sequence. As with the previous titles in the series, the standard of maps and photographs is high. This particular book goes a long way toward highlighting a critical phase of the war in the west that is often skipped over or neglected. Certainly, worth adding to your library if you are interested in the last months of WW2.''-- Despatches

Author Information

Simon Forty was educated in Dorset and the north of England before reading history at London University's School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He has been involved in publishing since the mid-1970s, first as editor and latterly as author. Son of author and RAC Tank Museum curator, George Forty, he has continued in the family tradition writing mainly on historical and military subjects. Amongst other books, he is the author of The German Infantryman on the Eastern Front (with Richard Charlton Taylor, 2023) and Red Army into the Reich (with Nik Cornish, 2021), both published by Casemate, and has co-authored a range of highly illustrated books on the Normandy battlefields, the Atlantic Wall and the liberation of the Low Countries. Tom Timmermans lives and works in the south of the Netherlands. An enthusiastic historian of WW2 subjects, he is the brains behind battledetective.com.

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