Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Newsroom
Richard Doherty - Aspects of Arnhem: The Battle Re-examined |
- By Hawkeye7
Operation Market Garden has generated a great many books and two good films: Theirs Is the Glory (1946), filmed on the actual battlefield with veterans of the battle, including John Frost and Kate ter Horst, reprising their wartime roles and A Bridge Too Far (1977), with an all-star cast and a script that also covers the American part of the operation. It holds a fascination for military historians, largely attributable to its uniqueness and breathtaking scope: landing three airborne divisions behind German lines to capture a series of bridges over major rivers, including the Meuse and the Rhine. That it was a defeat never bothered the British, who are accustomed to celebrating heroic failures. (And to Americans I say: Remember the Alamo.)
This is a very disappointing book. I was expecting a critical reassessment but it falls well short of that. It never draws all the threads together. Editing is terrible: many passages are repeated multiple times. The book references the literature on the battle, pretty much assuming that the reader, like the author, has a shelf of books on the operation. Unfortunately, most of the books in question are quite old, dating to the period after A Bridge Too Far came out and stirred up great public interest. It makes little use of more recent sources. The author picks on Lewis Brereton, who is a big target, since he was also involved in the attack on Clark Field and the raid on Ploiești, two other notable disasters, but the case is unconvincing. In particular, the author highlights the decision to have only one glider towed per aircraft, but omits the explanation that this was on account of the long range over which they had to fly.
Publishing details: Doherty, Richard (2023). Aspects of Arnhem: The Battle Re-examined. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1-399-04391-5. OCLC 1369311813.
Christian Wolmar - The Liberation Line |
- By Hawkeye7
I am always on the lookout for books on the logistics of 20th century campaigns, and snapped this one up when I saw it. The book is well researched, and contains a great deal of new information. The author, Christian Wolmar, has written many books over the last twenty year, but almost all of them are about railways. This is not his first venture into military history; he wrote about the role of railways in conflicts in his Engines Of War (2010). In any case he does not venture very far from the railway tracks.
This book is well written and well researched. It is aimed primarily at the general reader of military or railway books, and combines top-level overviews of strategy and how the railways fit into it with first-hand accounts. The author notes that while the Red Ball Express has received accolades over the years, the Allied transport system relied on rail, not road transport. It was not possible to maintain forces of the size deployed in North West Europe in 1944-1945 using road transport alone, which in any case was not designed for long-haul work.
The book recounts not just the operation of the railways, but the efforts by the Allies and Germans to demolish and rehabilitate them. It covers the British and French as well as the Americans. It contains ma lot of interesting information, such as the fact that while Frenchmen drive on the right, their trains drive on the left like they do in the UK. (And an American attempt to drive on the right led to an inevitable derailment.) But the book is not a dry recounting of facts and figures, but full of personal accounts.
Highly recommended. Publishing details: Wolmar, Christian (2024). The Liberation Line: The Untold Story of How American Engineering and Ingenuity Won World War II. New York: Hachette Books. ISBN 978-0-306-83198-0. OCLC 1396553160.