13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed Summary of Normandy, August 27, 2008
This review is from: Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation of Paris (Hardcover)
This book is a translation from the author's 2007 French original. The great majority of the books in English on Normandy are from a British, American or (more rarely) a German viewpoint and often have some bias, large or small, in favor of that viewpoint. Wieviorka's French view is unusual for English speaking readers and refreshing in some respects. Unfortunately, however, this book may not have a vast appeal to general readers.
The book is primarily a summary (almost an abstract) of the Normandy invasion and campaign from the highest levels. It covers the famous problem areas such as strains among the Allies, British lack of resources and men, the failure to capture Caen quickly and several others. It also has some unusual observation.
The author's interest is in high policy, in the diplomatic, strategic, political and logistical factors that formed it, in the resulting decisions and how they worked out. Wieviorka, in fact, devotes relatively little space to the operational unfolding of this complex campaign and virtually no space to any detailed description or analysis of the fighting itself. The book is 361 pages of text. The paratroops are boarding their planes on page 185 and the description of the major fighting is over by page 300. There is no attempt to weave in eyewitness reports from those doing the fighting and the view seldom descends even to division level. This approach will doubtless reduce the possible audience for the book.
The book concludes with a long chapter on the destruction inflicted on France and its population by the fighting and preparatory bombing. Some of this is devoted to the resistance fighters, who surpassed Anglo-American expectations in effectiveness. More is devoted to the effort, ultimately successful, by DeGaulle to make sure that the civil government of France during and after the invasion would be in the hands of the French and that he and his party would constitute that government. This story is not found in the English language works that I have read and is well-told here, albeit in summary form; but it may not have much appeal to an English-speaking readership.
Wieviorka has a number of interesting observations. For example, he suggests that the famous artificial harbors (Mulberries) were not worth the effort and contributed little or nothing to the Allied cause. He also believes that the Transportation Plan, designed to use air power to isolate the Normandy battlefield, was only marginally successful until the Allies established air bases in France and eliminated the need for time-consuming flights from English bases. Wieviorka joins other recent authors in criticisizing the Overlord planners's failure to consider the problems of fighting in the claustrophobic hedgerow country, but he uniquely emphasizes the great increase in combat fatigue cases that resulted from this fighting. Wieviorka also, as others have done, suggests that Anglo-American troops had little patriotic or ideological commitment to destroying the Nazi state and fought mainly to finish a job they did not fully understand and to get home to the better future that they wanted. But Wieviorka argues, uniquely in my experience, that this lack of transcendent commitment cost the Anglo-American forces (especially the American) in drive, determination and effectiveness compared to the Germans, the Soviets and even the French forces fighting in Europe.
Wieviorka is also good at analyzing the logistical problems the Allies encountered. The problem was not inadequate resources but transportation difficulties. At first, Wieviorka argues, these problems came from the very cramped quarters and limited road net in Normandy. The post breakout problems, however, came from the failure of planners to consider the possibility of greater than expected success, which is exactly what occurred after the breakout.
The book, however, has mistakes. They range from trivial to substantial. On p. 43, Wieviorka has the US producing "1200 battleships" between 1942 and 1945, an obvious misstatement. A more serious error, in my opinion, is Wieviorka's four line dismissal of the failure to consult the Pacific experience in planning the pre-landing naval bombardment as immaterial since the "physical and strategic" situations were so different and communications between Europe and the Pacific were "inadequate" (p.94). The second reason given is lame. Effective communications could have been had if desired. The physical and strategic situations between the theaters were different but the question of mounting an effective bombardment on a defended and partially fortified shore was similar. The Pacific theater could have helped on this. As it was, the bombardment from the sea was ineffective and the air bombardment intended to obviate the need for naval gunfire was useless. Men may have died because of this failure to consult, especially on Omaha.
One error, however, is large. Wieviorka seems to think that American military doctrine required its generals to fling their forces headlong at the enemy without any thought of gaining advantage through maneuver. Thus, in describing the American breakout, Wieviorka says: "[General] Bradley dared to break with the classic orientation of American military strategy [of frontal assault]" by seeking to envelop the Germans (pp. 271-2). This is based on Wieviorka's view that the experience of the American Civil War "taught the Union generals the wisdom of mounting a frontal assault..., attacking the Confederate Army head-on, over the whole of the front, rather than trying to turn its flanks by means of enveloping maneuvers" (p. 15). This seems to me to be breathtakingly wrong and casts serious doubt on Wieviorka's understanding of the campaign.
American Civil War generals on both sides were disciples of Napoleon as he had come down to them through his devotee, Jomini. The gospel according to Jomini emphasized maneuver. Civil War generals accordingly constantly sought to maneuver to the flank at all levels, strategic, operational and tactical. Some, such as the Confederates Lee, Jackson and Longstreet, became (and remain) quite famous for it; but Union generals also attempted such maneuvers throughout the war. Grant's entire career, for example, from his first efforts against Forts Henry and Donelson in 1862 onward, could be seen as repeated flanking efforts. This includes his brilliant strategic and operational flanking maneuver that resulted in the capture of Vicksburg, his original plan to fight outside of Chattanooga and his repeated attempts to move past Lee's right flank in the Overland Campaign of 1864. Later at Petersburg he relentlessly lengthened his lines to the left and eventually smashed Lee's right flank in April 1865, effectively flanking the Confederate Army and driving it into its final retreat. Many of Grant's maneuvers in 1864-65 failed and bloody frontal attacks ensued, but flanking maneuvers were at the core of the campaign.
Nor were other Union generals reluctant to maneuver. McClellan's Peninsular Campaign was a conceptually superb but poorly executed attempt at a deep strategic envelopment, deliberately designed to diminish bloodshed by effective manuever. Hooker's Chancellorsville strategy was based on moving past the Confederate Army to its flank and rear (again botched in execution). Even the incompetent Burnside's famous head-on assault on invulnerable high ground at Fredericksburg occurred after his flanking march to the Rappahannock River was foiled by a logistical failure. World War I, with the AEF under Pershing, is the only American war before WW II where the high command seemed to embrace the frontal attack as desirable at all times. The American generals of WW II were no strangers to the idea of maneuver (leaving aside situations such as prevailed in many Pacific island assaults where there was no room for maneuver).
It is fair to say that the pre-WW II American military tradition had developed to entail grappling firmly and continually with the foe and destroying his military capacity in battle as quickly as possible. It is to nonsense to say that it eschewed maneuver. Such a misconception casts doubt on Wieviorka's entire picture.
The translation from the French is pretty good but occasional renderings clang on the Anglophone ear. On page 286, for example, Wieviorka is discussing the Allies's excellent performance in mobile warfare stemming from (inter alia) "their lightly armored but rapid ... tanks." English speakers would normally use "fast" rather than "rapid" in this context. The style overall is clear and plain, if somewhat flat.
The book will not appeal to everyone because of its approach and because it does have flaws, at least one of which seems to me to be major. I gave it three stars because I thought that it had a number of interesting points of view, but I would not argue with someone giving it a lower rating.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, with a few errors, November 28, 2008
This review is from: Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation of Paris (Hardcover)
I found this book in a bookstore a few months ago, and just got around to reading it. I've never heard of Olivier Wieviorka before, and so I was interested to see what a Frenchman would say about the attacks that led to the liberation of his country in 1944. He has a number of things to say, and many of his points are well-thought out. He also has the pro-French bias that you would anticipate, though frankly there's considerably less of that than I expected.
The author focuses almost exclusively on the higher-level planning and execution of the invasion. As a result, almost half of the book is devoted to the planning stages before June 6, and much of the rest of the book discusses issues not related to the actual fighting itself. All of the major incidents of the campaign, from the invasion itself to the battles for Caen, St. Lo, and Cherbourg, and the Falaise Pocket, are dismissed in a few pages, with only a cursory account of their courses. The author is much more interested in how they came to pass, and what their impact on France was. He spends a lot of time, for instance, discussing war crimes committed by the American and British armies during the campaign. He also devotes a lot of space to opinion polls discussing American (especially) attitudes towards the war.
The translation is reasonably well-done, with only a few glitches. I took the "1200 battleships" error to be one of translation, rather than Wieviorka's mistake. Given how competent he is in the rest of the text, it's inconceivable that a historian would make such a basic mistake. I imagine that the French word probably translates as "warships" and that the translator didn't know the difference. A larger set of errors, however, occur on the maps. Almost all of the problems occur with regards to the German order of battle, which the mapmaker doesn't appear to have any knowledge of. He (whoever he is, there's no credit given in the book) doesn't even refer to his own maps elsewhere in the book. So, in one map the five SS Panzer Divisions that fought in the campaign are all shown as Infantry Divisions, and one infantry division is shown as a Panzer Division. In another map, several of the Panzer Divisions are numbered wrong (there are two 12th SS Panzer Divisions on the map, the one in Holland actually being 1st SS Panzer) or not at all, and the higher-level HQ "Panzer Group West" is labeled "Panzer Division West". The map showing the Allied forces that landed at D-Day includes the Division Commanders of all of the landing divisions, except for those of the two American Airborne Divisions and the 1st Infantry Division. Oddly, the two Airborne Division commanders are probably the two most famous division commanders of the assaulting formations, one going on to be Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, the other eventually a military adviser to President Kennedy. I guess the author figured you'd know who they were.
Those complaints aside, this is an interesting, intelligent overview of the campaign and the fighting. Wieviorka goes rather easy on De Gaulle, but interestingly he's also pretty easy on Eisenhower, and sympathizes with his difficulties with Montgomery. It's interesting to read a book like this that's reasonably well-informed, and not written by either an American, an Englishman, or a German. Wieviorka can be pretty detached about the inter-Allied conflicts, because he's not from one side or the other. It's a good book and an interesting take on the campaign.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
