At the onset of World War II, the U.S. Army was a third-rate ground force of 145,000 with some generals who still believed in the relevance of horse cavalry. Its soldiers were untrained, its doctrine out of date, and its weapons hopelessly obsolete. Four years later, the U.S. Army was engaged in a global war with a force of more than 8 million men armed with modern weapons and equipment. Nothing Less than Full Victory is the story of how American ground troops in Europe managed to defeat one of the most proficient armies in history. The author, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, draws on his twenty years of experience in military logistics and eight years of scholarly research to examine the Army s remarkable transformation. Focusing on areas rarely considered in other books on World War II, Edward G. Miller analyzes the performance of American soldiers in the 1944 45 campaign in western Europe against a background of logistics, organization, training, and deployment. In doing so, this groundbreaking work refutes decades of assumptions to reset the historical framework for comparison of U.S. and German performance over the course of the campaign. Lieutenant Colonel Miller s skillful melding of little-known individual and small-unit combat action with the various facets of generating, deploying, and projecting power allows the reader to understand as never before the true significance of what took place. This book is published in cooperation with the Association of the United States Army.
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About the Author
Edward G. Miller is a retired army logistics officer and Department of the Army designated military historian. Prior to his retirement, he served for twenty years in a variety of planning and operational assignments, including posts in Germany and the Pentagon. His first book, A Dark and Bloody Ground: The Hurtgen Forest and Roer River Dams 1944 1945, won the 1996 Forest C. Pogue Award from the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and was a featured selection of the Military Book Club. He has published several magazine and journal articles and has appeared on national TV.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
solid scholarly and readable examination of US Army combat prowess in WWII,
By
This review is from: Nothing Less Than Full Victory: Americans at War in Europe, 1944-1945 (Ausa) (Hardcover)
In 2003, Ed Miller made a significant and scholarly impact in the Second World War history genre with his book "A Dark and Bloody Ground: The Hurtgen Forest and the Roer River Dams, 1944-1945". With his recent foray, "Nothing Less Than Full Victory: Americans At War in Europe, 1944-1945", he attempts to broaden his impact by tackling a topic that has fueled controversy since before the end of WWII; namely, why did the Allies win in NW Europe? Did victory result simply from an overwhelming material force (`brute force') of the US applied against a tactically and operationally superior German army, or was the US Citizen Soldier and his young army (including new and veteran officers) a major factor not so easily discounted by curse examination of selected engagements made in isolation? Independent of the `why', it is also an important to address `how' the US Army prepared and participated in the ETO to precipitate defeat of the German armed forces. In the course of addressing his first question (why), Miller also addresses this latter question (how).Miller's thesis is simple: the US Army achieved success in the European Theatre of Operations (ETO) not because of `brute force' (in fact Miller makes solid arguments with operational examples given in the text that in many cases strength factors of the two opposing forces were often very similar) but because the US Army applied its material resources better than the Germans - thus in the end the Citizen Soldier force the US fielded was operationally superior to the Wehrmacht. Miller is one of a handful of historian/authors who has openly challenged the popular belief that the Wehrmacht was a superior force only defeated through application of `brute force' and meddling from the top of the Nazi power structure (i.e., Hitler). For this fact alone Miller's work should be applauded. But how does it stand up when one examines the thesis in the context of the history presented and analyzed? In short, Miller provides considerable evidence in support of his thesis. Readers will walk away with a deeper appreciation for the topic at hand and many of the issues that have in the past oft clouded serious discourse. However, the organization and presentation of the book is at times not well suited to clear disposition and reader assessment of Miller's thesis. The specific pros and cons of "Nothing Less Than Full Victory" are presented below. Pros: Miller's `Preface' and conclusion (`Genesis to Greatness') chapters represent solid and lucid bookends to the book as a whole. In the short `Preface' (4 pp.) Miller articulates the question at hand, as well as his thesis, clearly and lucidly. He proposes a particular approach to the problem at hand - namely analysis of engagements under conditions where combat power of US and German units were relatively balanced, or at least evened out by additional factors such as terrain or weather. In `Genesis to Greatness' (19 pp. total) Miller does a bang-up job re-stating his initial thesis and then making his conclusions. The reader certainly will not be disappointed by the lead and exit chapters of "Nothing Less Than Full Victory". Sandwiched between the `Preface' and "Genesis to Greatness' are 16 chapters in which Miller takes the reader on a ride with the US Army from before the war and entrance into Fortress Europa (`Introduction' through Chapter 4), through numerous engagements from D-Day (Chapter 5) to cessation of hostilities on 8 May (first 7 pp. of `Genesis to Greatness'). What makes these sections of the book most interesting and valuable, aside from being utilized to test Miller's thesis, is the novelty of much of the material relative to most contemporary histories. In particular, many of the engagements Miller utilizes in his book are from lesser known locations and were fought by units many readers will not be very familiar with. Consistent with Miller's high level of scholarship established with "A Dark and Bloody Ground", these portions of the book are extremely well researched and will provide readers with considerable material to mull over. Cons: As introduced above, the only real `con' associated with "Nothing Less Than Full Victory" is how organization and presentation of the books `middle 16 chapters' can at times detract from the reader getting a clear grasp on how those sections support or refute Miller's thesis. While Miller presents a thoroughly detailed and engaging prose with respect to the selected engagements described in the book, the `devil' is unfortunately often lost in the `details'. For example, while Miller almost always starts a new engagement discussion by laying out the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing forces - generally showing with ease that the US forces did not in fact posses greater total combat power, his subsequent discussion of combat often gets muddled in ways emblematic of the chaos of war. Action moves from small unit to small unit, from US to Wehrmacht forces, with little clear thread of conscience, beyond exposition of combat itself. Miller also tends, in trying to make the case for strong combat performance of US forces, to over emphasize the opposing strength of the German forces, such that most of the discussion of a given combat engagement has the Germans `on top'. In the end the US forces prevail but the way in which the argument is posed tends to bury or minimize the how and why of the US tactical/strategic victory. Miller's summary sentences/paragraphs in these sections is less thorough than the lead in portions and thus the aforementioned issues tend to persist rather than being assuaged. This is too bad since Miller clearly has the ability to ties the knots more tightly! Fortunately for the reader Miller comes through in his conclusion chapter (`Genesis to Greatness') with flying colors so that the reader leaves on a high point. "Nothing Less Than Full Victory" is a solid piece of scholarship - 4.5 stars; the style is solid if sometimes letting the desired impact slip out of sight, but the introductory and conclusion sections are `pay dirt' - 3.5 stars. Total impact = 4 stars, although readers who want to be spoon feed will likely rate this book one star lower.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely Well Written and Extremely Insightful and Informative!,
This review is from: Nothing Less Than Full Victory: Americans at War in Europe, 1944-1945 (Ausa) (Hardcover)
Ed Miller's "Nothing Less Than Full Victory" is a well written and extremely insightful and informative book on the U.S. Army in World War II.The book, however, falls somewhat short of it ambitious main thesis - to explain how the U.S. Army was transformed from a third-rate force of 145,000 men to a modern global power, with more than 8 million men and women in its ranks, capable of defeating Nazi Germany and one of the world's most militarily proficient armed forces. Indeed, it would take several volumes to even begin to describe the magnitude of that transformation. Still, Miller debunks a great number of myths along the way - most importantly the myth of the superior Germany Army of World War II. A noted historian, retired U.S. Army military officer and logistics expert, Miller rightly focuses on logistical aspects of the U.S. Army's transformation as the foundation for its successes in World War II. He compares the logistical organizations and capabilities of the United States and German militaries to show convincingly that a failure of logistics played a seminal role in the defeats suffered by Hitler and his generals in World War II. Miller is a talented writer, well versed in not only the logistical aspects of the war but also in narrating combat at the small unit level, making his book a very good read indeed!
5.0 out of 5 stars
An impressively informed and articulate study,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Nothing Less Than Full Victory: Americans at War in Europe, 1944-1945 (Ausa) (Hardcover)
Edward G. Miller is a retired Army logistics officer and department of the Army-designated military history. In "Nothing Less Than Full Victory: Americans At War In Europe, 1944-1945", Miller draws upon his many years of experience, research, and expertise to provide an impressively articulate and informative history of American military involvement in the European Theater of World War II during the last two years of the conflict. Enhanced with the inclusion of a number of historical battle maps, "Nothing Less Than Full Victory" begins with two chapters of background that covers events and preparations from 1940 through 1943, plus a descriptive chapter on 'The Enemy'. The rest of the chapters are arranged chronologically and cover the progress of the war as it took place on European soil. Enhanced with appendices providing a 'Table of Comparative Officer Ranks'; 'The U.S. Armor Problem'; and 'Battle and Non-battle Causalities, June 1944-May 1945', "Nothing Less Than Full Victory" also features a section of extensive Notes, a Glossary, a Bibliography, and an Index. An impressively informed and articulate study, "Nothing Less Than Full Victory" is a welcome and recommended contribution to the expanding library of World War II Military Studies reference and histories.
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