I have merged my pages for Western Europe 1944-1945 and Der Ostenfront into this WWII in Europe page to tidy up the site.
Western Europe 1944-19
Ever since I was a kid I read books about the campaign in France, the Low Countries and Germany from D-Day forward. I remember making a presentation in my 9th grade history class about the organization, structure and standard equipment of the U.S. Army in the Second World War. Mind you this was in 1974 and most of my peacenik classmates must of thought that I was nuts, of course back then I wasn’t I didn’t get the Mad Cow until much later. The cool thing about being a history major as an undergrad and then graduate student is that what is an annoying hobby to some spouses actually could get you a job someday. Now I don’t need a job but I do love to study and write about history especially Military History and maybe I will get the chance to teach at the college level someday. I did it once, maybe again.
So here are my Western European Campaign articles.
Peace,
Padre Steve+
Marshall, Eisenhower and Senior Military Leadership
D-Day and After: Battling Through the Bocage
Mortain to Market-Garden: A Study in How Armies Improvise in Rapidly Changing Situations
Wacht am Rhein: The Battle of the Bulge
The Paradox of Conflicting Doctrine: The US Campaign in France and Germany 1944-1945
D-Day- Courage, Sacrifice and Luck, the Costs of War and Reconciliation
Eastern Europe: Der Ostenfront
The battle between the Soviet Union and Germany was the bloodiest conflict waged the history of warfare, total deaths between the Soviets, the Germans and the German Allies totaled well over 25 million dead and millions more wounded. The conflict also featured some of the largest battles ever fought between two nations where the number of troops engaged sometimes total a million or more and casualties were measured in the hundreds of thousands. It was a war of annihilation the likes of which has not seen before or after. Such massive campaigns which are almost incomprehensible to a generation which has seen total casualties from various wars only in the thousands, yet to the nations and armies that fought them they were all too real. To put the numbers in proper perspective the United States lost 416,000 military dead during the war while in the Stalingrad battle alone the Soviets lost over military 478,000 dead and the Germans 400,000 killed wounded or captured and of the 91,000 Germans that surrendered at Stalingrad only 6000 returned to Germany after the war.
In the midst of this brutal campaign that began in June of 1941 when the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa and ended with the planting of the Soviet flag on the Reichstag and death of Hitler in Berlin there was one year that decided not only the Russo-German war but that of World War II in Europe. That year began with the German 1942 offensive Operation Blau and ended with the Battle of Kursk. During this period the fate of nations and the world hung in the balance as two leviathans fought to the death at such places as Stalingrad, Kharkov, the Donets Basin and Kursk. These articles focus on that critical time in history. The page also includes a link to an alternative history of Kursk.
The Anniversary of Disaster: Stalingrad 67 Years Later
Manstein’s Counter-Stroke: Pulling Victory from Certain Defeat
The Battle that Wasn’t Necessary: Kursk 1943
Operation “Dachs” My First Foray into the Genre “Alternative History”
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 