Martin Blumenson – författare

A wide-ranging series of essays on military leaders, ancient and modern, whose actions and personalities provide insights into the interplay of time, circumstance, and individual character and ability that makes for success or failure. The authors cover "some masters of the art" including Sulla, Saxe, Thomas, Huebner etc, "masters of mobile warfare" such as Iberville, Crook, Wolseley, Hart, Montgomery, Patton, and experts in "coalition warfare" such as Rochambeau, Eisenhower. This book provides a study of the historical fields of battle, intended to appeal to the military professional or student of military history.

For the Allies, D day was only the beginning. Having succeeded in that epic venture, they faced the prospect of moving beyond the beaches of France.For the Germans who had failed to halt the Allies at the water's edge, the question was how to stop the enemy from further advance before it was too late.Martin Blumenson never forgets that the Allies'spectacular dash from their Normandy beachhead to the German border in the summer of 1944 was accomplished by men of flesh and blood,and led by officers with human doubts, limitations, and determination. He shows us how war is conducted, makes us share the pressures and responsibilities of the commanders, and unforgettably opens us to the hopes and fears of the men who constantly faced the imminence of death. Here are the familiar figures, but revealed in new perspective,Eisenhower, Montgomery, Bradley, Patton, Rommel. This is a masterly and dramatic military narrative in the great tradition,and a moving human record of a turning point in history.

This book, first published in 1968, examines the disastrous defeat suffered by inexperienced American troops, newly landed in North Africa, at the hands of Rommel. The news of Kasserine shocked the United States militarily and politically, and led to swift changes in equipment and tactics. This book traces the battle through to its aftermath in ‘a remarkable piece of battlefield investigation’ (Manchester Evening News).

This book, first published in 1968, examines the disastrous defeat suffered by inexperienced American troops, newly landed in North Africa, at the hands of Rommel. The news of Kasserine shocked the United States militarily and politically, and led to swift changes in equipment and tactics. This book traces the battle through to its aftermath in ‘a remarkable piece of battlefield investigation’ (Manchester Evening News).

[Includes 17 maps and 113 illustrations]This volume, the second to be published in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations subseries, takes up where George F. Howe’s Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West left off. It integrates the Sicilian Campaign with the complicated negotiations involved in the surrender of Italy.The Sicilian Campaign was as complex as the negotiations, and is equally instructive. On the Allied side it included American, British, and Canadian soldiers as well as some Tabors of Goums; major segments of the U.S. Army Air Forces and of the Royal Air Force; and substantial contingents of the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy. Opposing the Allies were ground troops and air forces of Italy and Germany, and the Italian Navy. The fighting included a wide variety of operations: the largest amphibious assault of World War II; parachute jumps and air landings; extended overland marches; tank battles; precise and remarkably successful naval gunfire support of troops on shore; agonizing struggles for ridge tops; and extensive and skillful artillery support. Sicily was a testing ground for the U.S. soldier, fighting beside the more experienced troops of the British Eighth Army, and there the American soldier showed what he could do.The negotiations involved in Italy’s surrender were rivaled in complexity and delicacy only by those leading up to the Korean armistice. The relationship of tactical to diplomatic activity is one of the most instructive and interesting features of this volume. Military men were required to double as diplomats and to play both roles with skill.

[Includes 16 maps and 94 illustrations]The focus of the American and British war effort in 1943 was on the ancient lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea where in May victory came at last in Tunisia and where in July Allied armies began a five-week campaign to conquer Sicily. The invasion of Italy in September sharpened that focus as Allied troops for the first time since 1940 confronted the German Army in a sustained campaign on the mainland of Europe.The fighting that followed over the next eight months was replete with controversial actions and decisions. These included apparent American peril during the early hours in the Salerno beachhead; a British advance from the toe of the peninsula that failed to ease the pressure at Salerno; the fight to cross a flooded Rapido River; the bombing of the Benedictine abbey on Monte Cassino; and the stalemated landings at Anzio. The author addresses these subjects objectively and candidly as he sets in perspective the campaign in Italy and its accomplishments.It was a grueling struggle for Allied and German soldier alike, a war of small units and individuals dictated in large measure by inhospitable terrain and wet and cold that soon immersed the battlefield. The methods commanders and men employed to defeat the terrain and a resourceful enemy are instructive now and will continue to be in the future, for the harsh conditions that were prevalent in Italy know no boundary in time. Nor do the problems and accomplishments of Allied command and co-ordination anywhere stand out in greater relief than in the campaign in Italy.

[Includes 33 maps and 97 illustrations]The campaign in the summer of 1944 related in this volume included some of the most spectacular ground action of the U.S. Army during World War II. It began with the slow and costly hedgerow fighting against determined German efforts to contain the Normandy beachhead; it entered its decisive stage when the breach of German defenses permitted full exploitation of the power and mobility of U.S. Army ground troops; and it reached the peak of brilliance with successive envelopments of principal German forces and the pursuit of their remnants north and east to free most of France, part of Belgium, and portions of the Netherlands. By late Aug. the war in the west appeared to be almost over, but the tyranny of logistics gave the enemy time to rally at the fortified West Wall and delay surrender for another eight months.Covering the period 1 July to 11 Sep. 1944, Breakout and Pursuit takes up the story of the European campaign at the time when the Allies considered their cross-Channel beachhead well established on the Continent. How the Allies exploited the initial success of their landings and drove from the shores of Normandy to the German border is the subject of the volume.The events of the period comprise a rich variety of military experience. Virtually every sort of major operation involving co-ordinated action of the combined arms is found: the grueling positional warfare of the battle of the hedgerows, the breakthrough of the main enemy position, exploitation, encirclement, and pursuit, as well as a number of actions falling under the general heading of special operations--an assault river crossing, the siege of a fortress, and night combat, among others. In their variety and complexity, these operations frequently bring into sharp focus the delicate problems of coalition warfare.