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On August 1 , Patton, finally back in good graces after the slapping incidents, had been given command of the Third Army, and played the starring role in the American breakout at Avranches. All the way towards the frontier, the Americans faced delaying tactics, courtesy of General Kurt von der Chevallerie, a veteran of the fighting around Kiev. In the face of shattered communications, tremendous losses, constant retreating, and practically no air support, the enemy still maintained overall control of his tactical situation.
He constantly fell back, but there was no mass collapse. At every critical point, he stubbornly defended and delayed. Of these, Yeide singles out General Hermann Balck, who performed the kind of flexible defense he had practiced in Russia on the Chir river. This view was most starkly presented by John Ellis in Brute Force , a comprehensive assessment of the Allied effort in World War II against Germany and Japan, which, in passing, reduces Patton to some sort of a glorified traffic cop.
Here is the story of the Normandy campaign in a nutshell. Add skilled public relations and a press hungry for heroes, and you had the circumstance so propitious that even Montgomery and Patton could seem like great commanders. Patton once again would attack his enemy when the other fellow was switching to his back foot. Like Ellis, Yeide emphasizes that in no way does this detract from the men who sacrificed life and limb in the Allied cause. And at no point is there a hint of glorification of the German side, only a clinical assessment of its fighting abilities.
Yeide scrupulously registers the crimes of people like Max Simon, who killed 10, civilians in Kharkov when with the Totenkopf division in Russia, and who helped massacre a further 2, civilians at Marzabotto, Italy.
Unfortunately, Nazi war criminals could be quite effective on the battlefield. H ow would the Patton corner respond? It is a fact that while the Germans had long prepared for war, the Roosevelt administration had to scramble to build an army in a hurry. This meant greener troops and a less experienced officer corps. It is also a fact that since the Civil War, America has relied on overwhelming firepower to win its wars. But as participants, the Germans could hardly be expected to be unbiased observers of their own defeat.
At this stage of the war, Hitler was busy promoting committed Nazi officers in the belief that they would put up a more stubborn defense. Such people would surely have found it easier to blame their defeat on an enemy relying on raw industrial might than to acknowledge his fighting skills. Yeide, like Ellis, does mention that some former Wehrmacht officers later upgraded their views of Patton, which he ascribes partly to a cooling of passions, partly as an attempt to curry favor when Germany joined nato.
A number of retired Wehrmacht generals became nato consultants. With that, and the war in Europe over, the Czechs stopped fighting the Red Army, wanting instead to return to their newly independent homeland.
Now Graves was left to maintain a delicate balance: keep the Trans-Siberian Railway open to ferry secret military aid to Kolchak, without outright joining the Russian Civil War. Opposition to the Russia deployments grew at home. For seven days, the Polar Bears, outnumbered eight to one, retreated north under fire from several villages along the Vaga River.
On February 9, a Chicago Tribune political cartoon depicted a giant Russian bear, blood dripping from its mouth, confronting a much smaller soldier holding the U. Their nine-month campaign had cost them men. But Wilson decided to keep U. Just when the Americans and the White Russian bandits seemed on the verge of open warfare, the Bolsheviks began to win the Russian Civil War.
In January , near defeat, Kolchak asked the Czech Legion for protection. Appalled at his crimes, the Czechs instead turned Kolchak over to the Red Army in exchange for safe passage home, and a Bolshevik firing squad executed him in February. In January , the Wilson administration ordered U. Graves completed the withdrawal on April 1, , having lost men. Veterans of the U. In , some former soldiers of the th regiment returned to North Russia to recover the remains of 86 comrades.
Forty-five of them are now buried in White Chapel Cemetery near Detroit, surrounding a white statue of a fierce polar bear. Erick Trickey is a writer in Boston, covering politics, history, cities, arts, and science. Post a Comment.
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