Review by Booklist Review
In what may be his last book, the late Neillands, a distinguished British military historian, covers the campaign in northwestern Europe that commenced with the breakout from Normandy and ended with the Battle of the Bulge. It is a story familiar even to many nonspecialist readers, but in retelling it Neillands points up for a general audience the strategic conflict between Eisenhower and Montgomery. Montgomery favored a single concentrated thrust under his command, whereas Eisenhower favored several thrusts across a broad front. Neillands argues cogently (though without conclusively proving his case) that admiration of Eisenhower's affability and American bias against Montgomery's lack of the same quality have obscured the technical superiority of Montgomery's generalship, in particular as a strategist. Thoroughly researched and equipped with superior maps, Neillands' volume has a place in any collection serving World War II history students and buffs. --Roland Green Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
British historian Neillands, who died in January 2006, enthusiastically affirmed British military performances in the World Wars just as Stephen Ambrose heralded the "greatest generation." Here, he reopens the long-simmering controversy on command and strategy in the post D-Day campaign, asserting that Dwight Eisenhower may have been a "superb" supreme commander, but was "frequently lamentable" as a field general. Neillands particularly indicts Eisenhower for failing to understand the challenges to his broad-front strategy, and for failing to control George Patton and Omar Bradley. He describes U.S. policy as shaped by determination to control a campaign our resources dominated, and a near-toxic Anglophobia manifested in an enduring prejudice against British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Monty is, predictably, Neillands's hero, whose single-thrust concept promised better results than Eisenhower's diffused efforts, and whose understanding of modern war marked him as a professional among American amateurs-Patton included. His difficult personality obscures the fact that he obeyed Eisenhower more loyally than Ike's own countrymen, Neillands argues. Montgomery emerges as a near-martyr to the Anglo-American alliance-an image sharply at variance with his own account of events. Despite constant praise of American GIs, Neillands's revisionist interpretation is likely to generate more heat than light-especially without providing significant new evidence. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
July to December 1944: with the Allies broken out of the Normandy beachhead, the German armies in full retreat and hastening back toward Germany, and French, British, and American armies in hot pursuit, the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) rosily predicted a January collapse, which was refuted in the Ardennes. Neillands (The Eighth Army), a former British Royal Marines commando, is interested in three intertwined issues: Allied strategy for the ground war, Eisenhower's performance as ground forces commander, and the various army commanders' roles in the race for the Rhine. He attempts to correct American historians' biases, reexamine the actions of the major subordinate commanders (Generals Bernard L. Montgomery, Omar N. Bradley, and George S. Patton), and discuss the problems that kept the Allies from ending the war in 1944. His evaluations of the characters are balanced: Eisenhower was a fine coalition leader and a mediocre battlefield commander, Montgomery is shown as a solid and experienced commander but a total failure at relationships with the other generals, and Patton as reasonably effective in the pursuit but constantly undermining Allied strategy. Essential for subject collections.-Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A clear-eyed critique, by noted military historian Neillands (Eighth Army, 2004, etc.), of the Allied command and its decisions and indecisions in the last half of 1944. This is a book of battle, including some of the best-known of the European Theater, including the Bulge and Arnhem Bridge. But the author is more concerned with the high command, and he finds the often-denigrated Bernard Montgomery in better form than many historians--particularly American ones--allow. Neillands observes that Montgomery pressed hard, after the Normandy landing, to be allowed to lead an invasion of Germany from the northwest, advancing through Belgium and Holland and storming the Ruhr Valley. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, countered with a strategy that involved taking both the Ruhr and the Saar at once, a plan that required the Germans to fall back, not regroup, and not fight with their customary ferocity. It was all of a piece, Neillands charges, with Eisenhower's history of poor decisions and apparent lack of understanding that it was logistics that would win the war--and in 1944, the Allied supply lines were stretched dangerously thin. "Montgomery's narrow thrust to the Rhine and the Ruhr was logistically possible," Neillands argues, whereas the broader-front attack was fraught with peril. Still, the American commanders were publicity hounds keenly attuned to the whims of the press and the public at home, and they demanded that the British take the back seat; in the same spirit, the author writes, American histories to this day tend to overplay British failures while ignoring American ones, including Omar Bradley's failure to support the U.S. infantry landing on D-Day and "the cock-up in command that prevented the 82nd Division from either taking the Nijmegen bridge . . . or avoiding a frontal attack across the Waal in borrowed boats three days later." The closing months of WWII, then, from the British point of view--one little known here, and worth knowing about. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
