Eisenhower's Lieutenants; The Campaign of France and Germany 1944-1945

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1981. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good/Fair. xviii, [4], 800 pages. Endpaper maps and photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Notes & sources. Index. Ink notation on fep. Edges soiled. DJ worn. Russell Weigley, (July 2, 1930 - March 3, 2004) was the Distinguished University Professor of History at Temple University in Philadelphia and a noted military historian. His research and teaching interests centered on American and world military history, World War II, and the American Civil War. One of Weigley's most widely received contributions to research is his hypothesis of a specifically American Way of War, i.e. an approach to strategy and military operations, that, while not predetermined, is distinct to the United States because of cultural and historical constraints. Weigley's graduate teaching emphasized military history defined in a broadly comprehensive way, including operational, combat history but also extending to the larger issues of war and its significance; to the history of ideas about war, peace, and the armed forces; and to the place of the soldier in society. This is an analysis of command at both the strategic and the tactical level. All the complex ingredients of war: the impact of technology, the roles of personalities, the confusions of the battlefield are presented in a powerful narrative which is deeply founded in scholarship. The portraits of Field Marshal Montgomery and of Iikes lieutenants Omar N. Bradley, Jacob L. Devers, Courtney H. Hodges, George S. Patton, Jr., Alexander M. Patch, William H. Simpson, Leonard T. Gerow, J. Lawton Collins, and Matthew B. Ridgway, among others are the first detailed treatments that many of these leaders have received. Every major strategic and tactical decision in every battle of the American offensive is covered in detail with maps and careful descriptions of terrain features, including personal insights drawn from diaries kept at the American army group and army headquarters. This is a major and grippingly told reassessment of the leadership and the fighting capabilities of the Allied forces in climactic battles of World War II.