Download Closing with the Enemy: How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945 AudioBook Free
Concluding with the Adversary accumulates where D-Day leaves off. From Normandy through the "breakout" in France to the German army's last gasp in the Battle of the Bulge, Michael D. Doubler deals with the dangerous business of warfare - final with the opponent, fighting and receiving fights, taking and possessing territory. His review provides a provocative reassessment of how American GIs completed these dangerous and costly tasks. Doubler portrays a far more competent and successful American fighting with each other force than prior historians - notably Russell Weigley, Martin Vehicle Creveld, and S. L. A. Marshall - have depicted. True, the GIs weren't totally prepared or sorted out for a warfare in Europe and have often been seen as inferior compared to their German opponent. But, Doubler argues that these were more than compensated for this by their capacity to learn quickly from flaws, to adapt in the face of unforeseen obstacles, also to innovate new techniques on the battlefield. This adaptability, Doubler contends, was a lot more crucial to the American work than we've been led to believe that. Fueled by a fiercely democratic and entrepreneurial soul, GI innovations surfaced from every level within the ranks - from the novel occupation of conventional weapons and small devices to the speedy retraining of soldiers on the battlefield. Their most remarkable success, however, was with combined biceps and triceps warfare - the coordinated use of infantry, tanks, artillery, air power, and technical engineers - in which they perfected the use of air support for ground procedures and tank-infantry groups for breaking through opponent strongholds. Doubler argues that, without such ingenuity and imaginative authority, it could have been impossible to defeat an opponent as well-trained and greatly fortified as the German military the GIs confronted.
