“It was the [allied armies’] valor, their endurance, and their ability to adapt that won the battle of Normandy and launched the liberation of Western Europe.” —from Normandy: The Real Story For decades, it’s been the conventional wisdom that “brute force” alone beat the German army at Normandy. Now a definitive new history, coauthored by a highly decorated field commander, proves otherwise. Using archival data, oral histories, and exclusive new interviews, Normandy: The Real Story takes the reader deep into the minds, hearts, and souls of the allied armies to show how—despite the shortcomings of their superiors and the inferiority of their weaponry—they destroyed two well-equipped German armies and won the war. Here is the crucial summer of 1944 as seen by both sides, from the British spy, code-named “Garbo,” who successfully misled the Nazis about the time and place of the D-day landings, to the poor planning for action after the assault that forced the allies to fight for nine weeks “field to field, hedgerow to hedgerow.” Here too are the questionable command decisions of Montgomery, Eisenhower, and Bradley, the insatiable ego of Patton. Yet, fighting in some of the most miserable conditions of the war, the allied soldiers used ingenuity, resilience, and raw courage to drive the enemy from France in what John Keegan describes as “the biggest disaster to hit the German army in the course of the war.” Normandy is an inspiring tribute to the common fighting men of five nations who won the pivotal campaign that lead to peace and freedom.

Normandy: The Real Story

History

Copp, Terry

Whitaker, Shelagh

Whitaker, Dennis

Military

Presidio Press

At the outset of the Second World War Canadians wanted to avoid the horrors encountered on the western front in 1914-18, one of the most significant of which was "shell shock." Most medical personnel preferred not to assign to combat those who showed neurotic symptoms during training, but this approach was challenged by the Canadian Psychological Association and by the new Personnel Selection Directorate established in 1941. Personnel Selection claimed to be able to distinguish, before training, between those suited and those unsuited to combat duty. However, when Canadian troops went into battle in Italy, the preparatory work seemed to have had little impact. Canadian losses due to "battle exhaustion" were no less than those of other allied forces. Front-line treatment allowed about half of these to return to their units, but eventually a very large number of soldiers were assigned to non-combat roles because it was judged they could no longer function effectively in battle. Similar problems were encountered in Normandy, Belgium, Holland, and Germany. Copp and McAndrew are critical of military commanders who thought strict discipline coupled with high morale from good training and success in battle would keep battle exhaustion in check, and of officers in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps who tried to impose theoretical solutions that did not fit the circumstances. The authors show how some doctors, using energy and common sense, contributed to the evolution of contemporary psychiatric ideas about the realities of large-scale psychological casualties.

Battle Exhaustion: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Canadian Army, 1939-1945

McAndrew, Bill

Americas

McGill-Queen's University Press

Fields of Fire offers a stunning reversal of accepted military history. Terry Copp challenges and refutes the conventional view that the Canadian contribution to the Battle of Normandy was a 'failure': that the allies won only through the use of 'brute force,' and that the Canadian soldiers and commanding officers were essentially incompetent. His detailed and impeccably researched analysis of what actually happened on the battlefield portrays a flexible, innovative army that made a major, and successful, contribution to the defeat of the German forces in just seventy-six days.
Challenging both existing interpretations of the campaign and current approaches to military history, Copp examines the Battle of Normandy, tracking the soldiers over the battlefield terrain and providing an account of each operation carried out by the Canadian army to illustrate the valour, skill, and commitment of the Allied citizen-soldier in the face of a well-entrenched and well-equipped enemy army. Using signal message logs, war diaries, operational research reports, and interviews, Copp re-examines often overlooked battles such as the advance inland on D-Day and the defence of the bridgehead, as well as the frequently analyzed struggle for Verrières ridge and the operations to reach Falaise, placing each operation within the context of overall Allied strategy. He demonstrates that previous accounts exaggerated the prowess of the German army and that while Allied air power and numerical strength were important, the Canadian and other Allied citizen armies won the war on the battlefield by employing an effective doctrine. The Canadian contribution to the Battle of Normandy, Copp argues, was an extraordinary achievement, well out of proportion to the number of troops engaged in battle, and the army was far more successful than previous historians have claimed. Passionately written and compellingly argued, Fields of Fire will make an irrefutable and controversial mark on Canadian military history.

Fields of Fire: The Canadians in Normandy (Joanne Goodman Lectures)

University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division

In his controversial and award-winning 2003 book Fields of Fire, Terry Copp offered a stunning reversal of accepted military history, challenging the conventional view that the Canadian contribution to the Battle of Normandy was a failure. Cinderella Army continues the story of the operations carried out by the First Canadian Army in the last nine months of the war, and extends the argument developed in Fields of Fire that "the achievement of the Allied and especially the Canadian armies... has been greatly underrated while the effectiveness of the German army has been greatly exaggerated." Copp supports this argument with research conducted on numerous trips to the battlefields of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. His detailed knowledge of the battlefield terrain, along with contemporary maps and air photos, allows Copp to explore the defensive positions that Canadian soldiers were required to overcome, and to illustrate how impressive their achievements truly were.
Except for a brief period during the Rhineland battle, the First Canadian Army was the smallest to serve under Eisenhower's command. The Canadian component of that Army never totalled more that 185,000 of the four million Allied troops serving in Northwest Europe. It is, however, evident that the divisions of 2nd Canadian Corps played a role disproportionate to their numbers. Their contribution to operations designed to secure the Channel Ports and open the approaches to Antwerp together with the battles in the Rhineland place them among the most heavily committed and sorely tried divisions in the Allied armies. By the end of 1944 3rd Canadian Division had suffered the highest number of casualties in 21 Army Group with 2nd Canadian Division ranking a close second. Among armoured divisions, 4th Canadian was at the top of the list as was 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade among the independent tank brigades. Overall Canadian casualties were twenty percent higher than in comparable British formations. This was a direct result of the much greater number of days that Canadian units were involved in close combat. 
As passionately written and compellingly argued as its precursor, Cinderella Army is both an important bookend to Copp's earlier work, and stands on its own as a significant contribution to Canadian military history.

Cinderella Army: The Canadians in Northwest Europe, 1944-1945

University of Toronto Press

Battalion- and company-level account of the vital contributions of Canadian soldiers to victory in Europe in World War IIBased on war diaries, casualty reports, and after-action interviewsThe author is one of Canada's preeminent military historiansConsisting of the Calgary Highlanders, the Black Watch, and the French-speaking RÃ¨giment de Maisonneuve, the 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade landed in France in early July 1944 as part of British General Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group. That summer, the brigade participated in hellish battles in Normandy, including Caen and VerriÃ©res Ridge. The 5th went on to distinguish itself in Belgium, where it endured foul weather and fierce resistance near Antwerp in October 1944, and ended the war with bloody streetfighting in the towns of Holland.

The Brigade: The Fifth Canadian Infantry Brigade in World War II (Stackpole Military History Series)

Stackpole Books

Brigade: The Fifth Canadian Infantry Brigade, 1939-45

Fortress Pubns

Scheldt

Maple Leaf Route

A Nation at War brings together a collection of sixty-two essays covering all aspects of the Canadian experience in the Second World War. It is a readable and authoritative introduction to both the historical narrative and the interpretive debates by the best selling author of Fields of Fire and Cinderella Army. Published by the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies and distributed by Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

A Nation at War, 1939–1945: Essays from Legion Magazine

Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies

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