Breakout: 60

After D-Day, the Allies found themselves slugging it out with the Germans in a nearly static attrition battle, for weeks. The Germans were, as usual, displaying a horrendous capacity to defend, and to counter-attack if they found an opening, extracting a high blood-price for every bit of ground. The Allied lodgment was sealed off, bottled up by the Germans. Montgomery’s attempt to breakout, GOODWOOD, had only served to litter the field with the scorched wrecks of one third of Britain’s armored strength on the continent. The Americans got to try next. July 25 was a carpet bombing of the German positions in front of the Americans, followed by a ground attack. By 60 years ago today, the Americans had pushed aside the German resistance in their path and the German defensive position was beginning to unravel. Patton arrived to take command of Third Army, and his moment and his Army’s moment on the stage of history began in earnest. Third Army broke through at Avranches on August 1. The wild ride which followed pushed the Germans out of France. (Short summaries of events here and here. Good timeline here.)

We celebrate D-Day, and rightly so. We should not forget that the weeks following were harsh and thankless and at times seemingly hopeless, and many feared that a stalemate was in the making. We should not forget those hard and bloody days endured by the Allied armies, nor the spectacular race across France which ensued when the Germans finally cracked.

(A recent, brilliant book on the Normandy campaign is Clash of Arms: How the Allies Won in Normandy by Russell A. Hart. This book is so good I’d like to do a post just on it. But I’ll probably never get to it. Reviewed here, and here (scroll down) and here.) (I also recently read Military Power : Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle by Stephen Biddle, which is an extraordinary book, which I really must write about here at some point. It is not really on topic, though it does have a chapter on the GOODWOOD battle. While I’m digressing, see also Biddle’s Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare to get an idea of his intellectual approach and rigor.)

Another Update

A thought occurs to me. Has anyone considered the analogy of the failure to plan for the hedgerows, since everyone was focused on getting ashore on D-Day which they really should have known about, and which really was a terrible error, — and the failure of planning for postwar Iraq, since everyone was thinking of a harder campaign with many more civilian casualties, possible use of gas by Saddam, millions of refugees, protracted urban combat in Baghdad, etc.? Did anyone think the proper response was to fire Montgomery or Eisenhower, or for that matter to vote for Dewey instead of FDR in the November 1944 election as a result of this planning failure? I think there is an analogy here … .

Update:

The expert on the hedgerows and dealing with them is Michael D. Doubler. This is from his book Busting the Bocage: American Combined Arms Operations in France, 6 June–31 July 1944:

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C-SPAN (all times est)

This Sunday’s Booknotes (8:00 p.m. and again 11:00) on C-SPAN 1 features John McCain, Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life. The Booknotes site notes:

“Courage,” Winston Churchill explained, is “the first of human qualities . . . because it guarantees all the others.” As a naval officer, P.O.W., and one of America’s most admired political leaders, John McCain has seen countless acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Now, in this inspiring meditation on courage, he shares his most cherished stories of ordinary individuals who have risked everything to defend the people and principles they hold most dear.

The book was published by Random House.

C-SPAN 2’s BookTV features its monthly “in-depth” session; this month, the subject will be Simon Winchester. The 3-hour session weill be repeated throughout Sunday afternoon and night (Noon to 3, 5 to 8, and midnight to 3 in the moning). Winchester’s first book was published in 1974; he has often appeared on this channel, including discussions of Krakatoa and The Professor and the Madman.
Winchester, trained as a geologist and then serving as a foreign correspondent, has often taken interesting perspectives on his subjects. His works reflect that variety.

Encore Booknotes repeats the interview with Richard Brookhiser on The Way of the Wasp: How It Made America at 7:00 Saturday evening and 11:00 Sunday morning ). . History on Book TV focuses on The First World War by Hew Strachan (11:00 Saturday evgening and 8:00 unday evening). The Public Lives choice is Fred Kaplan’s The Singular Mark Twain – an unusual literary subject for the channel , at 8:00 Saturday evening and 10:30 Sunday evening.

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Another Bush speech – Junod

InstaPundit pointed to Tom Junod’s Esquire piece, “The Case for George Bush” . This is blue state territory–journal, audience, writer. Junod contrasts his contempt for Bush with his respect for the principles in the president’s speech to the Air Force Academy. And he begins to doubt that cynicism, that dissing Bush really helps all that much. This is another good speech in which Bush lays out, if we want to see, the principles by which he acts. And I feel vindicated in my affection for Bush’s much earlier speech disussed in the post beow.

Junod begins with the assumption that Bush is, well, pretty weak man. But, he has come to recognize it is Bush who noticed the tectonic shifts going on in our world. Of course, a red stater, I occasionally winced as I read the essay. But this is bracing. Because Junod appears honest with himself, we can talk. In the end, he discriminates between what is real and what is not. He also does a lot of historical analogies and betrays a nice sense of proportionality.

Small criticism: He uses a final analogy that doesn’t work all that well. Bush hasn’t gone around crying wolf. In fact, he has been faulted for not crying wolf enough in the summer of 2001. The truth Junod is getting at isn’t all that well served here. But all of us do that at times, trying so hard to make our perspective real, grasp at comparisons that don’t work. Junod is clear and we see him thinking; that is important. If it is on the level of reality that the next months will be fought, we will all be better for it.

Question for Senator Kerry

I sat through most of your speech and did not hear anything new. We are used to the usual tactic of the challenger: contrast your glittering hypothetical to the incumbent’s messy reality. Maybe you can get Chirac, instead of Blair, to be your poodle. Maybe you would do all the same things as your opponent, but do them gracefully and to the applause of the world. I doubt it, but you are not the first to say it. I’m old enough to remember Nixon’s secret plan to end the Vietnam War. I don’t think your secret plan to make the permanent members of the UN Security Council follow your enlightened leadership will work out much better. Let it go; you don’t believe it any more than I do.

My question is this: if things are as badly awry as you say, what have you been doing about it? Senator Kerry, you have been in the senate for eighteen years. If health care were such an urgent issue, why did you never introduce a bill to reform it? If jobs are going overseas and American workers are not on that famous level playing field, what did you do about that? Every issue you raised in your speech is one that should have been addressed in the US Senate. Let’s stop talking about your Vietnam record. You have been in government for almost all of your life. Other than building your resume, what have you accomplished? Is there a major piece of legislation with your name on it? Please refresh my memory.

And if you have been mailing it in for eighteen years, what makes you think you are the man for this job?