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Author: Clayton Donnell
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473830125
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263
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Book Description
Breaking the Fortress Line 1914 offers a fascinating new perspective on the German offensive against France and Belgium in 1914. In graphic detail it describes the intense fighting that took place around the forts and fortified cities that stood in the path of the German invasion. The ordeal began with the German assault on the mighty fortress of Lige. They took twelve days to batter their way through the 'Gateway to Belgium', losing thousands of men in repeated frontal assaults, and they had to bring up the heaviest siege artillery ever used to destroy the defences.This is the epic struggle that Clayton Donnell depicts in this compelling account of a neglected aspect of the battles that followed the outbreak of the Great War. Not only does he reconstruct the German attack on the strongpoints they encountered along the entire invasion line, but he traces the history and design of these fixed defences and analyses the massive military building programmes undertaken by the French, the Germans and the Belgians between 1871 and 1914. Thousands of huge forts, infantry strongpoints, bunkers, casemates and shelters were dug out along the French and German borders. The German Moselstellung and Steinbruch-stellung were born. These massive concrete fortress systems with steel gun turrets and diesel motors to generate electricity were a completely new concept of fortress design.As war approached, France and Germany devised plans to overcome each other's powerful armies and these border defences. The French plan avoided contact with the German fortress system. But the Kaiser's army faced twelve forts at Lige, nine more at Namur, and then the strongpoints of the first and second Sr de Rivires lines. Clayton Donnell provides a gripping narrative of the violent confrontation that followed.
Author: Clayton Donnell
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473830125
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Get Book
Book Description
Breaking the Fortress Line 1914 offers a fascinating new perspective on the German offensive against France and Belgium in 1914. In graphic detail it describes the intense fighting that took place around the forts and fortified cities that stood in the path of the German invasion. The ordeal began with the German assault on the mighty fortress of Lige. They took twelve days to batter their way through the 'Gateway to Belgium', losing thousands of men in repeated frontal assaults, and they had to bring up the heaviest siege artillery ever used to destroy the defences.This is the epic struggle that Clayton Donnell depicts in this compelling account of a neglected aspect of the battles that followed the outbreak of the Great War. Not only does he reconstruct the German attack on the strongpoints they encountered along the entire invasion line, but he traces the history and design of these fixed defences and analyses the massive military building programmes undertaken by the French, the Germans and the Belgians between 1871 and 1914. Thousands of huge forts, infantry strongpoints, bunkers, casemates and shelters were dug out along the French and German borders. The German Moselstellung and Steinbruch-stellung were born. These massive concrete fortress systems with steel gun turrets and diesel motors to generate electricity were a completely new concept of fortress design.As war approached, France and Germany devised plans to overcome each other's powerful armies and these border defences. The French plan avoided contact with the German fortress system. But the Kaiser's army faced twelve forts at Lige, nine more at Namur, and then the strongpoints of the first and second Sr de Rivires lines. Clayton Donnell provides a gripping narrative of the violent confrontation that followed.
Author: Clayton Donnell
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1848848137
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
Breaking the Fortress Line 1914 offers a fascinating new perspective on the German offensive against France and Belgium in 1914. In graphic detail it describes the intense fighting that took place around the forts and fortified cities that stood in the path of the German invasion. The ordeal began with the German assault on the mighty fortress of Liège. They took twelve days to batter their way through the 'Gateway to Belgium', losing thousands of men in repeated frontal assaults, and they had to bring up the heaviest siege artillery ever used to destroy the defences.??This is the epic struggle that Clayton Donnell depicts in this compelling account of a neglected aspect of the battles that followed the outbreak of the Great War. Not only does he reconstruct the German attack on the strongpoints they encountered along the entire invasion line, but he traces the history and design of these fixed defences and analyses the massive military building programmes undertaken by the French, the Germans and the Belgians between 1871 and 1914. ??Thousands of huge forts, infantry strongpoints, bunkers, casemates and shelters were dug out along the French and German borders. The German Moselstellung and Steinbruch-stellung were born. These massive concrete fortress systems with steel gun turrets and diesel motors to generate electricity were a completely new concept of fortress design.??As war approached, France and Germany devised plans to overcome each other's powerful armies and these border defences. The French plan avoided contact with the German fortress system. But the Kaiser's army faced twelve forts at Liège, nine more at Namur, and then the strongpoints of the first and second Séré de Rivières lines. Clayton Donnell provides a gripping narrative of the violent confrontation that followed.
Author: H. W. Kaufmann
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473875188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
Wrapped in myth and distortion, the Battle of Verdun is one of the most enigmatic battles of the Great War, and the controversy continues a century later. Before the battle the Germans believed they had selected one of the strongest points in the French defences in the hope that, if they smashed through it, the French would collapse. But Verdun was actually a hollow shell since its forts were largely disarmed and the trench lines were incomplete. So why did the Germans fail to take Verdun? As well as seeking to answer this fundamental question, the authors of this perceptive new study reconsider other key aspects of the battle the German deployment of stormtroopers, the use of artillery and aircraft, how the French developed the idea of methodical battle which came to dominate their military thought after the war. They look too at how Verdun brought about a renaissance of fortress engineering that resulted in the creation of the Maginot Line and the other fortifications constructed in Europe before the Second World War.
Author: Clayton Donnell
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1526779854
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
In the early morning of 10 May 1940, the sky literally fell on the heads of the defenders of Fort Eben-Emael, considered to be Belgium's most powerful fortress. This huge structure, with its powerful artillery and infantry weapons, was the key to the Meuse and Albert Canal defences. In the darkness of the pre-dawn, German DFS 230 gliders drifted silently over the southern Netherlands, landing one by one on top of Eben-Emael. Within minutes German Special Forces troops destroyed most of the fort’s weapons and observation capabilities. The following day, the garrison surrendered, and the door to Belgium and France was open. But, as Clayton Donnell relates in this perceptive and meticulously researched study, Eben-Emael was only one of the nineteen forts of the fortified positions of Liège and Namur attacked in May 1940. Three new and sixteen refurbished forts held out for several days, and fought to the death. The story he tells contradicts the common assumption that these static defences were rolled over or bypassed –powerless to resist the overwhelming force of the German combat engineer’s assaults, Stuka bombs and heavy artillery shells. In vivid detail he demonstrates that their importance in the 1940 campaign has been seriously under reported, and he gives clarity to some of the legends that have grown up around the capture of Eben-Emael itself.
Author: J.E. Kaufmann
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1783463929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
After the Napoleonic Wars the borders of Europe were redrawn and relative peace endured across the region, but the volatile politics of the late nineteenth century generated an atmosphere of fear and distrust, and it gave rise to a new era of fortress building. In the neutral states situated between France and Germany - The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland - the need for extensive fixed defences was particularly urgent, and this is the subject of this highly illustrated new study. The strategic thinking that gave rise to these defensive schemes is described in detail, as is the planning, design and construction of the lines themselves. Their operational history in wartime, in particular during the Second World War, is a key element of this expert account.
Author: Dennis Showalter
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476634378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
If wars were wagered on like pro sports or horse races, the Germany military in August 1914 would have been a clear front-runner, with a century-long record of impressive victories and a general staff the envy of its rivals. Germany's overall failure in the first year of World War I was surprising and remains a frequent subject of analysis, mostly focused on deficiencies in strategy and policy. But there were institutional weaknesses as well. This book examines the structural failures that frustrated the Germans in the war's crucial initial campaign, the invasion of Belgium. Too much routine in planning, command and execution led to groupthink, inflexibility and to an overconfident belief that nothing could go too terribly wrong. As a result, decisive operation became dicey, with consequences that Germany's military could not overcome in four long years.
Author: Nick Lloyd
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631497952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 640
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Book Description
The Telegraph • Best Books of the Year The Times of London • Best Books of the Year A panoramic history of the savage combat on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918 that came to define modern warfare. The Western Front evokes images of mud-spattered men in waterlogged trenches, shielded from artillery blasts and machine-gun fire by a few feet of dirt. This iconic setting was the most critical arena of the Great War, a 400-mile combat zone stretching from Belgium to Switzerland where more than three million Allied and German soldiers struggled during four years of almost continuous combat. It has persisted in our collective memory as a tragic waste of human life and a symbol of the horrors of industrialized warfare. In this epic narrative history, the first volume in a groundbreaking trilogy on the Great War, acclaimed military historian Nick Lloyd captures the horrific fighting on the Western Front beginning with the surprise German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 and taking us to the Armistice of November 1918. Drawing on French, British, German, and American sources, Lloyd weaves a kaleidoscopic chronicle of the Marne, Passchendaele, the Meuse-Argonne, and other critical battles, which reverberated across Europe and the wider war. From the trenches where men as young as 17 suffered and died, to the headquarters behind the lines where Generals Haig, Joffre, Hindenburg, and Pershing developed their plans for battle, Lloyd gives us a view of the war both intimate and strategic, putting us amid the mud and smoke while at the same time depicting the larger stakes of every encounter. He shows us a dejected Kaiser Wilhelm II—soon to be eclipsed in power by his own generals—lamenting the botched Schlieffen Plan; French soldiers piling atop one another in the trenches of Verdun; British infantryman wandering through the frozen wilderness in the days after the Battle of the Somme; and General Erich Ludendorff pursuing a ruthless policy of total war, leading an eleventh-hour attack on Reims even as his men succumbed to the Spanish Flu. As Lloyd reveals, far from a site of attrition and stalemate, the Western Front was a simmering, dynamic “cauldron of war” defined by extraordinary scientific and tactical innovation. It was on the Western Front that the modern technologies—machine guns, mortars, grenades, and howitzers—were refined and developed into effective killing machines. It was on the Western Front that chemical warfare, in the form of poison gas, was first unleashed. And it was on the Western Front that tanks and aircraft were introduced, causing a dramatic shift away from nineteenth-century bayonet tactics toward modern combined arms, reinforced by heavy artillery, that forever changed the face of war. Brimming with vivid detail and insight, The Western Front is a work in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman and John Keegan, Rick Atkinson and Antony Beevor: an authoritative portrait of modern warfare and its far-reaching human and historical consequences.
Author: William F. Buckingham
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445641178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
A gripping narrative of the most infamous Western Front battle of the war. The British remember the Somme, Russia the Brusilov Offensive, and France and Germany remember Verdun
Author: Cameron Hazlehurst
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019288705X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 597
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Book Description
Jack Pease was at the heart of the British Liberal government from 1908 to 1915, holding the position of Chief Whip through two general elections, and a member of the Cabinet confronting domestic tumult, international tensions, and war. Pease was an unassuming participant in the deliberations of a unique gathering of political talent. His journals as President of the Board of Education from 1911 to the formation of the coalition ministry in 1915 are a closely observed, unvarnished record of what he saw and heard in Downing St and Westminster: constitutional and Home Rule crises, industrial conflict, electoral reform, women's suffrage controversies, struggles over budgets, naval estimates, and foreign policy. Despite his Quaker beliefs, Pease committed to supporting war against Germany, and his troubled conscience is laid bare in letters to his wife and friends. Replete with intimate portraits of his revered chief H. H. Asquith and the Prime Minister's social circle, the journals also provide evocative observations of the contest of ideas, arguments, and moods of prominent contemporaries, especially David Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill as Home Secretary then First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord Kitchener as Secretary of State for War. Pease's candid accounts, augmented by the diaries and letters of others privy to Cabinet policy secrets and personal rivalries, reveal the stories not told in the Prime Minister's reports to the King. Together with the editors' biographical introduction, extensive explanatory commentaries, and bibliographical guidance, Pease's text provides a uniquely comprehensive understanding of Asquith's Liberal government in peace and war.
Author: Bernard Wilkin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429648359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
This book chronicles the escapes attempted by Belgian soldiers and civilians from Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War. Insofar as is practical, the authors have tried to let the subjects speak for themselves by making extensive use of their testimonies preserved in archives in Belgium and the United Kingdom. The book begins with the stories of soldiers who managed to evade capture in the summer of 1940 and returned home, and the few that decided to continue the fight and joined the Allied forces in the United Kingdom. It also includes the prisoners of war who managed to escape from camps or Arbeitskommando inside the Reich and provides a detailed analysis of their narratives: their motivation for going on the run, their choices on when and how to travel, and the many obstacles they encountered along the way. Most escapees were content to return home, with some then joining resistance organisations, but a small minority were committed to joining the Allies, and further chapters recount their attempts to reach Spain and Switzerland, and the additional problems they encountered in those neutral states. Final chapters reflect on the penalties inflicted on prisoners of war who were recaptured and on the escapees’ struggle for recognition in the post-war world.
