Illustrated throughout, this is the first book to study the Soviet and German armoured forces that fought the campaign for the Eastern Front's vital oilfields.
Although Sixth Army's battle for Stalingrad dominates accounts of the German summer 1942 offensive, the parallel thrust by von Kleist's elite First Panzer Army actually came closer to Hitler's main strategic objective of 1942: the Caucasus oilfields.
In this book, military historian William E. Hiestand presents an analysis of the armoured forces that fought this campaign. The Germans struggled with difficult terrain, stiffening Soviet resistance, and extraordinarily long lines of communications, but the campaign would see the Panzers battle into the mountains and towards the Caspian Sea, marking the Wehrmacht's deepest thrust eastward. The Soviet defenders had to make do with tank brigades of obsolete T-26s and inferior T-70s, with limited T-34s and KV-1s, as most T-34 production was funnelled towards Stalingrad. However the Western Allies had opened the Persian Corridor to the USSR, and the Caucasus defenders made extensive use of Lend-Lease Valentine and M3 Lee tanks.
Illustrated with rare photos and detailed new profiles of the tanks on both sides, this book explores how armour fought the campaign, until the collapse of German forces around Stalingrad forced von Kleist's Panzers to retreat, ending German hopes of securing the vital oil.
Fully illustrated, this book examines the evolving armored vehicle tactics used by US forces during World War II.
US tank tactics were governed, in practice, by the terrain and the enemy as much as the quality of equipment, so they developed markedly between November 1942 and May 1945. When the United States entered the ground war against Germany and Italy in North Africa in November 1942, both a proportion of its armored equipment, and the doctrine on how to use it in battle, were immature, and its crews were novices compared with those of the battle-hardened Panzer formations. The fighting in French North Africa taught the US Army costly lessons, but these were learned rapidly.
The campaigns that followed in Sicily and Italy in 1943 demanded further tactical adaptation, and this was doubly true in the extremely thick terrain of Normandy in summer 1944. Again, the sweep across France, the Low Countries, over the Rhine, and across Germany, although against weakened opposition, raised continuing challenges, and the US Armored Force was learning lessons in battle right up to VE Day. Similarly, the war against Japan on the Pacific islands had its own distinct character.
This book, by an internationally respected historian, concentrates on tracing these developments of how battles were fought rather than upon the technicalities of the tanks themselves, and is illuminated by after-action reports of typical actions in all theaters.
A highly illustrated look at the Allied push to stop the Germans across central Italy, culminating in a battle in the middle of Florence.
Following the fighting at Anzio and Cassino in 1944, the Allies were in pursuit of the Germans, who had managed to get away when the Americans took Rome. With experienced troops recalled from Italy to participate in the invasions of Normandy and southern France, the Allied numbers dwindled, only partially replaced by three divisions. The Allies pushed on, following the Germans into central Italy in a bid to stop them getting to the Gothic Line.
Fighting across Rome, Pisa, Leghorn, Lake Trasimene, Ancona and Florence, the Allies pushed their advance across the country. Troops from the US, UK, France, New Zealand, South Africa, Poland, and India fought in these campaigns, chasing the Germans as they withdrew to safety. With detailed maps, diagrams and period images, Italian historian Pier Paolo Battistelli sets the scene for this last push from Rome, showcasing the highly motorised fighting in multiple cities across central Italy, and explains why this was an Allied tactical failure.