[QUOTE="Grimly Curmudgeon"] It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the Accompanied by 150,000 French troops, don't forget.[/QUOTE] People with a sketchy knowledge of history, or a slanted view of it[1], always forget that. That was 150,000 Frogs who lived to fight another day (as opposed to the ones who fought with the Germans in Russia, and against the Allies in North Africa/Middle East - something else that is often conveniently forgotten). I'm always amused by people who go on about how Paris was liberated by the French. Yeah, er, right. Technically...... For the history buffs, I can thoroughly recommend Armageddon, Max Hastings' new tome about the defeat of Germany from 1944-45. Utterly brilliant. Up there with Stalingrad. He makes the point that as far as fighting went, the Western Front was really a sideshow: the real fighting was, as always, on the Eastern Front. He also points out that man for man, and in matters of training, ability, initiative, and all equipment (with the notable exception of air power and the T34 tank) the Wehrmacht was far and away the best army in the field, right up to collapse. He also highlights the slowness of the Allied advance post-September 1944, partly because the Allies were intent on avoiding (their own) casualties and preferred to rely on firepower rather than good tactics, and partly because the allied commanders (in the west) had nobody to compare with Kesselring, Manstein, von Rundstedt or indeed, Zhukov or Konev. And he dwells on the catastrophes in East Prussia and the ethnic cleansing there, something else that has been mostly swept under the carpet of history. Seriously recommended. Only in hardback at ukp25. [1] And usually both. IMHO, a mind that takes a slanted biased view of things in general can't handle history which is, a bit like mathematics, largely tied up with facts.
