robert: thank you. >> thank you for coming and if you'd like to be on the email list, there's a pad and pen at the back. thank you for coming. get home safe. [captions performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] announcer: history bookshelf featured the country's best known american history writers of the past decade talking about their books. you can watch our weekly series every saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span3. announcer: our nine-week series, 1968, america in turmoil, is available as a podcast. you can find it on our website c-span.org/history. this is american history tv, only on c-span3.

announcer: next on american history tv, authors of new books on world war ii reflect on military operations led by the united states and its lose to defeat germany and re-establish peace in europe. they also remember u.s. army commanders that rose through the ranks during the war. the association of the united states army thosted 50-minute program. >> i anegize for not introducing dr. roger cirillo. he started our book program when general sullivan came to ausa and he carried it off very successfully. joe craig is a great replacement but roger, thank you for years past of some of the products

that have come out and have been really well done and very meaningful for the audiences. we've now transitioned in our time machine and it's not the disco in san antonio, to the second world war. and we're going alphabetically. trick question. my right to your right. so doc harrison. >> my name is richard harrison and i have been connected with ausa since 2009 when the idea was put forward to produce a series of translated books based on documents called from the soviet military archives. these are studies put out by the red army's directate for

studying the experience of the war with a notion towards educating future generations of officers on the experience of past, i must underline this word, successful operations. i have yet to the come across at least in my work, an operation that was a failure. so this is, again, a very soviet approach. now, during the course of this great trek which began in 2009, we have produced nine books. these are books, i was commissioned to translate and edit them by ausa and they have since been published over the year by helion press, a british firm. the first was the battle of moscow dedicated to the last stage of the defensive operation before moscow and the soviet

counter offensive around the city beginning in december of 1941. the second was the so-called rollback which basically encompasses everything from the time of the closing of the soviet ring around stalingrad to the stabilization of the front in late february march 1943. takes us all the way from the dawn river in southern russia to eastern ukraine. the third is dedicated to the battle of kursk. covering the period, these are soviet approaches to these operations, not the german ones which we are mostly familiar with. so for example in the battle of kursk, the operation encompasses the time period from the start of the german offensive to the

soviet liberation in august 23, 1943. so you're talking about six months -- excuse me, six weeks of very intense fighting spreading out over hundreds of kilometers. the third -- the fourth i should say book, was "operation bugaration" dedicated to the operation in the summer of 1944. followed quickly by the soviet army's offensive into romainia in the summer of 1944 after which they quickly segued following up on this victory into turning north into hungary where you have the budapest operation from approximately october 1944 through february 1945 when the german garrison of the city finally surrendered. then you have pro u to berlin

which encompasses the soviet offensive in eastern germany and poland during january and march 1945 all the way up to the odeh river after which follows the berlin operation which encompasses the fighting in the german capital proper and surrounding area. the last book in the series is the battle of the dinper, the red army's forcing of the east wall december 1943. this picks up basically where the battle of kursk ends. could you please go to the nap. map. i must apologize for the map in russian but i found it superior and more legible to the english language maps i could come across. anyway, if i may point some

things out. this represented the situation situation -- [indiscernible]. prerequisites for a further soviet advance into the dnper

river. once those were cleared the soviets could undertake their general offensive in eastern ukraine which basically occurred all along the front. at this point the german situation becomes very much like the situation they faced a year later in normandy where the allies, having established a beachhead, having captured cher borg began to push in order to move out into france proper. the pressure keeps building up. the germans, of course, being very good soldiers, are doing a masterful job of defensive fighting but they can't hold out forever against these overwhelming numbers which both the americans and the british and the canadians and in this case, the soviets, are bringing to bear. so the soviets as is their want are basically attacking all along the front and at some place something has to give and it does right up here in the

svesk area where the soviets finally achieve a major breakthrough along general ruckasoski's central front and they began to approach the dnper. and at that point, the commander of army group south, finally manages to wrangle permission from hitler to fall back behind the line of the dnper river which the germans grandly christened the east wall. meaning this was supposed to be an impenetrable barrier. the battle of the dnper proper encompasses this entire area along the river's course all the way down to the black sea. the book that i translated, which, again, is taken from the

study, only deals with the operation of two of the fronts. marshal cuneiev, the second ukrainian front and general vatutan's veronish front which is on the same day christened the first ukrainian front. as the germans begin to fall back, the soviets are doing their level best to catch up with them, stay on their heels and seize a bridgehead across the dnper from which they can develop further offenses. stalin at one point is offer hero to soviet union medals, the equivalent of our congressional medal of honor medals, like candy to anyone who can get across the river first and soviets do succeed in capturing bridgeheads down here on the second ukrainian front area and

south and north of the dnper along the first ukrainian front sector. i'll go to the second ukrainian front here first. this is basically a very, very hard slog. the soviet bridgeheads are very small at first but the soviets are notorious for their ability to hold these bridgeheads, in spite of all german efforts to eliminate them and they are able to eliminate some of them but not all of them and the solves solves -- soviets begin to build up small bridgeheads, pack them with men and material, able to force themselves further out and to achieve an operational place to launch major offensive. they do this by the end of december, down here in the south. and as you can see the other southern fronts have closed up on the dnper all along the line. events move more dramatically up here in the north where the

soviets are able to establish a bridgehead at bucrin and utish. they tried to make their initial breakout here but are stymied and even suffer one of their greatest defeats by making an airborne landing which is wiped out. so always resourceful, willing to try something new, the soviets shift their activities, moving an entire tank army north of kiev and are finally able to break out and capture the ukrainian capital. they get as far west as jutomin before the german counter attack driving them back but by the middle of december, the soviets have recovered and stopped the german advance and from this point on, the soviets began their offensive designed to basically split the entire german front in the east in two, into two sectors, one south of the marshes and one to the

north. this marked the beginning of their winter 1944 campaign in which basically wins them back almost all of the ukrainian right bank. that is basically the story of the battle of the dnper. what can i say about these books and the series as a whole? all of these books, including the battle of the dnper book, have their own particular soviet vices and virtues. if you're looking for accurate statements of soviet losses, this is not the place to go. if you're looking for exaggerated claims of losses inflicted on the germans, this is certainly the place to go. like many products of the soviet period there's a lot of chaff to be tossed out before you get to the actual wheat but like in many -- as i've learned over the years, mining soviet documents mining sources is like mining

for gold. you have to toss out a lot of dirt and other useless material before you get to the nuggets. they are there. particularly the descriptions of the preparations for an operation. most of these studies are divided into two parts. a preparation section and execution section. by far, the most interesting part and most informative, i think, for the modern reader, is the preparation section. the actual unfolding of the operation reads pretty much like a chronicle that you expect it to end this way. successful advance germans running away like -- like scared and that sort of thing. it's all pretty much didactic, very didactic soviet approach. the real gold is in the first part, whether you talk about numbers of guns per kilometer numbers of tanks per kilometer how they mass troops along the

important axes before the attack actually began. many of these books are "how to do it" primmers for conducting a successful operation and i think that is the overall value not only of the dnper book but for the series as whole. thank you. if you have any questions, i'll be happy to answer them. [applause] >> our next author is i'd say more of an editor and i'll be interested in the selection of the author you featured and what your relationship was with him. >> thank you, sir. hello, everybody. i'd like to take a couple of minutes to discuss the book about general john ardean jr. this came about by accident, basically. i was lieutenant colonel working at army material command in

2011. and the command held what they call a former commanders conference. it's a time when they bring back all the old commanders, if you're still alive, you get an invite. >> former, not old. >> yes, sir, former. it's well worth it because they all sit around a table and they'll say, here's what we're having issues with today and then some guy will say, 30 years ago, we had the same problem and here's how we solved it so it's a well worth run conference. i was picked to escort general dean. all i knew at the time was i was escorting a 92-year-old former general and that's how it started out. i picked him up at the airport the night before the conference and he had suffered many delays in flight. i believe it was like 11:00 p.m. when i picked him up knowing the conference had to start next morning at 7:30, i thought, do i

need a wheelchair at the ramp to pick him up and i saw this little guy coming out to the plane wheeling his luggage and she was just a spark plug of a person. i get him in the car, he's got nothing but great conversations and stories. i get him to his room and i say that went well, he can get a couple of hours of sleep before the meeting. no. he wanted to go down to the bar because there was a baseball playoff game going. and so that was just the start of it. and then i saw through the course of the conference, everyone seemed to want to be around general dean. as a person, in a suit, not a military guy with medals and prestigious uniform to wear. they all gravitated toward him because he had the gift. he could spin a story. he had the gift of gab and he just charmed men and women

alike. suffice to say it was a great assignment for me and at the end of the week, he offered to take my wife, hope, and i, out to dinner to say thank you. we went to ruth chris restaurant. we got there, i believe, at 6:00. and the next thing i remember is the valet tossing the keys of the car on the table 11:30 saying i'm going home. it was just the beginning of a great friendship. i had written a previous book on a civil war general biography and i gave it to him as a present and i think from that -- he had a great story to tell. he's not one of these top tier guys that everyone knows about. if you're a career army guy, you might understand or you might have served with him. but i don't think -- he's not a name like wes moreland that would jump out. he had a great story to tell and he asked me -- because he was 92 years old, he said, i think i've

got better things to do than write a book at 92. so he trusted me with his papers and we communicated every day either by email or telephone. so what i tried to do, as an editor was to make his story readable but plus i tried to, as with my other book, i tried to figure out how a man can be successful in his profession how to start as a lult and -- lieutenant and end up four-star general. everyone knows there's luck involved but there's also things you need to do skill-wise to make that climb easier. could we get the next slide, please? this is the jack deane that i met and grew to love. 92 years old. and his mind, sharp as a tack,

and he just had some great stories. so as i tried to figure out why he was so successful, this is one of the theories i came up with. his father was a general, as well. and not only just a general, but general marshall's right-hand man. when deane graduated from west point, he married a lady whose father was a general and her uncle was a general. and her grandfather was, say it with me, a general. who, by the way, had been awarded the medal of honor. and he also had an uncle who believe it or not, who was a drummer boy in the civil war whose game was johnny shiloh, who went on to become a general. so, i mean, his whole life his

whole -- first of all, he loved doing what he did and he was surrounded with -- the army was one big family to him. not to say that got him to where he was but it certainly made life easier for him, as well. we get the next slide, please? now, the gentleman seated in the center is general deane's father, john deane, as well. and he served as marshall's secretary to general staff in the beginning of the war and in 1943, he was sent over to russia to serve as the senior military commander for ambassador harman. by the way, when i visited general deane's widow, i got some great pictures to put in the book and this is a classic.

this is his first day at west point in 1938. and you can just imagine what he's being put through right here. next slide. jack deane's graduation, 1942. class of 1942, by the way, had almost 20% death rate during the war. i think it was 19.7 or something. but one in five cadets in the class of 1942, the first class to graduate, when we were in the second world war, didn't make it to the end. so there was, you know, there was a luck factor, as well. handsome guy there, isn't he? next slide. general deane is on the right there, as a lieutenant colonel he's a battalion commander less than three years from his

graduation date at west point so he's gone from second lieutenant to lieutenant colonel in less than three years. this is also a part of his -- the reason why he moved up so fast in world war ii. he was born -- his service in the army came at the perfect time, if you were going to be a soldier. ok, next slide. this is an interesting story. deane becomes like a walter mitty of the army. he's always popping up, whenever there's a crisis going on. he just happens to be there. and this is a picture in berlin right after the berlin wall went up and, of course, that's jack paar, the correspondent. they did a tv show in 1961 at the berlin wall and there's deane talking to him about the new rifle, the m-14 rifle.

next slide. i believe there's a story behind this picture that i have to tell you. this is the berlin wall. it's just been put up. it's not in its permanent shape yet. deane is on patrol on this day in august of 1941. he goes down an alley and there's a riot going on and you see those cobblestones laying there and the west shermans down at the bottom of the picture were throwing these cobblestones, were like the size of pretty big, tossing them at the east german soldiers across the way. and they bring up this water cannon to shoot at the west german civilians. deane gets out of his jeep and he stands in front of the west germans and you can see where that v is in the water. the east german water cannon shot to his left shot to his right and pointed it right at him and deane still didn't back down.

he didn't move. and then that ended the confrontation. the east germans backed off. and i always think, if that picture would have been taken a couple of minutes sooner that would have been the iconic photo of the cold war to have an american colonel staring down an east german water cannon. next picture please. so deane shows up at berlin as a battle group commander in 1961. remember, his father had all this experience in russia at the time. actually, his father was probably noted as the senior russian expert from all his time there and of course he passed on a lot of thoughts to his son and when the berlin wall first went up deane said, what are we going to do? everyone says, what are we going

to do? and deane said, let's knock it down. so it didn't happen, of course. but his theory was that if the russians were going to go to war, they were going to go to war no matter what so at a decision like that left the wall up for another 50 years. this is general deane as a commander of the 82nd division. next slide. and finally he achieved four stars and a.m.c. commander. so i tried to tell his story the way he wanted it. they were his words. he certainly wasn't right on all occasions. he had his biases, for sure. but what he did was he's made a stand and he told it in his eyes the way it was.

and isn't that all what we want as soldiers, of our leaders? we don't want some wishy washy guy, we want somebody who takes a stand and writes what's expected and i can tell you that he was -- had all kinds of integrity and i fell in love with him because he was just a great man. so i would like to ask, at the end of this gathering, anybody out there had any kind of personal connection with general deane, i'd like to talk to you when it's all over. he's kind of like an unsung hero in the military. thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> before our next book is presented, the question is can i share with the audience what general deane did in may when he retired? >> sure, i'd love to hear it. >> i got a call when i was a

brigadier in the pentagon from the mayor of a small town. it was general deane. and i forget the size of the town. it might have been -- so i started looking at him before your book was written. really fascinating. i wanted to share that with you. i thought you might bring that out. >> one problem with this because general deane was so old, at 95 years old, when he passed there's not a lot of people i could reach out to to get personal stories so that was sad because i ran into a guy today in the audience came by to buy the book who served with him in the 173rd but that's what i really missed out on. thank you, sir. >> ok. please. next at-bat. >> we're not doing it alphabetically which is wonderful. i'm usually last. which is great. this is the topic. we'll come back to it in a minute. next slide please. everybody knows who that is.

i don't have to give you his name. he wrote a kiss-and-tell book right after the war, the greatest coalition commander we've ever produced and he had foibles which i discovered when i was working on my biography. he had three army groups working for him. this is the pain in the ass to the north. field marshal montgomery, very, very interesting correspondence between the two, well worth three or four hours but we know who these two are. next slide. we know who these gentlemen are. 12th army group commander to the level. omar bradley, close friend, for a while, of eisenhower's. and we have the famous patten. i can show these slides to any audience and they'll know who these people are. eisenhower had just two army groups as far as america was concerned and the french weren't there, either. next slide please.

i was at alsans lorraine doing a staff write and rick atkins there was and read all these things said by eisenhower about devers and by bradley about devers and by patten about devers and i said what's a good book i can read about devers and i mispronounced it and he corrected me and he said no one but you're going to write it, scott. so he had to write the forward. this is jacob devers and this is a biography of a man who lived 79 years and that's well and good unto itself. it's also a biography of he and his wife who are in the service together until she died in 1967. a lot of her letters are used in the book. my wife has worked with me on all the books we've done and that's the story that needs to be told about the army family and person from second lieutenant out in wyoming to

four-star general, is a story worth telling and goes on to serve as abmc chief, by the way. it's also a story of the united states army from 1909 until 1949 at the least so i had a lot of fun writing it but that's not the purpose today because we can talk about the book forever and i get real excited. next slide, please. back one sorry. october 1944 by this time, eisenhower has three army groups online. to the north is mr. montgomery who i've impressed -- expressed my views about. in the center is omar bradley who wrote two kiss and tell books, unreliable books and a really good corps commander and we head to the south, jacob devers. devers had an army group composed of the first french army, the most forgotten army in the french military history and seventh u.s. army under patch so devers was the right flank.

to give you an idea of their relationship, wherever ike could, he spent time with omar bradley. they would drink together, play bridge together. ike talked to him on the phone almost every day. ike went forward to see him forward being a euphemism, to see his friend omar bradley, classmate. famous relationship. during the same period of time ike had to go see field marshal montgomery because he was component of the british nation. in that same period i think there's only three instances where eisenhower has a face-to-face with devers in his area of operations. just three. there are no daily phone calling. there are no buddy-buddy letters. so it began to be interesting to me as i was doing the biography of devers, what's this about this relationship between him and ike and how did it affect world war ii and it had major effects. it's a great way to look at a

dysfunctional relationship amongst the highest officers. devers was theater commander for two theaters, helped build the air force so we went further. next slide. we had a stalemate in october of 1944 and eisenhower says we'll do a broad front so in early november we're all going to launch major offensives. in the north, the british in the center bradley and in the south devers. great. this is the broad front approach. the results are not very significant up in the northern sector, the 21th army group was not strong enough. they finally did force the germans out of the way. in the center it's the bottle of the hurtgen forest. 40,000 u.s. infantry men are lost in that battle. it emascalates eight infantry divisions. it's just awful. our next slide, please. in the south, something different happens. the army group commander, jacob

devers, listened to his french army commander and u.s. army commander and they made plans and chose to penetrate on fronts, one on the right down thible foregap and one on the left, is a varon gap and an amazing thing happens. that i -- by the 19th of november, the french army was on the rhine river. the other army group got to the rhine in march 1945. on the left, patch's army pushes through and captures strasbourg by november 23 on the rhine river. next slide and gar davidson engineer of seventh army has prepared to jump the rhine. the plans are clear, sixth army group will jump the rest in peace -- rhine the minute it gets a chance to do so. devers believes that's the mission from eisenhower. on the 23, 24 of november, ike is coming to visit sixth army

group, not to congratulate them for being on the rhine way ahead of anybody else. not for penetrating the german fronts, capturing 25,000 german prisoners with very few losses. no such thing. he's down there to tell them that he wants to take a corps away from sixth army group and give it to bogged down patten. so he arrives there and next slide and finds out that the whole group is moving to cross the rhine, on the roads are all the pontoon trains, 450 decks are waddling down the road on the way to the rhine and ike goes, time-out stop, what's going on here? well, sir we're getting ready to jump the rhine and he says no you're not, stop, cease and desist so cully, a guy who wrote a book called "decision," strasbourg said this is one of the worst decisions ike ever made. i'm not sure about that. but it was an opportunity to cross the rhine. the rhine was undefended north

of strasbourg. we had two divisions ready to cross. we had all the equipment and plans already done on the shelf. so next slide please. ike has come down there there's a huge confrontation between eisenhower and devers that night and devers tries to convince him this is an opportunity he must take and ike adamantly refused to listen to devers and they don't jump the rhine. buy the book, you'll enjoy the story. but that was very emblematic of the relationship between an army group commander and the supreme commander. he didn't listen or have trust in his army group commander. he really hadn't wanted devers to be an army group commander and i always wondered why so i had to push down into this. the prevailing wisdom was that when devers was theater commander in england in 1943, he refused to release heavy bomber groups to eisenhower down in

sicily in italy and that ike was furious. that is all true and marshall overrode ike. that also irritated ike to say the least but it goes deeper and earlier. next slide. the next time these two don't listen to each other is one month later. the battle of bulge has occurred the germans are preparing to launch the attack into northern elsas. eisenhower issues orders to devers that when the germans attack and we know it's going to be on new year's eve -- we knew exactly the german plan -- when they attack, devers would have been ordered to pull completely out of northern elsas to include the city of strasbourg. that is 600,000 french citizens that would have been turned back over to the gestapo. devers flies to headquarters near paris, argues all day with bull and with eisenhower saying you cannot do this, and b, you don't have to do this. we've already planned a really

well done mobile defense to stop the german attack and save the people of elsas and ike won't hear it. he issues the order that when they attack, they'll pull back. the germans attack as we thought and when we thought they would and run into general patch's defenses of the seventh army who absolutely stop them. eisenhower is furious. on the first of january, he says why has devers disobeyed me, he's disloyal and he's talking about firing him on the second so there's something really deep when you've got the second most senior man in europe, is devers who has no sway at all with the supreme commander and tries to dissuade the supreme commander from making that kind of strategic mistake. next slide. because if you give up strasbourg you will not have nato. the french are pivotal in the creation of nato.

and de gaulle could not have survived had we given up strasbourg and 600,000 frenchmen to the germans so devers lost the fight but he fought a delay in action of three days which allowed the french to make the pitch and to get it done. why do they hate each other goes back to, next slide 1942, ike's in north africa. our army's getting its fanny kicked by the germans, marshall sends devers over for an inspection tour. devers spends 29 days, 30,000 miles, inspects, reports back to ike january 4 and ike has been smoking four packs a day, his blood pressure was off the charts, he had pneumonia churchill on his ass, marshall on him saying you've got to get forward and fight the fight. under huge stress and in comes mr. happy-go-lucky jacob devers and tells ike everything that's wrong in the theater. not a good idea. blame goes both ways. it's a dysfunctional

relationship. next slide. there's a look at them. i'm going to wrap it up but the point is, it's a great book. a lot of fun. but it shows a different aspect of eisenhower whom i deeply respect. thank you very much. [applause] >> it's a big book. the only fault i have with it is up until this afternoon i always called him devers but it is very well written and if you know a little bit about world war ii, you keep saying why didn't these two people get along and it sort of lays it out and it's comprehensive. all right, we're not in the ninth inning we're into the finale of the orchestra. >> good afternoon, it's great to be here again. thank you to ausa and roger cirillo. the first thing you're asking is why another book on george patten.

my master's thesis was entitled patten at bay where i studied his campaign that preceded the bulge and thought i would follow him into the bulge to see how he recovered from 50,000 casualties in the three-month campaign in the lorraine and how he would respond and update my approach in the use of intelligence in writing operational history and in doing so i systematically went through the ultra files and looked at every ultra decrypt that arrived at army headquarters and could verify which came into the army headquarters which was a different range of material that went into 12th army group headquarters and g-2 there edwin ciphert a problem itself so the intelligence picture was slightly different on the ultra side of army group and army level. that being said, at the end of the day, when i assessed

patton's operational technique the way he intended to apply his military forces and seek a decision i became just thoroughly impressed with his willingness and openness to use intelligence, update intelligence diversify intelligence, and synthesize it all and test it. he tested it. he just didn't take it at face value although he did have incredible trust in his g-2 oscar koch. at the end of the day he leveraged intelligence to the absolute utmost and that was the basis of his intuition, as he called it, his gut feeling about what was going to happen. for the most part, it was built on, no doubt, incredible experience life-long experience in the military but he had done his homework and that's what often gets lost with the patton, the bluster and the nicknames and the mannerisms tend to

overshadow the fact that you're dealing with a first class professional warrior, scholar. i have judged him for a long time as the best army commander in the west of the seventh. miles dempsey second british army. courtney hodges, first u.s. william simpson, ninth army. alexander patch, seventh army and patton's the highest card in the deck in my opinion at the army level and as my colleague said here, he didn't think that bradley was probably any better than a good corps commander and that leaves me to one of the conclusions from my book. from this book, is that the notion that patton's ceiling was army level really has no merit from my perspective. he could have easily -- he had the vision, the ability to

anticipate what the situation should look like 72, 96 hours out, as well as, if not better than bradley. but that is a point for endless discussion. at the bar or at the mess. at the end of the day, when i studied the operations i became thoroughly impressed with his ability to physically move, his willingness to accept risk after he had assessed the situation his being able to cross the line of departure is a bit contention. if you create two columns and line up historians that say he told ike he could go on december 21 and those who said 22, it breaks out fairly evenly. so who do you football? believe? in my opinion, he said he could go on the 21st so he gave ike a 48-hour window to commit three division and by the end of the

day he was ready to go on the 21st, the 12,000 vehicles that moved from the two corps were for the most part in place and he could have launched the forward elements of the three divisions on time as he said. fourth armored division was actually in position to attack on the 20th. its lead element could have intervened in the bulge at bast bastone on the 20th, the advance guard. it's a thoroughly impressive performance. what happens for patton is the inability to influence either bradley or eisenhower during the fight on different courses of action and what should be -- what was the best course of action for defeating the germans. and if you're familiar with the battle you'll know that eisenhower made the decision to relieve baston and essentially squeeze the toothpaste out of the bottle. patton had a radically different

concept. he wanted to shape the battlefield differently put tremendous pressure on one of the anchors, force the germans to make decisions and seize the initiative from there. at the end of the day, i think his course of action in the south was more than viable. if he did not actually physically attack the terrain corridor on the southern anchor for the germans, he could have certainly put tremendous pressure on them there which would have had cascading effects at the operational level. this book is ultimately an operational study and i wanted to understand how patton actually planned adjusted to changed circumstances and brought his combat power to bear. at the end of the day, the actions that are taken by the germans, when the spearhead fails in the north, all the combat power of the german army

filters south in patton's path so after the 26th when he relieves baston, the story doesn't end. unfortunately, most of the dhur dhur -- literature ends there. yay! the battle's over, 101st has been relieved but amount of fighting and number of casualties that are sustained on both sides from the 27th onward to the end of the campaign for the next month is what really fascinated me. patton is faced with a new formation, after he attacks on the 22nd. every 1.5 days. so he has to find a way to create reserves, generate combat power to achieve overmatch to gain ground. at the end of the day he achieves his mission he sustains casualties at a rate just about equal to what the germans have sustained. it's about 1.2 to one, which speaks to the brutality of the opposition, the conditions and

the terrain. but at the end of the day patton did what he was ordered to do. i do think finally i will say that i do think that he was actually capable of more. i think, although heefts, in my opinion, the highest card in the deck, he could have been used even better and ike and bradley given different circumstances could have teased out and even more superior performance from george in certain circumstances. that being said, he did have a forte for certain types of operations. and i do hope that you get a chance to read it. it is operational history. it's the hardest history that i've written because to actually tease out the nuggets as one of my colleagues said, it's like mining for gold, right, to actually understand how an army moves and fights is a marathon it's not a sprint in terms of

understanding. so i think i've achieved that in the book and if that's your forte, i think you'll enjoy the operational study. thanks sothank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. we'll take questions or comments from the audience. dr. sorly? >> colonel mason, my name is lewis sorly iii. in world war ii, my uncle, lewis sorly jr., was an infantry battalion commander and in our family lore maintain that jack deane was his leader. i would like to find in your book if there's confirmation of that. >> it his first assignment was -- anti-tank platoon? i believe so.

we can check the the appendix of the book has his assignments down there and i'm pretty sure you're crocket that that -- correct on that. >> for this panel book, thank you very much. it's all good reading that i recommend to you. we will have another book coming out part of next year's but part of this year's charge that went out, "thunder in the aragon" and the author could not be here because he's in france working on another book. thank you all for coming, very much. and enjoy the rest of your evening. be safe. [applause]