I consider Marc Milner to be an excellent military historian, so I was pleasantly surprised when Amazon.ca showed me the announcement for Stopping the Panzers: The Untold Story of D Day. It is scheduled to be released in November, but I have preordered a copy. The blurb on the Amazon.ca site follows:
In the narrative of D-Day the Canadians figure chiefly--if at all--as an ineffective force bungling their part in the early phase of Operation Overlord. The reality is quite another story. As both the Allies and the Germans knew, only Germany's Panzers could crush Overlord in its tracks. The Canadians' job was to stop the Panzers--which, as this book finally makes clear, is precisely what they did. Rescuing from obscurity one of the least understood and most important chapters in the history of D-Day, Stopping the Panzers is the first full account of how the Allies planned for and met the Panzer threat to Operation Overlord. As such, this book marks nothing less than a paradigm shift in our understanding of the Normandy campaign. Beginning with the Allied planning for Operation Overlord in 1943, historian Marc Milner tracks changing and expanding assessments of the Panzer threat, and the preparations of the men and units tasked with handling that threat. Featured in this was the 3rd Canadian Division, which, treated so dismissively by history, was actually the most powerful Allied formation to land on D-Day, with a full armored brigade and nearly 300 artillery and antitank guns under command. Milner describes how, over four days of intense and often brutal battle, the Canadians fought to a literal standstill the 1st SS Panzer Corps--which included the Wehrmacht's 21st Panzer Division; its vaunted elite Panzer Lehr Division; and the rabidly zealous 12th SS Hitler Youth Panzer Division, whose murder of 157 Canadian POWs accounted for nearly a quarter of Canadian fatalities during the fighting. Stopping the Panzers sets this murderous battle within the wider context of the Overlord assault, offering a perspective that challenges the conventional wisdom about Allied and German combat efficiency, and leads to one of the freshest assessments of the D-Day landings and their pre-attack planning in more than a decade.
Well, maybe I ordered a copy because I agree with his thesis. In my opinion the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division with 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade outfought elements of three Panzer Divisions in the first week of the invasion. The orders to the formations of 1 SS Panzer Corps, especially 12 SS Panzer Division, were basically to drive the invaders into the sea. They failed miserably, something that people like Kurt Meyer glossed over in their memoirs and other writings. In fact 12 SS, which was not commanded by Meyer at the time, was very poorly handled and its commander was, perhaps fortunately for his reputation, killed by Allied bombing shortly later.
In the narrative of D-Day the Canadians figure chiefly--if at all--as an ineffective force bungling their part in the early phase of Operation Overlord. The reality is quite another story. As both the Allies and the Germans knew, only Germany's Panzers could crush Overlord in its tracks. The Canadians' job was to stop the Panzers--which, as this book finally makes clear, is precisely what they did. Rescuing from obscurity one of the least understood and most important chapters in the history of D-Day, Stopping the Panzers is the first full account of how the Allies planned for and met the Panzer threat to Operation Overlord. As such, this book marks nothing less than a paradigm shift in our understanding of the Normandy campaign. Beginning with the Allied planning for Operation Overlord in 1943, historian Marc Milner tracks changing and expanding assessments of the Panzer threat, and the preparations of the men and units tasked with handling that threat. Featured in this was the 3rd Canadian Division, which, treated so dismissively by history, was actually the most powerful Allied formation to land on D-Day, with a full armored brigade and nearly 300 artillery and antitank guns under command. Milner describes how, over four days of intense and often brutal battle, the Canadians fought to a literal standstill the 1st SS Panzer Corps--which included the Wehrmacht's 21st Panzer Division; its vaunted elite Panzer Lehr Division; and the rabidly zealous 12th SS Hitler Youth Panzer Division, whose murder of 157 Canadian POWs accounted for nearly a quarter of Canadian fatalities during the fighting. Stopping the Panzers sets this murderous battle within the wider context of the Overlord assault, offering a perspective that challenges the conventional wisdom about Allied and German combat efficiency, and leads to one of the freshest assessments of the D-Day landings and their pre-attack planning in more than a decade.
Well, maybe I ordered a copy because I agree with his thesis. In my opinion the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division with 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade outfought elements of three Panzer Divisions in the first week of the invasion. The orders to the formations of 1 SS Panzer Corps, especially 12 SS Panzer Division, were basically to drive the invaders into the sea. They failed miserably, something that people like Kurt Meyer glossed over in their memoirs and other writings. In fact 12 SS, which was not commanded by Meyer at the time, was very poorly handled and its commander was, perhaps fortunately for his reputation, killed by Allied bombing shortly later.
