Jeff Shaara - No Less Than Victory: A Novel of World War II

A LSO BY J EFF S HAARA

Gods and Generals
The Last Full Measure
Gone for Soldiers
Rise to Rebellion
The Glorious Cause
To the Last Man
Jeff Shaaras Civil War Battlefields
The Rising Tide
The Steel Wave

TO
MY COUSIN
EDDIE SHAARA

T his is the third volume of a trilogy that tells the story of the Second World War in Europe, through the eyes of a select few of the key participants. As in every story Ive written, I feel I should mention that this is not a comprehensive historical account of the entire war. There are lengthy shelves in every library and every bookstore packed with volumes that have tackled the subject in far more detail. My primary goal is to take you back to this time, allowing these characters to tell their story as they lived it. There is no history in hindsight. In World War Two, the men and women who took part were facing the greatest crisis of their lives, a crisis that shaped the future of mankind. Though the historian may analyze that crisis, examine it with the comfortable knowledge of what followed, to the men who fought this war and those who made the great command decisions, there was very little comfort at all. Every day brought new challenges and new decisions for the commanders or a new urgency for the men who carried the rifle. The story here is true, the history accurate, and every event is real.

My research focuses solely on the accounts of the participants, their voices: memoirs and collections of letters, diaries and photographs, and, in wonderfully poignant instances, interviews with living veterans. This book has to be described as a novel, because there is dialogue, the everyday conversations that are not always recorded for posterity. And, much of the story is told from the points of view of these characters themselves, taking you into their thoughts. Even the veterans arent able to fill in all the blanks.

I understand the risks of telling this kind of story. Many people have their own definite images of these iconic figures. Some of those images have been shaped by Hollywood, which is usually unfortunate. (To a great many Americans, the name George Patton conjures up the face of George C. Scott.) In the past, I have had people confront me with a certain level of outrage, one man specifically saying to me: How dare you put words in the mouth of Robert E. Lee! Fair enough. I accept the challenge. If I dare to put words into the mouths of any of the historical figures in my books, I had better feel comfortable that those words (and thoughts and emotions) are authentic. Otherwise, the characters will be counterfeit, and you, the reader, will know that immediately. Before I write a word, I dig as deeply as I can to find those voices, and the most gratifying success for me is when the writing begins and the story flows freely. It is a wonderful feeling to become that clich, the fly on the wall, feeling as though Im just the conduit, telling you what Im seeing and hearing and feeling. You may certainly disagree with my portrayal of some of these men, and most assuredly, I cannot include every detail of every characters life. But by the end of this book, I hope you have a sense of who these people are, what they accomplished, and why we must not forget or dismiss their accomplishments. And I hope you find this to be a good story. That is, after all, the point.

There is one aspect of this book that is different from the first two volumes of the trilogy. Though I have included German voices before (most notably, Erwin Rommel), by the end of the war in Europe, many in the German hierarchy are dealing with a significant crisis that goes beyond what the war has done to their country. The reality of Hitlers reign can no longer be denied, and each man must confront his own conscience about what Hitlers Germany has become. To portray the Germans as one-dimensional goose-stepping cartoons would do a disservice not only to them, but to you. It is easy to cast judgment on these men today (as, at the Nuremberg trials, it was fairly easy then). But they are important to this story, and I feel that portraying them simply as the bad guys, while politically correct, would not be authentic.

In a strange twist of coincidence, as I am writing this, I just returned from a brief trip to Washington, DC, where I happened to be when the shooting incident occurred at the Holocaust Museum. That horrifying act was committed by an eighty-eight-year-old Holocaust denier. Toward the wars end, American GIs (and then, the generals) discovered the worst of the Nazi concentration camps. Literally thousands of American and British soldiers witnessed firsthand the grotesque aftermath of the atrocities committed by the Germans. I am appalled by those who deny that the Holocaust took place. The accounts of the Allied soldiers and reporters who were there at the liberations of these camps, the sheer volume of evidence is so completely overwhelming that to deny it took place is both comically and tragically absurd. My fear is that the deniers have an agenda, political or social, and that by denying or even excusing what was done to those millions of human beings, their purpose could be to justify it happening again.

If this book is emotional for you, or if, after reading it, you feel you understand a bit more about the war itself, or know a little more about those men who were so responsible for the history of this extraordinary event, then you and I share something. It has been my privilege to tell this story.

J EFF S HAARA
June 2009

In response to the many requests I have received, the following is a partial list of the first-person accounts that document the events in this book.

T HE AMERICANS

Colonel Robert S. Allen, HQ Third Army

First Sergeant Jack Alley, Forty-second Infantry Division

General Omar Bradley, Twelfth Army Group

Private First Class Robert Burns, Eleventh Armored Division

Commander Harry Butcher, HQ SHAEF

Private Dick Davison, Eightieth Infantry Division

Lieutenant Al Doherty, 102nd Infantry Division

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, SHAEF

General James Gavin, Eighty-second Airborne Division

Private First Class Irving Grossman, 106th Infantry Division

Major W. M. Hudson, Engineer, Third Army

Brigadier General Oscar Koch, Third Army G-2

Colonel Fred Kohler, 299th Combat Engineering Battalion

Captain Victor Leiker, Ninth Armored Division

Captain Charles B. MacDonald, Second Infantry Division

Major Charles W. Major, Eighty-second Airborne Division