Marc Milner - Stopping the Panzers: The Untold Story of D-Day

MODERN WAR STUDIES

Theodore A. Wilson

General Editor

Raymond Callahan

J. Garry Clifford

Jacob W. Kipp

Allan R. Millett

Carol Reardon

Dennis Showalter

David R. Stone

Series Editors

STOPPING THE PANZERS

The Untold Story of D-Day

Marc Milner

University Press of Kansas

2014 by the University Press of Kansas

All rights reserved

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Milner, Marc.

Stopping the panzers : the untold story of D-Day / Marc Milner.

pagescm. (Modern war studies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7006-2003-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-7006-2049-4 (ebook)

1. Operation Overlord.2. World War, 19391945CampaignsFranceNormandy.3. World War, 19391945Tank warfare. I. Title.II. Title: Untold story of D-Day.

D756.5.N6M4952014

940.5421421dc23

2014029772

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States

10987654321

The paper used in this publication is recycled and contains 30 percent postconsumer waste. It is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

Once upon a time there was a war, but so long ago and so shouldered out of the way by other wars and other kinds of wars that even people who were there are apt to forget.

John Steinbeck, Once There Was a War, 1958

This book has been decades in the making. Indeed, as the son of a D-Day vet who fought in these epic engagements, I have long been aware of the landings and the initial beachhead battles. The debates and discussions with my father over the who, what, when, where, and how of Normandy began early and only ended with his death in 2006. My discovery (only after enrolling) that the University of New Brunswick had a program in military history simply stoked that interest. So, too, did the mentoring of another Normandy vet, Professor Dominick S. Graham. The rest, as they say, is history.

Despite my thirty-five-year distraction as a naval historian, Normandy was never off the radar. Since coming back to UNB in 1986, most of what I have taught in the classroom and supervised at the graduate level has been army history. Given UNBs proximity to the Canadian armys corps schools at CFB Gagetown, army history wasand remainsa natural focus for our program. You can, quite literally, do military history here to the sound of guns firing. Heated discourses on tactics and doctrine, weapons templates, beaten zones, command thresholds, in support or under command, and C3I issues still dominate casual discussion in the hallway. Not surprisingly, then, most of the sixty-plus masters and doctoral theses I have supervised over the years have been on army topics. Among these, several graduate students require special mention for feeding the Normandy passion: David Wilson, who worked on armored doctrine, Dan Malone for his work on naval fire support, Mike Sullivan for his look at combat motivation in the 12th SS, Arthur Gulachsen for taking a closer look at casualties in the 12th SS, and Larry Zaporzan for his MA on Radley-Walters. John Rickards PhD on General Andy McNaughton changed my thinking (and probably that of many others) about that much-maligned Canadian general. Chris Kretschmar, an MA student who actually did a thesis on naval history, worked for me on a number of occasions as a research assistant and very kindly ferretted out the information of the personnel strength of 12th SS in the spring of 1944.