Ordered by Hitler 'to hold, or to die' and to fight 'to the last grenade and round', the German army was a formidable opponent during the 1944 Normandy campaign. This book depicts the experience of that army in Normandy through its own records and documentation. Blood and Steel, The Wehrmacht Archive : Normandy 1944 is an informative and colourful collection of translated original orders, diaries, letters, after action reports, and even jokes, as well as Allied technical evaluations of German weapons, vehicles and equipment and transcripts of prisoner of war interrogations. The translations also feature comments from wartime Allied intelligence officers, which provide an insight into how the German army was regarded by its opponents at the time. As you read the landser''s letters to wives and families in Germany, his forbidden diaries, his gripes about food, officers, and shortages of just about everything, the daily life of the German soldier in the long and bloody summer of 1944 will come to life. You will also learn from official documents about his superiors' efforts to cope with Allied air and artillery superiority, create new tactical methods for all arms and maintain discipline in the face of overwhelming odds with both exaggerated claims of miraculous new 'Vengeance Weapons' and threats of the ultimate sanction for desertion or surrender.
