I finished John Prados' Normandy Crucible: The Decisive Battle That Shaped World War II in Europe. A concise 4 star read, that delved into the early days of the planning, the invasion and the assortment of leadership and personalities.

The meat and potatoes though is on the attempts to break out of the Bocage culminating in the Cobra Breakout and Falaise Pocket. An interesting detail was Prados' incorporation Ultra intelligence and it's value and limitations. Prados see's the Ultra intelligence more in its tactical than strategic value.

Prados discusses the various operations highlighting Operation Goodwood and Cobra but also discusses other breakout attempts and the various mechanical innovations especially on the Sherman Tanks to overcome the Bocage.

The book then winds up discussing the operations around the closing of the Falaise Gap, the mistakes and successes made by both the Germans and the Allies. The Germans failure to achieve breakout of the pocket sooner but ultimately having enough core leadership and troops escape to be able to reforge their forces albeit more thinly manned and armed and more brittle than earlier renditions of the Whermact. The same lack of commitment in closing the gap and better and clearer communication between Monty. Bradley and SHAEF, which contributed to a successful entrapment of but not a complete entrapment of the Wehrmact. In the end Prados distributes blame and credit fairly equally among all parties.

A worthy addition to the literature. ( )

This is an excellent account of the Normandy Campaign [landings through the fall of Paris 1944]. The author is a noted scholar, author and board game designer [Third Reich, etc.]. His specialty Is the history of intelligence. This shows in the excellent work he does synthesizing what has emerged about SIGINT [Ultra, etc.] with the actual operational details of the campaign. Dr. Prados is the first writer on this topic to seriously tie in the effects of the failed bomb plot with German operational decisions. He also does an excellent job of resolving the conflicting accounts of the major allied commanders and the gaps in the immediate postwar histories. Of special importance is how he ties together decisions made at the macro level [German mobilization of Volks Grenadier divisions and new panzer brigades] with their ability to rally on the German frontier after the race across France. I found his thesis that the Ardennes Offensive in December can be traced back to a proposal for a major multicorps German strike against the Normandy lodgment a stretch but Dr. Prados makes an excellent presentation of available facts. There is also a lovely chapter on how he modified the old SPI board game Cobra to test his conclusions on the campaign [I did find myself wishing he had included a URL and created a web posting of the variant rules and OOB as I would love to have played it myself]. I must also congratulate the author and his publisher on truly excellent maps that made following the text a joy. Highly recommended. ( )