Search results for ""Author Jeffrey Plowman""

Early morning, 19 March 1944. Tanks manned by New Zealanders, Indians and Americans launch a daring attack along a narrow mountain track on German positions north of Monte Cassino. So began one of the most audacious Allied attempts to break through the Gustav Line and advance on Rome - and it almost succeeded. Yet the extraordinary story has seldom been told, and it has never been told before in the vivid detail Jeffrey Plowman brings to this new account. Using operational orders, combat reports, unit diaries, post-battle photos from private and public archives and the graphic personal accounts of those who took part, he describes the construction of Cavendish Road and the course of the entire operation that followed. The planning for the attack and the men involved are described in a gripping and clear-sighted way, as is the attack itself - its initial rapid success and its ultimate failure. Eighty years later Jeffrey Plowman reveals exactly what happened and shows how and why this bold thrust against the German strongpoints at Monte Cassino, which could have turned the course of the battle, ended in retreat. His book also features a visitor's guide that covers the length of Cavendish Road from the village of Caira to Massa Albaneta, linking each spot with the events described in the narrative.

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The battles fought between the Allied armies and the German Wehrmacht at Monte Cassino in 1944 were key episodes in the protracted Italian campaign, and the eventual Allied victory was a decisive step in the wider war to liberate Europe from German occupation. Much has been written about Cassino, but few books have chosen to tell the story through photographs - to give a visual insight into the fighting and the forces involved, the conditions in which they fought, and the landscape around the Monte Cassino abbey which became a battlefield. That is why Jeffrey Plowman's photographic history is of such value. Using almost 200 wartime images, many of which have not been published before, he gives a graphic impression of the realities of the fighting as it was experienced by the troops on the ground. He focuses on the tanks - the array of armoured vehicles deployed by both sides which played a critical role. This aspect of Cassino has rarely been covered in such detail and in such a vivid way. The book will be of special interest to modellers and historians of armoured warfare, but it will also appeal to readers who have a more general interest in the Italian campaign.

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Blitzkrieg. Lightning war. We are all familiar with the rapid thrusts the Germans made in the early days of the Second World War that saw the demise first of Poland and then the Low Countries and France. But were the German tactics, which appeared at the time to smash through all resistance, really as devastating as they seemed? That is the major question Jeffrey Plowman asks in this absorbing new study of the campaign in Greece in 1941\. Within three weeks they overran the country but, by looking into the campaign in detail, the author claims that at no time did the Germans gain ascendency over the token British and Anzac force sent to bolster the Greek defenders. They came close to doing so, but the Anzac troops and their Greek allies put up a spirited defence that sometimes turned the Germans' own methods against them. This perceptive new account should prompt a reassessment of the Greek campaign. It also offers a fascinating insight into the weaknesses of the Germans' all-conquering method of warfare which became increasing apparent during the later stages of the war.

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The Battles for Cassino encompassed one of the few truly international conflicts of the Second World War. A strategic town on the road to Rome, the fighting lasted four months and cost the lives of more than 14,000 men from eight nations. Between January and May 1944, forces from Britain, Canada, France, India, New Zealand, Poland and the United States, fought a resolute German army in a series of battles in which the advantage swung back and forth, from one side to the other. From fire-fights in the mountains to tank attacks in the valley; from river crossings to street fighting, the four battles of Cassino encompass a series of individual operations unique in the history of the Second World War. Authors Jeff Plowman and Perry Rowe have spent several years studying the conflict together and walking the battlefield to take the hundreds of comparison photographs which are the raison d'etre of all After the Battle publications. Photographs have been selected from archives and private collections around the world to present a balanced view, combined with maps, orders of battle, citations and detailed captions. The Cassino battles, epitomised by the controversial bombing of the monastery which towers menacingly over the battlefield, stand at the centre of the Italian campaign. The dogged defence by a 100,000 men of the German XIV. Panzerkorps under General Frido von Senger und Etterlin, facing a greater multi-national force, was only routed in the end by a gallant French flanking manoeuvre, with the Poles marking the final victory by hoisting their national flag over the ruins of the Monastery.

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