Search results for ""author karel margry""

Lead author Karel Margry, with material by Winston Ramsey and Charles P Stacey Editor: Daniel Taylor Text: Approx 63,000 words in main account plus 31,000 word in captions. Up to 700 images including maps, photographs and illustrations. Of these, around 120 may be in a colour section making up the concluding section of the book. The book comes in three distinct sections the first is an in-depth analysis of the German 'Westwall' defence system built between 1936 and 1944. This includes the build phases, the organisation of the workforce and the political background. The second section looks at the Allied campaign to overcome the defences of the Siegfried Line through the winter of 1944/45, focussing on three major operations by the US, British and Canadian armies. The third section deals with the perception of the Westwall in the eighty years since the war and then outlines a battlefield tour guide of those elements that still survive.

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In the history of Nazi concentration camps, and particularly labour camps, there is probably no place that bears the same stigma of wretchedness as 'Dora-Mittelbau' at Nordhausen. Located in the Harz mountains in central Germany, next to a quarry tunnel system in the Kohnstein mountain, it served to house thousands of slave workers for an underground factory known as the Mittelwerk, which produced three of Germany's best-known secret weapons: the V1 flying bomb, the V2 rocket and jet engines for the Me 262 and Ar 234 fighters. With over 20 kilometres of underground galleries, it was the largest underground factory in the world. Many of the inmates died in indescribable misery, being forced to extend the tunnels with meagre equipment and under ghastly conditions, sometimes not seeing daylight for weeks on end. Started in August 1943, Dora-Mittelbau in due course became the centre of a whole complex of underground factories in the Nordhausen area, with several subsidiary camps being set up. In all, of some 60,000 prisoners sent there between 1943 and 1945, 20,000 were driven to extinction to implement Nazi Germany's secret weapons programme, but they laboured late and in vain, for the products they yielded had little impact on the war. The V1 and V2 are the only weapons which cost more lives in production than in deployment: far more people died producing them than were killed from their impact in London, Antwerp and elsewhere. The history of Nordhausen, already gruesome in itself, ended in a crescendo of violence when, in the final weeks of the war, the surviving inmates were evacuated from the camps in death marches . One group of over a thousand men then became victim of one of the most horrendous of all Nazi atrocities. On April 13, 1945, just outside the town of Gardelegen, their SS camp guards, helped by local troops and Hitlerjugend, locked the prisoners in a big barn and set fire to the inside, burning those inside, killing them with hand-grenades, and shooting anyone who tried to escape from the burning, smoke-filled building. A total of 1,016 men died as a result. When discovered by American troops two days later, Gardelegen quickly became known as the site of one most notorious war crimes committed by the Nazis. In this book, Karel Margry recounts the history of Nordhausen concentration camp and of the Gardelegen massacre in full detail. Both stories are illustrated with unique Then and Now comparison photographs. The book contains the following two stories from ATB magazine: Issue 101: Nordhausen Author: Karel Margry. 18,165 words, 118 black and white photos. Issue 111: The Gardelegen Massacre Author: Karel Margry. Text: 16,189 words, 78 black and white photos. Note: After the Battle s account of Nordhausen, when first published in 1998, was considered so accurate and comprehensive that the Nordhausen Camp Memorial asked whether they could translate it into German and use it as one of their brochures. Thus a special German edition of issue 101 appeared under the title Damals und Heute, which has been reprinted several times.

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When the Allied armies broke out from the Normandy bridgehead in late July 1944, it became of paramount importance that they quickly capture new harbours to sustain the rapid northward advance. All the Allies supplies and reinforcements were still coming in through just two places the Mulberry artificial harbour at Arromanches and the port of Cherbourg captured by the Americans and with supply lines lengthening by the day, it was essential to speedily open up ports nearer the armies. For Field-Marshal Montgomery s 21st Army Group this meant first of all the channel ports of Le Havre and Boulogne. Both cities had been declared a Festung (Fortress) by Hitler and were to be defended to the last man. The attack on Le Havre (Operation Astonia ) was launched on September 10 and was a classic example of a successful set-piece battle. After the German defences had been softened up by colossal aerial and naval bombardment and artillery shelling, a siege-train of specialised armour broke through the outer crust of the German defensive perimeter and allowed two British infantry divisions the 49th (West Riding) Division and the 51st (Highland) Division to push through the gap and methodically reduce the enemy strongholds before driving into the heart of the city. The attack on Boulogne (Operation Wellhit ) began a week later and was the task of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. Another set-piece assault, it was again preceded by a devastating bombardment by RAF heavy bombers, which reduced large parts of the city to ruins, and a massive artillery barrage. Supported by specialised armour, two Canadian brigades then moved forward but the Germans resisted stubbornly and it took six days of heavy fighting before the Canadians had subdued all strongpoints and finally forced the garrison to surrender. Although both ports were now in Allied hands, it brought no immediate alleviation to the Allies logistical problems. Harbour installations had been extensively damaged by German demolitions and Allied bombardments and it would take many weeks of rehabilitation before the ports could be brought into use. Le Havre (which had meanwhile been assigned to the Americans) did not see the few first ships arriving until October 2 and Boulogne not until on October 12. As is our hallmark, all phases of the battles for the two Channel ports are illustrated with Then and Now comparison photographs. The book contains the following two stories from ATB magazine: Issue 139: The Capture of Le Havre Author: Karel Margry. 17,441 words, 76 black & white photos. Issue 86: Operation Wellhit The Capture of Boulogne Author: Ian Galbraith. 9,099 words,. 80 black & white photos

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