Eisenhowers Lieutenants: The Campaigns of France and Germany, 1944-1945

by Russell F. Weigley

Overview

Jointly published by Plunkett Lake Press and Indiana University Press.

This study of the American-led campaign in Europe in World War II analyzes command decisions at both the strategic and tactical levels. All the complex ingredients of armies at war — the burdens of history, the impact of technology, the roles of personalities, the confusions of the battlefield — are presented based on extensive scholarship. Field Marshal Montgomery and Ike's lieutenants, Generals Omar N. Bradley, Jacob L. Devers, Courtney H. Hodges, George S. Patton, Jr., Alexander M. Patch, William H. Simpson, Leonard T. Gerow, J. Lawton Collins, and Matthew B. Ridgway, and others appear in the book. All major strategic and tactical decisions in the battles of the American offensive against Nazi Germany are covered, with descriptions of key terrain features and many personal insights drawn from various diaries. The book provides an assessment of the leadership and fighting capabilities of the Allied forces in the key European battles of World War II.

"The publication of Eisenhower's Lieutenants is an event of significance in American military writing... admirable... clearly the product of exhaustive, painstaking research." — Drew Middleton, The New York Times

"Eisenhower's Lieutenants is an outstanding and highly recommended work. It offers the wealth of information, superb research and presentation, comprehensive treatment, and challenging reinterpretation one has come to expect from Weigley. It also points out once again that his reputation as one of our outstanding military historians is well deserved." — Mark A. Stoler, Journal of American History

"... outstanding book... highly professional study of command and operations in northwest Europe, 1944-45... the best account we have of the World War II campaigns from Normandy to the Elbe." — Forrest C. Pogue, American Historical Review

"The fullest account yet of the climactic campaign in northwestern Europe, from the planning of D-Day through the German surrender, with an interesting focus on the personalities involved in shaping the Allied forces, plans, and operations... precisely informative and broadly rewarding." — Kirkus Reviews

"... an excellent book." — Calvin B. Peters, Journal of Political and Military Sociology

"... by the dean of American military historians..." — Washington Post

"I had thought I knew everything about World War II that I would ever want to know. I was wrong. Reading Eisenhower's Lieutenants was a wonderfully enriching experience. I learned more than I ever would have thought possible. This will unquestionably become one of the great classics of American military history." — Stephen E. Ambrose

Product Details

BN ID:	2940163178063
Publisher:	Plunkett Lake Press/Indiana University Press
Publication date:	07/09/2019
Series:	Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaigns of France and Germany, 1944-1945 , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Russell Frank Weigley (1930-2004) graduated from Albright College (1952) and received his PhD in history in 1956 from the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation was published as Quartermaster General of the Union Army: A Biography of M.C. Meigs. Weigley then taught at the University of Pennsylvania (1956-1958) and at Drexel University (1958-1962) before joining Temple University as an associate professor; he became Distinguished University Professor in 1985 and remained at Temple University until his retirement in 1999. He co-founded Temple’s Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy and was considered the heart and soul of Temple's History department: at one point he supervised 30 PhD candidates concurrently. Weigley was also a visiting professor at Dartmouth College and at the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

His research and teaching interests centered on American and world military history, World War II, and the American Civil War. One of Weigley’s major contributions to research is his hypothesis of a specifically American Way of War, i.e. an approach to strategy and military operations distinct to the United States because of cultural and historical constraints.

Weigley was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1969-70), the Athenaeum Literary Award (1983) and the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize of the American Military Institute (1989). He served as President of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the American Military Institute. He was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the Society of American Historians. He was the eighth holder of the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College Foundation Chair of Military Affairs.

His books include The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo which won the Society for Military History’s Distinguished Book Award, A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861–1865 which received the Lincoln Prize, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944-1945 which was nominated for the American Book Award in history in 1983, and The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy.