Second Front: The Allied Invasion of France, 1942–43 (An Alternative History)
Page 35
While tank battles gained headlines, US infantry divisions meantime relied on their artillery to hammer down their Axis infantry counterparts, as shown below.
Part of the premise of the Allied invasion was that the French people would rise in its support. This in deed happened, as shown in this photo of an American officer and a French partisan during a street fight in a French city after the Allies’ arrival.
Other French citizens were punished for prior friendliness to the Germans. For females a shaved head was the usual mark of punishment for such offenses.
A U.S. anti-tank crew fires on Germans who machine-gunned their vehicle. Month after month, thousands of small-unit combats took place as the Germans did not give up their gains easily.
The Allied supply lines were fully stocked, but winter weather sometimes made it difficult to deliver chow to frontline troops across the slippery roads. In this photo we see how one delivery was eagerly welcomed by a U.S. squad.
The reports of German terror in Warsaw and other parts of Poland had much influence in Allied councils, and especially among Polish troops in exile serving with the Allies. The endgame of the war would focus much around the Allies need to rescue Europe in not just strategic terms but moral ones.
When the Germans finally surrendered it was practically wholesale in the West. In the East, however, many units continued to resist the Soviets until they or civilians could escape safely into Western hands.
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In addition to the preceding books, the author has also made extensive use of a number of war games in order to test his hypotheses on the probable course of events following a given strategic decision and also as a rich source of order of battle information. The following are those most frequently consulted.
Astell, John, Torch: Europa XI, Game Designers’ Workshop, 1985.
——-, Second Front: Europa XII, Game Research/Design, 1994.
Astell, John and Chadwick, Alan, Western Desert: Europa VI, Game Designers’ Workshop, 1983.
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Copyright © 2014 by Alexander M. Grace
978-1-4804-4581-9
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