Death of a Nazi Army: The Falaise Pocket

by William B. Breuer

Describes the battle between the Allied and German forces in Falaise, France, and examines the reasons for the defeat of the Germans

Genres: World War II, Military Fiction, History, Military History

312 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1985

About the author

William B. Breuer landed with the first assault waves in Normandy on D-Day (June 6, 1944), then fought across Europe. Later, he founded a daily newspaper on a string in Rolla, Missouri, and after that, a highly successful public relations firm in St. Louis, Missouri. He had been writing books full time since 1982

Reviews

[Sleepy Boy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Histories written by combat vets tend to have a certain je ne sais quoi I find. This one is no exception; it’s obvious from page 1 that Mr. Breuer had “seen the elephant” as it were. Excellent look at Cobra, the kessel, and its aftermath from top brass to the PBI of both sides.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This what excellent military history should be-exciting, riveting, a view from the pointy-end of the spear where men and machines clash to the leaders at the rear who may have a clue or not about what to do. Some decent maps and photos made it stand out in the genre and helps you comprehend what was going on. A very confusing battle went on from the start of Cobra (breakout from the hedgerows to the near-destruction of the German 5th and 7th Armies near Falaise). 5 Stars You do have to know about the Normandy invasion and what happened in a general sense to get the most out of this book.

Some of the accounts follow Lt Herrick and his platoon. Here he is getting ready to mount an attack:

Across from Herrick sat a figure clad in a gray-green uniform, coal-bucket helmet clamped on his head, a bolt-action rifle across his knees. He scowled at the American lieutenant. Herrick scowled back. The German got the best of the contest due to the fact that the enemy soldier had three eyes and Herrick only two. The third one was a neat round hole in the center of his forehead. “I might look like that sometime,” Herrick got to thinking. So he went over and turned the dead German around.
Herrick launches the attack against tough resistance:
(Herrick’s) face and hands were covered with it (blood). But he felt no pain-a factor that frightened him. Then Evans, a teenaged rifleman next to him, slid down the muck onto Herrick. A jagged piece of steel protruded from the boy’s neck. It was Evans’s spurting blood that had covered the platoon leader. A medic slithered over to Evans, examined him, and pronounced him dead.

The attack bogged down. Soon Colonel Russell was blistering the airwaves over a walkie-talkie-who or what was responsible for holding up the war? “We’ve got to get that hill!” Russell exclaimed. “Now get the lead out!”

“Okay, we’re going to charge,” Herrick told Platoon Sergeant Lubbock, who in turn yelled to the rear: “We’re goin’ to charge the bastards. If anyone’s damn fool enough to follow, get in tow!” Nearly all of the platoon were damn fools.

Herrick and his men went on up the hill, slipping and sliding, cursing the tangle of underbrush and the relentless chatter of enemy machine guns.
Lt Herrick and his men are used to overwhelming Allied airpower…usually:
Suddenly there was a mighty roar and Herrick and the other dogfaces in the column looked casually into the sky, expecting to see the familiar white star of the U.S. Army Air Corps on a fighterbomber. A chill surged through them and they leaped for cover as a black ME-110 of the Luftwaffe zipped in low and sent streams of bullets along the entire length of the column. The German pilot was good. Americans lay sprawled in the road, dead or seriously wounded, and two tanks were badly damaged.

Now the Luftwaffe pilot banked and returned for an encore. Herrick reflected that the enemy flyer had more courage than brains. Every weapon in the long column opened fire on the sleek German Jabo. The pilot whipped his plane straight up as it began smoking, then a white parachute blossomed as the German bailed out of his mortally wounded fighter plane. His body jerked and kicked as small-arms fire from the angry Americans in the column converged on him. Lieutenant Herrick could hear him screaming, even after his ’chute was shredded and he was in free-fall like a bomb. The German struck the ground with a thud.
If the weather is good, the fighter-bombers were out in force:
Except in the worst weather, American Thunderbolts and Mustangs were almost always over the spearheads, flying in half-hour shifts with two-way radio communication between tank commanders and pilots. Outside Gavray a column of 3rd Armored Division tanks was forced to a stop by German antitank guns. Vehicles clogged the road. Overhead, Lieutenant Leslie C. Boce was cruising in his Thunderbolt when he heard the voice of the tank commander down below: “Won’t some of you people come and help, goddamn it? Everybody gets air support but me.”

Lieutenant Boce replied: “I’m on my way!”

Minutes later, spotting a Thunderbolt overhead, the tank commander called out over his radio, “Is that you above me?” “Yes, what can I do for you?”

“There’s some Kraut guns on my right. They’ve been holding up my column.”

“Okay, I see them. We’ll take care of the bastards.”

Boce and his flight of Thunderbolts peeled off one by one and pounced onto the enemy guns, loosing 500-pounders, and returning to strafe the position. Then the air corps lieutenant called the tank commander: “How are we doing?”

“Great!” was the enthusiastic reply. “We’re already moving forward!”

Not far away, a ponderous German Tiger tank, its 88-millimeter guns belching defiantly, was holding up another American tank column. Above, the leader of a Thunderbolt flight called the tank commander: “There’s a Tiger 75 yards down the road firing on your leading elements.”

“We know. Can you help?” “Affirmative. But the Tiger is too close to you to bomb. We’ll strafe the bastard.” Minutes later the Thunderbolt called the Sherman: “Bombed the Tiger. Didn’t get direct hit but three near-misses. He is stopped cockeyed in the road. Try and proceed and we’ll observe your progress.” “All quiet. Well done, pal! ” the tank commander responded. The advancing column found the Tiger helpless on its side in a ditch, the crew having scrambled to the rear.

One thing that was clear in the book--this was a wild melee and heroes popped up everywhere:
Pouring over the river span in considerable numbers, the German force set up artillery pieces on a bluff in the northwest portion of Avranches from which point it could fire on the See River bridge and the Granville-Avranches road. Part of the enemy convoy pushed on through the blacked-out center of town toward the southern exits, where they bumped into armored infantrymen of Dager’s CC-B, who were guarding that section of the American “wagon train.” The collision in the darkness took both Americans and German by surprise. Both adversaries soon recovered from the initial shock and an intense firefight erupted. Private William H. Whitson of CC-B jumped behind a .30 caliber machine gun and began pouring heavy bursts of fire into the German ranks. Soon enemy bodies began piling up before his smoking barrel, and several vehicles caught fire when he sent volleys into them. Whitson was in an exposed position, but refused to seek cover. With daylight nearing the German force pulled back, and a strange calm settled over the landscape in south Avranches. Comrades looked at Bill Whitson’s body slumped over his machine gun, a bullet hole through the head. Fifty dead Germans were found in front of his automatic weapon and he had destroyed nineteen vehicles.
The French underground was not in a mood to treat the Nazis well:
There was one common denominator-they hated the Boche with an intensity unmatched in any other sector of France. Before D-Day, roving packs of maquis (FFI fighters) had been organized into teams by parachuting British and French paratroopers and supplied by nocturnal drops by the Royal Air Force. Now these organized groups were in position, mainly along the two principal roads that ran through the peninsula. They served as flank guards for Patton’s flying columns and as spies behind German positions. The maquis allowed American tankers to race on without having to halt to mop up small pockets of Germans or handle prisoners. Many of the latter, terror-stricken on being turned over to the maquis, never reached American POW enclosures. Often their corpses had large bloody blobs where their privates had once been, severed by rusty knives in the hands of French underground fighters imbued with a cold hatred of the Boche over four years of brutal Nazi occupation.
Coolness under fire is good:
Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Sweat, Operations Officer for the 3rd Armored Division, took advantage of a brief lull to slip in a hurried shave. He was standing in front of his jeep, razor in hand, outside the CP of Hickey’s combat command, which was located in the basement of a doctor’s office in Juvigny. Sweat heard a familiar fluttering sound and a sickening thud. A German mortar shell had passed over his shoulder and plowed into the ground some twelve to fifteen feet away-a dud.

The unexploded round was just outside the unflappable Doyle Hickey’s door. Hickey came to the opening, puffing on his ever present pipe, looked at the ominous dud, turned around and went back inside, without comment or change of expression.

Moments later a shaken Colonel Sweat called out with a straight face, “Does anyone have some clean underdrawers they can loan me?”

[Dimitri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Relationship status: it's complicated. Sometimes the jovial tone and crude use of bywords (Feltgraue for German combattants) in combination with a sparse, elderly biography make me wonder why.

Then the text turns exiting again, with a gritty episode that predates the stock Falaise image of an avenue filled with perforated vehicles, greenish corpses and riddled horses.

The span is almost perfect. No glorious landing. You drop in the deadlock of the bocage, with the friendly bombs of operation Cobra on the horizon.

The Goodwood grind around Caen remains in the distance also, but the strategical overviews give the reader a sense of chapter sense in what's often a rushed part of the ETO story, even in books on 'Normandy'. Yes, Keegan, that includes your 'Six Armies'.

Yet the sense of confusion that both sides' command felt as German units were bypassed, Kampfgruppe pulled back randomly and US armour under Patton rode the gaps with the cavalry's disdain for orders from minds breeding advances by date lines on a map.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will quickly find William Breuers other works to add to my library.

[Greg Schloesser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative and interesting study of the "Falaise Pocket" that resulted in the devastation of the bulk of the German forces in northern France during WWII. While providing detailed information on the forces involved, the author doesn't get too technical. Rather, he fills the book with interesting stories of the individual soldiers and leaders who were involved in this monumental event.

If you enjoy WWII history, the book truly is a page-turner. Even though it is over 35 years since it was first published, it is still very accurate and useful.

Recommended for those interestred in WWII history.

[Rick Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Breuer's narrative about the Falaise Pocket fills in the gaps of a critical period of time between the Normandy landings and the failed September 17, 1944 Operation Market-Garden that was the brainchild of British General Bernard Montgomery. Breuer's story weaves the grueling life of the American and German soldier into that of the generals who were planning the operations. He also highlights the personality and philosophical clashes between many of the generals. This is a good book for those who study World War II or desire to learn more about what occurred in the European Theatre.

[Neal Fandek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much better than most books of this type. We zoom out to get the birdseye view, Eisenhower, Bradley, Hitler, zoom in on commanders, and even individual fighting men. Really very well researched, very readable.

The only problem is having to flip back-and-forth constantly from the text to maps to see where engagements took place! Also, disappointing that this was not the Stalingrad of the west. There was no surrender of these German armies.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easygoing and detailed account of the Cobra breakout from the Normandy beachheads by the Allied forces in WWII that decimated the German Fifth and Seventh Armies in Falaise. This was a part of the war of which I knew little (other than of course the D-Day invasions) so I found it very interesting reading.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had hardly heard anyting about the "Falaise Pocket" until I read this book, but I don't know why it hasn't recieved more attention. This was part of the post D-Day allied breakout that truly gutted the German defense in France.