Nothing Less Than Full Victory: Americans at War in Europe, 1944-1945

by Edward G. Miller

At the onset of World War II, the U.S. Army was a third-rate ground force of 145,000 with some generals who still believed in the relevance of horse cavalry. Its soldiers were untrained, its doctrine out of date, and its weapons hopelessly obsolete. Four years later, the U.S. Army was engaged in a global war with a force of more than 8 million men armed with modern weapons and equipment. Nothing Less than Full Victory is the story of how American ground troops in Europe managed to defeat one of the most proficient armies in history. The author, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, draws on his twenty years of experience in military logistics and eight years of scholarly research to examine the Army s remarkable transformation. Focusing on areas rarely considered in other books on World War II, Edward G. Miller analyzes the performance of American soldiers in the 1944 45 campaign in western Europe against a background of logistics, organization, training, and deployment. In doing so, this groundbreaking work refutes decades of assumptions to reset the historical framework for comparison of U.S. and German performance over the course of the campaign. Lieutenant Colonel Miller s skillful melding of little-known individual and small-unit combat action with the various facets of generating, deploying, and projecting power allows the reader to understand as never before the true significance of what took place. This book is published in cooperation with the Association of the United States Army.

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

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2007

About the author

Lt. Col. Edward G. Miller, United States Army (Ret)., is a former logistics officer and Army-designated military historian who served several tours in Germany and on the Army Staff. His first book, "A Dark and Bloody Ground: The Hurtgen Forest and Roer River Dams 1944-1945", won the 1996 Forest C. Pogue Award from the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and was a featured selection of the Military Book Club. He has published several magazine and journal articles and has appeared on national TV.

Reviews

[Checkman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another in what is a growing number of works that are reexamining the myth that the United States Army was lavishly equipped and simply bulled it's way through the German Army. A relatively unskilled force that wouldn't have been victorious if not for the power of America's industrial might behind it. A quick examination of the Army's casualty figures from D-Day to VE Day in May of 1945 should show that the U.S. Army did not have an easy time of it, but still the myth persists. A myth which does a disservice to those soldiers who served not only in the ETO but in all the theaters in WWII.

Mr. Miller is a retired Army officer whose entire career was spent in logistics (beans & bullets and getting them where they are needed). He therefore approaches the Army in the WWII European Theater of Operations from that perspective. Almost immediately Mr. Miller shows that the U.S. Army in Europe wasn't as well off as history leads us to believe. There was never enough manpower, small-arms ammunition, artillery shells, proper cold weather clothing, fuel and even food to name just a few things. Supply lines were overstretched and the U.S. Army was on the offensive almost non-stop.Offensive operations are brutal. The Germans were dealing with shorter supply lines and fighting a defensive campaign - a skilled defensive campaign.

Both sides made serious mistakes and ultimately it could be argued that the allies were able to overcome their mistakes because they did have more resources whereas the Germans eventually just ran out of everything. Nevertheless Mr. Miller states that in the years immediately following the war it suited some German writers to push the myth that the Germans outfought the Allies, but were overwhelmed by the sheer mass of material. Mr. Miller shows that the allied forces fought a hard campaign and the victory was brought about in no small part to their sheer willpower as well as skillful fighting. The allied forces got better as the war went on. Beans and bullets are important - very important,but eventually a war is fought by soldiers. War is a mix of tangibles (logistics and manpower) and intangibles (morale and willpower).

The biggest thing I have to say about this book is Mr. Miller takes a potentially deadly boring subject and makes it interesting. Personally I found it very interesting to learn more about what took place behind the front line. Mr. Miller shows that warfare is an very complex endeavor. Complex and chaotic.If you're wanting to learn more about what it took to organize and supply the U.S. Army in World War II Nothing Less Than Full Victory is a good place to start.