The 8th Rifle Brigade advances from training to combat in Normandy, shaping a pivotal wartime arc through fast breakthroughs, desperate defenses, and rapid, strategic gains.As the Second World War loomed, the Territorial Army was doubled and 2nd Battalion, The London Rifle Brigade was formed. This title was short lived and 8th Rifle Brigade joined the newly raised 11th Armoured Division in the spring of 1941. Three years of training followed, with regular changes o...

In Spring 1945 the outcome of the war was ritually certain but the mighty River Rhine still stood in the way of the Allies. Eisenhowers strategy was to guarantee a crossing in the Ruhr area by allocating the main effort to Montgomerys 21st Army Group. Montys task was to envelope and take out the last German war production and open the way onto the North German Plain.On the morning of 24 March 1945 the Normandy veterans of 6th British Airborne Division were to land just three to six miles i...

This WWII military history and battlefield guide examines a pivotal conflict of the Battle of Normandy—including detailed maps and illustrations.Over a month after the D-Day landings, the Allies were still confined to the Normandy peninsula. The German line was anchored by the medieval town of Caen, which the British were supposed to have occupied on D-Day. The key to capturing Caen was Hill 112, known to the Germans as Kalverienberg, or "Mount Calvary".

By June 1944, Juno Beach was a key part of Hitler's vaunted Atlantic Wall, with no less than four major strong points along its length. German pillboxes were sited to sweep the beaches with machine gun fire and were surrounded by belts of barbed wire and mines. Leading the attack were the 3rd Canadian Division, supported by the specialist assault tanks of the 79th Armoured Division (Hobart's 'Funnies'). Despite careful planning, poor D-Day weather led to a piecemeal landing and heroic indi...

By early August 1944 the Germans fighting in Normandy had been worn down by the battles around Caen, while to the west, the American breakout was finally gaining momentum. Now was the time to launch II Canadian Corps south towards Falaise. With much of the German armour having been stripped away for the Mortain Counter-Attack, hopes ran high that the Corps, reinforced with British tanks, the 51st Highland and the Polish Armoured Divisions, would repeat the success of their predecessors in ...

This WWII battlefield guide offers a detailed history of the Allied Liberation of Nijmegen during Operation Market Garden—with maps and photos throughout.On September 17th, 1944, the 82nd Airborne dropped Allied parachute infantry along the Waal River in the Netherlandish city of Nijmegen. Their goal was to seize the city's two major bridges and reinforce the British troops in nearby Arnhem. Though the Allied forces faced a desperate struggle, they ultimately secur...

Having fought their way up fifty miles of Hell's Highway and through Nijmegen, XXX Corps was just ten miles from Arnhem and the 1st British Airborne Division. Here it found itself on an island of flat land between the Waal at Nijmegen and the Rhine at Arnhem. The situation was increasingly bad with the remainder of II SS Panzer Corps in the area and German counter attacks on Hell's Highway preventing the Allies applying their material superiority. The Guards Armoured and then 43rd Wessex I...

This WWII history and battlefield guide examines the Allied push across the Rhine with maps, photos, and informative text.By late March of 1945, the advance through Europe had brought Allied forces to Hitler's doorstep. Second British Army and Ninth US Army were poised to carry out an assault crossing of the Rhine. In the British part of the operations, Field Marshal Montgomery's best assault divisions were assembled to carry out the British and Canadian part of the...

The 3rd Division's slow progress on D-Day, hindered by German defenses and reinforcements, delayed the capture of Caen, pivotal to Allied strategy.The COSSAC planners in 1943 outlined a strategy to capture the city of Caen, some 10 miles in-land from the coastline with an airborne division. On assumption of command of 21st Army Group, General Montgomery up-scaled the invasion and inserting SWORD Beach, gave the task of capturing the city to the 3rd Division on D Da...

The 1944 battle for Caen saw intense Allied-German combat, defensive actions, and key operations like Charnwood.With the German reinforcement of Normandy in April 1944, the chance of I Corps capturing Caen on D Day or shortly thereafter had become increasingly unlikely. And so it was, during D+1, the 21st Panzer Division were joined by the Hitlerjugend Panzer Division in a defensive wall around the north and west of the city, while the Allied main effort was transf...

A comprehensive history of the Allied attack on German-occupied France during World War II, examining its planning, execution, and failure.In 1942, with the outcome of the war very much in the balance, there was a pressing need for military success on mainland Europe. Churchill ordered Admiral Lord Mountbatten's Combined Operations HQ to take the war to the Germans. The Canadians were selected for the Dieppe raid, which, while a morale raiser, was a disaster. Over 3...

The history of the armored division comprised of German teenagers in the Normandy campaign, drawing on new materials from former Eastern Bloc archives.Raised in 1943 with seventeen-year-olds from the Hitler Youth movement, and following the twin disasters of Stalingrad and 'Tunisgrad,' the Hitlerjugend Panzer Division emerged as the most effective German division fighting in the West. The core of the division was a cadre of officers and NCOs provi...