Blitzkreig No Longer: The German Wehrmacht in Battle, 1943

In 1939, The Germans Stormed Into Poland, Shocking The World With The Speed, The Destructiveness, The Seeming Invincibility Of Their Blitzkrieg. By 1943, The Tide Had Started To Turn. Successes Still Came, But These Were Increasingly Eclipsed By Defeats And Retreats, Setbacks And Surrenders. In Blitzkrieg No Longer, Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., Offers A Riveting Glimpse Inside The Third Reich's War Machine During The Pivotal Year Of 1943. The Year Began Well Enough For Hitler And His Armed Forces, With The Brilliant Erich Von Manstein Orchestrating An Almost Miraculous Regrouping After The Disaster At Stalingrad. The Wehrmacht Lived To Fight Another Day--indeed, Another Two Years--but Growing Allied Strength And Experience Combined With German Shortages In Men And Materiel To Stymie Germany's Advances On All Fronts. In The Mediterranean, Erwin Rommel's Earlier Gains In North Africa Were Erased By The Surrender Of Tunisia In May. Two Months Later, The Allies Landed In Sicily, Initiating A Five-week Battle That Ousted The Germans From The Island, Although Some 60,000 Men Escaped To Italy, Which The Allies Invaded In September. German Troops There Were Entrenched And Fought Tenaciously In A Campaign That Would Last Until 1945. On The Eastern Front, The Barbarous Warfare Of 1941 And 1942 Continued Unabated--only Now The Soviets Often Had The Upper Hand, Both In Numbers And, More And More, In Operational Ingenuity. Even Manstein Could Not Produce A Victory At Kursk, Where Soviet T-34s Beat German Tigers And Panthers In The Largest Armour Battle In History. Kursk Would Mark The Beginning Of Nazi Germany's Long And Bloody Retreat In The East. The Third Reich's Defeats Were Not Limited To The Ground. At Sea, The Allies Neutralized The U-boat Threat, And In The Air, They Dominated The ‘luftwaffe’ And Took The War To The German Home Front. The War Would Drag On For Two More Brutal Years, But The End Was Now In Sight. No Longer Could The Germans Mount Their Feared Blitzkrieg; No Longer Could They Win The War. Mitcham Chronicles This Turning-point Year With Insight And Drama. Full Title 2 Copyright Page 3 Table of Contents 4 Introduction 6 Chapter 1 Nazi Germany and the Wehrmacht, 1933–42 7 Chapter 2 Manstein Restores the Southern Flank 23 Chapter 3 The Defeat of the German Navy 36 Chapter 4 Tunisgrad 46 Chapter 5 The Bombing Intensifies 98 Chapter 6 The State of the Wehrmacht, Spring 1943 108 Chapter 7 Hitler’s Summer Offensive 117 Chapter 8 The Retreat Begins in the East 134 Chapter 9 Decay and Disarray in the Mediterranean 141 Chapter 10 The Allied Invasion of Southern Europe 153 Chapter 11 The Fall of Fascism and the Loss of Sicily 187 Chapter 12 Cracking the Floodgates: The Russian Front from 1943 to Early 1944 197 Chapter 13 The Italian Defection and the Battle of Salerno 215 Chapter 14 Salerno to the Gustav Line 231 Appendix A Table of Comparative Ranks 240 Appendix B German Staff Positions 244 Appendix C German Units, Ranks, and Strengths 246 Appendix D Characteristics of Select German and Allied Tanks 248 Appendix E Luftwaffe Aviation Units, Strengths, and Ranks 250 Notes 252 Bibliography 269 Index 284