[PDF] Passchendaele 1917 eBook

Author : Philip Warner
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 39,60 MB
Release : 2005-07-30
Category : History
ISBN : 1844153053

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Nearly ninety years ago, on 31st July 1917, the small Belgian village of Passchendaele became the focus for one of the most gruelling, bloody and bizarre battles of World War 1. By 6th November, when Passchendaele village and the ridge were captured, over half a million British, French, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Germans had become casualties. Philip Warner, the noted historian of twentieth-century warfare and the author of over fifty books on military history, many published by Pen and Sword, has skilfully brought together all the elements of this horrific campaign - the historical background, personal accounts, strategies and tactics, the personalities and the political manoeuvres. He investigates the issues which had a crucial effect on the course of the battle, including the mutinous state of the French army, the bombardment which destroyed the drainage system, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig's determination to continue operations despite the appalling weather and ground conditions, and the stormy relationship between Haig and Lloyd George. However, it is the determined fighting ability and the bravery of the allied soldiers, rather than the tactical plans of the commanders, that dominate this detailed and totally absorbing account of the harrowing four-month campaign called the Battle of Passchendaele. Passchendaele is a masterly and timely analysis of one of the most important battles in history.

Author : Chris McNab
Publisher : Dundurn
Page : 159 pages
File Size : 33,6 MB
Release : 2016-05-21
Category : History
ISBN : 1459734181

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The story of one of history’s bloodiest and most futile battles, Passchendaele, is expertly related and explained by a leading historian, with detailed illustrations and supplementary facts.

Author : Nick Lloyd
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 537 pages
File Size : 12,31 MB
Release : 2017-05-04
Category : History
ISBN : 0241970113

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'A timely re-appraisal . . . a masterpiece' General Lord Richard Dannatt 'Sweeps aside mythology and provides a rational explanation and cool description of what took place' Max Hastings, Sunday Times _________________________________ Between July and November 1917, in a small corner of Belgium, more than 500,000 men were killed or maimed, gassed or drowned - and many of the bodies were never found. The Ypres offensive represents the modern impression of the First World War: splintered trees, water-filled craters, muddy shell-holes. The climax was one of the worst battles of both world wars: Passchendaele. The village fell eventually, only for the whole offensive to be called off. But, as Nick Lloyd shows, notably through previously unexamined German documents, it put the Allies nearer to a major turning point in the war than we have ever imagined. _________________________________ 'Meticulously researched . . . A harrowing and important history' PD Smith, Guardian 'He brings the battle and its political context vividly to life . . . a model of what a work of military history should be, this is now perhaps the definitive account of this phase of the war on the Western Front' Simon Heffer, Telegraph

Author : Robert J. Parker
Publisher : Amberley Publishing Limited
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 37,76 MB
Release : 2017-06-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1445655721

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A new centenary history of the infamous Western Front campaign for the Belgian village of Passchendaele fought from 31 July - 10 November 1917.

Author : Michael Locicero
Publisher : Helion
Page : 520 pages
File Size : 44,68 MB
Release : 2021-04-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781911628729

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The Third Battle of Ypres was officially terminated by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig with the opening of the Battle of Cambrai on 20 November 1917. Nevertheless, a comparatively unknown set-piece attack - the only large-scale night operation carried out on the Flanders front during the campaign - was launched twelve days later on 2 December. This volume is a necessary corrective to previously published campaign narratives of what has become popularly known as 'Passchendaele'. It examines the course of events from the mid-November decision to sanction further offensive activity in the vicinity of Passchendaele village to the barren operational outcome that forced British GHQ to halt the attack within ten hours of Zero. A litany of unfortunate decisions and circumstances contributed to the profitless result. At the tactical level, a novel hybrid set-piece attack scheme was undermined by a fatal combination of snow-covered terrain and bright moonlight. At the operational level, the highly unsatisfactory local situation in the immediate aftermath of Third Ypres' post-strategic phase (26 October-10 November) appeared to offer no other alternative to attacking from the confines of an extremely vulnerable salient. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the affair occurred at the political and strategic level, where Haig's earnest advocacy for resumption of the Flanders offensive in spring 1918 was maintained despite obvious signs that the initiative had now passed to the enemy and the crisis of the war was fast approaching. A Moonlight Massacre provides an important contribution and re-interpretation of the discussion surrounding Passchendaele, based firmly on an extensive array of sources, many unpublished, and supported by illustrations and maps.

Author : Stephen Bull
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 81 pages
File Size : 39,50 MB
Release : 2017-06-29
Category : History
ISBN : 1472819780

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In 1917 the soldiers of the Canadian Corps would prove themselves the equal of any fighting on the Western Front, while on the other side of the wire, the men of the Royal Bavarian Army won a distinguished reputation in combat. Employing the latest weapons and pioneering tactics, these two forces would clash in three notable encounters: the Canadian storming of Vimy Ridge, the back-and-forth engagement at Fresnoy and at the sodden, bloody battle of Passchendaele. Featuring carefully chosen archive photographs and specially commissioned artwork, this study assesses these three hard-fought battles in 1917 on the Western Front, and offers a new take on the evolving nature of infantry combat in World War I.

Author : Chris McNab
Publisher : The History Press
Page : 156 pages
File Size : 31,16 MB
Release : 2014-12-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0750962798

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Passchendaele 1917 is the story of one of the most pitiless and iconic battles of the First World War, known today as Third Ypres. Fought over three tortuous months in 1917, the fighting raged through some of the worst physical conditions of the entire war, across battlefields collapsing into endless mud and blood. Eventually, more than 500,000 casualties bought front-line changes measured only in hundreds of yards. If you truly want to understand what happened and why – read Battle Story.

Author : Philip Gibbs
Publisher : Library of Alexandria
Page : 581 pages
File Size : 19,10 MB
Release : 1965-01-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1465527990

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1917.... I suppose that a century hence men and women will think of that date as one of the world's black years flinging its shadow forward to the future until gradually new generations escape from its dark spell. To us now, only a few months away from that year, above all to those of us who have seen something of the fighting which crowded every month of it except the last, the colour of 1917 is not black but red, because a river of blood flowed through its changing seasons and there was a great carnage of men. It was a year of unending battle on the Western Front, which matters most to us because of all our youth there. It was a year of monstrous and desperate conflict. Looking back upon it, remembering all its days of attack and counter-attack, all the roads of war crowded with troops and transport, all the battlefields upon which our armies moved under fire, the coming back of the prisoners by hundreds and thousands, the long trails of the wounded, the activity, the traffic, the roar and welter and fury of the year, one has a curious physical sensation of breathlessness and heart-beat because of the burden of so many memories. The heroism of men, the suffering of individuals, their personal adventures, their deaths or escape from death, are swallowed up in this wild drama of battle so that at times it seems impersonal and inhuman like some cosmic struggle in which man is but an atom of the world's convulsion. To me, and perhaps to others like me, who look on at all this from the outside edge of it, going into its fire and fury at times only to look again, closer, into the heart of it, staring at its scenes not as men who belong to them but as witnesses to give evidence at the bar of history—for if we are not that we are nothing—and to chronicle the things that have happened on those fields, this sense of impersonal forces is strong. We see all this in the mass. We see its movement as a tide watched from the bank and not from the point of view of a swimmer breasting each wave or going down in it. Regimental officers and men know more of the ground in which they live for a while before they go forward over the shell-craters to some barren slope where machine-guns are hidden below the clods of soil, or a line of concrete blockhouses heaped up with timber and sand-bags on one of the ridges.

Author : Ian Finlayson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 12,51 MB
Release : 2020-10-07
Category : History
ISBN : 1922387290

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The Battle for Passchendaele on 12 October 1917 was one of the epic struggles of the First World War. British Field Marshal Douglas Haig allocated II ANZAC Corps to capture Passchendaele village, with Major General Monash’s 3rd Australian Division and the New Zealand Division leading the attack. For both divisions the battle was a bloody debacle. Monash’s division started the battle with 5800 men and, just 24 hours later, could only muster 2600, suffering horrendous losses for a small territorial gain which was later relinquished. The New Zealand Division was trapped in front of the German wire and barely moved from its start line, suffering one of its highest casualty rates of the war. Fought in conditions which seemed to preclude any chance of success, the battle has become a metaphor for pointless sacrifice. After the battle the British and Australian leadership were unanimous in placing blame for the defeat on the all-pervasive mud. Monash, writing to his wife, believed that his plan ‘would have succeeded in normal conditions’. Yet, two weeks later, in similar weather and terrain, Lieutenant General Currie’s Canadian Corps succeeded where Monash and Godley’s II ANZAC Corps did not. The central focus of this book is a detailed analysis of the 3rd Australian Division’s plan and execution of the attack on Passchendaele. By examining the differences between the Australian and Canadian plans for the capture of Passchendaele, the author casts this iconic battle in a completely different light. It is a re-examination that is long overdue.