COLOSSAL CRACKS

Montgomery's Twenty-first Army Group in North-west Europe, 1944-1945. A reinterpretation of the British Army's conduct in the crucial 1944-1945 Northwest Europe campaign, this work examines the Colossal Cracks operational technique employed by Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery's Anglo-Canadian Twenty-first Army Group. Rooted in concerns about morale and casualties, Colossal Cracks was a cautious, firepower-laden approach that involved the concentration of massive force at points of German weakness. Hart argues that Montgomery and his two senior subordinates handled this formation more effectively than some scholars have suggested and that Colossal Cracks represented the most appropriate weapon the British Army could develop under the circumstances. Introduction; The Maintenance of Morale; Casualty Conservation; "Colossal Cracks" I: The Set-Piece Battle; "Colossal Cracks" II: The Other Elements; Dempsey and the Second (British) Army; Crerar and the First Canadian Army; Conclusions, Index.