Armoured Warfare from the Riviera to the Rhine, 1944–1945

By Anthony Tucker-Jones

While the Allied armies were deadlocked with the Germans in Normandy after D-Day and even as they broke out and began their long advance, another campaign was being fought against the Germans in southern France and it is this campaign, which is often neglected in accounts of the liberation of Europe, that is the subject of Anthony Tucker-Joness latest photographic history. In a sequence of over 150 wartime photographs he tells the story, from the amphibious invasion of the French Riviera Operation Dragoon to the battle at Montelimar, the forcing of the Belfort gap, the destruction of German resistance in the Colmar pocket and the entry of Allied forces into southern Germany. His concise narrative gives a graphic overview of each phase of the operations, and the selection of photographs shows the American, French and German forces in action. The mechanized and armoured units and their equipment are a particular feature of the book. The photographs are a valuable visual record of the tanks, guns, jeeps and trucks the most up-to-date military vehicles and weaponry of the time as they moved along the roads and through the towns and countryside of southern France.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473881495

Anthony Tucker-Jones

Anthony Tucker-Jones, a former intelligence officer, is a highly prolific writer and military historian with well over 50 books to his name. His work has also been published in an array of magazines and online. He regularly appears on television and radio commenting on current and historical military matters.

Book preview

Chapter One

The Riviera Dilemma

Just over two months after the momentous D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944, the ‘other D-Day’ took place in the south of France. The bitter arguing over the validity of this operation was such that it almost threatened to bring down the British government. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American Allied Supreme Commander, described the row with Britain’s leader as ‘one of the longest sustained arguments that I had with Prime Minister [Winston] Churchill throughout the period of the war’.

The Allied fight against the Axis forces had gathered momentum by 1944 following a series of successful actions, particularly Operation Torch, the Anglo-American landings against French North Africa in November 1942, Operation Husky and the capture of Sicily in July 1943 and the subsequent invasion of southern Italy in September 1943. That year the proposed invasion of southern France, initially dubbed Operation Anvil (then Dragoon), emerged to complement Operation Hammer, the attack on northern France (which later became Overlord). The idea was to divide the German defences in France and prevent their forces in the south moving north to oppose the cross-Channel