GERMANS ON THE SOMME Rare Photographs From Wartime Archives

$49.00

Images Of War GERMANS ON THE SOMME Rare Photographs From Wartime Archives" by David Bilton.

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GERMANS ON THE SOMME Rare Photographs From Wartime Archives" by David Bilton. Offering an unfamiliar view of a familiar battleground, this book of evocative photographs with cap[tions and an explanatory text shows the Somme from the point of view of the Germans who occupied the area in the Great War.

The Somme is a name heavy with associations for the Germans who defended the sector throughout the Great War, as much as for the French and British who attacked it at such lethal cost. Seizing this area of chalk upland and small woods and villages in 1914, the Germans grimly dug in, constructing a warren of cavernous underground fortifications that defied Allied artillery bombardment. The French were the first to pit themselves against it in 1915, handing over to the British as the build-up for the great offensive of July 1916 began. Beaten back at huge cost by the Franco-British offensive, the Germans made a strategic voluntary withdrawal in March 1917, devastating a wide area behind their shortened lines. But they returned a year later, in the Spring offensives of 1918, only to be forced back yet again in the Allied counter-attack that finally ended the war. This book overs the whole war on the Somme from the German perspective.

The range of informative illustrations are fully captioned and there is a general text and chronology of events. This book offers an unfamiliar adversary's view of a battleground that more than any other sums up the tragedy of the Great War for the British.