Closing With the Enemy: How the GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945

Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, April-June, 2004 by Peter Clemens

Closing With the Enemy: How the GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945 by Michael Doubler (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 354 pages, $21, ISBN 0-7006-0744-7

Are innovation and adaptation best driven top down or bottom up? Just two-and-a-half years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army landed at Normandy. Over the next eleven months, the relentless offensive combat operations conducted against the German Army carried the U.S. Army into Central Germany and ultimate victory. Given the scale and ferocity of the operations and considering that Germany still had a first-rate army, the European Theater of Operations (ETO) during 1944-1945 proved the U.S. Army's sternest test.

How the U.S. Army fared in the ETO against its German opponent is a source of continuing debate among soldiers and historians. Michael Doubler's excellent book, Closing With the Enemy: How the GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945, is a significant and positive addition to this debate.

This well-written book relies extensively on original sources in its discussion of how the U.S. Army adapted in the ETO. Mr. Doubler argues that the U.S. Army that landed at Normandy was a well-prepared force with sound doctrine, thorough training, and adequate equipment. Its great strength, however, was the institutional willingness to constructively modify tactics and policies to fit the circumstances. The diverse operational environments of the ETO forced the Army to master the challenges posed by its different campaigns: the struggle in the hedgerows, the pursuit across France, battling into urban centers, cracking the West Wall fortifications, slugging through the forests, and conducting opposed river crossings. Except for the defensive phase of the Ardennes battle, the U.S. Army generally remained on the offensive.

The author argues against interpretations that the U.S. Army achieved victory only through application of sheer brute strength while employing little tactical flair. The Army, restricted to a 90-division force dispersed between Europe and the Pacific, did not enjoy a substantial manpower advantage over the Germans.

The author contends that, unlike its totalitarian German counterparts, where innovation was from top down to the troops via the General Staff solution, the U.S. Army drove innovation from the bottom up. Mr. Doubler believes that U.S. soldiers, imbued with the notions of free speech from their democratic society, showed initiative to adapt and devise solutions to problems, not waiting for superiors to provide them. Given the continual tempo of operations, there was little time to devise and disseminate General Staff solutions to units engaged in combat operations.

The book recounts again and again the many instances when soldiers and local commanders devised tactical solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Given the varied campaigns the U.S. Army fought in its drive across Europe, the initiative to devise local solutions was critical for sustaining the Army's offensives and creating an effective combined-arms team. Mr. Doubler's contribution runs counter to the somewhat damning interpretation of muddled U.S. Army performance in the ETO as put forth by Russell Weigley's Eisenhower's Lieutenants and Martin van Creveld's Fighting Power. While the U.S. Army in the ETO was certainly not a perfect instrument, the U.S. soldiers' ability to adapt, as the author points out, was its key to success.

Sergeant First Class Peter Clemens, USAR

Stafford, Virginia