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Book Review: Advance and Destroy: Patton as Commander in the Bulge John Nelson Rickard

Citino also elaborates his own thesis on one of the core questions of German strategy in the east. This having often been described as rudderless in the wake of Operation Citadel’s failure, Citino suggests that in the second half of 1943, with Soviet offensives rolling the German front backwards, men such as Field Marshal Manstein sought answers to the Red Army’s weight of numbers by ‘fleeing into their own history’ (p. 227) and seeking to recover the aggressiveness and rapid manoeuvre that had always defined Prussian strategy. Hitler, however, was not so easily swayed, especially when this called for surrendering vast tracts of territory, and the resultant debates proved a watershed in German strategic thinking as bold offensive action moved to the stubborn defensive. In all aspects of his discussion of 1943 Citino’s trademark mastery of the vast literature is evident, with a number of endnotes amounting to bibliographical essays discussing both the key authors in the field and their respective contributions. Indeed Citino’s endnotes are as important as the text itself. Overall I would have liked to have seen more on the eastern front, especially given the more minimal treatment of the Nazi-Soviet war in the final months of 1943. Still, there can be no question as to the value of Citino’s latest offering, and, like his many past works, The Wehrmacht Retreats deserves to be widely read.