WORLD WAR II (Military Science, Band 111) - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Why did every major offensive in World War II eventually grind to a halt? Not at an impenetrable line of defence, but at the hard boundary of logistics.

The Reach rewrites our understanding of the Second World War by anchoring every campaign—from Barbarossa and the Atlantic U-boat wolf packs to the strategic air offensive and the final push into Germany—in the unglamorous, inescapable arithmetic of tonnage, fuel consumption, railway gauges, and port capacity.

German "Blitzkrieg" was an improvised gambler’s throw; the mighty German army walked and pulled its artillery with 600,000 horses; Soviet railways required physical conversion gauge by gauge; and American industrial might crossed oceans not just with tanks, but with hundreds of thousands of lorries and portable coral-lagoon fleet bases.

Stripping away nationalist myth, post-war apologism, and technological fetishism, Cornelis van Houte demonstrates a single governing rule of the twentieth century: Production only counts where it arrives.

• 100 concise, evidence-driven facts cutting through conventional historical narratives.
• Redefines strategy: Why logistics is the numerator and denominator of military power.
• Reevaluates turning points: From the real cause of the freeze outside Moscow to the bookkeeping reality of the "Speer miracle," the U-boat air gap, and the true cost of strategic bombing.

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