The sheer volume of studies on the Second World War in Europe suggests that it would be unlikely for a work published in 2022 to provide any new insight. However, Peter Caddick-Adams argues convincingly that many of the works which begin with the Normandy invasion or the Battle of the Bulge give a very abbreviated account of the last several months of the war in West Europe and frequently also impart the misleading impression that this period did not involve heavy fighting. Caddick-Adams emphasizes that heavy fighting, typically by SS formations or Hitler Youth, took place in some areas despite the lack of German resources and an increasingly bleak situation. In his description of the last eight days of the Allied war effort in western Germany, Caddick-Adams writes that “Sixth Army Group's war diary noted the situation ‘fluid.' Yet this bureaucratic shorthand concealed the fact that it was not only frustrating but potentially still dangerous” (468). Caddick-Adams divides his lengthy work, focused on the last hundred days of the Allied effort in West Europe, into three parts which examine the advance of the Allied armies to the Rhine, the crossing of the Rhine, and the campaign beyond the Rhine into Germany.
Fire and Steel provides a comprehensive analysis of these events by analyzing orders that were issued by Dwight Eisenhower and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), tracing the evolving strategic and tactical situation and analyzing the myriad decisions and actions carried out by Allied armies, corps, divisions, and battalions (U.S., British, French, and Canadian). Caddick-Adams highlights the efforts of lesser-known commanders such as Jacob L. Devers, Courtney Hodges, Alexander Patch, and the French Commander Jean de Lattre, while reevaluating all factors that had an impact on the Allied advance toward and into Germany, including logistical issues. Although he acknowledges Eisenhower's strengths as the supreme commander of the coalition forces, Caddick-Adams criticizes Eisenhower's tendency to prioritize relations with the British, and his unwillingness to deviate from the original strategic plan and take risks that might have led to Germany's surrender earlier. Caddick-Adams provides a detailed account of the events in West Europe and discusses previous assessments of events and conclusions that historians have drawn based on those events. For example, in addition to providing a thorough examination of the actions that led to the capture of the bridge at Remagen, Caddick-Adams demonstrates that postwar accounts have greatly exaggerated the story. In fact, “the truth of the Remagen story was that no one expected to capture a Rhine bridge intact; there was no race to seize one, in fact the opposite. SHAEF wanted them destroyed in order to prevent German forces from withdrawing to fight another day” (182).
In Fire and Steel, Caddick-Adams emphasizes one other aspect of the final drive by the Allies advancing through West Europe. He argues that the Allied soldiers who fought in West Europe and carried out the invasion of Germany had a common or shared experience unrelated to combat. “Thus, it turns out that stumbling over the dead, far more of them outside the [concentration] camps than within, as well as releasing the living, was a surprisingly common experience for Eisenhower's personnel advancing into Germany in 1945. For these men and women, the images of fire and steel and death continued up to the last seconds of the European war. They found the shock so traumatic that, decades later, they were still reliving the moment in nightmares and panic attacks” (6). Given the gruesome incidents many soldiers had endured during battle, the impact of the horrors of Nazi brutality and mass murder take on an even greater significance.
Brevity is not a strength of this work, which covers one hundred days in more than five hundred pages, and there is some repetition in terms of the use of specific phrases such as “at what cost” and in examining some issues such as the relationship between Eisenhower and Montgomery. However, this work provides an extensive amount of detail on most aspects of the Allied efforts in the last months of the war in West Europe (leadership, strategy, tactics, logistics, and challenges such as liberating death camps), while reevaluating the significance of specific challenges and decisions. Peter Caddick-Adams acknowledges that the decision to focus solely on Allied ground forces in the West means that there is little information from other perspectives (German or Allied Air Forces) but this is not a significant weakness. Furthermore, his extensive research and use of diaries, letters, personal interviews, and memoirs enable Caddick-Adams to depict the experiences and in some cases the emotions of a wide range of individuals, from commanding officers to ordinary soldiers and civilians. His use of official accounts and his comparative analysis of statements or assertions in official documents versus memoirs written after the war is impressive and allows him to challenge certain assertions or views that emerged well after the fighting in Europe had ended. Overall, this is a valuable and extensive study of the concluding weeks of the Allied war effort in West Europe which, along with the Soviet advance from the East, culminated in the unconditional surrender of Germany. The level of detail and length would make this book challenging for undergraduate students, but graduate students and scholars will benefit from the insights and extensive notes provided by this work.
