Their kettle-shaped helmets lent a medieval aspect to the horse soldiers clattering out of the twilight. The year was 1940, the occasion a preparedness parade, the helmets actually those of the 1917-1918 style. Yet to a small boy catching his first glimpse of Americas army as well as the metallic headgear seemed to represent old wars rather than new, a military past yet more remote than the Mexican border skirmishes for which the troopers in fact were outfitted.

Thus begins this brilliant study of the American-led campaign for Europe in World War II. It is an analysis of command at both the strategic and the tactical level. All the complex ingredients of nations at war the burdens of history, the impact of technology, the roles of personalities, the confusions of the battlefield are presented in a powerful narrative which is as pleasurable to read as it is deeply founded in scholarship.

The portraits of Field Marshal Montgomery and of Iikes lieutenants Omar N. Bradley, Jacob L. Devers, Courtney H. Hodges, George S. Patton, Jr., Alexander M. Patch, William H. Simpson, Leonard T. Gerow, J. Lawton Collins, and Matthew B. Ridgway, among others are the first detailed treatments that many of these leaders have received. Every major strategic and tactical decision in every battle of the American offensive is covered in detail with maps and careful descriptions of key terrain features, including many personal insights drawn from diaries kept at the American army group and army headquarters.

This is a major and grippingly told reassessment of the leadership and the fighting capabilities of the Allied forces in climactic battles of World War II.

Contents:
Preface

Part One: The Armies
1. The American Army
2. Weapons and Divisions
3. The View of the Far Shore
4. By Air and by Sea

Part Two: Normandy
5. The Beach
6. Cherbourg and Caumont
7. The Bocage
8. Cobra
9. The Crossroads South of Avranches

Part Three: France
10. The Short Envelopment
11. The Riviera the the Rhone
12. The Seine
13. The Meuse
14. The Twin Tyrants: Logistics...
15...and Time

Part Four: The Disputed Middle Ground
16. Holland
17. Attack in the Ardennes (I)
18. Lorraine (I)
19. The Reich Frontiers
20. Autumn Interlude
21. Lorraine (II)
22. Alsace
23. Huertgen Forest and Roer Plain
24. On the Eve of a Breakthrough
25. The Breakthrough
26. The Doctrinal Response
27. The Precarious Balance
28. The Battles of Christmastide
29. Attack in the Ardennes (II)
30. "Inadequate Means’

Part Five: Germany
31. The Eifel
32. Two Tumors Excised: Colmar and the Roer Dams
33. To the Rhine
34. The Crossing of the Rhine
35. Eastward from the Rhine
36. The Legions on the Rhine
37. The Ruhr
38. Berlin
39. The National Redoubt
40. The Elbe, the Moldau, and the Brenner Pass

Epilogue
Notes and Sources
Index

Reviews:
“The publication of Eisenhower's Lieutenants is an event of significance in American military writing. . . . admirable . . . clearly the product of exhaustive, painstaking research." —The New York Times Book Review

" . . . the best account we have of the World War II campaigns from Normandy to the Elbe." —American Historical Review " . . . precisely informative and broadly rewarding." — Kirkus Reviews

" . . . an outstanding and highly recommended work." —Journal of American History " . . . by the dean of American military historians . . . " — Washington Post Bookworld”

“I had thought I knew everything about World War II that I would ever want to know. I was wrong. Reading Eisenhower's Lieutenants was a wonderfully enriching experience. I learned more than I ever would have thought possible. This will unquestionably become one of the great classics of American military history.” — Stephen E. Ambrose