The success of the 1944 Normandy Campaign had come at a heavy cost. Having sustained over 200,000 casualties, the battered and bruised Allies faced new logistical challenges as their advance took them further and further away from the beachhead secured months earlier. While Germany’s decisive defeat in the Falaise Gap had enabled sizable gains in France and across the Belgian border, the enemy had retained control of several channel ports, preventing the Allies from shipping supplies into these facilities. A crisis threatened if war materiel could not be brought to the continent and then transported to the liberating forces on a far larger scale.
Located on the left flank closest to the French coastline, First Canadian Army was allocated the unenviable task of besieging the channel ports. Unfortunately, the German defenders would fight with stubborn tenacity to hold Boulogne, Calais and other seabound fortresses (Dunkirk would not fall until 9 May 1945), leaving their much-needed harbours either out of reach or otherwise extensively damaged when the Canadians broke through to them. Hope appeared to rest on Antwerp, situated in Belgium near the border with the Netherlands and boasting the largest port facilities in Europe.
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Denne historien er fra Issue 119-utgaven av History of War.
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NAUMACHIA TRUTH BEHIND ROME'S GLADIATOR SEA BATTLES
In their quest for evermore novel and bloody entertainment, the Romans staged enormous naval fights on artificial lakes
OPERATION MANNA
In late April 1945, millions of Dutch civilians were starving as Nazi retribution for the failed Operation Market Garden cut off supplies. eet as In response, Allied bombers launched a risky mission to air-drop food
GASSING HITLER
Just a month before the end of WWI, the future Fuhrer was blinded by a British shell and invalided away from the frontline. Over a century later, has the artillery brigade that launched the fateful attack finally been identified?
SALAMANCA
After years of largely defensive campaigning, Lieutenant General Arthur Wellesley went on the offensive against a French invasion of Andalusia
HUMBERT 'ROCKY'VERSACE
Early in the Vietnam War, a dedicated US Special Forces officer defied his merciless Viet Cong captors and inspired his fellow POWs to survive
LEYTE 1944 SINKING THE RISING SUN
One of the more difficult island campaigns in WWII's Pacific Theatre saw a brutal months-long fight that exhausted Japan’s military strength
MAD DAWN
How technology transformed strategic thinking and military doctrine from the Cold War to the current day
BRUSHES WITH ARMAGEDDON
Humanity came close to self-annihilation with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Broken Arrows’ and other nuclear near misses
THE DEADLY RACE
How the road to peace led to an arms contest between the USA and USSR, with prototypes, proliferation and the world’s biggest bomb
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
Einstein, Oppenheimer and the race to beat Hitler to the bomb. How a science project in the desert helped win a war
