Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness

Niklas Zetterling’s revised and update version of his excellent book Normandy 1944 is being re-issued. According to Amazon.com it will be available January 10, 2020. The link is here: Normandy 1944

It is set up to “look inside” so you can get some idea what is in there. It is of course, not another war story but a two part discussion on “Campaign Analysis” and “German Combat Formations.”

The “look inside” feature did not include an ability to search the text, so I was not able to check the really important stuff, like how many times Trevor Dupuy and I are mentioned in the book. I am graciously acknowledged in the introduction (as is Richard Anderson). Now, I did write an appendix for the original book. Always the gentleman, Niklas did ask my permission to remove it from this edition.

The book does include a discussion of the relative combat efficiency of the German forces compared to British and U.S. units, always a sensitive subject. We have never invested a lot of time in analyzing Normandy. Most of our analysis of this subject is from Italy 1943-44, Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge) 1944-45 and Kharkov and Kursk 1943 (and shown in War by Numbers). So this is a nice independent look at the subject using additional data from a different campaign by a different scholar.

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
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Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
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His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
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Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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2 Comments

  1. Dupuy gets mentioned 21 times. I noticed that your piece in the appendix had been removed, which was a pity. Is there any chance of that being reproduced on the blog?

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