Taking Berlin

August 15, 2022
The author of Taking Paris returns with a look at how World War II progressed in Europe after the D-Day landings. Unquestionably, the fight for the Nazi capital was an epic confrontation and a crucial element of the ending of the war. Yet popular historian Dugard, co-author of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series, examines that part of the story only glancingly, offering a brief, desultory section near the end. Instead, the author focuses on the Allied push across Western Europe, starting with D-Day and including the disastrous Operation Market Garden and the Ardennes Offensive. All of these events, significant as they are, have been covered better before, whether as official history, memoir, or analytical commentary. Dugard reiterates the antagonism between Montgomery and Patton, a conflict that ran so deep it almost derailed the entire Allied effort. But this is also well-traveled territory. Dugard seeks to inject new material via colorful figures like journalist Martha Gellhorn, but her wartime adventures have already been recounted extensively--not least by her. The author also notes that there was an Allied plan to beat the Russians to Berlin with an airborne troop drop, although it never came to fruition. This is hardly a secret: There is a reference to it in Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers, among other works. One waits for Dugard to spring a surprise, in the form of new documents or a fresh perspective, but it never comes. He barely mentions the Russian army that actually took Berlin, and the eventual move by American and British forces into the western part of the city, the real start of the Cold War, receives no coverage. The postwar fate of Berlin was settled largely at the Yalta Conference, not by Patton or Montgomery. Anyone interested in more rigorous histories of this period have plenty of other options, including those of Antony Beevor, Peter Caddick-Adams, and Rick Atkinson. For WWII neophytes.

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September 12, 2022
Bestseller Dugard follows Taking Paris with a kaleidoscopic account of the Allies’ campaign to capture Berlin in the final months of WWII. Opening the narrative with Gen. George S. Patton’s famous May 1944 speech before the D-Day invasion (“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You win it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country”), Dugard interweaves the experiences of a colorful cast that includes Patton, Gen. James Gavin, Winston Churchill, journalist Martha Gellhorn, and German field marshal Erwin Rommel. Among the highlights: Gavin parachuting behind German troops guarding Omaha and Utah beaches on D-Day; Gellhorn stowing away on the hospital ship HMS Prague to observe the Normandy landings from offshore; and Patton’s rivalry with British general Bernard Montgomery. Documenting the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge, Rommel’s death, the taking of the Siegfried Line on the border of Germany and France, the Yalta Conference, and other turning points, Dugard enriches the account with colorful if shopworn gossip about Gellhorn’s romance with Gavin; Eisenhower’s rumored fling with his driver, Kay Summersby; and more. Dugard’s terse prose (“Engines cough. Catch.”) and use of present tense (“James Gavin is a dangerous man”) keeps the action humming, and he skillfully mines his subjects’ personal writings. This fast-paced history is well worth the read.

October 15, 2022
The Second World War had been raging for five years when a cross-channel invasion of France by U.S. and British factions of the Allied forces changed everything. The leadership of U.S. General Eisenhower and British General Montgomery, along with the persistence and bravery of the men landing by air and sea, made Operation Overlord a triumph. By June 1944, the war's momentum had shifted, and Nazi forces, which had once trampled over much of Europe, had their backs to the wall as they faced possible mutiny in their upper ranks. The Soviets were battered but had beaten back the Nazi onslaught and begun to push west, while the British and Americans closed in from the east. Berlin was their common goal, but the path there would be bloody. Following Taking Paris (2021), Dugard's latest engaging history book features a fascinating narrative of intrigue in the waning days of WWII. From the perspectives of both the Allied and Axis powers, Dugard shows how victory often appeared as proximate as agonizing defeat.

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