Autopsy of a Battle, the Liberation of the French Riviera

[Jean-Loup]

After almost 10 years of work, I am pleased to announce that my book about the Liberation of the Nice area in the wake of Operation Dragoon is now availlable: Autopsy of a Battle, the Liberation of the French Riviera, at Schiffer Publications. The english version is already availlable, and the french version should be availlable as of July at Heimdal.

The book presents an overview of the airborne aspect of Operation Dragoon, then becomes an extremely detailled account of the Liberation of the towns and villages of the French Riviera, in the Cannes and Nice region, from August 15th to September 7th 1944. There is also a chapter dedicated to the German occupation, with many unpublished photos, and a chapter about the French resistance, with information that can rarely be found in English language. The book is mostly an oral history, constructed from hundreds of interviews I performed personaly with Allied, German and French veterans, French resistance members and local civilians. All the oral accounts are meticulously crosschecked with period documents such as official military reports, diaries, photos, letters, cemetery registers, exhumation reports, battlefield archaeology, etc. These documents are also quoted or reproduced in the book.

The units most heavily represented in the book are the 1st Special Service Force, 509th PIB, 517th PRCT, 551st PIB, and the German Reserve Division 148. Other units are also represented in certain specific chapters, the 141st IR, the 40th Engineer Regiment, the 887th Airborne Engineer Company, the French Groupe Naval d'Assaut de Corse, the German Infanterie Division 34, etc.

Those of you who have liked my threads over the years, should like this book, as it it was written in the same spirit, but going into even more details, and using an even more rigorous approach. There is of course quite a bit of battlefield archaeology, and lots of personal stories of soldiers.

There are approximately 800 photos in the book, most of them unpublished. I have to say however that it was very difficult to find photos about such a specific theme, so the reader should be warned that the number of high quality unpublished photos is limited, though there are a fair number.

Anybody interested in the phenomenon of war should find this book interesting to read, because of the numerous personal stories, and because of the multifaced approach, that presents information from the Allied, German and French perspectives, and from the military, resistance and civilian persepcetives. There is also in depth information about themes that are usualy not mentioned, such as what happened with the bodies of killed soldiers, the work of Graves Registration companies, etc.

I have a little and not very professional advertising website set up for the book that can be seen here: http://autopsyofabattle.blogspot.com/

Below I will show a few pages from the book, to present the style and features that can be expected in it.

JL

[Jean-Loup]

When ever possible, the battles and encounters described in the book are backed up with battlefiled archaeology reports and photos of militaria recovered from local residents.

[Jean-Loup]

ALL information about Allied and German casualties was meticulously cross checked with Allied and German graves registration and exhumation reports. A huge effort was made to make a complete list of all German casualties that occured in the Nice area during WWII, and of all First Airborne Task Force casualties that occured in southern France. Lists of hundreds of names sorted by date and location of death are presented in the annexes of the book. In each chapter, lists of casualties are presented after the descriptions of the battles. I attempted to contact the relatives of each and every Allied and German casualty mentioned in the book, in order to find a photo of him, and details of his death. I dont think such detailed work has ever been done on such a large scale for a WWII era battlefield.

This is not one of those books that says: "The paratroopers attacked the town and killed fifty Germans, while suffering only three casualties", based on the period US military report or an Allied medal citation. This book says exactly how many German bodies were found after the fighting, who they were by name, how they were buried and where, has photos of them, letters their familly received, etc.

The Allies were investigated in the same manner. I also did an in depth research project on the graves registrations, and managed to interview one of the two American officers who buried all the casualties mentioned in the book.

[Jean-Loup]

The book contains detailed information about the German Reserve Division 148, more then has ever been published elsewhere to my knowleadge. There are numerous unpublished photos of the Germans on the French Riviera.

In each chapter, the descriptions of the battles are accompanied by photos and brief biographies of some of the soldiers who were killed during the fighting. As mentioned earlier, I attempted to find a photo of all 300+ Germans (many of which were 17 and 18 year old Silesian and Czech conscripts) and 100+ Allies (mostly american, with a few Canadians and French as well) who died during the encounters described in the book.

[Jean-Loup]

In the book there is one chapter dedicated to the French resistance and the maquis in the Nice region. This chapter is based on first hand accounts by both right and left wing resistance members, and presents informationt that can only rarely be found in English, or even in French for that matter. Though the resistance was really not my main focus of study for the book, I am very proud of having managed to build up this chapter.

And throughout the book are numerous photos of the towns, villages , people and events mentioned. I made every effort to find as many photos as possible from every source availlable, and managed to turn up a fair number of unpublished photos from both the Allied and German side.

That is it for now, and I am looking forward to hearing feedback from readers of the book in the next months.

[Jean-Loup]

I had the pleasent surprise of finding the very first "scholarly review" of my very first book on amazon today, by Marc Pitcavage, who although seeming to be a picky reader, gave it four stars:



Let me say right off that I have a very dim view of the publisher of this book, Schiffer, which is notorious for its nazicentricity. It is a measure of how desperate I am for books on World War II to read that I decided to order this at all.

Yet I turned out to be more than pleased with this particular book, Jean-Loup Gassend's "Operation Dragoon: Autopsy of a Battle: The Allied Liberation of the French Riviera August-September 1944."

Paying more attention to the first part of the title (Operation Dragoon: Autopsy of a Battle) than the second part when I pre-ordered it, more than a year ago, I assumed it was going to be about the Anvil-Dragoon landings. The main reason I decided to chance it was because it was by a French author and I had hoped that it might cover the exploits of the First French Army in its rapid liberation of Toulon and Marseilles, a remarkable feat of generalship and fighting.

But it wasn't about that at all. Rather, it was about one tiny sliver of the landings in southern France (and far from the French army): a month of warfare in a single French department (essentially a county), the department of the French Riviera (where Cannes and Nice are located), the southeastern most department in France, right next to the Italian border along the coast. This department is mostly sparsely populated mountainous areas (the Maritime Alps), with the beautiful resort areas along the coast.

With the Anvil-Dragoon landings in late summer 1944, part of the First Airborne Task Force (an ad hoc British-American airborne division) and part of the U.S. 36th Infantry Division landed in this area, by air and by sea, on the extreme right wing of the Allied landing (so too did a tiny French commando unit). The 36th pulled away for other tasks, leaving the FATF (minus the British brigade, which pulled out fast, replaced by the American-Canadian First Special Service Force), which was tasked with protecting the bridgehead and moving east to the Italian border. It faced the German 148th (training) Division, an understrength infantry division consisting of low-morale, often incompletely trained soldiers, many of whom were of Polish rather than German origin (and thus apt to desert). The 148th's task was to manage a controlled retreat to the Italian border, where defenses were being prepared.

Thus you have, in effect, a small unit action: one understrength division pitted against another understrength division in a small geographic area. However, there is also a major third player: the French Resistance, which was quite active.

The book is written by a non-historian, Jean-Loup Gassend. He is actually a forensic physician from the French Riviera who grew up with stories of the fighting that occurred in his home region and became fascinated by them. He participated in attempts to locate and identify war dead from the region and eventually decided to write a book on what transpired there in August-September 1944.

Gassend created what can only be called a labor of love--and something really only possible by someone willing to spend years devoted to a project. The book is coffee table book sized, but not coffee table book thick. Rather, it is a massive tome, about 560 pages long (and weighting nearly 8 pounds).

Gassend did research in French, English, and German, laboriously writing veterans or their surviving relatives, or conducting interviews. He also did the same for French civilians. He also did extensive research in secondary sources and primary documents. Moreover, as a forensic physician, he also engaged in forensic battle research, analyzing casualties and the physical items found on them (in some cases, looking at casualties was the only way to establish that which German unit was in which place at which time). In other words, the subtitle "autopsy of a battle" is a more literal title than one would think. The level of research is impressive.

Gassend, probably wisely, decided to write his book mainly as an oral history, allowing participants (military, resistance, civilian) to tell the story themselves, for the most part. As a non-historian, this was probably the best way for him to go. The book is reasonably well-written (Gassend speaks/writes English), though Schiffer's copy-editors should have caught a few things.

The Riviera "campaign" was really nothing but small scale skirmishes, sometimes very small scale, with no truly big action at all. The largest single combat was when the French resistance rose up against the Germans in Nice. What this does is allow Gassend to treat each little skirmish, each little episode, as a treasure to explore and relate, from every perspective possible--American/Canadian, German, French resistance, French civilians.

Gassend's emphasis on casualties and deaths--in numbers that are meaningful as opposed to the vast deaths of the Bulge or Kursk or Iwo Jima--gives the book a special character. When a person dies here, it is a death, not a statistic. And we often find out exactly how that person died--war isn't pretty. This is something that really is missing from the overwhelming majority of military history works, but it is possible here because of the nature of the historical situation as well as Gassend's patient, loving dedication to detail.

I haven't read many World War II books like this one, I will certainly say. But it is a book worth reading, even though in the larger scheme of things, virtually none of the actions here mattered at all. Gassend shows us that sometimes it is not the larger scheme of things that we should be paying attention to.

[jacquesf]

Nice review JL. Did not know about this book. J

[Mike Davis]

Excellent! I just ordered through Amazon: USD $63.69

[Jean-Loup]

Did you get your copy yet Mike?
The French edition is just being finnished off now, and the French designer told me that one of the proof readers had had nightmares after reading through the book... which I took as a compliment of course.

[Henry Lee]

Coverage of German armor units

Are there much coverage of German armor units in the book?

I expected unpublished photos of German panzers for Panzer-Regimnet 15 and other units and text describing the tank battles with US units.

[Jean-Loup]

No, as mentioned above, the book covers the Liberation in the area between Green beach (right wing of the invasion), and the Italian border (see illustration below). In this area only the 148 Reserve Division; and then the 34 Infanterie Division were involved, and they had no tanks. This is not a book about armoured warfare, it is a book about paratroopers, forcefully enlisted infantry troops, partisans and civilians.

The title "Operation Dragoon" is indeed confusing, and I did not want these words in the title, but the publisher added them onto the title to make it more catchy. Only one small aspect of Operation Dragoon is covered in the book. The pint of the book was not to cover Dragoon, but to cover the liberation of the French Riviera as shown below.

[Kelly w]

Congratulations Jean, lots of time and effort spend on this one. Shame the publisher could not get what you wanted with the cover title. After all it's your work and sweat involved, but that's business for you. When you become famous you will tell them how it's going to be done!!!

[Mike Davis]

I received my copy of this massive volume last week from Amazon. The content is amazing and the quality very high. I would not hesitate to recommend it, a comprehensive documentary of a less well-known campaign.

[Jean-Loup]

Thanks Mike.
The book has been getting good grades on amazon so far, and also some very nice comments, including from complete strangers:


"Amazing analysis of the battle, not only the action, but the people who were involved. Jean-Loup has taken different accounts of the same event and combined them with modern research and forensics to give a deep insight of what happened and why and how it affected those involved. This tome provides great insight into the battle."

"I see this book as the definitive work on World War II in Southern France. It presents a balanced view from all participants. Interviews of many surviving participants in the event that liberated this area from Nazi control are included as well as homage paid to the valiant men who paid the ultimate price which makes it a must read for all Historians interested in this era. It presents the German perspective as well as the allied views. All those who lost family members in this theater will find it engrossing. The author has done a superlative job in researching the action to assure an accurate and intriguing account. The author Jean-Loup Gassend is a resident of the area which makes him especially familiar with the area and it's people. His interviews are researched and verified as much as possible.
It is a beautiful book that I found very pleased to have purchased. The contents are compelling reading."

[Jean-Loup]

An email from one of the few survivors of the 509th who actualy read the whole book though he is over 90:


I have finally finished reading Autopsy of a Battle. I am a slow reader because I have glaucoma
and can read only for a short time.
This book is the most in-depth account of World War II action that I have read. I found much new
information about the invasion, including some about my own unit, the 509 PIB.
I was very impressed by your descriptions of the German side and the activities of the Maquis.
I did not have much personal contact with the French Resistance.
It was interesting that the German commanders wrote letters to the families of German soldiers
killed. It seemed to me they did this more than American commanders
You must have written hundreds of letters and conducted many interviews with German, French,
American and British persons. You have honored many people killed in this war by including their
pictures in your book. Your description of the entire invasion is outstanding.
Many thanks to you for your fine book.