The Untold Story of How American Engineering and Ingenuity Won World War II
Hachette Books, 2024, 368 pp RRP US$34.00
Hardcover ISBN: 9780306831980
Written By: Christian Wolmar
Reviewed By: Samuel Wright
In January 1944, young doctor and polymath Solly Zuckerman devised his much lauded ‘Transportation Plan’ with the goal of crippling Germany’s logistics network in occupied France. Zuckerman’s unique approach was to view the railway network in France as though it were the cardiovascular system of a human body: ‘When a man died of a heart attack,’ he said, ‘it was not through lack of corpuscles but rather because the arteries were clogged. What counted, therefore, was not the availability of the locomotives but the capacity of the arteries – the railway network – to transport them around the body.’[1] This innovative and unorthodox view of military strategy had an enduring impact on the Allied campaign in Normandy. It is stories like that of Solly Zuckerman that underpin much of Christian Wolmar’s The Liberation Line: The Untold Story of how American Engineering and Ingenuity won World War II. From these stories I have drawn two lessons relevant to Army: that innovative solutions to complex problems are paramount to maintaining an edge over our adversaries, and that success on the battlefield is the result of an interconnected support system working harmoniously, a system that includes, perhaps most importantly, some of the more mundane and underappreciated contributions.
As a prominent railway historian, Christian Wolmar is suitably placed to provide an engaging history of Allied railway engineering in Second World War France.[2] Liberation Line begins with the build-up of resources in Great Britain in anticipation of a cross-channel offensive. The tension is palpable as British and American government officials and military professionals weigh up the strategic benefits against the logistical challenges of such an offensive. The lead up to D-Day was not without its challenges. Operation Jubilee, also known as the Dieppe raid (an amphibious attack on occupied France designed to inform future operations), was a disaster. As Wolmar highlights, the Dieppe raid was a failure both in its impact on German forces and in its capacity to inform future approaches.[3] And yet, despite the challenges, Allied forces were successfully embedded in Normandy through the most ambitious amphibious operation in history, and were sustained in their advance through one of the most extensive and complex logistics operations in history.
The Liberation Line is a history of odds being continuously and emphatically defied. The engineers and railway workers that rebuilt France’s railway network were consistently working to impossible deadlines and in often dangerous situations and locations. The French railroads, destroyed by the Allies during bombing campaigns and acts of sabotage by the French resistance, needed to be repaired, and quickly. Early in the campaign, with Patton advancing rapidly, fuel was urgently required to continue the advance. In what has been referred to as ‘the most dramatic achievement of engineers in railroad construction’, American engineers were tasked with rebuilding 135 miles of railroad in 75 hours, an undertaking that would normally require months of planning and construction.[4]
Engineering and construction kept supply lines open and in communication with the rapidly advancing US Armies, namely Bradley’s First and Patton’s Third, a difficult undertaking given Patton’s penchant for moving first and sorting out logistical requirements later. And yet it was Patton who best embodied the daring and cunning required to perform such immense undertakings. Patton ‘disobeyed all the conventions of army movement’ and was not opposed to undertaking tasks ostensibly below his station, such as acting as a traffic cop to direct military traffic in Avranches.[5] Wolmar makes it clear that Patton set the pace, and the rest of the Allied forces had to keep up. But Patton ‘always led his men. He did not rule them.’[6] Feats of innovation and ingenuity were driven by not just necessity in the face of extreme tasks, but also because leadership demonstrated a commitment to achieving creative solutions to complex problems.
Other examples of engineering ingenuity are scattered throughout Liberation Line. They are examples rendered human by Wolmar, stories of innovative solutions created in the high-pressure environment of wartime. For example, there is the story of Colonel H Bingham, who devised a method of bringing railway cars directly from modified LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank) onto the railway lines in Normandy,[7] ensuring that materiel was not bogged down on the beachhead. And there are the engineers who, concerned about booby trapped railway lines, tested the lines ‘with a locomotive pushing two railcars weighed down with ballast [likely grain or sand] to ensure any mines would be safely detonated.’[8] In addition to these Allied achievements, there are lessons that can be learned from their opponents too. Identifying that the Allies were targeting railway lines, the Germans dug fake craters and built flimsy bridges surrounded by debris, creating the illusion that communications had been destroyed and repairs not carried out.[9] The Nazi’s communications did not break down due to a lack of ingenuity, but due to a lack of support from their leader, Adolf Hitler, who refused to heed advice from the Luftwaffe.[10]
While Wolmar praises American feats of ingenuity and improvisation, The Liberation Line is not without its criticism of historical inaccuracies induced by the US Army. Such inaccuracies reinforce the popular image of the liberation of France and undermine the efforts of those who kept communication lines open. An example of this can be seen in the Red Ball Express. The Red Ball Express was a trucking operation that delivered 100,000 tons of supplies from Normandy to the front line, utilising ‘absolute priority’ of the roads on a ‘defined one-way route’. Needless to say, the operators of the Red Ball Express worked exhaustingly long hours, causing the deaths of numerous civilians, caught in the paths of oncoming trucks as they raced to maintain frontline communication. Official US Army histories exclude the fact that ‘of the 50,000 men who took part in the Red Ball Express, nearly 80 percent were black GIs who served in separate units from white soldiers’ due to racial segregation.[11] The 1952 film of the same name is one of many examples of the harm caused by inaccurate histories.
Historians have long been aware of the ‘tyranny of logistics’. Allied logistics were a key contributor to victory in Europe, and it was Nazi Germany’s aversion to logistics considerations that contributed to its downfall.[12] What is unique about Wolmar’s study is not his focus on the primacy of logistics, but rather his determination to uncover the extraordinary resilience and resourcefulness of, not only US railway engineers, but also of French railwaymen, Red Cross volunteers, and others whose ‘dull, repetitive work’ ensured that the tyranny of logistics could be overcome. Through telling the stories of all involved in the Liberation Line, Wolmar has turned an oft dull and repetitive topic into an insightful and informative history that pays homage to one of the lesser-known aspects of the Allied campaign in Normandy. Logistics considerations are essential but so is ensuring that these railwaymen, soldiers and civilian workers are not forgotten from history due to the perceived unromantic nature of their contribution.
Endnotes
[1] Christian Wolmar, The Liberation Line: The Untold Story of How American Engineering and Ingenuity Won World War II, New York, NY: Hachette Books, 2024, 45.
[2] Wolmar has written extensively on the role railways have played in war and empire; see Christian Wolmar, Engines of War: How Wars Were Won and Lost on the Railways, Atlantic Books, 2010; Christian Wolmar, Blood, Iron & Gold, Atlantic Books, 2009.
[3] Wolmar, The Liberation Line, 9-10.
[4] Ibid., xxiii
[5] Ibid., 110
[6] Allen, Drive to Victory, 17 cited in Wolmar, The Liberation Line
[7] Wolmar, The Liberation Line, 80; ‘Preventing the heavy freight cars and locomotives from sinking into the sand meant they had to remain on rails all the time. Bingham’s solution, which he had developed in London, was neat and effective: the engineer’s installed “breathing bridges” on the sand that consisted of railroad tracks set in quick-drying concrete… On the LSTs, one end of a section of track was laid on the lip of the deck, and other end mounted on wheels that connected with the rails on the beach.’
[8] Ibid., 154.
[9] Ibid., 283.
[10] Ibid., xxv; “Tracks to Victory,” Classic Trains, special edition, 2019, 55 cited in Wolmar, The liberation Line, xxv. Hitler ‘ignored the evidence from the Luftwaffe’s reconnaissance of the classification yards and railway sidings in Southern England, which revealed that they “were full of locomotives and freight cars which the Allies apparently intended to use to penetrate his ‘impenetrable fortress.” In contrast, Hitler’s “own roads to victory became progressively useless as Allied planes bombed the Third Reich out of gasoline, and when he turned to his long-neglected railway system to help him out, it was unequal to the task.”
[11] Ibid., 161
[12] Russell A. Hart, "Feeding Mars: The Role of Logistics in the German Defeat in Normandy, 1944," War in History 3, no. 4 (1996), 418.
