Word: breakthrough
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Then and Now. In 1940 it had taken Colonel General Walther von Reichenau 31 days after the breakthrough at Sedan (where a ready-made land front already existed) to capture Paris. In 1944 it had taken Bradley 23 days after the breakthrough at Coutances (where a land front had had to be created in the Normandy bridgehead) to cross the Seine, which permitted Paris to free itself...
Some interesting points about Eisenhower's restoration of Patton: in Sicily Patton was in command over Bradley; in Normandy the position is reversed. A dispatch from Normandy last week reported that the breakthrough there-which now reglorifies Patton-was "conceived, planned and executed" by General Bradley...
...Omar Bradley, the infantryman's general, was using the greatest U.S. striking force in World War II. In the Normandy stalemate after the brilliant capture of Cherbourg, he had used it tentatively, so G.I.s seemed to think, among the baffling hedgerows of the bocage country. But when the breakthrough came there was nothing tentative about it: Bradley kept plowing ahead without giving the Germans a chance to recover their balance...
Like many a plain front-line G.I., General McNair was hit by a wild salvo dropped in the heavy air preparations for the Normandy breakthrough (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS...
Rommel had a concentration of guns, armor and Italians at El Hamma. Coningham turned loose nearly every medium and light bomber in North Africa on the still-cocky Nazi. For two and a half hours, sticks of bombs were continuously in the air. At the end of the breakthrough and the pursuit, Rommel had lost 300 tanks and vehicles, and his armored back was finally broken...