Foreword
With the publication of Riviera to the Rhine, the Center of Military History completes its series of operational histories treating the activities of the U.S. Army’s combat forces during World War II. This volume examines the least known of the major units in the European theater, General Jacob L. Devers’ 6th Army Group. Under General Devers’ leadership, two armies, the U.S. Seventh Army under General Alexander M. Patch and the First French Army led by General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, landing on the Mediterranean coast near Marseille in August 1944, cleared the enemy out of southern France and then turned east and joined with army groups under Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery and General Omar N. Bradley in the final assault on Germany.
In detailing the campaign of these Riviera-based armies, the authors have concentrated on the operational level of war, paying special attention to the problems of joint, combined, and special operations and to the significant roles of logistics, intelligence, and personnel policies in these endeavors. They have also examined in detail deception efforts at the tactical and operational levels, deep battle penetrations, river-crossing efforts, combat in built-up areas, and tactical innovations at the combined arms level.
Such concepts are of course very familiar to today’s military students, and the fact that this volume examines them in such detail makes this study especially valuable to younger officers and noncommissioned officers. In truth, the challenges faced by military commanders half a century ago were hardly unique. That is why I particularly urge today’s military students, who might well face some of these same problems in future combat, to study this campaign so that they might learn from their illustrious predecessors in the profession of arms.
Harold W. Nelson
Brigadier General, USA
Chief of Military History
Washington, D.C.
1 April 1976
The Authors
Dr. Jeffrey J. Clarke has been a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History since 1971 and was named its Chief Historian in July 1990. He has also taught history at Rutgers University and the University of Maryland-College Park and is currently adjunct associate professor of history at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Dr. Clarke holds a Ph.D. in history from Duke University, is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, and served with the 1st Infantry Division and Advisory Team 95 during the Vietnam War. He is the author of Advice and Support: The Final Years, a volume in the U.S. Army in Vietnam series, and has contributed many articles, papers, and essays on military history to a wide variety of professional publications and organizations. Dr. Clarke is currently preparing a combat volume on the Vietnam War.
Robert Ross Smith received his B.A. and M.A. from Duke University and later served for two years as a member of General Douglas MacArthur’s historical staff during World War II. In 1947 he joined the Army’s historical office, then known as the Office of the Chief of Military History, where he published The Approach to the Philippines (1953) and Triumph in the Philippines (1963) in the U.S. Army in World War II series as well as several other military studies. Later he served as historian for the United States Army, Pacific, during the Vietnam War. At the time of his retirement from the Center of Military History in 1983, Mr. Smith was chief of the General History Branch.