The Battle for Brittany

In a swift campaign the Third US Army conquered the Brittany peninsula in August 1944. The German forces in Brittany had been herded into Lorient, St Nazaire, and Brest, where they could only await American siege operations. Despite these achievements, the Brittany campaign had not yet secured the basic strategic objectives that had motivated it: the capture of harbours. St Malo was destroyed beyond hope of immediate repair and Nantes was demolished as well. At the end of the month, as the VIII Corps gathered its forces for a mighty effort to take Brest, the development of the breakout in Normandy and the pursuit beyond the Seine made the logistical planners start to look elsewhere for major ports of entry. The VIII Corps faced a dogged defence at Brest and it took six weeks of fighting to obtain the final surrender of Generalleutnant Ramcke on September 19. American casualties in the Battle of Brittany totalled 9,831; prisoners and the taken numbered 38,000, of whom more than 20,000 were combat troops. On September 13, after the extent of the reconstruction and works necessary to rehabilitate the harbour at Brest had been looked at, it was decided to abandon all repair work there. The serious Allied problem of port capacity persisted until November, when the Antwerp facilities became available. The charge was later made that the employment of three divisions and valuable transports and supplies to defeat the German garrison at Brest adversely affected pursuit operations beyond the Seine. However, it should be noted that the resources used at Brest were quite small compared to the main effort and could hardly have changed the development of the advance towards the Seine and beyond. Told through more than a hundred ‘Then and Now’ comparison photographs that bring history to life, this book tells the story of the long siege of Festung Brest. By pinpointing for the first time, the locations where so many photographs were taken, this book will allow the reader to walk in the footsteps of the heroes of this great moment in history.