Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 142

robust personality, took credit. This challenging of
information taught to high school students creates
a very interesting read. Herein lies the one major
weakness of McCain and Salter’s work. If the authors
are going to contest a widely accepted instance in
history with new information, it would be behoove
them to disclose their source in the text. While the
two authors do have a bibliography, they never cite
any of their information with footnotes or any kind
of in-text citations.
This fact does not affect a reader from the general
audience as it remains a quality text. It introduces an
audience interested in history, but not researchers,
to little-known or unknown soldiers. For the world
of academia though, this text should not be used as a
scholarly source due to the lack of quality citations.
I would definitely recommend 13 Soldiers: A Personal
History of Americans at War to a general audience of
individuals interested in history, but for the world of
academia, this text is still wanting.

1st Lt. Eugene M. Harding, U.S. Army National
Guard, Auburn, Indiana

BLOOD AND STEEL 2: The
Wehrmacht Archive: Retreat to the
Reich, September to December 1944
Donald E. Graves, Frontline Books, London,
2015, 202 pages

B

lood and Steel 2, the second book in a series
(the first covers the Normandy campaign),
is a collection of annotated documents from
the German archives and Allied intelligence files.
Canadian military historian Donald Graves naturally focuses on the German forces opposing the First
Canadian Army—making the title somewhat of a
misnomer as the Germans fighting the Canadians
actually retreated into the Netherlands. However,
the documents selected are broad enough to provide
a good overview of the general German situation in
the west and at home in the fall of 1944, making this
a valuable addition to any library on the Wehrmacht
in World War II.
The documents are thematically organized,
including looks at German morale, the individual
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soldier and POW experience, and organization and
German assessments of Allied troops. The latter
discussion focuses on the German impression of the
American soldier. Documents chosen include orders,
intelligence estimates, diary entries, and Allied POW
interrogations. The documents are all from the 1944
period and thus rely on information gleaned from
contemporary sources and do not depend on postwar research or analysis. Graves’ somewhat limited
annotations are useful, although they s