 | |
| Author | Alan Gratz |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical Fiction |
| Publisher | Scholastic Inc. |
Publication date | October 15, 2019 |
| Pages | 336 |
| ISBN | 978-1-338-72673-2 |
Allies is a historical fiction novel by Alan Gratz, based on D-Day. It was published by Scholastic Inc. on October 15, 2019. [1] Although Gratz has written several other historical fiction novels set in World War II, including Prisoner B-3087 , Projekt 1065, Grenade, and Heroes, each stands alone.
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The story starts with a sixteen-year-old boy named Douglas "Dee" Carpenter and his friend Sid Jacobstein, who are soldiers traveling in a boat, preparing for the fight against the Nazis. Douglas Carpenter's real name is Dietrich Zimmerman, and he is secretly German. [2]
At the same time, eleven-year-old Samira Zidane has her mother caught by the German guards and wants to save her because she lost her father to the Nazis and she does not want to lose her too. Samira then teams up with French forces to stop the Nazis until the American army attacks Normandy. Simultaneously, nineteen-year-old Lance Corporal James McKay and his friend Sam Tremblay are ready to jump off an airplane into the Nazi battlefield, knowing that they are going to die. While this is happening, Private Bill Richards is in his tank named Achilles on the battlefield, thinking this is going to be the greatest invasion of history. The German 88s shoot at Achilles, and Bill has to get out of his tank to dig a hole with his friend Thomas. The German 88 missed, and they all cheered that it missed. Elsewhere, Corporal Henry Allen, who is a medic, heals many injured soldiers during the battle. Meanwhile, Dee has been shot on the battlefield, and he was told not to fight anymore. Dee reunited with Sid, but he had gotten hurt in the leg. When the Germans attacked with a mortar, there was a mini-battle between them. Dee and Sid hid behind the hedgerows, but they had to free French towns from Nazi control. While staying close to the houses, one of the houses exploded from the other side of the street. The Germans had a Panzer and a forward-mounted machine gun firing bullets. While the Panzer is traveling, Dee overhears the Germans talking about taking revenge on the French for blowing up the supply depot last month. Sid saw a church boarded and burning with people inside. Dee told Sid what he had heard. Sid questioned Dee about how he understood the German soldiers speaking, and Dee said he was German. Sid was filled with disgust at first, but he had no time to think, and Sid had shot the boards, and one of them cracked. There was a German sniper who tried to stop them from saving them by shooting the window. Sid told him to keep on going, and he moved, but Dee got shot in the shoulder and was now unconscious. [3]
After the war is over, thirteen-year-old Monique Marchand wants to be a nurse and tries to help the remaining injured soldiers. While Monique is helping the soldiers, a reporter named Dorothy Powell helps Monique with helping the soldiers. When Dee finally regained consciousness, Monique and Dorothy carried him to the Bayeux Tapestry. When he turned around, he saw Sid in his bed. Dee was worried about who's going to stop the Nazis, but Sid reminded him that the entire free world united for the common good and that they were stronger together and allies.
Julie Hanson of Seattle’s Child “found [Allies] a riveting read and a good introduction to World War II and D-Day. It did not gloss over the brutal realities of war, and particularly of the Allied invasion of Normandy. The storytelling includes many deaths, but I didn't find it gruesome or gratuitous." [4]
John McMurtrie from The New York Times said "The book gives us far more than an assemblage of characters out of central casting. The figures whom Gratz paints surprise themselves with their acts of heroism, but they’re also full of doubt and fear. And they can be funny. They’re real people whom young readers will believe in and relate to.” [5]
The School Library Journal 's Kaetlyn Phillips said “A complex moment of history is deftly explored. Give to readers who enjoyed Refugee, Gratz’s other World War II novels, or Eric Walters’s Fly Boy.” [6]
Blitzkrieg or Bewegungskrieg is a word used to describe a combined arms surprise attack using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations; together with artillery, air assault, and close air support; with intent to break through the opponent's lines of defense, dislocate the defenders, unbalance the enemies by making it difficult to respond to the continuously changing front, and defeat them in a decisive Vernichtungsschlacht: a battle of annihilation.
Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. Popularly known as the Desert Fox, he served in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany, as well as in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, and the army of Imperial Germany. Rommel was injured multiple times in both world wars.
Decision Before Dawn is a 1951 American war film directed by Anatole Litvak, starring Richard Basehart, Oskar Werner, and Hans Christian Blech. It tells the story of the U.S. Army using potentially unreliable German prisoners of war to gather intelligence as clandestine "line-crossers" in the closing days of World War II. The film was adapted by Peter Viertel and Jack Rollens (uncredited) from the novel Call It Treason by George L. Howe. The film was a critical success and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Michael Wittmann was a German Waffen-SS tank commander during the Second World War. He is known for his ambush of elements of the British 7th Armored Division during the Battle of Villers-Bocage on 13 June 1944. While in command of a Tiger I tank, Wittmann destroyed up to 14 tanks, 15 personnel carriers and two anti-tank guns within 15 minutes before the loss of his own tank.
The Western Front was a military theatre of World War II encompassing Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The Italian front is considered a separate but related theatre. The Western Front's 1944–1945 phase was officially deemed the European Theater by the United States, whereas Italy fell under the Mediterranean Theater along with North Africa. The Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale combat operations. The first phase saw the capitulation of Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, and France during May and June 1940 after their defeat in the Low Countries and the northern half of France, and continued into an air war between Germany and Britain that climaxed with the Battle of Britain. The second phase consisted of large-scale ground combat, which began in June 1944 with the Allied landings in Normandy and continued until the defeat of Germany in May 1945 with its invasion.
The Falaise pocket or battle of the Falaise pocket was the decisive engagement of the Battle of Normandy in the Second World War. Allied forces formed a pocket around Falaise, Calvados, in which German Army Group B, consisting of the 7th Army and the Fifth Panzer Army, were encircled by the Western Allies. The battle resulted in the destruction of most of Army Group B west of the Seine, which opened the way to Paris and the Franco-German border.
The SS Division Hitlerjugend or 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend" was a German armoured division of the Waffen-SS during World War II. The majority of its junior enlisted men were drawn from members of the Hitler Youth, while the senior NCOs and officers were from other Waffen-SS divisions. Most of the Division Enlisted Soldiers, were of Teenagers starting from the ages of 16 or even 15.
The 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich or SS Division Das Reich was an armored division of the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Wilhelm Mohnke was a German military officer who was one of the original members of the SchutzstaffelSS-Stabswache Berlin formed in March 1933. Mohnke, who had joined the Nazi Party in September 1931, rose through the ranks to become one of Adolf Hitler's last remaining general officers at the end of World War II in Europe.
The Battle for Caen is the name given to fighting between the British Second Army and the German Panzergruppe West in the Second World War for control of the city of Caen and its vicinity during the larger Battle of Normandy. The battles followed Operation Neptune, the Allied landings on the French coast on 6 June 1944 (D-Day).
The Ardenne Abbey massacre occurred during the Battle of Normandy at the Ardenne Abbey, a Premonstratensian monastery in Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe, near Caen, France. In June 1944, 20 Canadian soldiers were massacred in a garden at the abbey by members of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend over the course of several days and weeks. This was part of the Normandy Massacres, a series of scattered killings during which up to 156 Canadian prisoners of war were murdered by soldiers of the 12th SS Panzer Division during the Battle of Normandy. The perpetrators of the massacre, members of the 12th SS Panzer Division, were known for their fanaticism, the majority having been drawn from the Hitlerjugend or Hitler Youth.
Hubert Meyer was a German SS commander during the Nazi era and a post-war activist. In World War II, Meyer served in the Waffen-SS and had junior postings with the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler; he briefly commanded the SS Division Hitlerjugend in 1944. After the war, he became active in HIAG, a Waffen-SS negationist lobby group, and was HIAG's last chairman before the group dissolved in 1992.
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Normandy landings. A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.
The 17pdr SP Achilles is a British variant of the American M10 tank destroyer armed with the British Ordnance QF 17-pounder high-velocity 76.2 mm (3-inch) anti-tank gun in place of the M10's considerably less powerful 3-inch Gun M7. A total of 1,100 M10s were converted to Achilles, making it the second most numerous armoured fighting vehicle to carry the 17-pounder gun, behind the Sherman Firefly tank.
The Battle of Le Mesnil-Patry during the Second World War, was the last attack by an armoured battle group conducted by Canadian troops in Normandy in June 1944. The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada of the 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade of the 3rd Canadian Division, supported by the 6th Armoured Regiment of the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade attacked the village of Le Mesnil-Patry in Normandy, to advance southwards towards the higher ground of Hill 107 to the west of Cheux. The attack was intended to support a larger operation by the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division and the 7th Armoured Division to capture the city of Caen and to advance in the centre of the bridgehead next to the First US Army. The battle was a German defensive success but the greater German objective of defeating the invasion by a counter-offensive also failed.
Panzer ace is a contemporary term used in English-speaking popular culture to describe highly decorated German tank ("panzer") commanders and crews during World War II. The Wehrmacht as well as British and American militaries did not recognise the concept of an "ace" during the war. The similar term, tank ace has been used post-war to describe highly regarded tanks commanders.
James Holland is an English popular historian, author and broadcaster, who specialises in the history of the Second World War.
Panzer Aces is an English-language book series by the German author Franz Kurowski. Originally released in 1992 by J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing, a Canadian publisher of military literature, it was licensed in 2002 by the firm to American publishers Ballantine Books and Stackpole Books. The series' books were a commercial success and enjoyed a wide readership among the American public.
J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing is a Canadian publishing house that specialises in literature on the German armed forces of the World War II era. Its authors are both popular history writers such as Paul Carell and Franz Kurowski, along with the war-time veterans, including Kurt Meyer of the SS Division Hitlerjugend and Otto Weidinger of the SS Division Das Reich.
The Normandy massacres were a series of killings in-which approximately 156 Canadian and two British prisoners of war (POWs) were murdered by soldiers of the 12th SS Panzer Division during the Battle of Normandy in World War II. The majority of the murders occurred within the first ten days of the Allied invasion of France. The killings ranged in scale from spontaneous murders of individual POWs, to premeditated mass executions involving dozens of victims. Colonel Kurt Meyer, a commander in the 12th SS Panzer Division, was the only perpetrator charged for his role in the atrocities.