No Holding Back: Operation Totalize, Normandy, August 1944

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. His latest works are Who Killed Canadian History?, Who Killed
the Canadian Military, and Hell’s Cor

The Canadian campaign in Normandy in 1944 has been receiving much more
attention recently than in years past, not all of it favourable. The
Canadians were green, too slow, and ill-led, critics say, but Canadian
scholars, led by Terry Copp, have looked at the ground, the weaponry,
and the records and produced a sharply contrary view of good soldiers
beating the Germans. No one hitherto has looked at the big attacks of
August—Operations Totalize and Tractable—that aimed to close the
Falaise Gap. This book, the first of two on the subject, looks at
Totalize in detail, and it will add fuel to the debate. Reid’s study
of Tractable will be eagerly awaited.

No Holding Back is superbly presented, with fine illustrations, charts,
and maps. The charts show how much road space an armoured/infantry
column took up; the illustrations give a very good sense of what the
Canadian and German armour and artillery could and couldn’t do.
Reid’s prose is serviceable and his judgments, particularly on the
role of artillery and air support, are fresh and informed. His views of
Canadian generalship are bleak in the extreme, and he has few good words
to say about Canadian armour or its employment. What struck me most
forcibly, however, is that Reid manages to write almost without
acknowledging the existence of Terry Copp’s work. This suggests a
scholarly silliness that is unworthy of a capable author and an
unwillingness to engage in a war of ideas that does him no credit.