Following the successful landing by the Allied armies in Normandy in June 1944, Hitler's forces battled for two months to contain the bridgehead. However, when his last-ditch attempt to recover the initiative with Operation Lüttich — the counter-attack from Mortain on August 7 — failed, it was an implied admission that his armies in the West had been defeated. From that starting point, Jean Paul Pallud takes up the story, following in the footsteps of the Germans as they retreat across France. The next days and weeks were ones of confusion for the German command with staffs and technical services dispersed; command and communication virtually non-existent; roads congested and strafed, and directives to build new stop-lines almost immediately rendered obsolete by the flow of events . . . all within a matter of a few days. This, then, is that story . . . told through hundreds of 'then and now' comparison photographs by the author, and which includes some quite amazing discoveries that he made along the way.