| Thinking of the Keegan quote there is surely a lot of truth there?
Regardless of the sheer scale of the defeats in the west there was something hugely significant about the retreat from France for Germany.
Similar perhaps to the way most westerners now perceive the battles in Western Europe as a more immediate and accesible part of the war, wouldn't the German 'Volk' have seen the crushing loss at Falaise as rather closer to home than the (at that time) slightly more 'remote' conflict to the East?
The first 'local' catastrophe for the Reich? and maybe more significantly than any other factor; over the same ground as the First War. An enormous symbolic defeat with huge ramifications across not just the military sphere but also the Social and political? It has to have been the point many German citizens, politicians, and soldiers finally thought "We're not going to win this are we..." |