The Victory in Europe Campaign 1944-5
The Victory in Europe Campaign 1944-5
This tour, conducted by Robert Kershaw in the past, begins at London with visits to Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms, the Imperial War Museum and HMS Belfast. The following day it incorporates the Bletchley Park Ultra Decrypt Museum at Milton Keynes, General Eisenhower’s Southwick House Headquarters near Portsmouth and the D-Day Museum at Southsea. All these visits set the scene for D-Day the invasion of Europe 6th June 1944.
The Channel ferry from Poole to the Cherbourg Peninsula enables a visit to the US D-Day landing beach at Utah en route to our accommodation. The next part of the trip is three days in Normandy viewing the US parachute drop zones around Ste Maire Eglise, the US Ranger assault on Pte du Hoc, the German coastal battery at Longue-sur-Mer, the Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches and the British landing beaches. It ends with a look at the dramatic British glider coup de main attack on Pegasus Bridge, spanning the Orne River Canal. The material used draws upon Robert Kershaw’s highly successful book D-Day Piercing the Atlantic Wall.
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- HMS Belfast
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- D-Day map room Southwick House
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- Bletchley Park
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- Omaha beach today
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- D-Day 70th Anniversary Pte du Hoc
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- Site of Malmedy massacre
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- German coastal battery Longues-sur-Mer
The next phase of the journey is a stop-over in Paris, to explore the French insurrection and the city’s fall to the Allies in August 1944. A day is then spent travelling to Brussels by train and driving ‘Hell’s Highway’, the Operation Market Garden airborne carpet corridor laid across the main waterways to the Rhine. Halts are made at Grave, Nijmegen and Arnhem. A further day is spent visiting and discussing the battles for the famous Arnhem Bridge and the siege of the village of Oosterbeek, where the isolated British 1st Airborne Division was decimated. Robert Kershaw’s acclaimed book It Never Snows in September describes the German view of Arnhem and Market Garden and his more recent book A Street in Arnhem describes the agony experienced by the village of Oosterbeek during the Second World War.
Two days are then follow viewing the ‘dragon’s teeth’ of the much vaunted German Siegfried Line near Aachen before travelling on to the Ardennes. Here we follow the tank tracks of the SS Kampfgruppe Peiper during its bloody advance from Lanzerotte on the German border to the US massacre site at Malmedy, where we disentangle alot of myth from reality. The next day we cover the German advance by the 5th Panzer Army against Bastogne and its heroic defence by the 101st US airborne Division.
The tour concludes with a drive to the Rhine bridge at Remagen, to cover its remarkable capture by US forces and enjoy a boat trip on the Rhine before finally departing from Frankfurt. This is essentially a 12 day tour with an option to proceed further to Berchtesgaden via the preserved Dachau concentration camp, to discuss the final days of the Reich.
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- Arnhem Bridge
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- Grave Bridge
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- The 'Eagle's Nest' Berchtesgaden
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- US trenches still survive in the woods around Bastogne
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- Nijmegen Bridge
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- Dachau concentration camp today
Read Robert’s Books
The Hill
’The Hill narrates the battle for Hill 107 in May 1941, which will decide the outcome for the entire campaign to capture the strategic island of Crete by the Germans from the air alone. The story is told through the eyes of the primary decision makers and takers in defence and attack. The New Zealanders are on the summit, the Germans scaling the heights.
An original approach that reads like a play, based on meticulous research of diaries, letters and post combat accounts.’
The Hill
’The Hill narrates the battle for Hill 107 in May 1941, which will decide the outcome for the entire campaign to capture the strategic island of Crete by the Germans from the air alone. The story is told through the eyes of the primary decision makers and takers in defence and attack. The New Zealanders are on the summit, the Germans scaling the heights.
An original approach that reads like a play, based on meticulous research of diaries, letters and post combat accounts.’