Customer Reviews

Ardennes: The Secret War

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As my title suggests, more of the tired 'weren't the Nazis wonderful but unlucky, weren't the Allies stupid but lucky?' school of history. I should have guessed what to expect when I saw David Irving listed in the bibliography - you'll remember him from the court case where he was outed as an apologist for the Third Reich - I digress

The book is badly written and poorly researched, the battle itself has been covered from every angle by historians and those on the ground at the time, I was rather hoping this would add to the sum of knowledge about the battle but I was to be disappointed, it's only for the Nazi fanboys I'm afraid.

The author makes some surprising conclusions about the success of the invincible Germans - according to Mr Whiting the para drop that scattered the half trained ersatz fallschirmjager all over the Ardennes was a success (which may come as a surprise to any of the survivors especially those who wrote about the fiasco afterwards)

Skorzeny was a covert-ops genius, ten feet tall and the brains of a rocket scientist - which doesn't exactly fit with the opinion of the Luftwaffe group that actually liberated Mussolini (he nearly blew their mission by muscling-in and stealing the credit), nor when discussion his background did Mr Whiting seem aware of Skorzeny's failures and poor planning skills on other ops.

And that's my problem with this book, unabated hero worship of the Germans and a dismissal of any unit or major player on the Allies side - makes you wonder how they won.

The author has a few problems with simple to verify facts that make me worry about the standards of his research, the USAAF flying B-29s in Europe? News to them, the Luftwaffe losses during Bodenplatte being about 100, when all other historians give figures around 300? Drawing the conclusion that Bodenplatte (surprise) was another German victory when in reality it destroyed the Luftwaffe while hardly effecting Allied air ops

Naah - my copy will be going in the bin