Customer Reviews

Germany's West Wall: The Siegfried Line (Fortress)

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Neil Short's Germany's West Wall, Osprey's Fortress series # 15, is actually a better study of Germany's western defenses than his full-length volume on the same subject. Unlike his earlier work, Short's volume for Osprey provides better graphic detail on the layout of German bunkers and more data on resources used in construction. Overall, the graphic quality of this volume makes this the best low-cost study available on the subject.

Germany's West Wall consists of sections on design and development (11 pages, good); principles of defense (13 pages, adequate); the living site (discussion of construction and habitation); an operational history summary (11 pages); and an aftermath section that includes notes on useful websites and visiting the remaining West Wall structures. There are two maps - the layout of the West Wall defenses and the French 1939 Saar offensive - which are merely color versions of maps in his earlier book. There are seven color plates which depict: a typical bunker under construction; typical bunkers of the Limes and Aachen-Saar programs; a birds-eye view of the defensive system; the Gerstfeldhohe Tunnel System; American techniques for assaulting the West Wall; and the Katzenkopf B Werke. There is also a chart depicting manpower involved in building the wall during 1938-1940.

As in his larger work, Short sees the West Wall as a qualified success, but the lack of a French offensive strategy in 1939 or Allied logistic sustainability in 1944 seem to undermine that conclusion. The color plates provided in this volume provide a better picture of the strength (or lack of) in the West Wall defenses and it is apparent that the system lacked sufficient firepower or numbers to provide an effective linear defense in depth of the German border. Indeed, the West wall was amazingly poorly armed, with few bunkers mounting any weapon heavier than a 50mm anti-tank gun (the bunkers before the war could not mount the larger, more effective 75mm or 88mm guns). The typical bunker built in the 1938 Limes Program - the "Regelbau 10" - provided shelter for a rifle squad and its light machinegun but cost at least 42,000 RM to build - about one-third the cost of a tank. While the Germans were able to supplement the lightly armed West Wall in 1944 with heavier weapons dug in adjacent hasty fighting positions, it appears that the West Wall was based around light infantry weapons, not heavy or long-range weapons. Lacking mobile reserves or heavy weapons, in most cases defenders in the West Wall had to wait for the Allies to approach to virtually point-blank range of less than 1,000 meters.

With the information provided by Neil Short in this volume and his earlier work, it is possible to deduce from the data provided that construction of the West Wall was a huge drain on Germany's resources. Between 1936-1940, about 17,000 bunkers and other structures were built for a cost of somewhere between 900 million and 1.5 billion RM ($360-600 million) - which compares rather poorly with the French Maginot Line built in 1928-1936, which cost about $100 million. The project required over 150,000 workers and huge quantities of steel, gravel, sand and timber; the German transportation network was severely strained to move over 9 million tons of material to construct the West Wall. At a time when Germany was desperately short of steel for tanks and battleships, Hitler was investing thousands of tons of steel reinforcing rods into the West Wall's static "Dragons Teeth". Approximately 9% of the German military budget in 1938-1939 was spent on West Wall construction, versus the 1.3% of the French defense budget spent on the Maginot Line. Upon close analysis, the West Wall appears to have been a huge "White Elephant" of dubious value. If Hitler had invested the resources lavished on static fortifications on mobile forces instead, he could have started the Second World War in a much more powerful position; funds and materials from the West Wall project would have been sufficient to build about nine more panzer divisions and upgrade the existing ones with more Pz IIIs and Pz IVs; the Luftwaffe could have created an additional air fleet; the Kriegsmarine could have built several additional pocket battleships and two dozen more large U-Boats. Indeed, the case could be made that the resources squandered on the West Wall was one of Hitler's bigger strategic mistakes and helped to lose the war from the start.

The author has provided a concise and detailed description of Germany's West Wall. The graphic detail on the layout of German bunkers is amazing. Overall, I would agree that the graphic quality of this volume makes this the best low-cost study available on the subject.
The book includes a Chronology and chapters on the Design and Development loaded with construction details, the principles of defence showing how the Germans used defense in depth and identifying the various types of bunkers built for the West Wall, The Living Site that describes the construction of the sites through their use and maintenance, Operational HIstory with a combat history of the Siegfried line, and also a chapters on the Aftermath -what happened to the bunkers- and what sites can be seen today. The color plates provided in this volume provide a better picture of the strength (or lack of) in the West Wall defenses and some are really amazing like the cross section of the Gerstfeldhohe Tunnel System at Niedersmiten that was never completed because of the 1940 victory in the West. The detailedd ctuwaway drawing of Katzenkopf B is a bit dark, but really an amazing view of one of hte small complexes. The bunkers were too small to accomodate 75mm or 88mm guns antitank guns, so late in the war their value was limited. The author points out that the typical bunker built in the 1938 Limes Program - the "Regelbau 10" - provided shelter for a rifle squad and its light machinegun but cost at least 42,000 RM to build - about one-third the cost of a tank. This may lead one to question the value of these bunkers, but maybe they need to consider the time in which they were built. The fact the bunkers were designed for light weapons made them adequate in 1939.
Although one reviewer feels that this defense line may have been a poor investment its 17,000 bunkers and other structures served their initial purpose and were still of value in 1944. This book I would highly recommend for a good, clear, concise view of the West Wall.

This small book really spells it out. The Siegfried Line was a relatively advanced system for defense in depth, yet it consisted mainly of small fortified positions. Many of these positions proved inadequate for the weapons of 1944, but in 1940 it was a bulwark that kept the French at Bay.

Very interesting photos and computer graphics. While a short book, the author covers the west wall adequately. Although I disagree with his tone that the allies had an easy time getting through the wall. This "wall" stalled the allies for over 9 months and yet the author talks about how easily the defenses came down. A book to own just for the graphics and pictures but keep in mind there was quite a drama of command (Patton versus Montgomery) over conquering this "beast" with its dragons teeth and pill boxes, something the author provides little insight to such managerial realms.

This is a good booklet no doubt. One of the main focuses of the author is the amount of resources that went into the project and how little they got out of this effort. Its hard to make such comparisons because the figures can appear to mean so much but show so little, unless the details can be placed in a context that the reader can relate to. This would be the only real criticism I have of this work, but to be fair ,that would be an quite an achievement!

The author details the following expenditure up to 1938 for the 11860 bunkers & Pillboxes in the 'Limesprogramm'.
300,000 cubic meters of wood
351,000 tonnes iron to reinforce the concrete bunkers
6.9 million tonnes of gravel and sand
1.3 million tonnes of cement
420,000 tonnes of stones

520 million Reichsmarks in cost of materials, although the author freely admits the cost of construction easily would double this cost. The amount of steel is reported at 642,000 tonnes, although this appears to also include the iron and rebar in the concrete structures. That makes it hard to determine just how much actual steel was needed in the programme and more importantly how much of that was armor steel. There is evidence that a large amount of armored steel was involved in this programme, but unfortunately details are lacking.

If one was to try to draw comparisons with other weapons programmes these would be details that we would need to have at our fingertips. Looking in the sources section, it appears that 90% are English language military reports with only a small amount German. That would seem to point the direction that is needed to resolve that question.

The book covers well the aspects of the West Wall it covers in only 64 pages. It covers:

1. Production/civil engineering aspects of the wall. This includes costs, materials (with detailed research on steel, concrete, lumber, labor), problems inherent with building such a large project in such a short time (shoddy construction in many parts, if not most; many poorly cited fortifications). The most important point here is the tremendous cost to Germany of building this.

2. Goals of fortification at time of construction (i.e., permit manning of Western front with minimum of manpower, deter French from attacking [or at least slowing down] in case of two-front war).

3. How the West Wall fit into German strategy in 1944, how it performed, what allied strategy was to counter.

Illustrations of fortifications throughout (drawings/cut-aways of fortifications, maps, contemporary photos, illustrations showing how the fortifications provided covering support to each other, examples of allied attack plans, etc.) are five star.

If you are interested in above and have only about an hour of time to spend, this is the book for you.