Customer Reviews

The Ghost Front: The Ardennes Before the Battle of the Bulge

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I thought I would get an explanation of why the Allied air forces could not discern the buildup in the Ardennes. But Whiting does not offer an explanation. Instead he focuses on the mismash of intelligence failures. But, you don't get to know any of the characters very well. Plus, from a writing perspective, Whiting has to many long, disconnected subclauses that are difficult to comprehend. Finally, he repeats himself often. Don't pay full price for this book. It is not essential to your WWII collection!

Charles Whiting's book, Ghost Front: The Ardennes Before the Battle of the Bulge" is an interesting, if brief, examination of the Allied failure to see the German Ardennes offensive of 1944 coming before it happened. Other reviews have stated that Whiting provides no real insight as to why this happened, and in the end analysis there is some truth in that - many of the facts surrounding this huge intelligence faux pas remain obscured and possibly lost forever to time. However, in contrast to some other reviews I found Whiting's explanations of the events quite compelling and enlightening. Granted no single fault was found with Allied intelligence to place blame on, but that was why the Bulge occurred - no single event, but rather a series of events lead up to the Ardennes offensive and the German surprise. Whiting in my opinion does a decent job introducing many of the significant intelligence characters of the period, both Allied and Nazi. I found the stories of the German counter-intelligence ploys most interesting and enlightening, as these are sides of the story not often told. While there is certainly enough new material here to keep one interested I tend to agree with previous reviews that Whiting's style is a bit difficult at first, but I got used to it. I read the book over a three-day period (mainly while traveling for a business trip) and can say that in the end I really enjoyed the book. Yet, it's shortness (~160 pages) made it not quite worth full market price when all the criticisms discussed above are taken into account. I would however not dissuade readers from taking a look at other works by Whiting.

I hear www.wargamer.com will soon have a full review of this title. They also have many other reviews, previews and analysis articles of military history.

Ghost Front is a fascinating, if somewhat esoteric, view of the events that led up to the Battle of the Bulge. The intelligence failure of the Allies, or more precise, the pure blindness they suffered from, caused tens of thousands of needless casualties on both sides of the line.

Charles Whiting does a good job of portraying information that is not easily found in other sources, but his grammatical style has errors and doesn't flow very well in places, making reading this book less enjoyable than it should be.

The late Charles Whiting, a veteran of WWII under Montgomery, has for over fifty years written many books on the war that include but is not limited to campaign coverage of North Africa, the Med and Western Europe. As some other reviewers have mentioned, the author was highly pro British and extremely anti American. He was so anti American, he loses some credibility as a historian. While some of his criticism (in this book and all the others) is legitimate, the other ravings are either distorted banter or opinionated half truths. The experienced reader will know the difference but new students may have trouble differienating.

The author gets much of his background information for the book from numerous interviews from German veterans. The author truly rambles so its difficult to highlight a specific format of the book but the largest aspect of the book shows the Germans, having been pushed back to their border during August and were more desperate and determined than the Americans, successfully prepared a counterattack of major proportions and were able to do it in such a way as to keep their true intentions from the enemy, including the British. The author uses the Germans as the driving force in his narrative, making the American side the driven.

The title, "Ghost Front" refers to the section of the Ardennes that is bracketed to the north by the village of Losheim and to approximately the Luxembourg border to the south. The line was defended by Middleton's weary VIII Corps that was in the process of being refitted in September and really wasn't in a position as the author argues to push past the West Wall, building a salient without a serious threat of being pocketed. With Montgomery getting the lion's share of the supplies in preparation for Market-Garden, Hodges's and Patton's chances for a renewed offensive in September were further reduced. With a terrible logistic problem and the need to rebuild his divisions and train his new recuits, Eisenhower was right in being cautious for the time being. When Market-Garden failed in mid September, it put further strains on the entire Allied line for some time.

The good things about the book is that the author shows the Germans did a better job of reconnoitering the American line. With the help of civilians in the area, secret agents and successful recon patrols, the Germans were able to identify US forces and weak points in the line. This intel convinced Hitler of launching. The Germans also did a good job of misleading the Americans where the German three main Armies taking part in the Ardennes Offensive were stationed prior to launch point and the Germans did a convincing job of deceiving 1st Army into thinking that the offensive would be a local attack to regain Aachen sector. Its also shown the American Generals and most of their intel people were over confident into thinking that the Germans were incapable of a major counter offensive and therefore didn't have to prepare for a serious threat. (Montgomery was just as overconfident as Eisenhower and Bradley but there is not one word of criticism levied on Montgomery but tons of it were placed on the American shoulders. There is also not one word of criticism on Montgomery's deliberate delay in clearing Antwerp to help 12th Army Group's logistic problems or the failed attempt of Market-Garden negatively affecting the eastern line. Much of Whiting's criticism could be mitigated.)
While Ultra and Magic intercepts were unable to follow Enigma communications regarding the Offensive due to a blackout, they were successful in decoding traffic from the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin with Tokyo. Too bad it still wasn't enough to generate some action with Bradley or Hodges. Patton took the potential counterattack more seriously and prepared for it, enabling him to react faster.
You will also briefly read about the intelligence men that were part of this drama. The key people are: Edwin Sibert, Monk Dickson, Allen Dulles, Kenneth Strong, Hermann Giskes, Reinhard Gehlen. You will also read about the exploits of Otto Skorzeny and his commandos.
There were a few photos and a couple of general purpose maps.

Though I dislike the excessive criticism and sarcasm against the Americans, there are certain intelligence aspects of this September to December period that were interesting and well presented and could be helpful for many of us in understanding the "Ghost Front".

This old British author loses all credibilty after reading just two of his books. Whiting is so overtly pro British and so anti-American and has literally no objectivity whatsoever. Whiting not only repeats paragraph after paragraph in a series of books on say, the subject of the battles for the Huertgen Forest or on any battle he has written more than one book and, the editors/publishers continue to ignore the fact that two or three of Whiting's books on any battle are identical. Whiting also plagiarizes the works of other authors on a consistent basis. Whiting's books on WWII are simply a long and boring whine against the U.S., have little, if any, substance except where this old man blatantly copies other credible authors.

Why publishers continue to publish this old fraud's work is the question and, any reader who has read more than one of Whiting's books would, no doubt, never be gullible enough to waste a Canadian or American dollar on Whiting's mostly nasty anti American, anti Canadian pulp fiction.

I liked the book because it gave me a different perspective of the B.o.B. of lots of things going on in the quiet zone, and also reasons why the US Army was so incredibly ignorant of the Germans intent for a counteroffensive.

It makes me mad for the first time that Ike and the general staff, highly trained and far from the bullets, would let their guard down and get so many young men killed because they wanted to think the war was all but over, so ignore all the telltale signs of an impending counteroffensive.

Although the book lacks a bit in keeping you on the edge of your seat, it was well worth the time to gain the new perspective for me.

I recommend it just for that reason, if no other.

Thanks for reading.

I looked forward to reading this book, after all, I love WWII history. Unfortunately, the more I read Whiting, the more I believe that instead of 200+ books (see inside jacket cover), he should have written five.
First, the good. He describes a set of operations before the Battle of the Bulge - not popularly known and this is good that he handles the subject. Praise for the intent. In addition, the book deals with some little-known details, including "Operation Heinrich" managed by Giskes.
Now, the bad. The reason why I hesitate to call the author a historian is because he is, above all, inaccurate. Specifics (just examples, they abound all over the book): 1) on page 22, a Belgian castle is referred to as "Chateau du Boise St. Jean"[sic!]. Then on page 23 it is "Chateau de Bois St. Jean". Finally, on page 27 it becomes "Chateau du Bois St. Jean"... So, either consistency, or knowing French would help.
2) Caption of first picture after page 115 (hardcover): " ... SS Commander 'Sepp', Dietrich, founder of the Liebstandarte" ... come on, Mr. Whiting, you should know it is "Leibstandarte" - you wrote a highly re-hashed book about "Jochen" Peiper, in the title of that book you at least correctly referred to it as "Leibstandarte"... Again, either consistency or knowing German might help.
Finally, the ugly. This goes on and on... One of these examples could be an editorial error, but the author does not seem to care, or know. Others wrote about his quite unfounded anti-American and anti-Eisenhower bias, so I say no more about that... To balance it, I guess, there is quite a bit of anti-German bias as well (now the Brits, they are fine...).

I wish there were less re-hash, more accuracy ... or just fewer books and better quality...