20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Thoughts on Whiting, January 7, 2004
This review is from: OTHER BATTLE OF THE BULGE: Operation Northwind (West Wall Series) (Hardcover)
Reading the other posts about this book compels me to say a few things about the author. Charles Whiting is a popular, readable and prolific writer of WWII stories, but he is not a historian in any way, shape or form. If you have read more than one of his books you will recognize the following:
1) lack of any kind of endnotes and few footnotes: where is this material coming from?
2) quotes from interviews with the author, which are not in any way anotated at the end of the book
3) praise of the common US soldier but uniformly harsh criticism of all senior U.S. leadership, especially Eisenhower
4) comparisons with Vietnam which, while occasionally interesting (he points out that William Westmorland fought in the Huertgen Forest without learning its lessons) usually border on the ridiculous
5) plagarism from his own works, including entire chapters, some of which have not even been re-written, but simply included whole in different books
6) where are the @&*#&! maps?
This book, like his "Ardennes: The Secret War" posits that Operation Nordwind was a bigger threat than the Battle of the Bulge to the Allies because it nearly defeated the Alliance politically at a time when they had already won the war militarily. It is an interesting conjecture, but it is tainted by the half-hidden glee that Whiting seems to feel over any disaster involving American troops and particularly their leadership. Everything he writes is written through that distoring lens. In any endeavour, if you want to find fault, you will, and in war this is particularly easy. Eisenhower was an armchair warrior and a true mediocrity as a strategist, but he was a superb military politician, maybe the only man who could have kept such a contentious alliance together until final victory. He deserves credit for holding it all together.
I have read five of Whiting's books and found most of them to be very entertaining, especially because he tends to focus on American disasters which naturally have not gotten much press since the war, and thus have not been written about extensively. He puts books together like a novel, and is far from a 'dry' writer. But his scholarship would not have met the standards of my high school history teacher, much less those of a true historian. He seems to write about what interest him only, is careless with his statistics and dates, includes facts that suit his opinions, states his opinions as facts, and constantly recycles his own material. You could probably file his books under 'historical fiction' before you could file them under 'history.'
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
If you have nothing else to read, then maybe., March 26, 1999
Whiting seems to have copied most of the information for his book, from unit histories. At the same time he failed to cross-check his sources leaving a book that is full of inaccurate accounts of the battle. His final statement linking the war in Vietnam and the battle for Strasbourg was the most ridiculous thing I had ever read. If you know nothing about the battle, then it could be a good starting point. Just don't believe everything you read in it.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
"If you know nothing of the battle, then buy this book.", January 29, 2001
By A Customer
I found the book to be difficult to follow given the dearth of maps and the style of writing. I have read many battle histories but I found this book difficult to enjoy. I particularly disliked the author's social commentary throughout the book and found unsubstantiated his criticism of Eisenhower. I agree with an earlier review of this book, if you know nothing of the battle, then read this book. In hindsight, I should have looked elsewhere.
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