Customer Reviews

West Wall: The Battle For Hitler's Siegfried Line (Charles Whiting ""West Wall"" Series)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book describes the battles along the Siegfried Line. Included are several photos of the men involved in the fighting and maps of the area in which they fought. While several high ranking officers such as Patton and Model are discussed along with a "what ever happened to..." chapter for the leaders, I was a bit disappointed that not more detail was given as to the West Wall itself. Its development and construction is not really discussed at all while its guns, bunkers, dragon's teeth, etc. are only mentioned when they are involved in one of the many battles which occurred along the 350 miles of contested defenses.

Overall, it's actually a decent book which is easy to read (perhaps becuase of the lack of extensive detail I was seeking) and it shows that the many seperate battles along the West Wall should be considered to be more like one large campaign. But the lack of a detailed discussion of "the what & why" of the defenses themselves left be wanting, hence the 3 star rating.

The last reviewer claimed that Charles Whiting 'has no idea what ww2 combat is about'.This is an offensive lie.Whiting was a teenage infantryman with the Scottish 52nd Lowland Division from 1944-45.Such information is on the endpapers of many of his books.

From my experience as an infantryman with the 84th Infantry Division in WW2 I feel much of the book is fiction. His discussion of the action around Geilenkirchen in November - December 1944 is void of the actual time line. Dates in general are inored in the book. The author has no feeling of what WW2 combat was. So far my search to find biographic information on the author has not turned up much. He has written a lot of books.

Charles Whiting is the hack writer of WWII churning out books on an assembly line basis, with little research to back up his cliched comments. This is another in a long line of dismal efforts. He's more interested in inserting meaningless anecdotes, often crude, than presenting anything new or substantive. More factual information on Hitler's West Wall can be obtained from countless better sources including a good WWII encyclopedia, such as the Oxford Companion to WWII. Don't waste your money on this or any of his other drivel.

Although this title is not the definitive effort on this topic, there is not much written on it, and this one is decently presented. The writing is clear, the index and bibliography are good, there are a few maps (could have been more) and a nice photo section. I think most WWII students will read this and come away with more information than they had beforehand.

Amazingly for such a major series of battles, their has been very little written about Hitler's Western Wall.

The writer of this book has tried to seal this gap. Unfortunately it does need better. The writer has a habit of writing sweeping statements eg if the allies had not broken the wall, Nazi Germany would have survived. I doubt it, all that would have happened assuming the Allies were held is that the Soviets would have grabbed more of Germany in the East and the Allied advance up in Italy would have been more important too.

Still however it is a well written book. It certainly not boring. I suspect that the writer does know a lot about his subject and the military. Reads like an adventure story. Full of interesting facts. Well worth a read.

Another assembly line book by Charles Whiting (is there an actual person with this name, or is it a pseudonym used by the publisher?)-sloppy writing and a total lack of any new insight or even information.

I picked up this book with anticipation about learning more on the often overlooked Allied campaign to break through the defenses of the German Siegfried line in the west.

Disappointment set in soon as popular myths about the French Maginot line are retold as fact while odd, irrelevant (and sometimes vulgar) anecdotes are inserted without adding anything to the story-do we really need to know that much about Ernest Hemingway? Yet not enough details are included on the structure or techniques of Organization Todt, the German contractor for the Siegfried Line and other massive wartime projects as just one example.

Do yourself a favor and buy any of the WWII books by Cornelius Ryan instead, especially "A Bridge too Far" which deals with a German resistance in the west as the Allies approached the Rhine.

I have ups and downs with this book. THe account of combat might be the strong point, but he certainly does not make clear what this vaunted Siegfried Line actually was. The book lacks an adequate description of "Hitler's Siegfried Line".