Customer Reviews

The Western Front 1944, Memoirs of a Panzer Lehr Officer

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I'll dispense with the physical specifics of the book since they are already listed.

This is the definitive book, of English text, on the famed Panzer Lehr Division. Ritgen had a unique way of delivering factual data in a human way. The book reads easily: Joseph Welsch's translation of the original German is well done. If you can't read Kurowski's German or Perrigault's French and really want to KNOW what happened with Panzer Lehr, from a veteran of the division, then THIS IS THE BOOK.

While quite readable, the book is not really a memoir. It is rather, a collection of articles written by the author and collected together into this book. Thus, the reader often feels lost as the book travels from one focus to another, and at the end one feels that he did not get a single full story, but many chapters from different books.

It starts as memoir with Ritgen recounting the forming of the Panzer Lehr division, and his disappointment at not getting a Batallion command as he was trained for. But once battle is joined, there is only a few paragraphs about his role in Normandy.

It then covers, at an operational level, the actions of Panzer Lehr and surrounding units during the battles in France.

Then we get accounts of the battles for Fort Driant and the approaches to Antwerp.

As a finale we return to the Panzer Lehr in Fall battles and finally the Bulge.

The book suffices as a rough history of the Panzer Lehr in 1944. The Fort Driant account and description of the capture of the Antwerp approaches is a distraction, though interesting. As a memoir I feel cheated. Ritgen was a Panzer Company commander and could write a great memoir. All we get is a well-written account of his time before the battles in the West.

Yes, it is about some of the battles fought on the Western Front in 1944, but it is no memoir.

This is another Panzer Lehr book that I must praise. This is from a staff officer who was there and gives excellent accounts of Lehr's first contact to last battle contact! Although the author does take a anti-german/nazi tone which I feel is an after war additive to appease the victors...hardcover, glossy pages like a magazine, full of rare photos, this ain't your shelf stuffer ww2 novel at B&N...It is for the serious ww2 buff and Flames of War gamers like me love it for the raw details!

I know I'm late to the party, but I can't recommend this book. I bought it hoping to get a first hand account of fighting in the Panzer Lehr, but the book is more an apologia for the Wehrmacht. At times Ritgen is biographical but more often than not he's recounting actions he didn't participate in, like Holland. However, he always has effusive praise for the "noble" German soldier.

When I finished reading the book,my thought was, Nazi Panzer Officers don't die, they become NATO Generals.