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"Snow & Steel" - New Bulge Book

Discussion in 'WWII Books & Publications' started by GRW, Jan 10, 2015.

  1. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

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    "There is a long running radio show on the BBC called Desert Island Discs, the premise being that the invited celebrity will pick a number of tunes and books to have while they are cast away. The programme has been around long enough for the iconic Guy Gibson to appear on it some time after he led the Dams Raid of May 1943. If I was to appear on the show now I would be strongly tempted to select this superb book as one of the handful I could take with me.

    The doomed Gibson died over the Netherlands in September 1944 around the time Adolf Hitler decided to big up his credentials as a great captain and direct a counter-offensive against the Allies in the West. The upcoming plan went through a number of changes of code name, but the essence was the same – a great panzer army would sweep through the Ardennes and across the Meuse, splitting the Allies in half as it steamrollered on to take Antwerp. Quite where it would go after fulfilling this ambitious objective was way beyond Adolf’s ken. He made absolutely no provision for what his army would do next.

    Hitler’s plan triggered a swathe of the vile cronies in his Loony Toons court to try and outdo each other in the race to create new armies and divisions. Chief of these was Himmler, a man with about as much military knowledge as my cat Tilly. Acquiring command way beyond his abilities but not the depths of his evil imagination, he forced a motley bunch of Luftwaffe mechanics and shore based sailors into formations that looked great on paper but were short on substance. The waifs and strays of the Reich were Hoovered up to form Volksgrenadierdivisions. This involved raking the occupied lands for suitable conscripts from the Alsace, Ukraine and elsewhere. The young and the infirm were not safe from these delusions and found themselves in uniform and heading for battle.

    It was that time in the withering Reich after the failed July 20th plot when any exhibition of dissent or, to be blunt, realism could prove lethal. Hitler demanded that the innocent families of perceived traitors would be doomed as well. This was no atmosphere in which to run a war. But with his extreme methods Hitler assured his crumbling regime would struggle on to destruction as his delusional paranoia increased. The author explains how this state of affairs insured none of his acolytes would dare attempt to overthrow him. It is so easy to assert that all it would have taken is for someone to put a bullet in the nutter’s head, but his court was filled with maniacal jesters and not men of moral courage.

    When battle came the Volksgrenadiers and newly minted Fallschirmjaeger would be forced to attack without adequate provision of artillery, armour, motor transport or hope. Large parts of the attacking force would depend on horsepower to get along and thousands of the hapless beasts were to perish alongside their masters in terrible conditions. Hitler had not a jot of care for his people. They would crash and burn with him. Having ruthlessly sidelined his general staff he alone takes responsibility for the disaster he was about to inflict on his armies in the West. Stuffing it with his favourite SS formations would do no good. All many of them would achieve is odium.

    Facing this mixed bunch was a citizens army of veterans and greenhorns spread across a wider front than was clearly advisable even without the gift of hindsight. Allied eyes were fixed on further advances elsewhere and the onset of winter offered the opportunity for much needed rest and refitting. The Ardennes presented a quiet sector where elements of the hard driving US armies could recouperate. When the offensive began on the 16th of December the Allied command, dominated by the moment seizing brilliance of Eisenhower, reacted with determination. He retained complete focus and took steps that proved to be a game changerdefeating even the more modest possibilities arising from Hitler’s doomed adventure. Eisenhower confirmed his greatness at that moment and secured his place in the pantheon.

    Despite this, the Allied response to the German onslaught wasn’t universally perfect and the fighting would be terrible with the desperate defence carried out amidst confusion and a degree of panic. But with the weight of resources behind the Allies there could conceivably have been only one result.

    The defence of the Bulge added to the legends of some units and built the reputations of others. Men of various ranks rose to the occasion and took crucial decisions and actions that made all the difference. For others there were problems and failures, a situation not unique to the US Army when the shit hits the fan but these inconvenient truths have occasionally been airbrushed from the big picture passed down to us in popular histories. Stuff happens. As the Germans attacked some American leaders were in a state of denial. They simply could not conceive the Nazis had the means to take such a gamble. Omar Bradley and his intelligence staff had cause for regret and Courtney Hodges and his 1st Army headquarters were in disarray, but the leadership of Eisenhower sealed the fate of the German offensive by ordering his army commanders to act. George Patton took up the baton with alacrity and turned his 3rd Army on the advancing Germans doing terrible damage to their ambitions.

    Popular history of the campaign has tended to settle on iconic actions that benefited from strong media coverage, a result of pressmen being in the right place at the opportune moment. We learn in this book that there was so much more to the battle than events at Bastogne and Malmedy, important though they are. Significant pieces of the battle have often remained barely known.

    After the offensive was defeated a journalist came up with the name Battle of the Bulge. It has been with us ever since and has gathered totems and icons indulged by rubbish like the eponymous 1960s movie and a mixed bag of books and latterly episodes from HBO’s reverential adaptation of Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers.

    The battle had all the elements; valour, endurance, terror and murder. As we know, some of it was just nuts."
    http://www.warhistoryonline.com/reviews/snow-steel-review-mark-barnes.html
     
  2. Martin Bull

    Martin Bull Acting Wg. Cdr

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    Overall a fair review of the book but I'm still scratching my head as to where Guy Gibson comes into it ! :hypnotize:
     
  3. Sheldrake

    Sheldrake Member

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    I had to check the BBC web site and became distracted by Guy Gibson's choice of records. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009xzj9

    The last choice has now created in my mind a new synthesis of the Dam busters and Apocalypse now. A variation of the Give us a clue game "One film to the tune of another." ...

    Snow and Steel was my Christmas reading. .
     
  4. Martin Bull

    Martin Bull Acting Wg. Cdr

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    Mine too ! And it prompted me to get online & book my next Ardennes holiday....... :dance4:
     
  5. Martin Bull

    Martin Bull Acting Wg. Cdr

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    Just a note that this book has received quite an accolade - for a book written about an American battle by a Brit ; a highly complimentary review in the current ( Jan/Feb 15 ) issue of World War II magazine.Senior Editor Michael Dolan describes the book as 'a treasure'.....
     
  6. FalkeEins

    FalkeEins Member

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    and great timing on the author's part too - Beevor's forthcoming Ardennnes tome is out in the spring according to amazon
     
  7. bronk7

    bronk7 Well-Known Member

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    I 'luckily' found this at the library right before the Christmas week......been reading it and IMO too much out of the way information.....goes into detail of the individual soldiers' histories, but then not too much detail of the Bulge battles themselves, considering the size of the book......meaning it doesn't cover even the critical battles in detail from start to finish....it's a very large book...the index is confusing..ie looking for ''Parker's Crossroads'' it says ''see Baraque de Fraiture'', but I couldn't find it...says 'Towns and villages listed under countries'.....I finally found it under 'Belgian Army',
    seems to give more on the individual personal events without giving the whole picture....such as the section titled ''Ten Percent Chance of Success'' , Model's quote on going on with the mission of von der Heydte...it doesn't give much detail on the mission, or the Bulge's air operations, or Skorzeny's part.......has a great Order of Battle and glossary.....not many maps or pics at all for such a large book...some of the picture captions odd , with no explanations of where or who in some
     
  8. Sheldrake

    Sheldrake Member

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    This is a well written book by a military historian who has studied this battle for 20 plus years and worked for various British military institutions. He has, walked the ground on numerous occasions and rerally knows the topic. It has a lot more depth than the tomes commissioned from the current list of fashionable historians.
     

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