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Showing posts with the label Ardennes Counteroffensive

Book Review: 'Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge'

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Dust jacket illustration for the U.S. edition of Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge. Design by Matt Yee. (C) 2015 Viking (a Penguin Random House imprint) On November 3, 2015, Penguin Random House UK imprint Viking published Ardennes 1944: Hitler’s Last Gamble , a book by historian Antony Beevor about the biggest battle fought in Western Europe during World War II. Officially known as the Ardennes Counteroffensive, the engagement that began on December 16, 1944 and ended six weeks later is better known by its more popular nomenclature – the Battle of the Bulge. (The battle earned its nickname due to the bulge-shaped salient in Allied lines on situation maps – official and those published in U.S. and British newspapers during that cold, miserable, and violent winter battle.) Published in the U.S. as Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge, the book is Beevor’s first World War II book that focuses on a campaign that was overwhelmingly a struggle between Adolf Hitler’s We

Book Review: 'Battle: The Story of the Bulge'

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(C) 1999 Bison Books Pros:  Very  readable. Written just 15 years after battle, the account is vivid. Cons:  Missing part of the overall story due to still-existing classification issues. Fog hung thick in the Schnee Eifel on the morning of December 16. The men of the Tank Artillery Regiment of the 1st SS Panzer Division, "Hitler's Own," were tense with excitement. "All batteries ready to fire!" came the report. On a nearby road, tanks of the division were lined up for the attack like a great winding dragon. A commander waved to the man standing in the turret of the next tank. "Goodbye, Lieutenant, see you in America!" The lieutenant laughed. Final checks were made on the range finders. Throats were dry, hands were poised at the lanyards, eyes fixed on watches. Up and down the line the arms of gunnery officers were raised. It was 5:30 A.M. "Fire!" An eruption of flame and smoke burst all along the Ghost Front. For eighty-