I finally finished the first volume of the Battle of the Bulge series from Stackpole that I bought in June.
After a tour of the Northern flank of the Bulge in May 2024, I wanted to learn more about this part of the battle. The Losheim Gap is actually where the main thrust of the German force occurred. It is here that the ‘Battle Babies’ from the 99th Infantry Division, and also the 2nd Infantry Division held the American defensive line against the Kampfgruppe Peiper, with the 1st and 12th SS Panzer Divisions.
In this book, the author Hans Wijers goes into incredible detail about the events that lead up to the initial German invasion of the 16th of December 1944, and what’s really only a few days until the panzer armies were stopped. But these were days of hard fighting by inexperienced troops. They fought valiantly in the bitter cold and against a much stronger enemy. Thanks to them, the Germans were held up long enough, and prevented from reaching their objective of the Meuse river. Reinforcements would finally arrive, and the battle was to last for more than another month until the Germans had surrendered, died or retreated.
Operation Greif is explained in more detail and personal accounts than I have yet read in other books. The confusion of running into enemy troops wearing American uniforms, speaking English, and driving American jeeps and Sherman tanks had a profound effect on the course of the battle. The scale of the operation was widely exaggerated, as one could no longer be sure of who was a real GI.
The role of the German Fallschirmjäger and Operation Stösser are explained well, which is an aspect of the battle that really speaks to ones imagination.
I enjoyed this book. It has everything you would want to know about this under-credited part of the battle, but it’s a bit hard to follow. The maps are tiny and scant. I actually bought another book in Dutch about the Battle of the Bulge that has good color maps of how the battle evolved.
Next up: Vol. 2: Hell at Bütgenbach / Seize the Bridges
