Product Description

While much has been written about the Battle of the BulgeHitlers gigantic counteroffensive in the Ardennes Forestthe question of exactly how Germany was able to secretly mass its strategic reserves opposite the U. S. front remains as shrouded in mystery today as it was at the time. In December 1944, the snow-covered Ardennes was so quiet it was termed by Allied planners "the Ghost Front. " The U. S. placed its greenest units among the wooded hills, along with combat-shattered units. But beneath trees just miles away, the Germans were stealthily massing two full Panzer armies and 300,000 assault troops. Week after week, Hitler poured the cream of the Wehrmacht into the "quiet" sector, for a surprise attack designed to shatter the American front. And while the Germans were eventually defeated in the Bulge, the preparations for the attack marked a victory for German stealth, deception, and organization. Charles Whiting, one of the best-selling historians of the war, examines how the Allies could have anticipated the attack had they not been lulled into a false sense of security. He also delves into the controversy over whether George Patton had received advance word of the offensive but failed to warn the frontline divisions. This question and many others are at last answered in Ghost Front.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #964644 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

Fantasy
The Ardennes has always been the WW2 battle I've been most interested in, since I live just half an hour from where that battle took place. I've read dozens of books on the battle as a whole, on parts of the battle or on specific military units involved. Many of these I'd recommend to anybody interested in the subject,but Charles Whiting's book isn't one of them. For some reason, in his books Whiting always seems to be able to find out a WW2 secret nobody else has ever come across before and which nobody can verify since his sources are anonymous, now dead, or just "Monsieur Dupont". The same in this book: a secret Belgian SAS mission, which accidentally gets parachuted behind enemy lines and thus becomes the first allied unit in Germany in WW2. Never recorded before! Or an SS General arriving in the Ardennes on his own to look for a suitable place to launch the first V2 missile. Which of course is fired one night right before a Monsieur Dupont, before the Germans retreat back to Germany. It makes one wonder why the Germans would bother going so close to the frontline, if their 1000-km-range missile could easily be fired from well within Germany. Whiting also talks about the many secretive German recce patrols to gather information on the Allied troops, months before the offensive started, and claims the cover picture shows such a patrol. Anybody who has read anything on the Battle of the Bulge has come across this well known picture a dozen times, and knows it's of a recce unit from an SS panzer division on their way into battle (and followed by the rest of the division, so not very secretive!). But if this book reads like a fantasy novel, the perfect explanation for that is written on the inside back cover: Charles Writing has written no less than 200 books on WW2. Which over a 50-year period would leave him just three months per book to do any research.. Conclusion: this book is a waste of money..

New facts on an old battle..........
Unlike the last reviewer,I,as a military buff,enjoyed this book immensely(as I do all Whiting's books).

Firstly,to Serge,the facts regarding the Belgian SAS in this book can be verified by careful study of that heroic unit(you might try the rather obvious step of reading the books in Whiting's bibliography at the back of the book!).It is NOT a fantasy of Whiting's.The man is not only a ww2 veteran who actually fought in the Bulge battle,as part of the British reinforcements,but is a qualified historian who has lectured at British and German universities from the 1950's....

Secondly,your point re V2's forgets that the Germans still continued to fire V2's from Holland.Thirdly,the picture heading on the front page comes of course not from Whiting,but from the publisher themselves,who unlike him are not historians.THEY will have got it wrong(as a writer,it is unlikely that he or any writer will see the cover until after it has been readied to the shops for selling)

On the book,itself,Whiting's 1999 book on the British side of the Bulge battle was a short,but involved mini-classic of its type.And this is no different.Whiting is excellent at writing fact after fact in short punchy chapters,with no dry prose.This book is therefore informative,whilst being a cracking page turner...

Well recommended.