Operatie Market Garden

Nine days before christmas 1944 Hitler played Germany's last card, on wich he staked everything to turn the tables in the West. the massive, stunning blow he struck in eastern Belgium caught the Allies totally unawares, yet a week later the panzers had still not crossed the Meuse in the first phase of an ambitious attack aimed at recapturing Antwerp and cutting off the Allied forces to the North.

What lay behind this all-out offensive wich Hitler acknowledged would decide whether Germany was to live or die? An integral part of this book is concerned with the plans and preparations for the so-called 'master stroke'. The various options considered, the operational orders, the precise armoured strenghts of forces scraped together, the measures to keep the build-up in the Eifel a secret - these are some of the elements that add fresh detail to the mounting of the offensive under the deliberately 'defensive' codename of 'watch on the Rhine'.

From zero-hour on 'O-Tag', the German onslaught along eightu miles of slightly held American frotn line in the Ardennes is traced, culminating in the attacking forces dogged defence to prevent the 'Bulge' they had driven into the Allied line from becoming a trap as Patton's Third army battered away from the south and the US First army struck back from the North.

The siege of Bastogne...the 'Malmedy massacre'...Skorzeny's commandos...Kampfgruppe Peiper...the defence of Saint-Vith: the varied impact of the Ardennes Offensive assured a lasting place in the history books for the lore of the Battle of the Bulge --- of events that captured the headlines at a time the Allies were wrapped up in planning Germany's defeat.

This is the first time that an attempt has been made to cover the entire salient in order to present the battle in the 'then and now' format for wich After the Battle publications are renowned. Hundreds of miles have been travelled by the author throughout every corner of the battlefield to search out the scenes of past events, and the fact that many previously published photographs have now been pinpointed has enhanced their significance accordingly.

every known photograph belonging to combatants, civilians and in public collections and private sources has been sought or considered.
All the cine film has been examined frame by frame and certain sequences illustrated and analysed. In this way a number of classic pictures almost always used -- or misused -- in depicting the Ardennes battle are not only placed in their context in the German advance but are also shown to be not always quite what they seem!

Nowhere in Western Europe is there a battlefield of this significance that contains so much of continuing interest in relation to what still remains to be seen, and the book concludes with a survey of the relics, memorials and museums that remain -- including a prolific amount of armour that vies both numerically and for authenticity with anything to be seen elsewhere in the West.

Schrijver: Jean-Paul Pallud.
ISBN: 9780900913402.
Taal: Engels.
Jaar: 1986.
Hardcover.