Battle of the Bulge then and now jean paul pallud : eBay Guides

Battle of the Bulge then and now by jean paul Pallud.  220x300mm by 40mm deep. Many black and white rare photographs.

This major work on the Famous late Battle of the second world war really is written with cited witness accounts and is laid out in the then and now format.  

This Battle has always been considered to be Hitlers last gamble in the west. As such, many false myths and stories have grown from the battle. To counter attack the allies so late in the war in europe, with so much of the german army already destroyed in the east, with stocks of fuel and armoured vehicles at a low ebb, required amazing planning and preperation on the part of the Germans. This fact alone is worth study, but it forms just one of many amazing aspects to this Battle.

Skorzeny's unparalleled operation Greif, to infiltrate the allied line dressed as American Soldiers in captured Jeeps is studied in remarkable detail. The probable reasoning behind the mass murder of captured GIs at melmedy, the fact that not all the tanks used by the Germans were king Tigers, the panic at the American HQ with the mistaken idea that the operations aim was to capture general Bradley. many myths are exploded, and what is so remarkable about this book is that what comes out as the real truth feels more amazing than fiction. 

Each aspect of the brief campagne is studied in detail, though of course the dates of some operations overlap, though it is possible in this format to study the effect of each operation individually.

This is a mind boggling amount of work for such a brief but intensive period of the war. It will reward the reader over and over again, but I envy the reader their  first discovery of it.

The only minus side is the understandably brief end chapters on what remains today. I feel this could have been examined in greater detail. But this is a big heavy book concentrating on the historical events of the time. If you're keen to know what really happened, then this is the book for you.