The Siegfried Line: The German Defense of the West Wall 9-12/44

by Samuel W. Mitcham Jr.

The battles for the Germans' last line of defence in World War II, including Arnhem, Aachen, the Huertgen Forest, and Metz. Built as a series of forts, bunkers, and tank traps, the West Wall - known as the Siegfried Line to the Allies - stretched along Germany's western border. After D-Day in June 1944, as the Allies raced across France and threatened to pierce into the Reich, the Germans fell back on the West Wall. In desperate fighting - among the war's worst - the Germans held off the Allies for several months.

Genres: World War II

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Jeff Dawson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping to get some very good insight into the Germans regrouping and stemming the allied onslaught into Germany. Instead, this book is more a very broad stroke of the events from July ‘44 till December 16th 1944.
The pros.
1)The author does provide some very good information concerning the units and men involved during the battle.
2) The notes at the end are helpful and informative
The cons.
1) EDITING! This is the third Stackpole book I’ve read where the editing is terrible. This a book of non-fiction and is required to be well edited. Not the case.
2) The book centers around “Operation Market Garden.” If I wanted to read about this battle, I’d pull out my copy of “A Bridge too Far.”
3) Cohesiveness. Doesn’t exist, especially in the last chapter. Too many times we are sent back to the collapse of the 7th army in France and the chase to the border.
4) I felt I was reading a book that was behind on a deadline. Very distracting
5) The notes at the end, comprise 20% of the book.
I appreciate the research put into this book, but I do not recommend it for the serious or even novice student. I’m glad I only paid $3.00 for this version. It will be going back to Half Price Books.

[Jared Estes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down one of the best books on the western front in 1944 I have ever read. The author is both thorough and the timeline of events as presented is engaging. Though, the reason I gave only 4 stars rather than 5 is because of two minor things - there is a lot of typos - there seems to be a typo every other page for instance 'Grenadier' was 'grenaider', kind of easy stuff to fix. Second, I am an avid reader of the Stackpole Military series and this is the only one where I've seen a writer (who's not a veteran of ww2) offer some opinions on Hitler. It was unnecessary and a little unprofessional. I come to Stackpole for the facts not someone's opinions.

[Stefan Fürst · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well-written, general overview of allied military operations in Western Europe in 1944. Unfortunately, the author uses a lot of pages on operation Market Garden instead of focussing on how the Allies conducted their breach through the Siegfried Line. Furthermore, the book concentrates on operational warfare (level of brigade upwards) and neglects smaller unit warfare (e.g. company-level) or the tactical level, a thing that I wished to find in this book. I also would suggest to integrate more maps to improve the understanding of the described operations.