Ardennes, The Secret War; The Secret War
New York: Stein and Day/ Publishers, 1985. Book Club Edition. Hardcover. [6], 186 pages. Illustrations. Footnotes. Maps. DJ has some wear and tears. Some edge soiling. Contents are Autumn Fog, Black Christmas, Nazi Twilight. Afterword. Bibliography. Index. Ardennes is seen principally from the Nazi side of the line, is the story of how a handful of German specialists nearly seized victory from defeat at a time when the American top brass were predicting that it would all be over by Christmas. The author, Charles Whiting, is a renowned military historian whose many acclaimed books have been main selections of the Military Book Club. Charles Henry Whiting (18 December 1926 – 24 July 2007), was a British writer and military historian and with some 350 books of fiction and nonfiction to his credit, under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms including Duncan Harding, Ian Harding, John Kerrigan, Leo Kessler, and Duncan Stirling. In 1967, he began writing nonfiction books for the New York publisher Ian Ballantine. Whiting continued this work even when producing novels. Between 1970 and 1976, he wrote a total of 34 books which he described as "Bang-bang, thrills-and-spills". From 1976, he was a full-time author and would average some six novels a year for the rest of his life. He was a prolific military historian, who developed a niche market for writing about the Second World War from the point of view of the experiences of regular soldiers rather than the military strategists and generals. The Allied advance on Germany's West Wall received its biggest setback from the German counter-offensive of December 16, 1944. The general outline of the Battle of the Bulge, or "Ardennes Offensive" as it is more commonly known in Europe, is well-known and has become a great military legend. However, as veteran World War II author Charles Whiting reveals here, the magnitude of the German surprise has been downplayed in the West and the extent of German deception and sabotage operations minimized.Charles Whiting traces German operations through the eyes of three key officers, all of whom he interviewed after the war. Hermann Giskes was a German Army counter-intelligence officer who had broken the Allied spy network in Holland and set up his own force of spies and saboteurs, who stood ready to aid any German offensive. Freiherr (Baron) von der Heydte was an aristocratic paratroop officer assigned to make a last desperate jump behind Allied lines. His small number of inexperienced troops were blown over great distances by the wind and tied down thousands of Allied troops who thought German paratroops were landing everywhere. Otto Skorzeny was an SS commando leader assigned to deploy agents in American uniforms behind Allied lines during the upcoming offensive. A joking remark by Skorzeny led Allied intelligence to believe that he had been assigned to assassinate Eisenhower and other Western leaders, setting off a panic that further hampered Allied efforts to contain the Bulge. These three officers were key members of a German "secret war" that was more extensive and came closer to success than many previous accounts have suggested. Condition: Good / Good.
Keywords: Ardennes, Battle of the Bulge, West Wall, von der Heydte, Otto Skorzeny, Hermann Giskes, 6th Panzer Army, Malmedy, Paratroops, Jochen Peiper, Stielau
[Book #82321]
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