The Battle of the Bulge: The German View. Perspectives from Hitler's High Command

Abstract

"The Battle of the Bulge: The German View. Perspectives from Hitler's High Command" edited by Danny S. Parker is reviewed.

The Battle of the Bulge: The German View. Perspectives from Hitler's High Command. Edited by Danny S. Parker. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1999. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Index. Pp. ix, 237. ,34.95.

As he did in his last work on the Ardennes offensive, Danny Parker presents a number of documents that the U.S. Army's European Theater of Operations Historical Section produced between 1945 and 1949, consisting mostly of material provided in interviews and studies by former officers of the Wehrmacht. In this case, he has concentrated on the views of the most senior figures: Adolf Hitler himself (as reflected in two of his speeches), Alfred Jodl (Chief of the Armed Forces Command Staff in the Armed Forces High Command-the OKW-and Hitler's principal military adviser), Gerd von Rundstedt (Commander-in-Chief West), Walther Model (commander of Army Group B, as related by his chief of staff's aide), and Percy Ernst Schramm (a trained historian and keeper of the OKW war diary). Parker writes that he wanted to make these documents available to the general public because of their "insightful quality" and the "compelling snapshot" that they provide of the Germans' perspective on the battle (pp. ix-x). The documents are indeed interesting. Schramm's work, especially, provides valuable information on the planning process, which Hitler and JodI clearly dominated.

Unfortunately, the book is not appropriate for most general readers-its purported audience. One would need a detailed understanding of the battle and of the Wehrmacht to make much sense of the documents, especially those on Jodl, Rundstedt, and Model. This is true both because of the level of detail in the accounts and because of their context. The interview with Jodi, for example, goes into details that are all but meaningless aside from any intrinsic interest they might have, while it is of dubious value on any larger issues-Jodl was, after all, on trial for his life at the time, and so was not inclined to be forthright. Better editing and commentary on Parker's part would have helped enormously here; his explanation that the accounts contain "inevitable errors associated with memory" is not satisfactory (p. x). Moreover, the documents are the Historical Section's original, often inaccurate translations, which Parker does not do enough to correct. The maps and index do little to make the book more useful, most of the illustrations have no direct connection to the theme of the work, and there is no bibliography.

Parker would have done better to find a specific issue to investigate and then use the documents in support of a broader narrative. As the book stands, though, it does not add to our knowledge of the Ardennes offensive or the German high command. The general reader will not learn much from it that is not available in one of the many broader accounts of the battle, and the specialist will already be familiar with the documents Parker presents.