Ardennes / Battle of the Bulge etc

It is enlightening to do a bit of research. I'm having a look at the Maginot line for a trip next year. There are loads of info that has to be pieced together or you can do it the easy way and go on a Ledger holiday. But I guess that retirement is not far away for you Richard and this is a good hobby to have. Keeps the grey stuff ticking over giving you stuff to do and go see. Are there any German accounts or records you have traced for the Bulge? A lot of info regarding WW1 and WW2 seems to be centred around Allied accounts of events.

The internet is crammed full of stuff, it's how to wade through it and then put it into some sort of order that's the challenge. The great thing is that you can do it in whatever way that make sense to you.

I guess that most of the books written from a German perspective will either be personal accounts, probably the the diaries or memoirs of the leading generals or what I'd call 'whole histories' where the battle is but a part of the fall of Nazi Germany. Many will be published in German, of which I do not speak one word.

What I think is interesting is looking at the scale of battles, the sheer size of the fronts are staggering. Too often I think people have a perception that the major engagements were fought across a field, as they were in the Middle Ages *. That myth is exploded when you step back and try to map out where events took place and on what days; days of fighting that can turn into weeks and then into months. To give you an idea, the eastern (German) start side of the bulge - the mouth of the bulge, if you like - is over 100 miles long north to south. Just this northern shoulder that I have mapped from the book involved no less than five separate thrusts designed (in theory at least) to combine well beyond their jump-off points into a single huge drive on the port of Antwerp, miles away. Similarly, the D Day battles, their eventual breakout and ultimate encirclement of a German army, started from the beaches (again over 100 miles wide west to east) but drove miles south as far as Le Mans before swinging north again to trap an entire German army. As 21st century bikers ask for routes from Caen to Le Mans, anyone can see it's a long way.


* A visit to the site of the battle of Agincourt does though show that even Medieval battle fields were large areas. The campaign that led up to it, huge in its scale.
 


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