|
|
|
Review
| The Unknown Dead: Civilians in the Battle of the Bulge, by Peter Scrijvers. The University Press of Kentucky, 2005. 430 pages. $35.00, cloth.
|
| Peter Scrijvers focuses on the ordeal citizens in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg endured in December 1944 and January 1945 while caught in the crossfire of the German and Allied armies. The Battle of the Bulge (or Ardennes Offensive) was one of the pivotal conflicts in the Second World War and the biggest campaign the U.S. Army has ever fought. Adolf Hitler, who conceived of the Nazi offensive and oversaw its execution, believed that the Allied coalition of "ultra-capitalist" and "ultra-Marxist" states was so fragile that a Nazi victory here might cause the alliance to split and give Germany a chance to marshall its forces against the foe he thought posed the gravest danger to the Fatherland, namely the Red Army advancing from the east. By beating back this offensive aimed at splitting the American and British forces and possibly reaching Antwerp, the Allies' major supply port in the European Theatre, the Allies defeated the last major forces the Germans could hurl at them on the west side of the Rhine Rive. |
1
|
|
This finely written and carefully-researched study is one of the first volumes in any language to take the experiences of the civilians in the Ardennes as its focus. This is, on the whole, an objective study of a highly emotional period. For instance, the author shows that both American and German forces, especially those who belonged to the dreaded SS, committed atrocities against civilians and POWs. Schrijvers, a military historian and Belgian native, has spoke to an impressive number of survivors from the Ardennes and to American veterans and has consulted many of the relevant diaries, memoirs, and government records, some of which have become available only recently. It is unlikely that anyone has gathered as many of the civilians' recollections in a single volume as he has. Perhaps the biggest contribution he makes with the book is that their stories—sometimes horrific, sometimes bizarre, but almost always compelling—have been preserved, many of them apparently for the first time. He seeks to show the horror and barbarousness of war and succeeds. The book makes extensive use of related studies of the "unknown dead" such as Charles B. MacDonald's fine A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge (1984), Alain Colignon's Les dix-huit jours. Volume 2 of Jours de guerre edited by Francis Balace (1990) and Andre R. Meurisse, De croix noires en etoiles blanches: Un enfant du terroir bastognard se souvient des annees 1940-45. (1994) He apparently has consulted few German documents, however, and unlike some accounts of the conflict, such as Gerald Astor's A Blood-Dimmed Tide: The Battle of the Bulge by the Men Who Fought It (1994) and A Time for Trumpets, he has little to say about German combatants' opinions. |
2
|
|
Schrijvers has written extensively on the Second World War and the U.S. Army in works, such as The Crash of Ruin: American Combat Soldiers in Europe during World War II (1998) and demonstrates a keen understanding of military strategy. He argues, quite correctly, for example, that the Nazis' lack of air power and fuel doomed their efforts to capture Antwerp. Since its creation in the early 19th century, Belgium has been split along ethnic, religious, and linguistic lines. The Belgian Resistance reflected these divisions to a greater degree than Schrijvers sometimes suggests; throughout the narrative he discusses the activities of a host of Resistance groups, but does not attempt to explain their objectives, appeal, or significance . More information on this topic would have been helpful since it could help explain why German—and, to a lesser extent, Allied troops—were often highly suspicious of and sometimes cruel towards the civilians of the region. With the exception of S.S.-Col.-Gen. Josef "Sepp" Dietrich, Hitler's former bodyguard and longtime confidante, he gives little more than thumbnail sketches of the leading personalities involved in the offensive, although some of the most colorful figures in the European Theatre played key roles, including, on the Allied side, U.S. General George S. Patton and British Field Marshall Bernard "Monty" Montgomery and among the Germans, SS-Lt. Col. Jochen Pieper and Field Marshall Walter Model, "the Fuhrer's Fireman," The index is not particularly helpful; it lists military units, place names, and key terms, but not persons. Thus, it is difficult to locate passages relating to specific events or individuals. There are seven maps; they aid the reader in tracing the movement of the armies, but are not visually appealing and do not always include locations discussed in the narrative. The Unknown Dead fills a gap in the literature on the Second World War. Most leading studies of the offensive, such as The Ardennes: The Battle of the Bulge (1965), the official American military history by Hugh M. Cole, focus on the armed conflict and make few references to civilians. This interesting and disturbing book is certainly not light reading. It can be assigned in college and secondary school courses in military history, especially classes on the two world wars, and as supplementary reading in courses in modern European history at the high school or college levels. |
3
|
| | |
| New Jersey City University |
Matthew McMurray |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|