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Von Rom -> RE: Why was Patton so great? (7/19/2004 6:11:35 PM)
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kevinugly:
Let's compare Whiting, whom you call a "distinquished" author, with that of the Official History of the United States Army of the Ardennes Battle.
Here are some readers' reviews of some of Whiting's books:
The Other Battle of the Bulge: Operation Northwind (West Wall Series) > Customer Review #1:
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Thoughts on Whiting
Reading the other posts about this book compels me to say a few things about the author. Charles Whiting is a popular, readable and prolific writer of WWII stories, but he is not a historian in any way, shape or form. If you have read more than one of his books you will recognize the following:
1) lack of any kind of endnotes and few footnotes: where is this material coming from?
2) quotes from interviews with the author, which are not in any way anotated at the end of the book
3) praise of the common US soldier but uniformly harsh criticism of all senior U.S. leadership, especially Eisenhower
4) comparisons with Vietnam which, while occasionally interesting (he points out that William Westmorland fought in the Huertgen Forest without learning its lessons) usually border on the ridiculous
5) plagarism from his own works, including entire chapters, some of which have not even been re-written, but simply included whole in different books
6) where are the @and*#and! maps?
This book, like his "Ardennes: The Secret War" posits that Operation Nordwind was a bigger threat than the Battle of the Bulge to the Allies because it nearly defeated the Alliance politically at a time when they had already won the war militarily. It is an interesting conjecture, but it is tainted by the half-hidden glee that Whiting seems to feel over any disaster involving American troops and particularly their leadership. Everything he writes is written through that distoring lens. In any endeavour, if you want to find fault, you will, and in war this is particularly easy. Eisenhower was an armchair warrior and a true mediocrity as a strategist, but he was a superb military politician, maybe the only man who could have kept such a contentious alliance together until final victory. He deserves credit for holding it all together.
I have read five of Whitings books and found most of them to be very entertaining, especially because he tends to focus on American disasters which naturally have not gotten much press since the war, and thus have not been written about extensively. He puts books together like a novel, and is far from a dry writer. But his scholarship would not have met the standards of my high school history teacher, much less those of a true historian. He seems to write about what interest him only, is careless with his statistics and dates, includes facts that suit his opinions, states his opinions as facts, and constantly recycles his own material. You could probably file his books under historical fiction before you could file them under history."
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Whiting, Charles. The Battle for Twelveland: An Account of Anglo-American Intelligence Operations Within Nazi Germany, 1939-1945. London, Leo Cooper, 1975. The Spymasters: The True Story of Anglo-American Intelligence Operations Within Nazi Germany, 1939-1945. New York: Dutton, 1976.
Constantinides says this is "a potpourri of fact and fiction, actuality and myth, assumptions, sketchy versions of certain events, contrived tie-ins, and a certain confusion." Nevertheless, the author is "sometimes so accurate as to indicate access to well-informed sources or successful combining of certain versions." There is also "a good segment on SIS's role and the basis of its intelligence successes against Germany."
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Whiting, Charles. Gehlen: Germany's Master Spy. New York: Ballantine, 1972.
NameBase: "Charles Whiting's book is somewhat sensational in tone and doesn't cite sources.... There are altogether too many exclamation points, along with direct quotes that appear to be added for effect rather than accuracy. Most of the book concerns Gehlen's career in Germany, particularly after the war, rather than his associations with U.S. intelligence."
http://intellit.muskingum.edu/alpha_folder/W_folder/whitf-whz.html
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Now let's look at the OFFICIAL HISTORY
NOTE: NO historian has EVER criticized the Official History of the Ardennes Battle.
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
The European Theater of Operations
THE ARDENNES: BATTLE OF THE BULGE by Hugh M. Cole
OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF MILITARY HISTORY
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1965
The OFFICIAL HISTORY:
This is what it says about the Ardennes Battle:
"This volume represents the most exhaustive collection of personal memoirs by leading participants ever attempted for a general staff history of a major campaign. The memoirs take two forms: interviews with American participants shortly after the action described, and written accounts prepared immediately after the end of World War II by the German officers who took part in the Ardennes Campaign. The use of the combat interview in the European Theater of Operations was organized by Col. William A. Ganoe, theater historian, but the specific initiation of an intensive effort to cover the Ardennes story while the battle itself was in progress must be credited to Col. S. L. A. Marshall. The enlistment of the German participants in the Ardennes, first as involuntary then as voluntary historians, was begun by Colonel Marshall and Capt. Kenneth Hechler, then developed into a fully organized research program by Col. Harold Potter, who was assisted by a very able group of young officers, notably Captains Howard Hudson, Frank Mahin, and James Scoggins."
Further: here are just some of the personal accounts included.
Sources:
The German sources contributing most directly to this chapter are MSS # B-23, 5th Parachute Division, 1 December 1944-12 January 1945 (Generalmajor Ludwig Heilmann); # B-041, 167th Volks Grenadier Division, 24 December 1944-February 1945, Corps Hoecker, 2-10 March 1945 and 59th Infantry Division, 20 March-24 April 1945 (Generalleutnant Hans Hoecker); # B-068, 3d Panzer Grenadier Division, Ardennes (Generalmajor Walter Denkert); # B-151, Fifth Panzer Army, Ardennes Offensive (General der Panzertruppen Hasso von Manteuffel); # B-151a, sequel to MS # B-151 (General der Panzertruppen Hasso von Manteuffel); # B-235, Fifth Panzer Army, 2 November 1944-16 January 1945 (Generalmajor Carl Wagener); # B465, 3d Panzer Grenadier Division, 16-28 December 1944 (Generalmajor Walter Denkert); # B-592, Fuehrer Begleit Brigade, 16 December 1944-26 January 1945 (Generalmajor Otto Remer); # B-701, Army Group B, 15 October 1944-1945 (Col Guenther Reichhelm); # B-799, LXXXIX Corps, 24 January-8 March 1945 (Lt Col Kurt Reschke).
See MSS # A-932 (Gersdorff); B-041 (Hoecker); and B-799 (Reschke).
The operations of the Third Army in the Bastogne counterattack are the subject of a special journal prepared by the TUSA 3 staff (in the author's possession). In addition the TUSA chief of staff, General Gay, kept an official Third Army diary (referred to hereafter as Gay Diary), a copy of which was used by the author. The personal data on General Patton is interesting but adds little to the official records. See also George S. Patton, Jr., War As I Knew It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947) and Harry H. Semmes, Portrait of Patton (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1955).
Very detailed coverage of the 80th Division operation will be found in the combat interviews. The division records are less useful than the AAR's and journals of the three infantry regiments. See also, Capt. Roy T. McGrann, The 610th Tank Destroyer Battalion (Pittsburgh, Pa.; Geyer Printing Company, 1946).
With the exception of those conducted with the 101st Airborne Division, the combat interviews with the 4th Armored Division are the most informative of all those bearing on the battle at Bastogne. The 4th Armored AAR and G-3 journal provide little exact or detailed information. The combat command AAR's and journals remedy this lack. Each battalion has either an AAR or unit journal. See also K. A. Koyen, The Fourth Armored Division (Munich, 1945); Lt. Col. D. M. Oden, 4th Armored Division-Relief of the 101st Airborne Division, Bastogne, Pamphlet Series, Command and General Staff College, 1947; History of the Ninety-Fourth Armored Field Artillery Battalion (n.d., n.p.); and The Armored School MS, Armor at Bastogne (May 1949).
Further: these sources represent information gathered from thousands of participants, including from Allied and German generals, from their staffs, from officers of all grades, as well as from the soldiers involved.
Further: these sources were cross-checked with official unit histories as well as general histories.
Further: this Official History was last updated in the year 2000. It is updated when NEW information is discovered.
Further: the Official History version of the Ardennes Battle took many years to write and runs over 900 pages
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