Rhineland: The Battle to End the War

by Denis Whitaker, Shelagh Whitaker, W. Denis & Shelagh Whi Whitaker

Book Overview

With their backs to the Rhine, crack German troops fought savagely to save their Fatherland in the grim winter of 1945, refusing to back down even with the Allies on their doorstep. The Battle of the Rhineland, the last great attritional battle fought by the Allies in World War II, was underway.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312034199
• ISBN13: 9780312034191
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 422 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive Coverage of a Difficult Assault

This well researched story is methodical as it is comprehensive. From using primary and secondary sources as well as conducting many veteran interviews, the authors have created a wonderful story that blends the tactical with the anecdotal experiences of many soldiers, giving the reader a good understanding of the difficulties the Allies experienced in getting to and crossing the Rhine River. The authors also cover the friction that had been generated between the Americans and British since D-Day and especially in the last few months. The story covers Operation Veritable, Grenade, Blockbuster, Varsity and Plunder. The coverage is quite detailed, explaining the extensive preparations that were made, the difficulties of the warming weather, the hesitancy and querulous Allies that made the assaults more costly than they had to be. The detail was so much that I found myself skipping passages to get to the battle scenes. The tactical coverage of the entire book was good and the chapter concerning the extreme measures the Allies took in capturing a bridge over the Rhine and the equal effort of the Germans in preventing that feat was especially interesting to me. The short Epilogue was also pertinent for the authors summarizes the difficulties the combat soldiers went through because of the bickering and shortsightedness of the Allied command, that it was the bravery and dedication of those soldiers that made capturing the Rhine a reality. The authors at the beginning of the book also describe the Hurtgen campaign and the poor command of that campaign. There are also 13 black and white maps which are good and a small photo section. There is also an appendix listing an Order of Battle, a Notes section, and Interview List and Index. The authors cover the last months of the war in the north quite well and for anyone who is interested in this sector and timeframe should consider this book.

Enjoyable read. Interesting though conventional military history.

_Rhineland: The Battle to End the War_ is an enjoyable and interesting military history of, as the title states, the near-final and final battles in 1944/45 to defeat the Third Reich on the Western Front by the Anglo-American forces, with particular reference to the Canadian forces engaged. This is is hardly surprising as one of the the co-authors, W. Denis Whitaker, was a Canadian army officer in the Second World War who had been promoted to brigadier-general at the war's end. That said, the book is as clearly written as it is well-organised, and it is a very enjoyable account to read. It is also a very conventional or orthodox military history from the perspective of the Western Allies, so if anyone is looking for anything ground-breaking or controversial, they will not find it in this book. Indeed, this account's content is so conventional that at times when reading it I thought I was reading a military history written some time in the 1950s or 60s. However, for all its conventionality or orthodox view, _Rhineland_ is from beginning to end an interesting book about one of the most interesting phases of the Second World War: the Western Front from June 1944 to May 1945. Certainly, too, one cannot condemn conventionality in military history if the military history concerned is historically accurate, and this book, naturally, is historically accurate. Equally, unconventuality and controversy in military history for their own sake have absolutely nothing to recommend them. That said, it is refreshing to read a conventional, well-ordered, and lucid military history from someone of higher rank and as closely involved as the late W. Denis Whitaker.