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Title: Hitler's Siegfried Line by Neil Short ISBN: 0-7509-2762-3 Publisher: Sutton Pubns Inc Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)

Rating: 3
Summary: A General History (In Disguise)
Comment: Neil Short's Hitler's Siegfried Line is a useful general history of the German West Wall defenses in the Second World War, but it is far more of a general history than a technical study. Readers seeking answers to the historical significance of the West Wall will find this volume satisfactory, but serious professionals interested in the exact composition and disposition of the West Wall defenses will put down this volume empty-handed. At times it also appears that the author's heart was not in this task, as he readily admits in the introduction that the publisher pushed him into writing on a subject that he had not specifically researched - honest, but an inauspicious start.

Hitler's Siegfried Wall consists of six chapters, with the first covering the genesis of the wall in 1919-1939, four on the wartime history of the wall, and a final chapter that covers post-war demolition of the wall. The author provides six simple maps: the general layout of the defenses; the French 1939 Saar offensive; the Allied offensives of September 1944, October-November 1944, December 1944 and February-March 1945. While the author provides a number of photographs to support the text, there are far too many shots of "Dragons Teeth" and far too few of actual bunkers. The author's narrative is heavily oriented toward covering the operational history of the wall - much of it drawn from Charles MacDonald's excellent official history, The Siegfried Line Campaign. However, the three main things lacking in this volume are comprehensiveness, technical detail and analysis.

The Germans built the West Wall in five phases: two defensive belts were built around Frankfurt and Stuttgart in 1934-1935; the Pioneer Program of 1936-1938; the Limes Program of 1938; the Aachen-Saar Program of 1938; and final improvements in 1939-1940. The Luftwaffe also built an air defense belt behind the West Wall fortifications. The author fails to provide a comprehensive history because he mentions the air defense belt, the Frankfurt-Stuttgart defenses and several large artillery batteries in the Black Forrest area, but then never discusses their composition or role. Nor does the author make any great effort to distinguish the differences behind the various phases, beyond basics that the Pioneer Program produced fewer, but bigger bunkers than the subsequent phases. Short even manages to miss the "A Werkes", which were to be very large forts in the West Wall; the "A Werke" begun near Istein was to have a garrison of 2,600 soldiers and mount 88mm and 170mm guns. There is also a paucity in technical detail; while the author provides basic data on the cost and concrete required to build certain bunkers, he provides no sketches on their appearance or discussion of their internal layout. Nor does the author provide even a single sample of how the West Wall defenses actually appeared on a particular piece of terrain (e.g. distance between bunkers or defensive belts).

The author does make an attempt at analysis, but it is restricted to the operational value of the West Wall. As Neil Short sees it, the West Wall was primarily designed to deter a French attack while Germany seized Czechoslovakia and Poland; it was a gigantic bluff - and it succeeded. Thanks to the Allied perception of the West Wall's strength, Hitler was able to leave only minimal forces in the west while he crushed Poland in 1939. However, Short sees the West Wall's actual combat value as somewhat less, since many positions were tactically unsound (no examples provided) and many of the bunkers were only lightly armed. In 1944, Short believes that the West Wall did contribute to the "Miracle of the West" in slowing and stopping the Allied offensive near the German border, even though U.S. forces did penetrate the line fairly easily in several places. Short's claim that the West Wall "inflicted terrible casualties on the Allies" is a bit much, since there were no cases where U.S. troops were repulsed with "terrible losses" due merely to stout West Wall defenses (the losses in the Huertgen Forrest being due more to difficult weather and terrain, combined with tactical mistakes).

Any real analysis of a fortification system such as the West Wall should ask whether the resources devoted to such a task were justified. Clearly, Short comes down on the side of a qualified "yes". However, Short also notes that U.S. units that properly used combined arms tactics - like the 30th Infantry Division - were able to penetrate even well-defended sections of the West Wall without suffering excessive casualties. Short doesn't spend much time addressing the issue, but the vulnerability of fixed, linear defenses was apparent when Allied forces started to penetrate the West Wall in any depth, as many positions had to be abandoned once the Allies got behind them. The fact that one of the strongest positions in the West Wall - the Katzenkopf - was captured without a fight should expose the inherent weakness in these type of defenses. Short also misses a key point - that fixed defenses are intended merely to delay, not defeat an enemy attack and are therefore dependent upon mobile reserves to defeat enemy penetrations. This raises the conundrum: when Germany had plenty of mobile units it didn't need the wall, and by the time it needed the wall, it lacked mobile units. Hitler's West Wall was a strategic "white elephant" that did not justify its expense, but appeared successful due to French timidity in 1939 and Allied logistical shortfalls in 1944.