This is a great book for the student of military history. The US/British histories make much of their might and skills while not really saying much of anything about the German Army other than the usual anti-Nazi rants. This book gives you the trench level view of the battle for Arnhem from the German side of the line. The source material is taken from unit and personal diaries of German soldiers. You get a good look at the organizational skills and staff work that goes into a battle and are able to follow a number of soldiers through the battle.

It is not for the casual reader however. Kershaw assumes that you are already quite familiar with MARKET-GARDEN, and, like John Keegan, European geography. And, he only presents the German point-of-view but, since that is what the book is all about, that is fine. However, if you are only passingly familiar with MARKET-GARDEN, I suggest reading Cornelius Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far first. That should be all the background you need. An optional extra would be a good map of (WWII) Holland.

I have been reading books on WWII for 25 years, so I have seen the same pictures printed over and over in various books and games. However, this book contains at least 100 pictures, none of which you likely will have ever seen before. As far as I can tell, they are all from German Army archives and personal collections. The down side, and this may have more to do with this being a reprint edition, is that the photos are of pretty poor quality. Many look like photocopies of a newspaper photo. But they are new and give some good scenes.

My one knock on the book (and this is common to most books of this genre) is the maps. They are dreadful and misplaced. There are 8 or so color glossy maps grouped in the center of the book. This placement isn’t great, but I understand the realities of printing books of this type, especially these small run books, so I can live with that. But other criticisms:

* The maps appear to be only vaguely in chronological order (i.e., there are a few that are out of order, so you don’t discover them until you passed the section they illustrate. And with a topic this complex, that is more than a little vexing).
* The scale varies from map to map, sometimes greatly. Most maps have no legend, so there is no easy way to figure this out. Also, without any guidance, it is hard to find the locations you are interested in. This is where knowledge of WWII Holland’s geography would be useful.
* The icons used were very odd. I have seen a lot of military maps and I still had a lot of trouble orienting and following these.

There are a bunch of other maps scattered about in the book, but in black and white, and they were mostly useless.

That criticism aside, I highly recommend this book. Especially for those who you who may have fallen under the sway of too much Stephan Ambrose cheerleading. Especially in the aftermath of the BAND OF BROTHER miniseries. In Ambrose’s writing, the American Army is the best trained, led and equipped force ever and they crushed the German Army just as everyone knew they would. That view is inaccurate, the American Army of 1944 would have had its ass handed to it by the German Army of 1942. And there was great uncertainty at the time as to the outcome of the invasion of Europe. But that isn’t (fortunately) what we got to fight. The strength of the Wehrmacht had been bled white by the Russians by this time. Most of the serious fighting on the Western front was done by scratch units, NCO schools, Ostwehr, etc. And these formations were usually thrown into the fray before their training was complete and were equipped with whatever was available.

But, as this book points out, they shouldn’t be discounted in their abilities. One part of me would like to see what would happen if the armies met on more equal terms, but I am glad we never found out. ( )