An astonishing account of the forgotten final German offensive on the Western Front.
About the Book
While the famous Battle of the Bulge has inspired countless books, the desperate attack launched to support it — Operation Northwind — has largely been overlooked.
Planned by Adolf Hitler himself, eight German divisions, including three elite SS formations, were hurled against the thinly held American and French lines in the bitter winter landscape of Alsace-Lorraine.
Even though Allied intelligence had forewarning through ‘Ultra’ at Bletchley Park, there was little they could do as the offensive smashed into their defences.
The attack drove a dangerous wedge into the Allied front and pushed the Franco-American alliance to breaking point when Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the evacuation of Strasbourg — sparking fury from Charles de Gaulle and his troops.
Drawing on American, French and German sources, Charles Whiting reconstructs this brutal and neglected campaign in vivid detail. He reveals how, despite suffering more than 18,000 casualties, the Allies eventually halted the German advance, closed the Colmar Pocket and relieved the pressure on the Ardennes.
This is a gripping account of one of the last desperate gambles of the Third Reich — and the hard-fought Allied victory that helped bring the war in Europe to its final months.
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