The best and most recent books on WW2 in Europe

A meticulous examination of the Battle of The Bulge, the largest battle ever fought by the US Army. What I found so fascinating was that, even given the massive scale of the fight, it reads more like a wide series of small engagements, scattered and disconnected from each other.  Individual units, often cut off from each other and vastly outnumbered and outgunned, still put up a stiff resistance, enough to pick away at the juggernaut advance of the Germans, each one slowing the enemy a little more and a little more and a little more, until reinforcements can finally put a stop to the enemy advance.

Quite simply, the best Bulge division history ever written. Plus, Fontenot sheds long-overdue light on the fighting at St. Vith, whose importance was nearly equivalent to the more famous struggle for Bastogne. Like every author on this list, he knows how to combine first-rate scholarship with excellent storytelling. Fontenot spent decades interviewing commanders and other participants, visiting the ground, and compiling source material. He knew many of the principal characters quite well and yet he never let his personal relationships stand in the way of historical objectivity. Plus, as a retired colonel and a veteran of Desert Storm who commanded an armor battalion in combat, he brings his own professional understanding into the mix. The result is a fascinating and innovative historical work.

What happens when an author with a remarkable knack for insightful research and a gift for brilliant narrative prose takes on the task of telling a story of such epochal importance? A wonderful book that conveys the desperation of the moment and weaves this together with latter-year perspective. Among Beevor’s many insights, my favorite is his assertion that “the German leadership’s greatest mistake in the Ardennes offensive was to have misjudged the soldiers of an army they had affected to despise.” So very true! The Germans badly underestimated the U.S. Army and they paid the price for their dismissive chauvinism.