Guarding Hitler

A 22-year-old Swiss student decided to kill Adolf Hitler and got very close to succeeding. The capture of two unusual Waffen-SS soldiers in Normandy resulted in another of the many close calls with death that the Nazi leader had. If you are keen to learn about the close protection around Hitler, his body guards and their vehicles, then this book by Dr. Mark Felton should be of great interest to you.  

Mark Felton has become a familiar name to many WWII buffs thanks to YouTube. By January 2021 his main YouTube channel reached one million subscribers. But with books like Guarding Hitler he has shown that he is much more than a talented YouTuber. In Guarding Hitler he tells the story of the SS forces directly responsible for the personal safety of Hitler and while doing so makes it clear how complicated the SS empire was. The number of similar (competing) branches within the SS is quite baffling and reflects a basic feature of the whole German state under National Socialism. The Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence agency of the SS and NSDAP (Nazi Party), has become well known, but Guarding Hitler instead acquaints the reader more with the two SS forces responsible for Hitler´s close personal security, the rather confusingly named Reichssicherheitsdienst (RSD) that was not part of the SD, and the Führerbegleitkommando (FBK). To not complicate life too much I here only use the last names that these groups had.

 

Guarding Hitler is not least about the many attempts to kill Hitler – I found the Swiss student´s to be the most fascinating one. Although this subject has been covered in previous books and documentaries, Felton manages to make also these sections of his book highly readable. He presents own archive finds about the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) assassination plan called Operation Foxley. The plan, focused on sending a sniper team to Obersalzberg, was created due to the capture of two very special Waffen-SS soldiers in Normandy in June 1944 – soldiers that made the SOE realize that the security at Hitler´s Obersalzberg complex was not perfect. The prisoners opened up a window of opportunity for the SOE. In my opinion Guarding Hitler has all the ingredients to form the basis for a really strong documentary about Operation Foxley, that of course could be followed by a WWII “what if” movie.     

 

Nordic readers may be surprised to learn from Guarding Hitler how RSD body guards protected also the Reichskommissars in Norway and Denmark. The RSD came to protect not only Hitler but many leaders of the Third Reich. 

 

Aviation buffs will no doubt be most interested in what Felton has written about Hitler´s private air force including the “parachute seat” that was added to the personal Condor aircraft of Hitler. To quote from the relevant chapter: “Air travel was dangerous, particularly during wartime, yet Hitler seemed to prefer the risks rather than using his train for most long-distance journeys.”

 

Hitler´s train is of course also present, the Führersonderzug and what I found particularly interesting in that part was what happened to it after the war, how it was used by different states and that Hitler´s saloon coach (dining carriage) was taken out of service only in 1990 (!) and is now on display in a Bavarian steam locomotive museum.

 

Well then, Guarding Hitler should be of interest to both the average WWII buff, WWII researchers and close protection specialists.

The Americans and Germans at Bastogne

Can anything more and also of interest be said about the Battle of the Bulge? This new book by Gary Sterne shows that it is still possible. This is a book of particular interest to wargamers and others who want to get into details of the fighting in December 1944.

The British author Gary Sterne is rather famous for his Normandy research, not least concerning the Maisy Battery (check it out!). To produce The Americans and Germans at Bastogne he located the early postwar interviews with several German commanders who took part. He then matched them with US Army reports and selected a large number of wartime and postwar maps. The result is a source that should be very useful for those intending to visit the areas in question, and for wargamers. Also, anyone wishing to research the most involved German generals should have this book. Waffen-SS Oberstgruppenführer (Generaloberst) Josef “Sepp” Dietrich is of course among the quoted generals but there are more pages with Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein and Generalmajor Heinz Kokott and others. 

Given that most featured German officers are generals the perspective is mostly on larger units, mainly the involved divisions. But from time to time you get to read about smaller units and even individual tanks. My impression of the Volksgrenadiers seems to be in need of revision as I understand from this book that their quality was very varied.

The clash in thick fog between US Army Staff Sergeant Michael Lesniak´s Sherman tank and a German Tiger is memorable. From the explosive account of the fighting around the village of Marvie I conclude that if I have the opportunity to again go there by car I would like to see what the place looks like today. Perhaps some buildings still show signs of the fighting? I have found scars from WWII before, many times.

If you are not into visiting battlefields I believe you will find that the most interesting part of The Americans and Germans at Bastogne is the chapter “German Commanders Assess the Reasons for Failure”. From it I note that “the failure to take St. Vith in time” is Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt´s number one reason. This was written down shortly after the war, without all the hindsight.

The book’s many maps should be of great interest, even though the image quality is not always the best. The photos are not that many but mostly good. This is a book that one gets for the text and maps, there are already plenty of photo books out there. If only this 291 page book would have had an index, and there are spelling mistakes (names). But hopefully there will be more editions, and then an index can be added.

Total Undersea War

Were the German U-boats in the Atlantic defeated in May 1943? Not only is that an illusion but submarine historian Aaron S. Hamilton proves that some of the last German sub operations, shortly before the big German surrender and right beside the North American coastline, are among the most amazing. 

The book title, Total Undersea War, at first seemed a bit vague. But once you get into the book it becomes logical, as Mr. Hamilton is able to show how largely surface-bound submarine warfare was transformed by the introduction of an air mast, or “snorkel”, opening up a new era under the surface of the sea. Thus this book is both about submarine design, late U-boat operations and postwar submarine design. 

 

Submarine buffs, and especially those that are residents of North America, will be richly rewarded by Hamilton´s research. If you are not already a buff you might have problems believing the Germans cruised so close to your shores even when the war was about to end. There is no doubt, however, that Hamilton´s book is based on hard facts. 

 

More U-boats departed for the East Coast in the spring of 1945 than at any point since 1942. Let that sink in. The US Navy took this German underwater offensive very seriously, and more than most people now realize. This was not least because of the possibility that a U-boat might launch a V-weapon against a US city or base. Why this V-rocket scare must have been especially troublesome can be understood by taking into consideration how Allied intelligence, in spite of all its resources, had failed to predict the massive German offensive in the Ardennes in late 1944. Hitler there proved that he could still deliver large and unpleasant surprises.

 

In fact, in January 1945, the German Minister of Armaments Albert Speer made a radio broadcast in which he said V-rockets would fall on New York “by February 1”. We all know that this didn´t happen, but it is amazing enough to learn how despite a tight US naval barrier, German U-boats still managed to slip through, reach the East Coast and remain undetected to the end. To quote Hamilton: “[…] a submarine that didn´t surface and didn´t transmit by radio was almost impossible to track, find and destroy.”

 

This brings us to the final chapter of the book, about the mystery of U-869. Here the author has gone to very great lengths to provide a credible solution, and any future expeditions to the wreck ought to use Total Undersea War as the starting point.

 

This 416-page book contains plenty of fine photographs that I have never seen before, plus several interesting appendices.