HITLER’S WINTER Q+A WITH ANTHONY TUCKER-JONES

Why did you choose to focus on the German perspective of the battle?

The German perspective always seemed far more exciting and intriguing to me. What made Hitler risk everything with that last throw of the dice? Many years ago I wrote a book on the battle for Falaise in Normandy from the viewpoint of the panzer divisions. Hitler’s Ardennes offensive was a direct result of their escape from the Falaise pocket. Although they lost all their panzers, over 90,000 panzertruppen got away to fight another day.

The Battle of the Bulge, as it became known, has remained a source of public fascination ever since the terrible 1960s movie of the same name. Most studies, though, tend to focus on the Allied response, particularly the heroic American defence of Bastogne and General Patton dramatically riding to the rescue. What people don’t realise is that Hitler launched four very different operations on the Western Front in the winter of 1944-45 and I was keen to explore how these all fitted together. These consisted of the ground offensive in the Ardennes, with Antwerp as its goal; the massed air offensive against Allied air fields in northern Europe; the V-weapons offensive against Antwerp; and the offensive in the Alsace that was intended to recapture Strasbourg. These are what really informed my title Hitler’s Winter.

Furthermore, I was fascinated by the special forces operations conducted in the Ardennes. There was Otto Skorzeny’s 150th Panzer Brigade masquerading as Americans, plus