ISBN 1-885119-66-6
367 pages

Acknowledgments; Preface; Guide to Abbreviations and German Words; maps; Bibliography; Index

Appendices: Organizational diagrams of German, US, and Soviet divisions and corps

   In his first book about the German I SS Panzer Corps, Steel Inferno, Michael Reynolds (a retired British general and biographer of Jochen Peiper) fashioned a synthesis of existing German and Allied accounts of the Leibstandarte and Hitlerjugend divisions in Normandy. His story of the two SS divisions proved popular enough to be selected as one of the Top Ten books of 1997.
   The new book backtracks to the origins of the first Life Guard and (reiterating much of the opening chapter of Steel Inferno) outlines its history as a personal guard unit, an infantry regiment, a motorized infantry division, a panzer-grenadier division, and panzer corps. Along the way Reynolds investigates the unit's relationship with Hitler, the Army, and the other SS units; its combat experience; and its role in assorted atrocities. (Further commentary can be found later in the book about specific accusations of atrocity, both by and against men of the I SS Panzer Corps.)
   In his second chapter, Reynolds traces the birth of the second division of the corps, the Hitlerjugend Division. Although initially comprised in the main of youths from the HJ organization who volunteered for service with the division, Reynolds emphasizes that, despite some rumors to the contrary, these were not children, but young men who had reached at least the age of 18 before the unit ever went into combat.
   Following this introduction, the book turns to the principal leaders of the two divisions and the corps, then briefly covers the corps' campaign in Normandy (which of course is the meat of Steel Inferno) and its withdrawal to the Westwall. During this nightmarish retreat, the entire corps mostly ceased to exist save for a few elements which had remained outside the Normandy area during the campaign.
   Following these huge losses during Normandy, during the retreat across France, and at the hands of local partisans, I SS Panzer Corps' survivors assembled in September and October in the vicinity of Osnabruck to begin the process of rebuilding the skeletal divisions. In two months they would be back in action, and Reynolds provides readers with some insights about how the cadre of veterans managed to integrate the rookies, many of whom had never volunteered to serve in the SS.
   The heart of the first half of the book deals with the I SS Corps in the Battle of the Bulge, devoting over 100 pages to the Ardennes. While much of this material will be familiar to readers, it also expands and corrects earlier accounts, among them Hugh Cole's The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge from the official US Army series. For example, after quoting Cole's description of the terrain around the "twin villages," Reynolds responds:

   Whilst it is certainly true that the 'twin villages' were tactically important and dominated the direct approaches from the north-east, east, and south-east, it is certainly not true that the track from the Udenbreth road 'converged, funneling along a single track into Rocherath-Krinkelt'. The tracks today are the same as they were in 1944 and although it was, and still is, quite possible to follow a track running north-west from the Udenbreth-Neuhof road towards Rocherath, the main forest trails from the Udenbreth-Neuhof road run west and south-west (through the Honsfelder Wald and Langelenfenn) to Murringen and the vital Losheimergraben-Bullingen road. These tracks are clear on pre-war maps but are not shown on MAP II in Cole's Official History and consequently they have been ignored by most historians....

   Indeed, although focusing on the actions of the SS, Reynolds integrates much information from Allied sources, notably after action reports, into the narrative. One of the strengths of this book is the manner in which the author sorts through the available evidence—for example, regarding claims versus actual tank losses—and suggests the reality most likely to have occurred.
   The account of the Ardennes includes not only the initial thrust by the SS Corps, but also the subsequent fighting, the retreat, and the eventual withdrawal of the corps.

   And so ended the part played by the designated Divisions of Hitler's Bodyguard Corps in the Ardennes campaign. Once again, they had given their all and been reduced to mere spectres of the Leibstandarte which had participated in the campaign in Russia in 1943 and the Hitlerjugend in Normandy in 1944. In summary, it can be said that they had been ordered to fight through unsuitable terrain, starved of essential supplies and denied the air support this type of offensive demanded. But it also has to be said that, due to failures by German intelligence staffs, the men of the LAH and HJ had often been surprised by the situations in which they found themselves—for example, the presence of the 2nd US Infantry Division in the northern attack area—and by the speed of the American reaction to their attacks, e.g., the rapid movement of the 1st and 30th US Infantry Divisions and CCB of the 3rd Armored to the threatened areas. But there was one more thing which spelled disaster for Hitler's last offensive in the West—the bravery and tenacity of the American front-line soldier. This came as a shock to the Germans who, like their Fuehrer, had a poor opinion of the US Army—and it may also have come as a surprise to many readers. Hopefully this narrative will have helped to correct the widely held misconception that the Americans were routed in the Ardennes and that the majority of the 'GIs' ran away—as the Waffen-SS found to its cost, nothing could be further from the truth.

   The following chapter describes the general situation on the Russian front at the beginning of 1945 and recounts the refitting of LAH and HJ and their movements toward their next battlefields. Although brought up to strength in raw numbers, both divisions were far short of experienced NCOs and officers, and no time was available to complete training or undertake field exercises. Reynolds also reviews Soviet organization, tactics, and equipment. As an aside, it should be noted that while discussing Soviet units, Reynolds constantly reminds readers of the true nature of those forces by referring somewhat irritatingly to units such as "I Guards Mechanized Corps (Panzer Division)" and "V Guards Tank Corps (Panzer Division)."
   In the second half of February, I SS Panzer Corps launched Operation South Wind against the Gran bridgehead in which the unit's attached Tiger II tanks played an important role. Even at this late stage in the war, the Germans were able to conduct a successful attack with highly favorable results.

   The Germans claimed seventy-one tanks, 179 guns, howitzers and anti-tank guns, 537 prisoners and 2,069 Russian dead in the fighting up to 22 February. Of these, Peiper credits Werner Poetschke's mixed SS Panzer Battalion with twenty-three T-34s destroyed, thirty Hungarian, Italian, British and German built tanks captured and 280 enemy killed. According to a return signed by Fritz Kraemer, the Chief of Staff of the Sixth Panzer Army, I SS Panzer Corps suffered 2,989 casualties, including 413 killed in the same period and, rather surprisingly, only three Mk IVs, six Panthers and two Tigers lost or in need of long-term repair. Figures quoted in the Histories of the LAH and HJ would indicate that this is a major understatement.
   Operation South Wind was, without doubt, a brilliant success. In eight days I SS Panzer Corps, admittedly with valuable assistance from Panzer Corps Feldherrnhalle, had recaptured over 400 square kilometers of territory, inflicted 8,800 casualties on the Red Army and cleared seven infantry Divisions and a Guards Mechanized Corps (Panzer Division) from west of the Gran. It is remarkable that such an effective fighting machine could have been produced within a month of the Ardennes disaster—the more so when one takes into account that many of the men involved had received only minimal training.

   After a few days of refitting and receiving replacements, the Leibstandarte and Hitlerjugend divisions launched Operation Spring Awakening, the Lake Balaton offensive, on 6 March. Rather like Hitler's Ardennes offensive, this assault was designed to throw the Soviets off balance, bring their advance to a standstill, and buy time for some kind of miracle.
   These battles are the subject of much confusion and conflicting reports in post-war accounts.

   Whatever the truth about the fighting on 6 March, it was certainly not a good day for the Germans—they had failed to surprise their enemy and their gains were depressingly small. In the case of I SS Panzer Corps the deepest penetration was a mere 4km.

   By 9 March, the corps was making much better progress and Reynolds describes the fighting but remains hampered by incomplete and contradictory sources.

   Although the descriptions of the fighting on 12 March are very similar in both the LAH and HJ Divisional Histories, there are conflicting claims as to which units carried out the assault across the Sio canal just to the west of the Bozot river. Ralf Tiemann states that it was made by Hansen's 1st SS Panzer-Grenadier Regiment LAH and the Division's 1st SS Reconnaissance Battalion, with 'elements' of the HJ's 26th Regiment. Hubert Meyer, on the other hand, claims that the assault was carried out by the 1st and 2nd Battalions of Braun's 26th SS Panzer-Grenadier Regiment, with support from the heavy weapons of the Regiment, artillery, and some of Brockschmidt's Jagdpanzers. In the opinion of this author, Meyer is more likely to be correct, since the sector to the west of the Bozot was the responsibility of the Hitlerjugend and there was a greater need for the Leibstandarte's infantry in the attack on the built-up area of Simontornya. The description of subsequent events will therefore be based on this assumption.

   Despite the momentary successes, the exertions of the corps were futile and by 19 March the LAH and HJ halted their final offensive and withdrew.
   The remaining chapters of the book chronicle the final months of I SS Panzer Corps' war on the Russian front. As Reynolds reminds us, the story of the southern sector of the front, overshadowed by the Berlin operations, has received relatively little attention. The author does his best to pull together the fragmentary sources available for these operations, but much of his narrative—even more so than at Lake Balaton—rests on limited evidence, estimates, and speculation.

   In the last few chaotic weeks of the war it was inevitable that many unit records and war diaries would be lost or destroyed, or in some cases not kept at all. So it was with the Leibstandarte and Hitlerjugend—their War Diaries for this period do not exist. Readers will no doubt have noticed that fewer details of the fighting are being provided and the beginning of the Soviet offensive sees the picture becoming even more blurred. As we approach the end of the fighting, whole units will disappear from our scene without mention, or come and go like they ghosts they have since become. Every effort has been made to produce a comprehensive image but much reliance has had to be placed on individual memories which may or may not be wholly accurate.

   Under the circumstances, Reynolds relies heavily on the LAH and HJ divisional histories by Tiemann and Meyer, but, as shown above, sometimes even those two sources disagree on important aspects of the battle or leave out engagements altogether.
   Whatever the exact details, the ensuing weeks of war proved to be a nightmare for the tired, dirty SS men who—despite occasional local successes—were forced to retreat again and again. In return for their continued resistance and mounting casualties, Hitler—enraged by what he perceived as a failure by his personal SS cohort—ordered that the men and officers of the LAH and HJ remove their honorary cuffbands.
   In the closing days of the war, the last remnants of the divisions broke into small groups and tried to make their way home or into the western zone to avoid capture by the Soviets. And there ends the story of the I SS Panzer Corps in World War II.
   The concluding chapter, "Captives, Camps and Courts", briefly tells the post-war stories of some of the men of the corps. Much of this material echoes the epilogue of Steel Inferno but adds some new information, such as the continuing inaccessibility of Wilhelm Mohnke's file in the British Public Records Office.
   While Men of Steel has much to recommend it, ultimately it proves less satisfying than Steel Inferno. Partly this stems from its heavy reliance on the English-language translations of the LAH and HJ divisional histories which makes it seem more derivative than Steel Inferno. And partly this stems from Reynolds' approach and the way the limited sources affect that approach as the book reaches its second half.
   Reynolds' strength as historian and writer is his ability to synthesize from the accounts of others, a technique he was able to put to very good use in his book on the Normandy campaign with its unrivaled richness of English-language historiography. This technique allowed him to present much detail about LAH and HJ while simultaneously filling in the gaps, showing how the divisions' opponents saw and recorded the action, and balancing the conflicting accounts. The first half of the second book, the Ardennes campaign, thanks to the plethora of complementary Allied sources utilizes the same approach. Unfortunately, the author's ability to build a synthesis breaks down in the less documented waning months of the war on the Russian front. This dearth of source material and consequent tide of unexplained events and unanswered questions is certainly not the author's fault, but it does detract from his account of those operations in the East.
   Given the paucity of late-war resources, Reynolds has probably done the best job that could be done. Readers will find much of value here, but likely will also be unable to avoid a feeling of disappointment at the sketchiness of much of the second half of the book. Thus, the most familiar—and, in a way, less needed—portions of Men of Steel are the best; the more intriguing, least explored battles prove most frustrating.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Sarpedon.
   Thanks to Sarpedon for providing this review copy.