Book Review: The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II's Most Decorated Platoon (Hardcover) by Alex Kershaw

When Kershaw is relating the stories of the members of the I&R platoon (Intelligence and Recon (scout) 394th Infantry regiment, 99th Division, US Army) , drawing on his personal interviews with the veterans, the book is pretty good. At that point, it is a compelling story of men under fire and duress. When he is setting the larger context, drawing on secondary sources, the story is trite and filled with niggling errors.

I also disliked the amount of attention given to Skorzeny and SS Col. Peiper. In particular, Kershaw imples that Peiper was unfairly targeted by "Communists" after the war. Here's the thing: a commanding officer is responsible for the behavior of ALL the troops under his command. It does not matter if Peiper was not personally present at the Malmedy Massacre, or that he did not order the killings of POWs. When atrocities occured, it was Peiper's responsibility to punish those of his subordinates who transgressed. Op. cit. Jadranko Prlić, Rasim Delić, Atif Dudaković, Sakib Mahmuljin - all convicted of war crimes during the Bosnian War (1992-5) for their failure to adequately supervise troops under their command. And Prlić was a politician, not an army commander in the field. (I also met all four after the war.) [N.b.: Dudaković has been charged; he has not been tried as of this writing.]