[.ca] From Normandy to the Ruhr: With the 116th Panzer ... (ISBN 0966638972)

Excellent book to flesh out your knowledge of the West Front:
Sort of like Forrest Gump in the 60's, the 116th Panzer Div was in the middle of many of the famous and key battles in the Western Front in '44 and '45. This book is an excellent description of the battles from the German point of view. The writing and research are fair and scrupelous. If you've read the major histories by American or British authors, this one will fill any voids, correct a few misunderstandings, and explain the other side of the story. You might want to keep those major histories handy, because sometimes I got a little confused about the larger picture (though Guderian describes the action on either side of the 116th).

Perfect Unit History:
An excellant account of one Div in the fight of WWII. As this unit fought on the Western Front it differs in the action accounts of the "Fight to the Death" that went on in the Eastern Front. Very descriptive accounts of battles fought and what went wrong on the German side and how they countered the Allied assaults. Sometimes successful and sometimes not....there are no one "we won every battle" descriptions but an honest account of how this division "the Greyhound" Division fought. Having been the only major unit to make it to the beaches on D-Day but not having the resources to consolidate their gains and then fight a continuous withdrawl action for the rest of the war, I found this book easy to follow. I was not lost and the maps made following the battles extremly easy to navigate which unit fought who. Well worth it.