Summary of Leo Barron's Patton at the Battle of the Bulge

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 Death was never far from the mind of Colonel Rudolph-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, as he was constantly on the run from the Gestapo. He had tried to kill Hitler on March 21, 1943, and was now en route to a meeting at Army Group B Headquarters.#2 Colonel Rudolph von Gersdorff was a conspirator against Hitler. He was born in 1905 in the town of Lubin, Silesia. He attended the War Academy in Berlin to become a general staff officer, and when the war broke out in 1939, he was a captain on the staff of the Fourteenth Army.#3 On July 27, 1944, he became the chief of staff for the Seventh Army. It was not an auspicious start. The U. S. Army's Operation Cobra had begun only two days earlier, and it was the breakout the German army's High Command had feared since D-day.#4 The German war potential allows them to form an offensive force by rehabilitating and completely reconstituting the twelve panzer and panzergrenadier divisions at present employed on the Western Front, as well as some twenty volksgrenadier divisions and two airborne divisions. The most important factor will be surprise and speed.