Alpine Elite: German Mountain Troops of World War II

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This book records for the first time in the English language the story of Germany’s mountain troops, the Gebirgsjager. A distinguished military historian, with the help of some 200 ex-members of the Gebirgsjager, has now written this enthralling account of one of Germany's elite formations of World War Il.

In every campaign from the opening of hostilities wherever fighting was bitter the Gebirgsjager were there. Often, they paved the way and led the storming advances or, when the German line was under pressure, held a rock-firm defence. The extremes of climate which they endured ranged from the deadly cold of the mountains during a Russian winter to the trek across the blazing arid slopes of the mountains of Crete to relieve the desperate parachute troops. The Polar circle, mountains of Tunisia, on steppe, in swamps or the high country: all these varied terrains fought over by the men from the Alpine regions of Germany and Austria.

From the mass of material gathered after years of research, certain major battles and campaigns were of the greatest significance; these are recorded here. The forcing of the Cretan mountains played a vital part in winning this battle in 1941. Also in 1941 divisions of a Mountain Corps played an important part in sealing the pocket in Uman, when nearly a million Soviet soldiers were surrounded. Mountain troops climbed the highest peaks of the Caucasus and threatened to carry the war from Europe into Asia. In the confusion in Austria at the end of the war it was a Gebirgsjager Division which was chosen to hold the line against the onstorming Red Army and thus sacrifice itself in order that others might escape. And each of these major episodes is linked by short accounts of other battles fought in Poland, Norway and Finland.

To carry out the research around which the narrative has been written original documents, war diaries and histories were consulted in institutions both at home and abroad. Many interviews were conducted with men who had served in the mountain regiments, as well as with Austrian civilians who experienced at first hand the fighting in their country during the spring of 1945, and these reports bring additional life to this graphic history.

The photographs range from military life in peace-time Germany to the campaigns and countries in which the Gebirgsjager fought. The campaign accounts are also illustrated with maps.