Die deutsche Gebirgstruppe 1935 - 1945 [Gebundene Ausgabe]

This book is structured chronologically. Sort of.

The first section dealing with the interwar years from 1919 to 1939 and this section also includes chapters on the individual Gebirgsjäger divisions and other units (including all units, also those raised much later in the war). Though every unit has it's own headline and informative description, there is no note on unit organisation, equipment or weaponry at all. This was disappointing. If you already own Tessins works, you already have all you get out of this section, i.e. date of raising, component units and geographical information, plus some commanders and brief notes on areas of operation.

Then follow eleven sections dealing with the various campaigns fought in the war, in chronological order. These sections all contain a general description of the campaigns, followed by an operational overview and then excerpts from the various Gebirgsjäger units war diaries and other sources.

The 11 sections are very uneven in quality. The text jumps from army level view to company level in a rather amoebic manner and with no maps or other aids, it rapidly becomes very confusing. It is difficult to distinguish Kalteneggers text from quotes. Some chapters consist entirely of quoted operational orders, such as the entire text on Tunisia. Others contain long explanations provided by Kaltenegger himself. Kalteneggers own texts do not follow any discernable pattern. Some chapters focus very much on the Gebirgsjäger, in others you read about them only in footnotes, as the chapter is actually about entirely different units. Somebody should have helped out with disposition here and it really feels like reading my very heterogenous collection of recepies sometimes.

What you get out of it all is some insight as to what campaigns the Gebirgstruppen took part in, and what their role was. Some of these are obscure and were unknown to me.

I do not consider this to be the standard work on the Gebirgstruppen. You gain no real insight in the particular warfare of mountaintroops, no insight at all as to training, organisation or equipment. You get only a very dotted insight of the campaigns actually fought. There is no summary, no analysis of mountain warfare as such, on the units or their actual impact, no analysis on the effect on the Austrian/Bavarian communities providing the men and no tactical or operational conclusion. The book contains no trace of comparative study, or even curiosity about how the enemy experienced engagements with mountain troops. The book is so in want of structure that it is very difficult to find the facts that are actually in it, which prevents its use as a research resource (there is no index at the end either). The strange thing is, that all of these elements are part of Kalteneggers other book on Spezialverbände (except the index at the end).

As in all his works, Kalteneggers interpretation of history makes itself very evident. This is a warning flag to those so injured by revisionist rhetoric that it destroys the reading experience entirely. Myself I just brush it aside.

I cannot recommend this. Instead I recommend buying the available divisional histories of the Gebirgstruppen units, and buy Kalteneggers MUCH better book on Spezialverbände der Gebirgstruppen, which I do consider to be a standad work on the Gebirgstruppen. In the latter, Kaltenegger has grown enormously as an author, he has let go of the revisionist rhetoric and learned a whole lot about disposition.