Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book by Alex Kershaw follows the experiences of Lt. Col. Felix Sparks of the U.S. Army’s Forty-Fifth Division, known as the Thunderbirds. As documented in an article by Todd South of the Federal Times, the book was written from countless interviews Mr. Kershaw had with Felix Sparks shortly before his death in 2007. If you are looking for non-fiction, then look elsewhere because the book has numerous very relevant factual inaccuracies. That is because many of the stories Sparks told to Kershaw simply did not happen. I am a researcher, WW II history buff and the author of The Final Battle - An Untold Story of WW II’s Forty-Second Rainbow Division. My book has more than 100 official resources in its bibliography. Concerning inaccuracies; for example, Lt. Col. Sparks claims that he and his unit of the 45th single handedly captured and liberated the Dachau concentration camp. This belies historical fact. It was the Forty-Second Division (the Rainbow) that liberated Dachau. Besides the numerous books and reference materials (e.g. Lt. Hugh Daly, The Combat History of the Rainbow Div., The Army Navy Publishing 1946; Sam Dann, Dachau 29 April 1945, Texas Tech Univ. Press 1998; The Rainbow Reveille dated May 11, 1945, published by the US Army and many others) documenting the facts surrounding the events at Dachau supporting this fact, the U.S. Army’s Center of Military History credits the Rainbow Division with the camp’s liberation and not the Thunderbirds. Of course, that is also why the plaque at the present day Dachau camp dedicates its liberation to the Rainbow Division. (Picture of the plaque is posted) The fact is that the Thunderbirds, as an entire division, just not Sparks’ unit, captured an adjacent Waffen SS garrison unrelated to the Dachau concentration camp and committed war crimes within that garrison. However, Sparks, in the Kershaw book, doesn’t even mention that the Waffen SS garrison existed. To expand the Spark’s fantasies, he describes what he calls “The Linden Incident.” Brig. Gen. Linden of the Rainbow Division, and his small contingent, which included two news reporters, actually accepted the surrender of the Dachau concentration camp from SS Lt. Wicker. That is the official historical record and there are numerous documents and pictures of this account as well. However, this official account was not told by Sparks, and thus, does not appear in the Kershaw book. What Sparks does describe not only belies the facts, it belies logic. In the Sparks’ “Linden Incident,” he claims he saw Gen. Linden outside the Dachau camp and Lt. Col. Sparks went over to the General and ordered him out of the area at gun point. If Sparks had done what he described, he would have been immediately arrested and later court marshaled. And if it happened, of course the news reporters would have reported that (and there are no reports of such an interaction). This is just a couple of examples of the relevant inaccuracies in the book. My feeling is that if a publisher is going to hold out a book as based on true events, then that book should be based upon true events which were fact checked and not based upon the unverified stories of a single man.