One of the best books on this battle is 'Hitler's Last Gamble'. It goes into great tactical detail in a large number of engagements. If you are a CMBO player this is the 'Battle of the Bulge' book for you.
Also, the author is one of the people who was contracted by the DoD to do an in depth study of all engagements possible in WW2, using the AARs and interviews with survivors of both sides. This gave rise to the 'CEF' system, which directly lead to major changes in how the U.S. trained it's combat troops. The changes in general adopted a number of German training techniques. The part of the appendices that discusses this entire topic (and analyzes a number of battles discussed in the book as case examples) explains in great detail the 'why' of why the Germans were so good tactically and operationally for the duration of the war.
If there's any one book that can give you good, no-nonsense understanding of squad, platoon, and company level combat in NWE in WW2, this is it. An awesome book. The appendices are 2 separate books all on their own.
Another great writeup dealing with infantry combat in WW2 is 'The Evolution of Small Unit Tactics', which was found in Avalon Hill's 'The General' (
http://users.erols.com/mrboone/general/gen_14_5.txt). It's basically a very well written summation of several very hard to come by DoD, MoD, Bundesarchiv analyses. It details the major change in small unit tactics at the end of WW1 (German units forming 'sturmgruppen' and moving to fire team or squad sized infiltration units/tactics, the adoption of the SMG as a primary weapon for certain units, etc.) thru the 'cycles' of WW2 (one 'cycle' example: Germans approach city combat inefficiently and get stung bad for the first half of the battle for Stalingrad, then teach the same lessons to the U.S. and British later in the war, etc.).
If you can get a copy of that paper I highly recommend it.
Mike/wulfie
