Fox at the Front

Fox at the Front

1st Edition cover
Author	Michael Dobson and Douglas Niles
Cover artist	Tony Greco
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Alternate history, War novel
Publisher	Tor Books
Publication date	November 2003 (hardbound) June 2004 (paperback)
Media type	Print
Pages	672 pp
ISBN
OCLC	52268942
Preceded by	Fox on the Rhine

Fox at the Front is a 2003 alternate history novel written by Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson. It is a sequel to the 2000 novel Fox on the Rhine.

The story picks up on December 27, 1944, just minutes after the climax to Fox on the Rhine, where Field Marshal Erwin Rommel has introduced himself to George Patton and offers to surrender Army Group B to him. Both generals agree that the threat of the Soviet Union was greater than all German forces under Heinrich Himmler, who has considered him a traitor. Rommel instructs Hasso von Manteuffel's Fifth Panzer Army and Heinz Guderian at the Sixth Panzer Army to surrender their units at the first Allied unit they encounter. However, given the large concentration of Waffen-SS forces in the Sixth, Himmler orders Jochen Peiper to take over the unit at its headquarters in Namur (killing Heinz Guderian in the process) and counterattack against the Allies. After a US infantry force sent to accept Guderian's surrender is ambushed, Peiper marshals a small kampfgruppe from the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler to attack Rommel's Dinant headquarters, but is forced to withdraw because of heavy US and German resistance. He also collects wounded German forces along the way during the trip back to the Rhine. Patton's liberation of Bastogne and the cooperation of Rommel's forces allows Third Army to race to the Rhine faster than the rest of the Allied forces by early January 1945, capturing a bridge in Koblenz to try cutting off as many SS units as they can. Some SS forces, including Peiper, make it across the Rhine. After he arrives in Berlin, Himmler puts Peiper in charge of the Das Reich division.