Product Description

On the night of January 11, 1945, fog, low clouds, and blizzards reduced visibility at times to literally zero along the Sandomierz bridgehead. So the German troops did not notice tanks, assault guns, and towed artillery pieces moving in position by the thousands along the east bankthe Russian sideof the Vistula River. Within seconds after the order to fire was given by the Soviet commander, General Konev, the air became incandescent with unnatural light. A sky of fire and smoke lowered over the country across the river: Houses flared up like torches, bunkers collapsed, roads were broken up, and men were ripped apart. The ferocity of the first attack shook the Germans so badly that they thought they were dealing with the main assault, and not just a reconnaissance in force. So they were completely unprepared for the principal attack and the horrors it held. Thus began the Red Storm on the Reichthe largest, costliest, and fastestmoving military operation in European history. "Essentially, the Second World War was won and lost on the Eastern Front," writes renowned historian Christopher Duffy. Until this book, however, the most dramatic events surrounding this part of the war have been little understood. Utilizing a wealth of recently released Soviet materials from Moscow archives, and cross-referencing these with German accounts, Duffy has uncovered a military campaign of unprecedented scale and intensity during which thirty million lives were lost. Red Storm on the Reich brings to life not only the Russian military assault on Germany, but also the human drama behind the epic sieges of Danzig, Kolberg, and Breslau. Duffy's gripping narrative is essential reading for all those interested in modern European history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1060494 in Books
• Published on: 1993-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Customer Reviews

An excellent book about a much neglected period of the war
Mr Duffy has provided us with a definitive account of the last stage of the war in Europe. Sadly there appears to be little in the English language literature dealing with the operations of the Red Army to reach Berlin and bring to an end the war. We can count ourselves all the luckier that Mr. Duffy's book is such a gem. He sets out to tell us the operations in a seamless narrative, effortlessly switching between layers of command reaching from a German platoon commander to a Soviet Marshal and into the Fuehrerbunker. After this section, he discusses in detail the operational problems facing both armies. He does so in a very accessible way, providing references to the first section for the specific examples. Mr. Duffy has an impressive amount of sources that he draws on, and the literature list is exhaustive.
I came away from this book with a significantly increased respect for the capabilities of the Red Army that my grandfather fought. The operations described in here dwarf the Ardennes battles in every respect, and are a serious reminder as to who won the second world war, and why Europe looked the way it did for 50 years after 1945.
A must read.

Stunning study of campaign of astonishing brutality
Christopher Duffy has written some very, very good stuff, notably "Austerlitz" and "Borodino and the war of 1812", but I think he surpassed himself with this....volume.

The Red Army shove from the Vistula to the Oder is not a campaign that has received a lot of coverage, compared to the Western Allied efforts in Normandy and Operation Market Garden or the earlier Eastern front epics of Stalingrad, Leningrad and Kursk, however there is a story of pure evil here, the evil that men do to each other (and women most particularly.)

The book started life as a paper for a military symposium and some of that technical approach survives. However this is a very human study of misery.

The Russian assault on the Vistula is thrillingly recreated as is the desparate retreat of the German forces, panicked for the first time (according to Duffy). However it is in the battles that the ridiculously outnumbered German forces undertook to try and buy time for their fleeing civilian population that the poignancy of this work is to the fore.

Particularly moving (and shocking) is the battle for Konigsberg, where the Russian troops started assaulting German women before the ink was dry on the surrender document.

It is very hard to read this book and not feel profoundly sorry for the German population in the East...

Good book.

A very flawed "revisionist" history
This book explores ground not otherwise covered in previous English language histories of WW2: the final months on the Eastern Front and, in particular, battles within what is now Poland. Much of this territory lay within pre-war German borders, and sympathy with the Germans ethnically cleansed from these areas after the war, forms the basic premise of the book. For Duffy, there are good Germans, including some generals and Nazi leaders, and bad ones such as Hitler and his more fanatical followers. The active involvement of all these good generals etc in the murderous campaigns in Russia and elsewhere, is ignored by Duffy. There are also Russians, whose personal features, mostly negative, are only briefly touched upon.
Conclusions drawn from such an analysis results in a revisionist version of history worthy of the discredited David Irving (an author, incidently, recommended by Duffy). Some of this is particularly dodgy:
- that Albert Forster, Nazi Gauliter of Danzig, was a "fundamentally decent man". Other histories point to his active involvement in the holocaust, and habit of sending his opponents to nearby Stutthof Concentration Camp.
- that as liberation approached, inmates of Stutthof freed by their SS guards, preferred to remain under German protection than wait for the Russians. This is ridiculous to the extreme: Stutthof was part of the "final solution" and some 80,000 people died there, most gassed to death on arrival.
- that a large group of British army officer prisoners of war in Eastern Prussia escaped from their Russian liberators and joined a Panzer regiment who had captured them in 1940, offering if required to fight alongside them. This claim, based on German sources, does not stand up to any historical examination.
The liberation of Auschwitz is touched upon in a single paragraph (attention focusing on why the Russian general involved chose not to visit it). Russian atrocities, which pale into insignificance by comparison, feature prominently.
The Polish people who inhabit many of the areas under discussion rarely get a mention.
This book may lull the less-discerning reader into sympathy with the Germans of East Prussia. Danzig and Pomerania; most will hopefully see through it and whatever point the author is trying to make, even if partially valid,will be lost.