Product Description

One of the greatest military feats during the Second World War was the transformation of the German force's activities in the weeks following the battles in Holland and the German border, where the Allies had finally inflicted the greatest catastrophes of modern war on them.

Somehow the Germans found the strength to halt the Allied advance in its tracks and to prolong the war to 1945. This book is the epic story of those last eight months of the war in northern Europe.

'As a military historian Max Hastings has few equals' Times Literary Supplement

'Max Hastings now stands in the first rank of writers on modern war' Financial Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6541 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 500 pages

Review
"'As a military historian Max Hastings has few equals' Times Literary Supplement 'Max Hastings now stands in the first rank of writers on modern war' Financial Times"

About the Author

MAX HASTINGS, author of eighteen books, was editor of the Daily Telegraph for almost a decade, then for six years edited the Evening Standard. In his youth he was a foreign correspondent for newspapers and BBC television. He has won many awards for his journalism, particularly his work in the South Atlantic in 1982. He was knighted in 2002.

Customer Reviews

A story very well told
I had previously read 'Overlord' by Max Hastings and found that he told that story (the battle of Normandy) very well. I read this book in hardback and found that it is similarly well told. As well as the pure facts of the allied & Russian advances and German counter-attacks, Max Hastings adds colour and interest from the personal accounts of many people he has interviewed (I contrast this with Berlin The Downfall - Beevor - which I found too dry in this respect). It also deals well with the problems faced by the allied leaders between themselves.

The book covers the western and eastern fronts and the concentration camps. It does not cover the war through Italy.

One thing I think could be much improved is the maps - there are a few, but not enough (e.g. one per chapter), they are very basic and don't tie in well with the text. There could be many more, illustrating the text, and use colour.

Armageddon...
...is a very appropriate title for a book about the battle for Germany if ever there was one. Especially at the Eastern Front. Hastings achieves a good balance between the wider picture - embracing the politics and military strategy of the campaign as a whole - with the experience of individuals who were in the thick of the action, whether they are soldiers, civilians, POWs or Hitler's concentration camp victims. This really is a very good book and I recommend it highly. I think this book is complemented particularly well by Norman Davies's "Rising '44: the Battle for Warsaw" and Anthony Beevor's "Berlin: The Downfall", both of which, incidentally, Hastings praises in his acknowledgements at the end of the book.

Why there was no Victory in 1944
The detail in this book is phenomenal, one minute you follow small groups of soldiers into battle and feel you are there,
the next you are reading a surgically accurate assessment of the big canvas: the failure to finish Hitler's western armies
in 1944.

Most allied generals come out badly, Montgomery especially.

Max Hastings is scathing about Operation Market Garden, partly on the grounds that it should never have taken place, but
more so on the grounds that Montgomery, in failing to capture the coastline north of Antwerp
when it was undefended, failed to open its vital port facilities, resulting in ever lengthening supply lines.

Worse, when its capture was perceived to be vital, it cost 18,000 casualties, and was not open until early November, by
which time victory in 1944 was no longer a possibility.

He is equally scathing about the necessity of the dreadful battle in the Hurtgen Forest, (so vividly portrayed in the film
"When Trumpets Fade") which has received so little attention in previous histories.

Finally, he is able to show the waning of British influence upon their American allies. This was partly due to the fact that
the UK was running short of manpower, and partly due to Montgomery's constant arrogance, particularly after the Battle of the Bulge.

Nowhere was this loss of influence underlined more clearly than in Eisenhower's personal message to Stalin in March 1945,
stating that Berlin was not a target for his armies.

Churchill's reaction, and Eisenhower's lack of "deference" to it, signalled that in future the US and the USSR would be
the big players.

(Churchill's policies in 1941 had been predicated on the assumption that the US would come to the rescue of a beleaguered
UK, but he failed to realise that they signalled the end of Britain's great power status. Was there an alternative? Probably not.)

Hastings book is also marked by a better balancing of accounts between the Eastern and Western Fronts than has perhaps
previously been the case.

The contrast between the cruelty of the fighting - and the treatment of civilians - is starkly emphasised. The conclusion
is inescapable: no Eastern Front, no victory!