Product Description

In the dying months of the Second World War on 31 January 1945, the first Red Army troops reached the River Oder, barely forty miles from Berlin. Everyone at Soviet Headquarters expected Marshal Zhukov's troops quickly to bring the war to an end. But despite bitter fighting by both sides, a bloody stalemate persisted for two months. At the end of this time the Soviet bridgeheads north and south of Kustrin were eventually united, and the Nazi fortress finally fell.Tony Le Tissier has written an impressively detailed account of the Nazi-Soviet battles in the Oderbruch and for the Seelow Heights, east of Berlin. They culminated in 1945 with the last major land battle in Europe that proved decisive for the fate of Berlin - and the Third Reich. The author has consulted new sources of information which became available in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic. Drawing on official sources and the personal accounts of soldiers from both sides who were involved, Le Tissier has meticulously reconstructed the Soviets' difficult breakthrough on the Oder: the establishment of bridgeheads, the battle for the fortress of Kustrin, and the bloody fight for the Seelow Heights. Numerous maps help the reader follow the ebb and flow of battle, and a selection of archive photographs paint a sobering picture of the final death throes of Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #341635 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

About the Author
Lt-Col TONY LE TISSIER MBE served with the British Army's Corps of Royal Military Police until 1977. He was a British governor of the Spandau Allied Prison in Berlin from 1981 to 1987. Tony is the author of Battle of Berlin, Berlin Then and Now, Farewell to Spandau, Race for the Reichstag; and for Sutton, With Our Backs to Berlin, Death Was Our Companion, and Slaughter at Halbe. He lives in Lymington, Hampshire.