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Victory Was Beyond Their Grasp: With the 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division from the Hurtgen Forest to the Heart of the Reich
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| List Price: | £19.95 |
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Average customer review:
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #191853 in Books
- Published on: 2007-09
- Original language: English
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
Customer Reviews
A book apart 
There is an ever increasing amount of unit histories and personal memoirs from `the other side of the hill' appearing in English. Most unit histories being published in English seem to concern the `glamorous' units, the waffen-SS, fallschirmjäger or panzerwaffe. Doug Nash's book is thus unusual to start with as he recounts the history of an `ordinary' infantry division, the 272 Volks-Grenadier Division. The humble infantry division has been almost completely ignored by military history literature on the German armed forces of WWII published in English, yet these divisions made up, by far, the vast bulk of the German Army. This then is the story of an average late war German division and of the average German soldiers that fought under its name.
The book however marks itself out in another, perhaps unique way. The basis of the book lies in a suitcase found after the war containing much of the paperwork belonging to the division's reconnaissance company. This paperwork has enabled the author to piece together an unparalleled detailed picture of one company's war as well as that of its parent division. The regular mundane reports and returns of a company have, in almost all cases been lost to history, burnt and destroyed, they were not seen as worthy of preservation for the archives post-war. The author has also carried out extensive interviews with surviving veterans thus combining the facts and figures with the eyewitness accounts of a unit struggling against the odds on the Western front during late 1944 and early 1945.
For the serious student of the German armed forces of WWII this book is a must, it's as simple as that.
Must have
Superb.This gives a very real feel to what it was like for small units in the German Army.I was surprised to find out the level of replacements at this time of the war and i have been reading about the German Army for a very,very long time.Recommended.
detailed and the book takes you back in time to the war very descriptive
detailed beyond belief. The book takes you back in time to the war, very descriptive and worth a read
