Drawing on a superb collection of rare and unpublished photographs
this latest book in the popular Images of War Series provides an absorbing
insight into the last desperate year of the German Army. In dramatic detail it
analyses the German retreat from the wastelands of the Eastern and Western
Fronts into a bombed and devastated Third Reich to the very gates of
Berlin.
Accompanied by detailed captions and text, the book shows how Wehrmacht,
Waffen-SS, Luftwaffe, Hitlerjugend and Volkssturm personnel attempted to defend
every yard of ground against the overwhelming Allied forces. As the final months
of the war are played out the reader learns how the Germans fought to the death
in a desperate attempt to prevent what Hitler called the ‘two fold devastation
of the Reich’. Despite the adverse situation in which the German Army was
placed, soldiers continued right to the very end, holding their lines under the
constant hammer blows of ground and air bombardments. Those German forces that
were fortunate enough to survive the overwhelming ferocity of the enemy
onslaught, gradually streamed back to fight on home soil until they were either
destroyed or were driven around a devastated Berlin.
