Armageddon : The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945

Rating:
Summary: INSIGHTFUL, CHALLENGING WORLD WAR II HISTORY
Review: From one of Britain's Best Military Historians.

I have always admired the work of Max Hastings, whether it be his combat reportage from the Falkland Islands or his masterful tome on D-Day "Overlord" where he first challenged the optimism and the skill of the Allied Armies facing the Germans on the Normandy Beaches.

In "Armageddon" Hastings further challenges the myths of the superiority of the Western Allies over the Nazi armies, and whether one agrees with him or not, his findings are cause for serious thought and re-evaluation, especially in regards to the way we fight our wars today.

Some of his findings aren't new - but more novel in the way that he presented and flushed them out. For example, Hastings rips Bernard Montgomery, a fellow Brit across the coals for his twin failures to open up Antwerp Port in September 1944, and for blithely sending in three Allied Airborne divisions without adequate armor or infantry support in the ill-fated Operation Market Garden in Holland. In the first case, Montgomery chose to do a "Farragut at Mobile Bay" in reverse. Whereas the Union Admiral chose to take out the harbor forts at Mobile and neutralize the Confederate fleet before assault the city, Montgomery chose to take the city without moving on the port facilities with the utmost urgency. That cost the allies almost two months of supplies - and perhaps the drive to move into Germany in the fall of 1944. Furthermore, by destroying the 1st British Airborne Division at Arnhem, Hastings shows that even if Arnhem had been successful, Allied forces still would have lack the necessary punch to move in force across the Rhine and into the heart of Nazi Germany simply because there weren't enough supplies. Antwerp was the key to ending the war in the west, and Monty blew it badly.

But Eisenhower also deserves his fair share of criticism. Hastings points out that Patton should have been the commander of the U.S. forces in the Ruhr, and had he been in command, would have possessed the fire, drive and imagination to move in force into the German heartland. To put in opposite Alsace-Lorraine was a waste. Furthermore, Hastings finds it unbelieveable that Ike, knowing Monty's weaknesses and his spite towards Americans, would let Montgomery take charge of the major operations designed to end the war in the fall of 1944 and fail completely!

The British soldiers were tired, their officers while courageous lacked skill and imagination. By contrast, the U.S. Army had some wonderful elite forces, i.e., the 82nd and 101st Airborne, and the 3rd and 4rd Armored Divisions to name a few, but outside of Patton and a few unorthodox officers, were either too slow or too hesitant to take the necessary initative.

By contrast Hastings gives the Wehrmacht, fighting desperately on its own soil very high marks for tenacity, and also to the Red Army for smashing through the thick German defenses from the Vistula to the Oder. He also notes that the totalitarian armies were the worst when it came to respecting human rights and lives; but better in mortal combat than the humane Allied soldiers. He also notes that Stalin had clear-cut goals whereas the sick Roosevelt vacillated to the dismay of a worn and pessimistic Churchill.

The chapter on the Soviet push into East Prussia is not for the faint of heart or to be read on a full stomach. Even those of us who cheered the destruction of the Third Reich and of the Nazi killing machine will have very little to cheer over the rapes, tortures and murders committed by the Red Army, no matter the justification, including the martyred Six Million and the countless Russians and Slavs slaughtered and starved by Hitler. In fact, much of our distrust of Russia stems from those days when the reality that Stalin was no better than Hitler finally hit home after Yalta. Hastings is not the first to chronicle the murderous rampage in Prussia, Jurgen Thorwald and James Lucas have preceded him. But he is the first to write of this in relatively unemotional and non-partisan tones.

This is one incredible history of the final 9 months of World War II in Europe. The savagery of the battlefield, the atrocities committed by Germans and Russians, the weaknesses of the West in contrast to the bloodthirsty determination of the Soviets, and accounts by the fighting men themselves (Hastings, like Ambrose and Brokaw wanted to capture the true voices of "The Greatest Generation" before they passed on, and did so with flying colors)...it is all here in "Armageddon".

Hastings, like Jay Winik in his treatment of the last month of the Civil War in "April 1864" has captured the depth and the scope of the killing fields in Europe at the end of World War II.

Rating:
Summary: Very critical of the allies
Review: Hastings has wriiten a book that is harshly critical of the allies during the Second World War. According to Hastings the Western allies missed numerous opportunities to conquer Germany such as after the capture of Aachen and the Battle of the Bulge. Moreover the Western allies were too reliant on firepower and not able to improvise in combat. Hastings also chatises Soviet miltitary abiltity as well, by criticizing the decision to halt the advance into Berlin by pausing to reinforce the northern flank, and Zhukov's frontal attack on that city. Hastings writes that the allies committed numerous atrocities such as bombing and strafing civilians while the Russians crucified and raped women.Plus Hastings questions the morality of the Western allies by provoking the doomed Warsaw rebellion without having the means to support it. The main fault of Hastings's work is that he leaves out the siege of Budapest and ignores the works by David French, Peter Mansoor, and Michael Doubler that contradict his thesis about the military abilties of the Western allies. Despite these criticisms, I would reccomend this book for those who want a new perspective on the Second World War.

Rating:
Summary: Parts read like a Stephen King horror novel
Review: I don't watch horror movies or read horror novels. Why?

Read this book. Max's use of words is just as good as Stephen Kings. What is the result? The reading is just as ghastly as any King novel, if not worse.

Past page 400 the novel is a little hard to take. Death is everywhere. There is a point where some children break out of a basement in Eastern German. There is a pond filled with dead and rotting German soldiers. Murdered and raped German women are everywhere for the eyes to see. The whole town has been wrecked. What has not been smashed or torn apart is burned, blackened. The only color the children notice is grey, the color of death.

Who needs horror after that?

Parts of the book are fantastic, just fantastic. Max is very hard on the U.S. Army Infantry. Also, Max gives arguments against the U.S. Army overdependance on artillery. Basically, an overdependance on artillery breeds a long logistics footprint and dependance on elaborate fire plans.

Max is no better to the Brits than the U.S. Army. He goes into great detail explaining the Market Garden debacle.

This book is a good analysis of the 1944 Western Allies. It does a good job of explaining Soviet advances and methods of fighting.

I wish I was a better wordsmith to give this review its proper due.

Bottom line: you'll be happy with the book.

Rating:
Summary: revelation
Review: I have never read such a wonderfull book about History.

We learn a lot from high geostrategy to foot soldier everyday's life and thougts from each camp, and armies management.

Just stunning.

Rating:
Summary: Superb Recounting Of The Final Battle For Germany in 1945!
Review: In all of modern history, there is surely no single spectacle more worth recounting in terms of its magnitude, level of mayhem, and sheer impact on the world that followed in its wake than that of the final drive into Germany simultaneously from both the west, by the Allies, on the one hand, and from the east, by the Soviet juggernaut, surging toward their final revenge for the atrocities visited on them by the Wehrmacht during Operation Barbarossa beginning in the summer of 1941, on the other. Accordingly, then , this exciting new tome written so well by British historian Max Hastings uses a treasure trove of newly discovered materials from both the Allies and The Soviet archives to detail just how bloodthirsty and painful this process was, how, in the author's terms, the Germans are painstakingly described as being the essential meat being devoured and ground into foodstuff, sandwiched between the two invading armies.

Of course, each of these formidable forces was exacting its measure of what was left of the pride of the German armed forces, which was left to stumble back into the Fatherland bloodied and bludgeoned by the blunt force of the advancing armor of Patton to the west and south, and the new Russian T-38s to the east. Those facing Patton were likely the luckier in this regard, for although the US Army was violent and cruel, it most often was far kinder to surrendering German prisoners than were their Soviet counterparts, in whose care few prisoners actually survived the experience. This was no accident, for the force propelling the Soviet surge toward Berlin in late 1944 and early 1945 were bloodlust, a thirst for revenge for the unspeakable atrocities the Wehrmacht has exacted not only from the Russian armies, but from the general population at large, as well.

Those with a background in the materials being broached here will understand that since the major purpose for Hitler's strike into the Soviet Union was to secure "living room" for expansion of the agrarian German population into the what they viewed as the Ukrainian `breadbasket' of Europe, the Wehrmacht (along with all sorts of specially-trained squads of killer troops who specialized in mass-murder) was ordered to annihilate the population through whatever practical means as might present themselves, whether though the specific devices of mass execution, or starvation, enforced slave labor, drafting them into becoming soldiers along other fronts, etc. Thus, as the Soviet forces slowly overcame the feverish, faltering and then failing defense of the conquered territories and finally begain to push the Wehrmacht back, first into Poland and finally onto native German soil, the moment of reckoning for all the blood and slaughter was finally coming due.

Of course, the sheer scale of the slaughter is almost unimaginable today, with the losses on both sides tallying in the multi-millions. Yet the author does yeoman's duty in carefully and painstakingly describing the scale of the `sturm und drang', and Hastings faithfully details the intricate details with all of the assorted personalities involved, from the vainglorious General Montgomery to the seemingly unstoppable Zhukov, from the ego-drive exploits of George Patton to the self-effacing efforts by Ike to get this incredible array of forces to work together toward the common goal of crushing Hitler and the Third Reich itself. Finally, then, we are left with an European continent which has been laid to waste, as the single largest military adventure of modern times draws to its fateful conclusion amidst the plotting and conniving of the so-called cooperating allied forces. Indeed, by book's close we begin to see how the emerging sociopolitical and military situation is leading itself into the armed bifurcation of Europe into two constituent parts, one western, democratic, and free, the other dominated by the interests of Soviet style-totalitarian regimes. This is a wonderful book, and one that deserves the serious attention of any history buff interested in how the final fateful battle of the European aspect of World War Two unfolded. Enjoy!


Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: It's been a long time coming, but what is effectively the sequal to "Overlord" manages to overshadow even that masterpiece.

To anyone under 50, the sheer scale of World War Two is staggering. The size of the armies, the number of dead and wounded, and the scale of the general suffering is so great as to be difficult to imagine. Hastings manages the very difficult trick of sustaining a narrative overview while never allowing us to forget that every event involved individuals.

Amongst the many shocking facts he exposes:

The treatment of the Soviet Union's own soldiers who had been captured was horrific. Stalin was worried that in captivity they had somehow become "exposed" to the West and possibly "contaminated." On liberation thousands were shot, while thousands more were sent to the GULAG or internal exile.

The evacuation of East Prussia (now Poland) meant that about two million German civilians lost their lives, whilst the survivors suffered rape, destitution, and abuse at the hands of a maddened Red Army.

The stupidity of the Nazi leadership when they continued to defend the Western front long after any hope of victory or negotiated settlement had passed. This lead to the occupation of Berlin and the East by the Soviet Union, with all the suffering and cruelty that ensued.

The naivety of President Roosvelt, in assuming he could trust Stalin, despite Churchill's misgivings. To be fair, nobody knew the President was terminally ill during much of 1944.

Finally, (yes finally!) a historian is candid enough to critisise "Market Garden" and correctly speculate that even if the operation had succeded, the Allies would have surely been halted and defeated or exhausted to a standstill somewhere else long before reaching Berlin in the winter of 1944.

The list goes on.

Buy this book, read it, and prepare to be amazed and unsettled at what human beings, many of whom considered themselves educated and civilised, are capable of. It's also the perfect antidote to the rancid guff the late Stephen Ambrose plagerised in his "greatest generation" works which often glorify this cruelest and most horrible of all wars.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent assessment of the battle for Germany
Review: Max Hastings has written a masterpiece on the battle for Germany in 1944-1945. The book is remarkable because Hastings is able to cover many different things simultaneously, while weaving everything together in a narrative that is well-written and engaging. Indeed, topics that are typically researched as independent issues (the Holocaust; the plight of civilians; the quality of the various armies; issues of military command; issues of politics) are all treated together to give, finally, the reader "the big picture". The meaning of all of this is driven home with personal accounts, which makes the book pointed and poignant. Quite simply, this book must rank highly on anyone's list of "best WWII books of 2004."

There are several issues that I think are worthy of special attention.

First, Hastings argues that Allied armies (UK and US) fought under conditions that forced caution and an attention to casualties. Being democracies, their militaries operated under different constraints than the German and Red armies which instead relied upon fanaticism and ruthless disregard for the value of an individual's life. That the allies produced no commanders of German or Soviet caliber is explained by the fact that they could not engage in East-front style operations, where a butcher's bill of hundreds of thousands of casualties was "normal." Hastings even states that a general like Zhukov would have been decidedly ordinary had he been forced to adopt the constraints the US and the UK operated under.

Second, Hastings does not use these constraints to excuse poor performance by the UK and US. He instead points out several failures of operations and command, as well as pointing out missed opportunities to move more quickly. Hastings blasts Montgomery and the British Army for failing to secure the approaches to Antwerp. He is correct in identifying this as perhaps the single most important hindrance to moving further in 1944. Without the port, supplies had to come over the D-Day beaches or up from the Mediterranean coast of France. This was wasteful and slow. Hastings further blasts Montgomery for his insistence on a narrow northern thrust. Hastings clearly and convincingly shows that it would not have worked. Concurrently, Hastings shows that the British failures in Market-Garden offer further evidence of (a) Montgomery's inabilities and of (b) the British army's poor quality. Finally, regarding the British, Hastings is quite scathing in his assessment of Montgomery's elaborate and basically pointless battle to cross the Rhine, which moved slowly and painfully, even as American units were already across elsewhere. Nor does Hastings spare American commanders, although they come out looking a bit better. Hastings is critical of Eisenhower's military command decisions, particularly in terms of passing up an opportunity to encircle the Germans in the "Bulge" and in terms of moving very slowly once across the Rhine. Even in 1945, when meeting fleeting resistance, Eisenhower seemed overly concerned with the possibility of German counter-attacks and wanted a tidy front line. Hastings criticizes Soviet decisions regarding the pointless attacks in Prussia and Silesia, which served, he argues, only to divert attention away from the Berlin axis of attack. What Hastings fails to recognize is that Red Army commanders were operating like Eisenhower: they were still afraid of the potential for German counter-attacks. The Red Army, like Eisenhower, continued to over-estimate the strength of the German army until the very end.

Third, the author reminds us that the slowness of the Allied armies had very real consequences. To those who study World War II from a purely military perspective, there is typically not much concern about how quickly the end of the war was brought about. After all, by the fall of 1944 it was obvious that Germany would lose the war, even if when it would lose was not known. Hastings points out, however, that the failure to end the war more quickly caused a tremendous amount of suffering. Dutch civilians starved to death in the winter of 44-45. The Nazis had more time to carry out their brutal Holocaust. Slave laborers continued to toil. Hastings' point is that if the US and UK were fighting for democratic and moral ideals, then they had an obligation to move more quickly.

Fourth, Hastings points out that the Red Army, fighting for revenge, exacted it in terrible ways on German civilians. Much like Beevor, Hastings documents the rape and pillage perpetrated by the Red Army. However, Hastings, unlike Beevor, is quick to remind the reader that the Germans, despite their complaints about "honor" behaved in exactly the same way, and worse, in the occupied region of the Soviet Union. In the absence of any other justice system, an "eye for an eye" is perhaps an understandable, although not morally perfect, result.

Finally, Hastings address a variety of political issues. He exposes Churchill's naivety in, well, everything from the UK's declining position in global politics, to the UK's declining importance in the alliance, to the lack of any influence in Eastern Europe (considering the Red Army was firmly in charge). Eisenhower, criticized for operational decisions, is credited for wise political decisions. Hastings gives him credit for holding the alliance together, especially in the face of downright unprofessional conduct of Montgomery and the petty sniping between other commanders. Eisenhower is also given credit for his correct decision to abandon a drive on Berlin. Hastings assesses Stalin's behavior and concludes that although it was brutal, it was very effective in securing his goals. Stalin knew he owed very little to either Churchill or Roosevelt and he had his armies covering the eastern half of Europe. He knew he could do as he pleased, and did so. The western allies did not "lose" eastern Europe because that assumes they had it in the first place.

Hastings has written a very perceptive book. Finally, an author has tackled simultaneously the military, moral, and political element of the end of the war in Europe, and has done so brilliantly.


Rating:
Summary: Epic account of an epic struggle
Review: Max Hastings is probably vying with Antony Beevor as the best contemporary writer on European military history (in fact, Beevor`s "Fall of Berlin" is the perfect complement). Both have their strengths, but Hastings does, at times, seem to invoke a greater empathy with some of the participants ... and to be slightly more detached in judging others.

His account of the battle for Germany and the last year of the war is an epic piece of work. This is war on a continental scale, fought on two fronts, as the American-led Allies advanced from the West, and the Soviets invaded from the East ... and a forgotten sideshow going on in Italy. The subtext in this final year was that the Soviets remained an ally in name only - by 1944, the Cold War was already pencilled into the future diaries.

In many respects, the battle to occupy Germany became the bloodiest, most atrocious period of the war. The generals involved were single-minded in their determination to emerge as victors and to secure their places in history. Defenders and attackers alike were capable of desperate acts. After the breakout from Normandy, there were many who thought the war must end rapidly. The Nazis, however, clung on to power doggedly, and the German troops proved a resilient and resourceful enemy, despite the inevitable.

Hastings portrays both the big political picture and the frontline reality well, though he is perhaps a bit disparaging of many of the Soviet troops - who admittedly knew a little about visiting atrocities on Germany and its civilian population. Hastings recognises that much German resilience was instructed by the need to avoid capture by the Russians.

Hastings emphasises that America's real baptism in European fighting occurred at Bastogne, as the Germans tried to reassert themselves and reconfigure the course of the war in the Battle of the Bulge. Bastogne was a lesson. Thereafter, the US provided the greatest number of frontline troops ... and took a more sanguine approach to the task of conquest.

This is a first-class piece of history and analysis. Hastings offers an incisive, accessible, and stimulating analysis of the last year of war. It is not a book you can lightly put down. There may be some need to tighten up on typographical errors in some editions, though these won't reduce your enjoyment of the book (and a paperback copy is due out next year). Excellent piece of history and military analysis.


Rating:
Summary: Superb reading, excellent history
Review: The reviews on this history are the highest.

Hastings hands out praise, but glorifies no one; Ike as a superb mediator but not a strategist, Patton as a fine strategist but a selfish, preening egotist who needed to be reined in by Ike, Bradley as a plodder, Montgomery as a fool [along with Ike] in the Battle of Arnhem and in failing to timely capture Antwerp. He praises the German soldier and is critical of the British and American soldiers.

Set against the glorified jingoism of Stephen Ambroise/Tom Brokaw, it is sobering and enlightening to see one's own nation through Hastings' focused prism at this time of war. Credit is given when credit is due but war is hell and Hastings makes the case more effectively than others.

Rating:
Summary: Fun to read
Review: This book is fun to read because you will be yelling at it by page 4.

Hastings is a journalist and it reads like it. This is good and bad.It's good because it is readable and bad because he makes grandiose generalized statements that an historian would never make.

A couple of errors in my opinion:

1. He calls MacArthur a great general. It is obvious that he has read nothing on the man or he would never make such a ludicrous statement.

2.He criticizes the American soldier for not being a bloodthirsty SS or slavic horde type, yet never explains that if the Germans had taken London or New York and laid waste that perhaps they might fight a little more passionately too.

3. He criticizes the command of Brits and US and lauds German and Russian command. Yet makes no mention of the crucible of war that is needed to produce a fighting command. None of the Brits or US really had any fighting experience.Not even Patton.The North Africa training ground was of some slight help but it gave us Clark, the worst commander in any army.Neither the Germans nor Russians ended with the command they began with.Nor did we.

I recommend the book because it is not romantic history like Ambrose but rather it is provocative, even when Hasting's conclusions are far off the mark.