Retreat to Berlin

by Ian Baxter

Overview

Drawing on a superb collection of rare and unpublished photographs this latest book in the popular Images of War Series provides an absorbing insight into the last desperate year of the German Army. It analyses, in dramatic detail, 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 Volksturm 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781848843806
Publisher:	Pen and Sword
Publication date:	06/16/2011
Series:	Images of War
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Ian Baxter is a military historian who specialises in German twentieth-century military history. He has written more than fifty books. He has also reviewed numerous military studies for publication, supplied thousands of photographs and important documents to various publishers and film production companies worldwide, and lectures to various schools, colleges and universities throughout the United Kingdom and Southern Ireland.

Table of Contents

Introduction 6

Assessment of the German Soldier mid-late 1944 7

Chapter 1 Defensive Battles in the East 8

Chapter 2 Action in Poland 28

Chapter 3 Collapse in the East 49

Chapter 4 Defence of the Reich 69

Chapter 5 Stemming the Russian Advance 91

Chapter 6 Last Defence Before Berlin 110

Appendix I Hitler's 'Fortified Area' Order March 1944 123

Appendix II A Typical German Infantry Regiment 1944 125

The Author 128