The End

The End PDF

Author: Ian Kershaw

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2012-08-28

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 0143122134

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From the author of To Hell and Back, a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany lost the Second World War, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital questions of how and why the Third Reich did not surrender until Germany had been left in ruins and almost completely occupied. Drawing on prodigious new research, Ian Kershaw, an award-winning historian and the author of Fateful Choices, explores these fascinating questions in a gripping and focused narrative that begins with the failed bomb plot in July 1944 and ends with the death of Adolf Hitler and the German capitulation in 1945. The End paints a harrowing yet enthralling portrait of the Third Reich in its last desperate gasps.

The End

The End PDF

Author: Ian Kershaw

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780713997163

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This is a a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II. Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany lost World War II, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital question of how and why it was able to hold out as long as it did. The Third Reich did not surrender until Germany had been left in ruins and almost completely occupied.

Armageddon

Armageddon PDF

Author: Max Hastings

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2004-11-16

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1400043727

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This is epic story of the last eight months of World War II in Europe by one of Britain’s most highly regarded military historians, whose accounts of past battles John Keegan has described as worthy “to stand with that of the best journalists and writers” (New York Times Book Review). In September 1944, the Allies believed that Hitler’s army was beaten, and expected that the war would be over by Christmas. But the disastrous Allied airborne landing in Holland, American setbacks on the German border and in the Hürtgen Forest, together with the bitter Battle of the Bulge, drastically altered that timetable. Hastings tells the story of both the Eastern and Western Fronts, and paints a vivid portrait of the Red Army’s onslaught on Hitler’s empire. He has searched the archives of the major combatants and interviewed 170 survivors to give us an unprecedented understanding of how the great battles were fought, and of their human impact on American, British, German, and Russian soldiers and civilians. Hastings raises provocative questions: Were the Western Allied cause and campaign compromised by a desire to get the Soviets to do most of the fighting? Why were the Russians and Germans more effective soldiers than the Americans and British? Why did the bombing of Germany’s cities continue until the last weeks of the war, when it could no longer influence the outcome? Why did the Germans prove more fanatical foes than the Japanese, fighting to the bitter end? This book also contains vivid portraits of Stalin, Churchill, Eisenhower, Montgomery, and the other giants of the struggle. The crucial final months of the twentieth century’s greatest global conflict come alive in this rousing and revelatory chronicle.

Battleground Prussia

Battleground Prussia PDF

Author: Prit Buttar

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2012-02-20

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 1780964641

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An engrossing history of the last year of the Second World War, charting the battles fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazis across German soil. The terrible months between the arrival of the Red Army on German soil and the final collapse of Hitler's regime were like no other in the Second World War. The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished. From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this book recounts in chilling detail the desperate struggle of soldiers and civilians alike. These brutal campaigns are brought vividly to life by a combination of previously untold testimony and astute strategic analysis recognising a conflict of unprecedented horror and suffering.

Crossing the Rhine

Crossing the Rhine PDF

Author: Lloyd Clark

Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 155584815X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

“The fighting spirit of Allied paratroopers comes through with exciting clarity” in this account of two separate invasions of Germany in World War II (Kirkus Reviews). A main selection of the Military Book Club In September 1944, as the Allies drove across Europe after Normandy, British field marshal Bernard Montgomery launched Operation Market Garden to secure the lower Rhine—Germany’s last great natural barrier in the west—and passage to Berlin. Though Allied soldiers outnumbered Germans two to one, they suffered devastating casualties and were forced to retreat. Then, in March 1945, Montgomery orchestrated another airborne attack on the Rhine, called Operation Plunder. This time the Allies overwhelmed the German defenses, secured the eastern bank, and began their final march into the heart of the Third Reich. Including detailed maps and personal accounts from those on both sides of the battle, this “vivid war story” examines Allied attempts to breach Germany’s borders, and illustrates how lessons learned from failure helped form the second plan of attack—and seal Germany’s defeat (Publishers Weekly).

The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-1945

The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-1945 PDF

Author: Alfred C. Mierzejewski

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-10-10

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 146963970X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this book Alfred Mierzejewski describes how the German economy collapsed under Allied bombing in the last year of World War II. He presents a broad-based, original study of German wartime industry and transportation, and of Allied air force planning and intelligence, including the first complete analysis in English of the German National Railway. The German industrial economy was extraordinarily dependent on the timely, adequate distribution of coal by railroad and inland waterway. The German National Railway in particular was the pivot of the finely balanced armaments production and distribution system created by Albert Speer. But Allied strategists did not immediately recognize this. Only in late 1944, when Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Sir Arthur Tedder built a new strategic consensus, was this vital coal/transport nexus severed. The result was the rapid paralysis of the Nazi war economy. Mierzejewski measures the economic consequences of the bombing by considering broad indices such as armaments and coal production, railway performance, and weapons deliveries to the armed forces. In addition, he shows how individual companies in each of Germany's major economic regions fared. By drawing on previously unexamined files of private German manufacturing companies, the Reich Transportation Ministry, and Allied air intelligence agencies, Mierzejewski creates a rare combination of economic analysis and military history that provides new perspectives on the German war economy and Allied air intelligence.

Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany 1944

Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany 1944 PDF

Author: Bodleian Library

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 82

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Nine-and-a-half months after D-Day, 30,000 British troops crossed the Rhine as part of the Allied assault on Germany. Two years earlier, work had already started on a guide to assist them in negotiating everyday life in what then was still enemy territory.This extraordinary document was intended to educate soldiers on a range of topics, including German history, the national character, politics, culture, food and drink, currency, and to explain the current situation, including the effect of war on Germany and the German attitudes to the British. It was also intended to condition them to resist the effect of German propaganda by means of a healthy dose of British propaganda.The result is a remarkable booklet, often unintentionally humorous and sometimes crudely stereotypical, it reads by turns like a travel guide (advising on the excellence of German sausages and beer - 'one of the pleasantest in Europe') and a crash course in psychological warfare. It is very much a document of the period, revealing as much about British wartime attitudes towards Germany as it does about British hopes and fears.'If you have to give orders to German civilians, give them in a firm, military manner. The German civilian is used to it and expects it.''The Germans are not good at controlling their feelings. They have a streak of hysteria. You will find that Germans may often fly into a passion if some little thing goes wrong.''Don't be too ready to listen to stories told by attractive women. They may be acting under orders.'

The German Defeat in the East 1944-45

The German Defeat in the East 1944-45 PDF

Author: Samuel W. Mitcham

Publisher: Stackpole Books

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9780811733717

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The last place a German soldier wanted to be in 1944 was the eastern front. That summer, Stalin hurled millions of men and thousands of tanks and planes against German forces across a broad front. In a series of massive, devastating battles, the Red Army decimated Hitler's Army Group Center in Belorussua, annihilated Army Group South in the Ukraine, and inflicted crushing casualties while taking Rumania and Hungary. By the time Budapest fell to the Soviets in Febuary 1945, the German Army had been slaughtered--and the Third Reich was in its death throes.

Armageddon

Armageddon PDF

Author: Max Hastings

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2005-10-18

Total Pages: 674

ISBN-13: 0375714227

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This is epic story of the last eight months of World War II in Europe by one of Britain’s most highly regarded military historians, whose accounts of past battles John Keegan has described as worthy “to stand with that of the best journalists and writers” (New York Times Book Review). In September 1944, the Allies believed that Hitler’s army was beaten, and expected that the war would be over by Christmas. But the disastrous Allied airborne landing in Holland, American setbacks on the German border and in the Hürtgen Forest, together with the bitter Battle of the Bulge, drastically altered that timetable. Hastings tells the story of both the Eastern and Western Fronts, and paints a vivid portrait of the Red Army’s onslaught on Hitler’s empire. He has searched the archives of the major combatants and interviewed 170 survivors to give us an unprecedented understanding of how the great battles were fought, and of their human impact on American, British, German, and Russian soldiers and civilians. Hastings raises provocative questions: Were the Western Allied cause and campaign compromised by a desire to get the Soviets to do most of the fighting? Why were the Russians and Germans more effective soldiers than the Americans and British? Why did the bombing of Germany’s cities continue until the last weeks of the war, when it could no longer influence the outcome? Why did the Germans prove more fanatical foes than the Japanese, fighting to the bitter end? This book also contains vivid portraits of Stalin, Churchill, Eisenhower, Montgomery, and the other giants of the struggle. The crucial final months of the twentieth century’s greatest global conflict come alive in this rousing and revelatory chronicle.