Armageddon: The Battle For Germany, 1944-1945 (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
Armageddon is a very insightful and deep book about the final 9 months of World War II in Europe. The book chronicles the slow and at times deadly advance of the Allied forces through Hitler's Europe starting with the ill fated Operation Market Garden through the bloody, savage , and gruesome Eastern Front.The author has already written a very well received book on D-Day so those events are barely even mentioned (much to my disappointment) and the book starts with Operation Market Garden where the Allied forces get completely crushed by the Germans in Holland. The book details the Allies issues in driving the Germans back through Europe, the brilliance of Patton, the steadiness of Ike, and the ability of the two armies- British and American -to work in cohesion. At the same time the book is able to explain the reality: the Western Front was the war's second front behind the Russians pounding into the East. The book clearly states that the war was won in the East; the West was just a holding effort to pin the Germans down. The book has really good upsides- interesting first-hand accounts of the soldiers and civilian populations of every nation; the military problems of all sides, and really the most incredible parts of the books are the graphic and terrifying Eastern front where a worn out and undermanned German Army fought with unbridled tenacity against a terrifying Russian horde. The Eastern front was a war of complete savagery and destruction unlike anything the world had seen or would see ever again. The book details the bloody battlefields of Poland and East Prussia where war crimes were rampant on both sides. The book then details the final shroud of death inside Germany, detailing the collapse of everything - the army, the government, the civilization. Its a very graphic detailing of a destroyed people. The author pays great attention to the destruction of Germany by land and by air and how there was nothing left of the people years after 1945.However, the book has gaping problems. For starters, as mentioned, I would have liked something on D-Day. The book starts too far removed. Second, there is not a single sentence written about the war in the South- Italy or Rome; no mention of Mussolini or anything south or Austria. Its an unpardonable exclusion. Next, the book details the horror very well... but by the end I was sort of numb to it, kind of like "Yup, got it- war is hell- rape, death, pillaging. Check, check, check." But the biggest problem is that the book has no central theme. While the book could have easily attracted attention to Hitler and the desire of the Allies to finally bag him, Hitler is almost a perfunctory character in this book; mentioned but never expounded on. As the book goes on, there is no central theme for the book to revolve around, just death and destruction. By Contrast, "Retribution"- the author's telling of the last year in the Pacific Theater, there is a very strong tie between the Americans' war aim v. the desire of Japan to "fight to the death." That theme is encapsulated perfectly in the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and ending WWII. That theme worked in that book. There is no similar theme in this book; one chapter or section seems to just blandly mix with the next. Its not just a little boring. And I felt this was the greatest weakness of this booka s opposed to Retribution: the book had the opportunity to make one unifying story, but instead hamstrung itself by sticking to many vaguely connected sub stories. The book is good but alas, not great.
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 is the definition of a 5 Star rating. Max Hastings chronicles the final battles to defeat Nazi Germany. He starts the story in August, 1944 with the Allies about to launch Op Market-Garden in the West and the Soviets drawn up along the Vistula, preparing for their next stage of the assault into Poland. Mr Hastings is able to take you effortlessly from the foxhole or tank turret to the highest levels of SHAEF or STAVKA. He makes it all interesting and shows the results of decision-making at all levels. All the while, he brings new information to light while briskly moving the story along. There wasn’t a single area that I found boring or uninteresting. Couldn’t put it down.What I found most refreshing was Mr. Hastings honest and clear-eyed view of all sides. If you don’t like seeing your side of the conflict or performance of your forces criticized, I would avoid this book. Hastings hands out criticism where deserved and praise where earned. Everyone is subjected to his critical analysis. He got me reconsidering my impressions about events in this period. I like to put little markers where I find an anecdote or fact that struck me. This book is a forest of those markers, far more than I could ever discuss in a review. Some of the themes and events that stick out: The Soviet command system struggled to successfully employ forces but had some extraordinary generals who knew how to employ massive forces—and were mostly indifferent to casualties incurred as long as the objective was achieved. They must have been very good at reading between the lines to accurately assess the situation:(view spoiler)[It is remarkable that the Soviet command system functioned as well as it did, given the ideological resistance to truth which was fundamental to the Stalinist system. In war telling the truth is essential not for moral reasons, but because no commander can direct a battle effectively unless his subordinates tell him what is happening: where they are, what resources they possess, whether they have attained or are likely to attain their objectives. Yet since 1917 the Soviet Union had created an edifice of self-deceit unrivaled in human history. The mythology of heroic tractor drivers, coal miners who fulfilled monthly production norms in days, collective farms which produced record harvests, was deemed essential to the self-belief of the state. On the battlefield, in some measure this perversion persisted. Propaganda wove tales of heroes who had performed fantastic and wholly fictitious feats against the fascists. Vladimir Gormin was reprimanded for reporting after an action that his anti-tank unit had failed to destroy any German tanks. A new return, citing two panzers destroyed, was duly composed and dispatched to higher command. “The statistics were always ridiculous. It was pretty hard to tell the truth,” said Gormin.Yet somehow, through a morass of commissar-driven rhetoric and fantasy, Stalin’s armies hacked a path to victory. Most Soviet intelligence reports of the 1944—45 period are notable for their common sense and frankness. (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Armageddon: The Battle For Germany, 1944-1945 (2005)?
A sweeping account of the last few months of the war in Europe but still no less bloody and destructive for all that - brings to life the enormous suffering, heroism, cowardice, capability and ineptitude of the various officers and soldiers on both sides. Makes clear how a close-run thing it was - given the near-criminal incapacity (and political and strategic blindness) of the Allied commanders - right from Eisenhower downwards and how they did manage to win the war, they nearly lost the peace..
—Vikas Datta
I've read a lot of popular WWII history, but all of it (with the exception of stuff about the Battle of Berlin) falls within the period from the invasion of Normandy to the end of Market Garden (and maybe some Battle of the Bulge). My knowledge of the war in Europe just completely stops after XXX Corps is halted just short of Arnhem. What the heck happened after that? What were the allies doing such that they were still in Belgium in December 1944? And what was happening on the Eastern Front? (I just assumed it was something horrible, and my assumption was a complete underestimation.)Short version of the 600-page answer to those questions given in this book:Montgomery was slow to do the necessary work to clear the areas around Antwerp after the port was captured, so it was basically useless to bring in Allied supplies rather than having to ship them all the way across France. The Allies were not aggressive in pursuing breakouts and encirclements, so German troops could continually fall back and defend. That was partly due to cautious leadership, and partly due to combat troops being reluctant to get killed so close to what was obviously the end of the war, and partly to do with the Germans continuously putting up tough and effective defense even when they were seriously outmatched in material. Also, there were serious tensions between the Americans and the British, and only Eisenhower's midwestern-style diplomacy held them together. All of the primary Allied generals end up looking bad on this account--not just Montgomery. Patton, for example, ordered a disastrous raid on a German prison camp to try to rescue his son in law. One exception is General Gavin, the commander of the 82nd Airborne division, who Hastings praises very highly (incidentally, I think I remember that Gavin wrote a blurb on the cover of Hastings's book about the Falklands War). The fighting on the eastern front is just brutal. It's even brutal to read about. I was completely unaware of the scale of the suffering of civilians and the forced migration from East Prussia. Jeez. Hastings is critical of the performance of the western troops (with the exception of the American paratroops) in comparison with their German opponents and the Soviet steamroller, but he does repeat the idea that the only way that they could have matched the Wehrmacht or Stalin's armies would be by completing giving up the sense that the lives of individual soldiers mattered, and he's insistent that that would have been a terrible outcome! (I concur.) I found Hastings's account of the bombing campaign interesting--he agrees with the common wisdom that the bombing of cities was out of all proportion to the harm that it did to German industry and military capacity, but he observes that the bombing that really hurt the German war effort was the targeting of oil refineries in Eastern Europe, and the allies slowly realized this towards the end of the war.
—Nat
Drawing on untapped Russian archives, Hastings (a former war correspondent and leading military historian) rethinks the final year of World War II in this sequel to Overlord (1984), an account of the Normandy landings. He writes with authority, technical mastery, and profound sympathy for the victims of war, particularly German civilians. Although much of this story has been told before, Hastings casts new light on the war's devastating tolls on lowly GIs, confused civilians, and commanding officers. According to a few critics, he underplays the Allied forces' strategic errors and paints black-and-white portraits of both sides; he barely masks his disdain for the Anglo-Americans and admiration for the Wehrmacht's professionalism. He all but ignores the war in southern Europe. But these are minor quibbles. For military buffs, Armageddon is a first-rate history. This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
—Bookmarks Magazine
