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Armageddon
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Armageddon
Max
Hastings, 500pp,
Pan Macmillan, $25
When
a book’s prose is crisp, chock full of anecdotes, quotes and astute,
concise judgments based on excellent research, then it’s hard to
put down.
English journalist and historian Max Hastings is one such writer.
He proves that military history should be written in such a way
to engage the reader in an area of history which, at first, might
not seem worth investing the time.
In Armageddon, Hastings tells the story of the fall of the Third
Reich over the eight months following D-Day on June 6, 1944. His
line of attack is to tell the story and highlight the reasons why
the Wehrmacht fought so hard and delayed the inevitable fall of
Hitler’s demonic regime.
Don’t think that Hastings is a revisionist right-wing historian
perversely dazzled by the Germans. Although he is very respectful
and honest about the technical abilities of the German Army and
judges it to be the most formidable of the armies which fought over
Europe in terms of training, skills and dedication, his writing
spares no Germans, especially the generals, over their moral cowardice,
vacuity and willingness to be complicit in the terrible war crimes
of the Nazis.
He also does not shirk from the horrific war crimes of the Russians
in taking vengeance when they invaded East Prussia, the first German
province to be destroyed by the Red Army. The systemic and dreadful
raping of German women by Soviet soldiers is not ignored.
Hasting is particularly strong in analysing the mistakes of American
and British senior commanders in prolonging the war on the Western
Front. In particular, the Allied defeat at Arnhem and the American
blunders in front of Aachen and in the Hurtgen Forest are examined.
But the strength of Armageddon is the balance between telling the
battle narrative, the strategic overview and the ordinary stories
of the soldiers and civilians of all sides in the last period of
the war in Europe.
Armageddon is a welcome addition to any library on World War II.
– David Sibley
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