A pictorial history of the Nazi retreat from the Western and Eastern Fronts, back to Germany, as World War II came to an end. Drawing on a superb collection of rare and unpublished photographs, this book in the popular Images of War Series provides insight into the last desperate year of the German Army. It analyzes, 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.
