In this complex and fascinating exploration of the last days of the Third Reich and the Soviet advance on Berlin, Prit Buttar brings the last five months of the war to life in fascinating detail. Drawing on first-hand accounts starting at the Vistula offensive of January 1945, the book tracks the larger motivations behind the end of the Second World War and the Soviet Union’s role in liberating Auschwitz and capturing Berlin. Including the Wehrmacht’s response (their last major armored offensive on the Eastern Front) and the stalling of the Soviet advance at the Oder River, this book is a fascinatingly comprehensive account of Stalin and the Soviet army’s agendas and goals at the end of World War II. The attention to detail and depth of historical research is absolutely staggering, and readers will really appreciate the hard work and minute details that Buttar has included in this detailed and comprehensive exploration of the Eastern front in 1945. With enough context to help readers understand the book and the larger implications of the Soviet advance on Berlin, this book is great for academics and casual World War II aficionados alike, and Buttar has done a fantastic job bringing this new release to life.

This was dry, so so dry. There's no real narration style. This reads like a textbook but rather than briefly present information, the details are drawn out and names are thrown around without anything to make them memorable to the reader. I was interested in this book because of how focused the timeline is (and I was expecting this to specifically follow Russia's WW2 politics and history - it did not). Looking at such a specific event is great for a historiography and for creating a connection between the history/history figures and the reader. And, I don't know... this really missed the mark.

There's largely no historiography. I often found myself pausing in my reading to research a specific historical figure or event on my own because the writing style doesn't do a good job of differentiating between much of anything.

The bibliography is decent and I'll admit, if I was conducting my own research on this topic, this would be a decent source to pull from, but that's the thing: it's a decent source, it's not nonfiction written for an everyday nonfiction reader.

Chose not to rate this on Goodreads, but since I have to choose a rating here, I'll go with 2 stars based on the writing style.

Following on from the author’s previous book on Operation Bagration, this volume takes in the wide ranging fighting between the Red Army and the increasingly desperate German Army as the Soviet Forces strove to take the battle deep into Germany. The nature of the fighting on the Eastern Front is again laid bare. All war is violent and often indiscriminate, but the gratuitous violence dispensed by German forces earlier in the war is noted by the author as a motivating force driving the Soviet forces forward. The appreciation of how the tables had turned is also noted by Prit Buttar as a factor in stiffening the resistance of the German forces, since defeat could only mean catastrophe, given the nature of the treatment of the populations in those countries on the Eastern front which had been occupied by Germany.

A feature noted by others covering this phase of the war is well described - the increasingly fantasy world in which Hitler and his true believers operated. Frequently cities were left to operate as ‘fortresses’ once the first echelon Soviet troops had passed in order to tie down Soviet troops until a relief operation could be mounted, when the military reality was clear - the remorseless advance of the Soviet forces could at best be delayed, not stopped.

The operations in the different theatres of operations in the Second World War have been covered extensively, and warfare on the Eastern Front is no exception. However, Prit Buttar has made a useful contribution, with a judicious use of first hand accounts and the helpful inclusion of post war research which has challenged some of the earlier understanding of this particularly barbaric phase of the Second World War. He notes, in particular, the self-serving memoirs of many senior officers, including Guderian, and the importance of comparing contemporaneous records of units engaged in the fighting with the later accounts published by Generals. He also rejects the suggestion from some German Army generals that the particularly shocking treatment of civilians, particularly but not exclusively Jews, was only carried out by SS forces, stressing that regular army units were also involved.

This book, in which the detail is impressive and the scholarship evident, deserves to be widely read. One tip from this reviewer would be to have a decent scale map handy in order to make sense of the complex movements of forces and battles described. Helpfully, the author gives current names of key locations which are initially described by reference to the names used at the time. This is particularly relevant where former German towns and cities are in present day Poland.

Strongly recommended.