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BOOK REVIEW: Max Hastings on Germany's 'Armageddon' as Allies from West, East Conquer Third Reich
 
Reviewed by David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
 
Hinton (HNN) – It might be a good idea if Nazi-uniform wearing Prince Harry were assigned to read “Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945” (Knopf, 640 pages, 32 pages of maps and photographs, $30.00) after he returns from Auschwitz and before he enters Sandhurst in May.

This book by British historian and journalist Max Hastings covers the period roughly from September 1944 to the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, mostly from the point of view of soldiers and civilians caught up in the most destructive period of World War II in Europe.

I would call the 20-year-old British royal party animal's attention to a photograph of a skeletal man who isn't a death camp survivor – he's an American prisoner of war newly liberated from a German POW camp. Shades of the awful TV series “Hogan's Heroes,” which poked fun at the antics of stalag guards, or Wolfgang Petersen's film “Das Boot,” which made heroes of German submariners.

Prolific author Hastings, who wrote “Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy,” a comparable account of D-Day published on the invasion's 40th anniversary in 1984, takes aim at the currently thriving German industry of victimology, which portrays ordinary Germans as victims of bestial Russians and other allied troops who murdered, raped and looted across their civilized country. A “civilized” country that worked to death millions of slave laborers to build rockets to destroy English cities, including the London where Harry's great-grandmother Queen Mary stayed along with the rest of the residents.

Hastings makes the excellent point that the Germans – he never misuses the word “Nazi” as a politically correct synonym for German aggression – were more fanatical than the Japanese in defending their “heimat” or homeland.

After the two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the Japanese meekly surrendered, with no pockets of teen-age boys sniping at the conquerors, as happened very frequently in Germany up to V-E Day and even beyond. If the German leaders had realized in September 1944 that they had no chance of winning, the carnage would have been much less. But, as Hastings graphically illustrates, such temporary German triumphs as the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 only prolonged the agony of ordinary Germans.

Many “ordinary” Germans, to use the word of historian Daniel J. Goldhagen, were as much to blame as Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Keitel, Doenitz, Ribbentrop, Speer and the rest of that band of monsters. Much of the detail in this book validates Goldhagen's thesis, advanced in “Hitler's Willing Executioners,” that “ordinary” Germans bear much of the guilt for the atrocities that came in the wake of German aggression in Europe from 1933 on.

A few numbers help distinguish between the attack from the west, led by Americans, British, Canadians, French and Polish troops and the move across Poland and East Prussia by Russian troops. Hastings points out that between June 1944 and May 1945 about 150,000 allied troops were killed in the west; more than 500,000 Russians lost their lives in combat in the east. These numbers don't include the millions of Russian POWs murdered by Germans, who treated the Russians far worse than Americans, Brits and Canadians who received Red Cross parcels and were able to write home to relatives.

In addition to interviews with dozens of ordinary soldiers and civilian survivors, Hastings several times quotes Staff Sgt. Henry Kissinger, a 21-year-old U.S. Army soldier returning to his native country (he was born in Furth, Bavaria in 1923 and escaped with his family to the U.S. in the 1930s). I found Kissinger's comments particularly poignant, considering his role during the Vietnam War about 25 years later.

The author, while acknowledging George Patton's battlefield aggression in sharp contrast to most other American, Canadian and British generals, is no fan of the colorful general. The “slapping incidents” in Sicily are not the issue, Hastings says, as much as occasions like Patton's costly and selfish attempt to rescue his prisoner-of-war son-in-law, Col. John Knight Waters. This rescue attempt, which resulted in many casualties, was something I had never read about.

Hastings partially rehabilitates Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the British commander so often belittled by many military historians – not to mention Patton. “Monty” was much loved by his men, Hastings says, because he minimized casualties –something unknown to the German and Russian field commanders. He also defends Eisenhower's decision to let the Russians take Berlin, both to minimize casualties of allied troops in the west and to acknowledge that Berlin was surrounded by the Russian zone of occupation already agreed on by the allies.

This latter move was bitterly attacked by Churchill, who wanted to keep the Communist horde at bay. Both Roosevelt and Truman after FDR's death in April 1945 understood the reality of politics and they also acknowledged that with casualties about 30 times that of the western allies, the Russians deserved some revenge.

Civil War Gen. William T. Sherman wasn't kidding when he said war was hell. That part of the speech in 1880 where Sherman made the comment to a graduating class of Michigan military cadets is appropriate today: ''I've been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It's entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here.

''Suppress it! You don't know the horrible aspects of war. I've been through two wars and I know. I've seen cities and homes in ashes. I've seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is hell!'

“Armageddon” is a book for serious World War II buffs, as well as general readers who don't know much about history—about 99 percent of the population, in my estimate. The notes are unobtrusive but comprehensive and the index is outstanding.

Frankly, if you have any faith in the essential goodness of the human species when you start this massive book, I'm willing to bet most of it will be gone when you finish it. Prince Harry, read it and absorb it: Nazis are no joking matter, 60 years on, as the Brits say.
 
More Book Reviews by David M. Kinchen
— 10/28/04 BOOK REVIEWS: Bill Kurtis on the Death Penalty; Ms. Moffett Becomes a Teacher
— 11/15/04 BOOK REVIEW: Roth Envisions a Frightening 'What If?' in 'The Plot Against America'
— 11/24/04 BOOK REVIEWS: Bush, Blair and Iraq; A Shrink at Nuremberg; Updike's Sexy Geek; Potomac Fever Smites an Academic
— 12/15/04 BOOK REVIEWS: 'Past Imperfect' Covers Complexities of History, Plagiarism Issues; 'His Excellency' Reveals George Washington's Accomplishments
— 12/29/04 BOOK REVIEWS: ‘de Kooning’ Chronicles Rise of American Art Supremacy; ‘Adams vs. Jefferson’ Shows That Controversial Presidential Elections are Nothing New
— 01/24/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Images of America: Huntington’ Displays Glorious Architecture of West Virginia’s First Planned City
— 01/27/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Auschwitz’ Personalizes Horror That Should Never Be Forgotten

David M. Kinchen is the Editor of HuntingtonNews.Net, repsponses and article submissions can be made to .
 
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