Crumbling Empire: The German Defeat in the East, 1944

by Samuel W. Mitcham Jr.

The last place a German soldier wanted to be in 1944 was the Russian front. That summer, Stalin hurled into battle more than six million men and 9,000 tanks, supported by 16,000 fighters and bombers and more than 12,800 guns and rocket launchers. Despite this massive effort and the resulting decimation of German forces, events on the Eastern Front are largely neglected by historians who focus instead on German defeats in Normandy and the Ardennes. This account details the massive battles on the Eastern Front from the summer of 1944 until the fall of Budapest in early 1945, a period when Hitler lost the majority of his conquered Eastern territories and many of his best remaining divisions.

To destroy the Third Reich, the Allies needed to defeat the German Wehrmacht militarily, and the decisive victories of this period occurred on the Russian Front. More German soldiers were lost in White Russia than at Stalingrad; more troops were lost in Rumania in a brief ten days than in the entire Normandy campaign; and German losses in Hungary were greater than the Battle of the Bulge. The most mobile army in the world in 1940, the German Army was the least mobile by 1944, and Hitler's stand fast and fortified place policies imposed a paralysis that neither senior German generals nor the High Command of the Army were able to overcome. Outnumbered 3 to 1 in men, 5 to 1 in tanks, and 20 to 1 in airplanes, the German Army was slaughtered, as casualties mounted and the empire crumbled.

Genres: Military History, Military Fiction, World War II, War

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Excelliron · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book doesnt even attempt to hide behind a veil of objectivity. It's extremely sensationalist, is largely conceived by the author's own imagination, and comes off as Bolshevik revenge porn. This is after he tells you story after story of incredibly evil and heinous deeds allegedly performed by the National Socialists, and how so many of them were rapists, child molesters, and every other vile thing you can project on an ideological enemy. He rarely, if ever, tells how he came to this information or discloses sources for these claims.

The book may as well be titled "The terrible no-good horrible things the evil Nazi child molesters did on the eastern front, and the totally deserved horrors inflicted upon them by the Russians for doing so"

If you want information about WW2 thats more on the factual side and less-so on the sensationalism and lies, check out WW2 historian David Irving.

[Justin Chudzik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic overview of the late war Eastern Front. This book sparked my deep, long-standing interest in the Eastern Front.