Defeat in the East: Russia Conquers January to May 1945

This book casts a brilliant, roving searchlight on the drama and human tragedy of a vast military debacle. It is the last winter of World War II in Eastern Europe, the months that began with the collapse of the exhausted German Army and ended only when the Russian tanks at last came to a halt before the door of Hitler's bunker in the Reichskanzehrei garden in Berlin. Juergen Thorwald participated in the rescue of refugees in Eastern Germany and after the war interviewed civilian refugees and military survivors, from Guderian to Wehrmacht privates, to gather the full story of that enormous battle, so little known in the West. From those interviews he has composed this book, an eyewitness report of Armageddon in the terrible winter when Hitler and the Russian Army brought death and defeat to the German people. =