ARMAGEDDON: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945
By Max Hastings. Knopf. 584 pp. $30
With an end to the war in Iraq more elusive than ever, it's a fascinating moment to remember the cataclysm that ended World War II. Some would argue that the fate of Hitler's Reich was sealed as early as the Red Army's counteroffensive in December 1941; others would point to the Battle of Stalingrad the following winter. But by the time the Western Allies had successfully stormed through France and the Soviets had made their way to the outskirts of Warsaw, it was clear to everyone but the most fanatic Nazis that the end was only months, or even weeks, away.
And yet, as Max Hastings's magisterial new book demonstrates in meticulous detail, the months between September 1944 and May 1945 were among the cruelest and most destructive Europe had ever seen. The end was known, but the path leading there passed through an ocean of blood and terror. Because victory was unavoidable and defeat unthinkable, every loss seemed all the more wasteful. But precisely for this reason, hatred, vengeance and despair propelled the exhausted and brutalized combatants to resort to increasingly ruthless measures so as to finally bring -- as many Germans said at the time -- "an end full of horror to the horror without end." While this is hardly an untold story, Hastings's gripping narrative blends individual accounts, sweeping reconstructions of battles and devastating criticisms of military and political leaders.
Armageddon is a classic war history in the style of such masters as Alexander Werth, John Ericksen and, more recently, Antony Beevor. Like them, Hastings has much empathy for the little cogs and victims of war -- and far less sympathy for those who orchestrate it. Consequently, his harsh judgment of the leaders does not always reflect sufficient detachment from the testimonies of his protagonists on the ground. This approach makes for lively reading, but it may provide a somewhat skewed picture of the event as a whole.
Hastings, a former editor of the Daily Telegraph, has a low opinion of the U.S. and British strategy and conduct of the war. He concedes that not much could have been done to prevent Stalin's takeover of Eastern Europe but laments the lack of energy displayed by American and British soldiers. Hastings argues that the Anglo-Americans -- with a few outstanding exceptions, including some elite units -- were poorly trained, lacking in motivation and led by generals who were mediocre or, at best, competent but unimaginative. Better leadership from such generals as Montgomery and Eisenhower and less cautious troops would have prevented the disasters of the Battle of Arnhem (where Montgomery launched an extraordinarily badly planned attempt to end the war by grabbing bridges on the Rhine) and the Battle of the Bulge (where Eisenhower failed to destroy the reeling Wehrmacht before it had time to regroup); it also might have spared many lives by ending the war in 1944.
Indeed, without the Soviets' immense sacrifices, the Americans and the British would have never defeated Nazi Germany. But the Red Army's far superior fighting power and generalship went hand-in-hand with extraordinary brutality toward its own troops, as well as against enemy soldiers and civilians. Hence Hastings's admiration for the Soviets' military accomplishments is tinged with his contempt for Stalin's policies and for his soldiers' innumerable crimes.
Hastings has no doubt that the best army of World War II was the Wehrmacht, which displayed outstanding professionalism and determination even in the final weeks. Awareness of the atrocities committed by Hitler's soldiers has hardly diminished the admiration of many military historians, professional soldiers and military history buffs for this seemingly perfect tool of war. This fascination with the Wehrmacht has a long tradition, going back to the influential British military historian and theorist Basil Liddell Hart's flattering 1948 portrait of Hitler's generals, which conveniently left out their crucial role as instruments of conquest, enslavement and genocide. This view is rooted in a depoliticized understanding of German soldiers that dismisses their ideological motivations and seeks to attribute their performance to skills or organization that could also be acquired by the armies of the democracies.
Hastings does acknowledge the fanatic resistance of hopeless foreign SS men and deeply indoctrinated Hitler Youth teenagers. He concludes that the democracies' less effective armies (and heavy reliance on industrial might) was the flip side of their soldiers' greater humanity, despite the unavoidable excesses by some men and the unnecessary destruction of German cities toward the end of the war. But such humanism was, of course, facilitated by what Hastings sees as a pact with the devil; the Anglo-Americans could fight a relatively moral war only thanks to the Soviet Union's terrible sacrifice and subsequent vengeance. This is, at best, qualified morality.
Between June 1944 and May 1945, 152,000 Allied soldiers were killed fighting in the west; the Red Army lost well over 500,000 in the same period. Some 400,000 German soldiers and civilians died in ground fighting and aerial bombardment in 1945 alone. Such figures can be understood only by referring to personal accounts, which Hastings uses splendidly. But partly because Armageddon focuses on the war's horrific endgame and partly because Hastings wishes to undermine conventional accounts of the war that gloss over the punishment inflicted on the Reich, the author lingers longest on the suffering of German civilians.
Germany now hosts a minor cottage industry on the victimhood of the Reich's civilians. And while Hastings stresses Hitler's particular focus on murdering Jews and dedicates even more space to the Nazi regime's other non-Aryan victims, he too is especially concerned with the fate of the German victims of Allied bombings, the mass expulsions from Eastern Europe and the eastern parts of Germany (where he cites highly inflated fatality figures), and the mass rapes by the Red Army.
The genocide of the European Jews has only belatedly come to be seen as part of World War II, and its inclusion often calls for a listing of all other victims. This tends to obfuscate the singular nature of the Holocaust: the Nazis' determination to exterminate the Jews. The mélange of victims includes even the German soldiers who, the late German historian Andreas Hillgruber asserted 20 years ago, sacrificed themselves to protect Germany against the "Asiatic hordes" and the "red flood" from the east. He also maintained that the loss of Germany's eastern provinces was the greatest tragedy of the war.
Yet as long as these Wehrmacht troops were protecting "civilization" from the Bolsheviks, the mass murder could continue. Between May 15 and July 18, 1944, a total of 434,351 Jews were deported from Hungary; most of them were gassed in Birkenau. The suffering of the individual needs to be recorded, and it may tell us a great deal about the nature of an historical event. But we must remember the context. The sacrifice of the German soldier was made in the cause of genocide and fascism. The struggle of so many Germans to maintain their Reich kept Hitler in power. It was because Hitler's soldiers fought to the bitter end that their country had to be destroyed. Only then could the reconstruction begin. •
Omer Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University. His books include "Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich."
