Battleground Prussia: The Assault on Germany's Eastern Front 1944-45 (General Military) Hardcover – September 21, 2010

"Battleground Prussia: The Assault on Germany's Eastern Front 1944-45" by Dr. Prit Buttar, is an impressive work dealing with the German defense of East and West Prussia from late 1944 until the war's end. The first few chapters set the stage, describing the political situation in Prussia, the impacts of the earlier part of the war on the area, and introduces several major characters, such as Erich Koch, the Gauleiter of East Prussia from 1928 until 1945, who had a tremendous impact (mostly bad) on the fighting. The remainder of the book discusses, in detail, the various Soviet offensives and desperate German attempts to hold the Soviets back as long as possible, as well as covering the German civilians attempts to flee and the horrible revenge extracted by the Soviets on those portions of the German population that fell into their hands.

In the course of the narrative, Dr. Buttar points out the many mistakes and criminal neglect by the German party officials and the German High Command, such as not allowing civilians to evacuate until it was literally too late, not evacuating the Courland Pocket to provide much needed reserves to the German front, transferring divisions around the various fronts so that they were in transit instead of being where they were needed, and forcing the German forces to defend so-called fortresses to the death rather than retreat in time and in good order. While, as the author points out, the Germans probably wouldn't been able to stop the Soviet offensive even if they had made more sensible decisions, they could have greatly increased the cost in blood to the Soviets.

The book is very evenhanded in its evaluation of the two sides, but most of the anecdotes and details are from the German side. I personally don't have any problems with that, especially as the author takes great pains to as fair as possible ... even when describing the atrocities that occurred, he puts them into their historical context and doesn't paint the entire Soviet army with a black brush. I just mention it as part of this review.

What I really like about this book is that it provides a lot of detail to a portion of the war that has not been well covered, in my opinion. In most books, this Eastern Front campaign is only briefly covered as a short bridge between Operation Bagration and the fall of Berlin, even though it included some of the most ferocious combat of the entire war. I consider myself an amateur historian and own well over 400 books on World War II, with an emphasis on the Eastern Front, and this book contains a lot of new information to me and fills in some of the gaps in my knowledge of the war in this theater.

I do have two nits to pick though. First, while there are around a dozen or so maps, there really needs to be a lot more. Dr. Buttar provides tremendous written detail on the fighting, attacks, and counterstrokes of the campaign, but more maps accompanying his fine prose would have added greatly to my understanding. Second, I would have liked to have seen more information on the units themselves ... an order of battle perhaps, the manpower strengths of the units, the losses they took, and so on. I realize that reliable records were increasingly hard to come by at this point of the war, particularly from the German side, but some summaries during the battle would have helped put more of a face on the losses suffered by both sides. Overall, though, I did not find these nits to be fatal flaws in the book, just things I wish the author had done differently.

Overall, I give this book 5 stars and highly recommend it to history buffs with an interest in World War II, and in the Eastern Front.

Prit Buttar's book details the final push of the Soviet Red Army across Prussia in the winter of 1944-45. The author provides stark reports of the bitter conditions faced by both the German army and the civilians in the path of the Russian juggernaut. It's not a pretty story. However, it's one that needs to be told.

The writer points out the ruthless treatments of Poles and, later, Russians by the invading Germans. The atrocities ordered by Hitler and his followers, and carried out by the SS and some army units, whetted a Soviet appetite for vengeance that they readily sated at the doors of eastern Germany's civilian population. The Soviet advances were lightning fast -- blitzkrieg in reverse -- and cut off armed forces and unarmed civilians alike to make their way along clogged and frozen roads to reach temporary havens of safety.

While the bulk of the book details the fighting, focusing heavily on the retreating and outgunned German army, it also includes a few perspectives from the Soviet invaders. More importantly, it describes the efforts of many civilians wondering whether to flee, when to flee and where to flee. While larger numbers of both citizens and troops found their way to the comparative safety of western Germany, many tragically did not.

Buttar's book reminds us that war is hell not just for soldiers but for the entire population, especially when propaganda-fueled hatred drives conquering forces forward. The sad part of this book, to me, is that although you feel great sorrow for the average German whose life is disrupted or destroyed, you really can't fault the Soviet troops for exacting some sort of revenge for the wrongs perpetrated by Germany on equally innocent people.

In conclusion, this volume is well written and appears well researched, although I did find a few typos that make me wonder if it was well edited. Worth a read, if you can stand a series of stories about sorrows and atrocities.