In most standard histories of the Second World War in Europe, the last six months of battle are given little attention. After the Germans were defeated in the Battle of the Bulge, the war is often assumed to have been over, bar sporadic shooting. As Countdown to Victory shows, this is a long way from the truth.

Countdown to Victory explores the turbulent last days of the war; while world leaders divvied up post-war Europe, the German army, far from being beaten, fought hard for every inch of ground. Barry Turner draws on a wealth of previously unpublished sources to reveal the resistance movements, political bids for power, squabbles between military leaders, the horror of the concentration camps, and many individual acts of kindness and courage. Countdown to Victory recaptures the excitement of victory and the despair of the defeated in the midst of a critical moment in world history.

Barry Turner was educated at the London School of Economics and London Institute of Education. He has been a full-time writer for 20 years, and has been a regular guest on television and radio programs, mainly for commentary on the arts and education. Some of his published works include: And the Policeman Smiled; Equality for Some: A History of Girl’s Education; A Place in the Country; and The Other European Community.

“Turner quotes at length the words of many who fought and suffered in those six months. The vivid power of their testimony is striking.” — Sunday Times (London)

When does a war end? Is it the day the treaties are signed? Is it the day the last soldier falls? Or is it the day the enemy finally realizes he is fighting a lost cause?

In standard histories of the Second World War, the last six months in the western European arena invariably make a short epilogue. After the German failure in the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's bold counterattack across the Ardennes, the war is often assumed to have been over, bar sporadic shooting. As Countdown to Victory shows, this is a long way from the truth.The German army, far from being beaten, fought hard for every inch of ground. This in-depth look at those final months reveals many individual acts of great courage and recaptures the excitement of victory and the despair of the defeated, told by the people who were eyewitnesses to these momentous events.

Countdown to Victory also examines many contentious issues: the race between Montgomery and Patton to become the first to cross the Rhine; the rarely discussed Hunger Winter in Holland, in which the Dutch people were left to starve by the Nazi administrators under the knowing eyes of the Allied forces; the destruction of German cities; Eisenhower's decision to leave Berlin to the Russians and the disagreements between British and American generals; the concentration camps and the question of German collective guilt; and the drama of the last days of the Third Reich. The memories and reflections are set in the wider context of the political struggle among Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, with Stalin winning on points for dominant say in planning a postwar Europe.

Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished American, British, Canadian, German, Dutch and Scandinavian sources, Countdown to Victory is a reinterpretation of those final months through he eyes of ordinary people forced to experience the trauma. These memories and reflections of the soldiers and civilians in the front line will make us rethink the popular images of the last stage of the war.

Searing and indelible, this riveting history puts a spotlight on a transformative moment in the twentieth century, from a historian whose page-turning style will have readers transfixed.

Countdown to Victory

The Final European Campaigns of World War IIBy Turner, Barry

William Morrow & Company

ISBN: 0060740671

Chapter One

Misreading Hitler

The party was over almost before it started. In August 1944 there were short odds on the war being over by Christmas. A month later, all bets were off. That the Third Reich would fall, few doubted. But when? It could take weeks or months; maybe even years?

The success of the Normandy landings, by no means a foregone conclusion, had been a great morale booster. In June the biggest ever invasion force had broken through German defences to sweep across France and Belgium. Caught in a pincer movement between American forces curving round from their advance south and Canadian and British troops moving down from Caen, the German Fifth and Seventh Armies had been trapped and destroyed. On August 20th, General George S. Patton led his Third Army on an assault across the Seine, creating a bridgehead at Mantes-Gassicourt nearly thirty miles to the northwest of Paris. Four days later, the French Second Armoured Division entered the capital. Meanwhile, to the east, the Soviet summer offensive had annihilated three Germany army groups to forge bridgeheads over the Narew River, north of Warsaw and the Vistula, south of the Polish capital.

But an advance of such speed and ferocity could not be sustained. On both fronts supply lines were dangerously extended. There was a desperate shortage of fuel and an equally desperate shortage of human energy. Battle-weary troops were in need of a respite. On the Polish frontier, Soviet forces dug themselves in at the river barriers, secure against Panzer counter-attacks. At the other side of Europe, the forward rush of three US armies was halted some sixty-four miles short of the Rhine. The Fifth Armoured Division of Patton's Third Army liberated Luxembourg, penetrating over ten miles into Germany. But then, in early September, even Patton's battle express ran out of steam.

Hopes of an early breakthrough were not easily abandoned. Operation Market Garden, a combined ground and airborne attack across sixty miles of enemy-held territory, was conceived by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery as a speedy conclusion to the war. The airborne troops would be dropped at Arnhem where they would secure a Rhine crossing. An infantry follow-up by Thirty Corps, led by General Brian Horrocks, was scheduled within fortyeight hours of the first landings. After that it should have been full speed to the great industrial cities of the Ruhr. In the event, the tanks of Thirty Corps fell easy victim to German gunners and Allied supplies failed to get through. The plan foundered. After nine days of close fighting, which virtually wiped out the British First Airborne Division and inflicted heavy casualties on the American parachutists, the operation was called off.

The ability of the Wehrmacht to challenge the odds was proved again eighty miles south of Arnhem, at Aachen, the first German city to fall to the Allies but at terrible cost to American forces. It had all seemed so easy. As the US Seventh Corps, led by General 'Lightning Joe' Collins, crossed open country towards Aachen, the defences showed every sign of crumbling. While Nazi officials were packing their bags, the commander of the 116th Panzer Division was also preparing to move out. He left behind him a letter to his American opposite number asking him to 'take care of the unfortunate people [of Aachen] in a humane way'. But then an altogether tougher commander took over. Determined to fight to the last man, Colonel Gerhardt Wilck forced Collins to abandon his plan to take Aachen 'on the run'. Instead, while the First Infantry, the 'Big Red One', America's finest infantry division, was fighting from house to house in the city suburbs, Collins' main force bypassed Aachen to enter what became known as the Hurtgen Forest or, as the GIs called it, the 'Green Hell of Hurtgen'. The objective was to achieve a pincer that would cut off the defenders of Aachen from the rest of the Wehrmacht. It worked but few would argue that it was worth the effort and the death toll. By mid-October, when Aachen finally passed to the attackers, American losses were close to 60,000 or, to put it another way, a casualty rate over six months higher than that for the six years in Vietnam. This was no way to win a war.

It was the same story in Italy, the only other front where progress might reasonably have been expected. After the capture of Rome in June, the Allied forces moving north had bumped up against a stubborn German defence of the Po Valley. As winter approached it was clear that the stalemate would not be broken easily. Everywhere the Allied advance was on hold. The emphasis now was on the build-up to a massive winter or spring offensive carrying the war well into 1945.

Preparation for a full-scale assault on the formidable West Wall or Siegfried Line defences along the German frontier were hampered by the destruction of past battles. The French railway system had been devastated first by Allied bombing and then by the Germans in retreat, while many of the Channel ports had been shelled or sabotaged beyond immediate use. Nonetheless, American and British forces captured Gelsenkirchen on the edge of the Ruhr conurbation, the heartland of German industrial power, and overran the outer defences of the Siegfried Line without much difficulty. It was when they struck at the main defences with networks of pillboxes and minefields that had to be cleared step by step, that the real horror started. Reporting for the BBC, Frank Gillard spoke of mile after mile of trenches across the countryside.

They zigzag along the edges of the roads and behind the embankments, and I saw one particularly well-prepared system alongside a sunken railway track. Most of these trench systems had culs-de-sac branching out at right angles, leading across fields, up to little bumps of rising ground or out towards other tracks ...

Continues...

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