With Allied armies poised on the banks of the Rhine, Nazi Germany
tottered on the brink of collapse. The ensuing battles on German
soil-especially those in the so-called Ruhr Pocket-were as fierce
and hard-fought as any in the European theater. Going well beyond
previous accounts, Derek Zumbro chronicles this key military
campaign from a unique and fresh perspective-that of the defeated
German soldiers and civilians caught in the final maelstrom of the
war's western front.
Best known for his translation of In Deadly Combat, the
bestselling World War II memoir, Zumbro chronicles the relentless
assault on the Ruhr Pocket through German eyes, as the Allied
juggernaut battered the region's cities, villages, and homes into
submission. He tells of children pressed into service by a
desperate Nazi regime-and of even more desperate parents trying to
save their sons from sacrifice at the eleventh hour. He also tells
of unspeakable conditions suffered by foreign laborers, POWs, and
political opponents in the Ruhr Valley and of the mass graves that
gave Allied soldiers a grisly new understanding of their enemy.
Zumbro also recounts the story of Field Marshal Walter Model's
final hours. His eventual suicide effectively ended the existence
of the Wehrmacht's once-formidable Army Group B after being
pursued, methodically encircled, and finally destroyed by U.S. and
British forces. Through interviews with surviving members of
Model's former staff, Zumbro has uncovered the attitudes-and
harrowing experiences-of beleaguered officers that official records
could never convey.
Other interviews with former soldiers reveal the extent to which
Allied bombing contributed to the rapid deterioration of German
combat effectiveness and tell of civilians begging soldiers to
abandon the war. Zumbro's deep research reveals the identities of
specific characters discussed in previous works but never
identified, describes the final hours of German officers executed
for the loss of the bridge at Remagen, and offers new insight into
Model's acquiescence to Hitler in military affairs.
By taking us inside the first-hand experiences and memories of
Germans from Reichsmarshals to Burgermeisters, Battle for the Ruhr
gives a profound and harrowing ground-level view of the enormous
destructive power of war.
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