The Wehrmacht's Last Stand: The German Campaigns of 1944-1945 (Modern War Studies)

By 1943, the war was lost, and most German officers knew it. Three quarters of a century later, the question persists: What kept the German army going in an increasingly hopeless situation? Where some historians have found explanations in the power of Hitler or the role of ideology, Robert M. Citino, the world’s leading scholar on the subject, posits a more straightforward solution: Bewegungskrieg, the way of war cultivated by the Germans over the course of history. In this gripping account of German military campaigns during the final phase of World War II, Citino charts the inevitable path by which Bewegungskrieg, or a “war of movement,” inexorably led to Nazi Germany’s defeat.

The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand analyzes the German Totenritt, or “death ride,” from January 1944—with simultaneous Allied offensives at Anzio and Ukraine—until May 1945, the collapse of the Wehrmacht in the field, and the Soviet storming of Berlin. In clear and compelling prose, and bringing extensive reading of the German-language literature to bear, Citino focuses on the German view of these campaigns. Often very different from the Allied perspective, this approach allows for a more nuanced and far-reaching understanding of the last battles of the Wehrmacht than any now available. With Citino’s previous volumes, Death of the Wehrmacht and The Wehrmacht Retreats, The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand completes a uniquely comprehensive picture of the German army’s strategy, operations, and performance against the Allies in World War II.

• Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942 (Modern War Studies)
• The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943 (Modern War Studies)
• Case Red: The Collapse of France
• The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943 (Modern War Studies)
• The Splintered Empires: The Eastern Front 1917–21
• Vitebsk: The Fight and Destruction of Third Panzer Army (Die Wehrmacht im Kampf)
• Operation Don's Main Attack: The Soviet Southern Front's Advance on Rostov, January-February 1943 (Modern War Studies)
• The Kuban 1943: The Wehrmacht's last stand in the Caucasus (Campaign)
• Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942 (Modern War Studies)
• The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich (Modern War Studies)