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beer_matt's review against another edition
5.0
Oh my work, what a hard read! I actually had to stop reading it after the chapter on the invasion of East Prussia by the Soviets and read another book.
Not an entertaining read in any way, but very informative. The comparison of Stalin and Beria with Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich as rank amateurs gave me pause to reflect.
Has I said about Shirer's book, everbody should read it......
Not an entertaining read in any way, but very informative. The comparison of Stalin and Beria with Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich as rank amateurs gave me pause to reflect.
Has I said about Shirer's book, everbody should read it......
mellowdave's review against another edition
dark
emotional
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Deportation, Genocide, Rape, Hate crime, War, Physical abuse, Racism, Slavery, Forced institutionalization, Antisemitism, and Murder
maxramsay's review against another edition
5.0
My parents got me this a CD audiobook donkeys years ago and I fell in love with historical audiobooks. Seemingly a lifetime later. Armageddon is easily Hastings' magnus opus.
marcelozanca's review against another edition
4.0
Very good book. Lots of news informations (for me), mainly about crimes from comunists against germans, poles and others who were unfortunate enouth to be "liberate" by the russians. Even the millions of russians prisioneres who mirecle survive the nazis were considere traitors and treaty accordinly back home. Stalin and the comunists in general must be considerer in the same level as nazis, the fail and do so give us today North Coreia, Cuba, China and corrupt governes elects all around the world (Venezuela, Equador, ...).
Recomendo.
zanca
Recomendo.
zanca
ncrabb's review against another edition
4.0
They pretty much said the whole nasty business would be over by Christmas, 1944. That’s the whispered claims of large numbers of people in the fall of that year—claims bolstered by a successful invasion of the European continent earlier that summer. But the optimism of autumn gave way to the winter of wearing down as German and Allied fighters made costly mistakes that prolonged the European theater of World War II until early May.
This book provides a highly readable extremely disturbing account of the final months of World War II in the European theater. It details horrors and atrocities committed by military units on both sides of the war. Most of these horrors were simply bits of history about which I either knew little or nothing or have chosen to parenthesize. Hastings changed all that for me with this book.
This is a bleak unblinking look at the blood-soaked end of a war that claimed the lives of tens of thousands. It looks at Allied fire bombings of German cities and questions the effectiveness of those bombings on the outcome of the war. But I was most sickened and horrified by the accounts of ruthless rapes committed in massive numbers by Red Army forces who bore down on the German population with no goals other than mass rape and death. The book will leave you shaking your head as you stare at the reality that London and Washington winked and looked the other way while Stalin’s boys carried out their reign of horror. Washington and London tacitly knew that they could not defeat Hitler without the Soviet army. It’s likely true, as the author asserts, that the American public would never have stood for the numbers of casualties that were permitted by Stalin. There is little doubt that Americans knew about Soviet army rapes and murders as it advanced westward and did very little to stop it.
In his defense, Eisenhower had no choice but to look for solutions that would end the conflict rapidly while ensuring an Allied victory.
I’ve watched with concern news reports from England of nerve agent attacks connected to Russia, and I’m left wondering what, if anything, has changed in nearly 75 years. This is not the book you curl up in bed with in the minutes before drifting off. The violence catalogued here will cause sleep to flee and leave you with nightmares when it fitfully returns. But this is as good a time to read this as any. It looks at German atrocities and allows the reader to see how people on both sides could feel justified about the nastiness committed on one another.
This is an excellent illustration as to the diabolical nature of war and the decided lack of glamor associated with it.
This book provides a highly readable extremely disturbing account of the final months of World War II in the European theater. It details horrors and atrocities committed by military units on both sides of the war. Most of these horrors were simply bits of history about which I either knew little or nothing or have chosen to parenthesize. Hastings changed all that for me with this book.
This is a bleak unblinking look at the blood-soaked end of a war that claimed the lives of tens of thousands. It looks at Allied fire bombings of German cities and questions the effectiveness of those bombings on the outcome of the war. But I was most sickened and horrified by the accounts of ruthless rapes committed in massive numbers by Red Army forces who bore down on the German population with no goals other than mass rape and death. The book will leave you shaking your head as you stare at the reality that London and Washington winked and looked the other way while Stalin’s boys carried out their reign of horror. Washington and London tacitly knew that they could not defeat Hitler without the Soviet army. It’s likely true, as the author asserts, that the American public would never have stood for the numbers of casualties that were permitted by Stalin. There is little doubt that Americans knew about Soviet army rapes and murders as it advanced westward and did very little to stop it.
In his defense, Eisenhower had no choice but to look for solutions that would end the conflict rapidly while ensuring an Allied victory.
I’ve watched with concern news reports from England of nerve agent attacks connected to Russia, and I’m left wondering what, if anything, has changed in nearly 75 years. This is not the book you curl up in bed with in the minutes before drifting off. The violence catalogued here will cause sleep to flee and leave you with nightmares when it fitfully returns. But this is as good a time to read this as any. It looks at German atrocities and allows the reader to see how people on both sides could feel justified about the nastiness committed on one another.
This is an excellent illustration as to the diabolical nature of war and the decided lack of glamor associated with it.
ericwelch's review against another edition
4.0
Max Hastings is one of the premier historians of the Second World War. Unlike Stephen Ambrose, who , while a very readable historian -- even knowing whom to plagarize (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_E._Ambrose#Plagiarism_controversy) -- is as much a cheerleader as historian, Hastings presents objective analysis. It's fortuitous that he also happens to be a very good writer.
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 follows his [b:Overlord D-Day and the Battle for Normandy|55414|Overlord D-Day and the Battle for Normandy|Max Hastings|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320400182s/55414.jpg|2869272]. Hastings succeeds in explaining why the Germans fought so tenaciously even after the war was obviously lost. Within ten weeks after the landings at Normandy, the allies were at the Rhine. The Russians, without whom we could never have defeated Hitler, were pressing hard on the eastern front.
Hastings portrays the Wehrmacht as one of the premier armies of the world -- and also one of the most vicious in its treatment of civilians. We tend to forget the enormous casualties suffered in WW II that make WW I look like a walk in the park. The Russians alone, according to some estimates, suffered some forty million deaths (of course, Stalin was responsible for many of them through vicious reprisals and substantial incompetence.)
Hastings presents a convincing case that poor training of allied troops and less than inspired generalship by Montgomery and Eisenhower prolonged the war, which should have ended, her argues, by the end of 1944. [A book I recently finished reading, [book:Company Commander The Classic Infantry Memoir of World War II|182134], notes that George Marshall deliberately kept the numbers of troops down so as to allocate more resources to materiel production and naval and air resources.] The Red Army, while having more spectacular leadership, suffered from its callous treatment of its own troops. They responded with savagery against the occupied countries. The more democratic countries' armies were substantially more humane -- Americans never saw the Germans as the inhuman barbarians they considered the Japanese to be -- but relied on the advances of the Russians to tie down German SS units on the east which otherwise would have been used against the allies.
Democracies tend to be more cautious in war, having to be concerned with casualties. Hastings notes that the Red Army and Germans had no such concern and could be much more profligate with their armies.
On the other hand, Germans fighting to the bitter end, for whatever reason, be it indoctrination or saving Europe from the Asiatic hordes, meant that they had more time to kill Jews. Almost 500,000 Jews were shipped to concentration camps from Hungary in mid-1944.
A fascinating book .
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 follows his [b:Overlord D-Day and the Battle for Normandy|55414|Overlord D-Day and the Battle for Normandy|Max Hastings|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320400182s/55414.jpg|2869272]. Hastings succeeds in explaining why the Germans fought so tenaciously even after the war was obviously lost. Within ten weeks after the landings at Normandy, the allies were at the Rhine. The Russians, without whom we could never have defeated Hitler, were pressing hard on the eastern front.
Hastings portrays the Wehrmacht as one of the premier armies of the world -- and also one of the most vicious in its treatment of civilians. We tend to forget the enormous casualties suffered in WW II that make WW I look like a walk in the park. The Russians alone, according to some estimates, suffered some forty million deaths (of course, Stalin was responsible for many of them through vicious reprisals and substantial incompetence.)
Hastings presents a convincing case that poor training of allied troops and less than inspired generalship by Montgomery and Eisenhower prolonged the war, which should have ended, her argues, by the end of 1944. [A book I recently finished reading, [book:Company Commander The Classic Infantry Memoir of World War II|182134], notes that George Marshall deliberately kept the numbers of troops down so as to allocate more resources to materiel production and naval and air resources.] The Red Army, while having more spectacular leadership, suffered from its callous treatment of its own troops. They responded with savagery against the occupied countries. The more democratic countries' armies were substantially more humane -- Americans never saw the Germans as the inhuman barbarians they considered the Japanese to be -- but relied on the advances of the Russians to tie down German SS units on the east which otherwise would have been used against the allies.
Democracies tend to be more cautious in war, having to be concerned with casualties. Hastings notes that the Red Army and Germans had no such concern and could be much more profligate with their armies.
On the other hand, Germans fighting to the bitter end, for whatever reason, be it indoctrination or saving Europe from the Asiatic hordes, meant that they had more time to kill Jews. Almost 500,000 Jews were shipped to concentration camps from Hungary in mid-1944.
A fascinating book .
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