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The Last Battle: When U.S. And German Soldiers Joined Forces In The Waning Hours Of World War II In Europe (2013)

by Stephen Harding(Favorite Author)

3.7 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0306822083 (ISBN13: 9780306822087)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Da Capo Press

review 1: In an area of Austria I know very well, the Nazis confined a bunch of squabbling French VIP prisoners (Gamelin, Clemenceau's son, De Gaulle's sister, Weygand, Daladier, Jouhaux) of varying political stripes to a fortified schloss under a crappy SS jailer. Days after Hitler's suicide, with Waffen-SS units wandering the hills and likely to kill the prisoners, messages got out to both a local German army unit as well as an American tank column. Of course they team up with the Austrian resistance and spring the French (who, despite a moment of shooting off machine guns together, continue their spat).
review 2: A story that had to be told, The Last Battle is about the attempt by an American tank commander (Jack Lee) to rescue a group of high-ranking French politic... moreians who were imprisoned by the Nazis in an Austrian castle in the mountains east of Innsbruck. During the final days of the war, an SS unit was dispatched to execute the prisoners, and Lee--with a small contingent of American infantry and one tank--scrambled to defend the castle and its occupants. In a bizarre twist of allegiances, a former SS commandant and a small unit of Wehrmacht infantry joined them to protect the prisoners. The story is full of larger-than-life characters: Lee was a former football star and a superbly competent tank commander; his SS ally was Hauptsturmfuhrer Kurt Schrader, a highly decorated veteran of the war who had finally decided to abandon the Nazi cause; among the prisoners were France's two most recent prime ministers (Reynaud and Daladier) and two former chiefs-of-staff of the French military (Gamelin and Weygand) as well as a leading French labor leader (Jouhaux) and a variety of other VIPs.The story takes place mainly within the 14th-century castle, Schloss Itter, renovated as a luxury hotel and then converted by the Nazis into a prison. The castle's defenders needed to make use of the medieval structure to fight off thousands of SS troops equipped with artillery, machine-guns and sniper rifles. Harding's description of the battle is marvelously suspenseful and full of fascinating detail.Harding's prose can be tiresome at times but this wonderful adventure more than compensates for that--this is a page-turner well-situated in a vibrant historical context and in a moment when history was taking a dramatic turn. Enjoyable and full of surprises. less

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