Battleground Prussia: The Assault on Germany's Eastern Front 1944-45 (General Military)

Prit Buttar’s Battleground Prussia The Assault on Germany’s Eastern Front 1944-45 is a masterful work chronicling the Soviet Union’s ultimate defeat of Germany on the Eastern front. It’s 454 pages documents the piecemeal destruction of German forces during the war’s final eight months, as Soviet forces grind through East Prussia and ultimately into Berlin, with the lion’s share dealing with the battles in Prussia. Total war was brought to Germany.Buttar gives the reader his typical introduction involving the antagonists and what lead to an almost no quarter given philosophy applied by Soviet forces. For the most part, the book is from the German perspective, with a nice blend of text, and personal account. As one reads, it’s tough to feel sorry for the Germans as they did sow the wind, and then reaped the whirlwind. What they forced upon the Soviet lands and people they conquered, including ethnic cleansing, slave labor, and atrocity were correspondingly returned to the Germans. The book documents the defeat of German forces, and the sorrowful plight of the people of Prussia. In war, it’s seldom just the combatants that suffer, but the civilians. Displacement, rape and execution were visited upon them.After reading four of Buttar’s books, I have a number of general and specific comments. Hitler was not a military leader. His interference on strategic levels stretching into tactical situations were mind numbing. Keeping hundreds of thousands of troops in Courland, Norway and also Hungary, not to mention equipment lost in said places,robbed his generals of strategic reserves. Hitler’s no retreat, fortress- to the last drop of blood policy prevented his forces from performing strategic and tactical withdrawals to prepared positions and creating mobile reserves, as the Russian forces often penetrated beyond the positions designated as defensible by the Germans, before the Germans actually fell back to these positions. Thus, constant pressure was applied at all times, with no respite for the Wehrmacht.Without a doubt, the Russians evolved in both their strategic and tactical approach to defeating Nazi Germany, but one wonders if their successes would have been achieved if not for the United States providing the Soviet Union with more than 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 14,000 aircraft, 8,000 tractors and construction vehicles, and 13,000 battle tanks, not to mention fuel, explosives, aluminum, copper and radio sets. Supply on the Russian front was a constant Achilles heal, and those trucks provided by the United States were better than anything else used by any of the combatants. This is area of allied support Buttar largely omits from his works.Maps! In this volume, maps are abysmal. One gets a general idea where something is occurring and who is involved, but it all gets jumbled together without proper maps to sort things out. As another reviewer commented, these books are not meant for general book clubs. If units, locations, and rivers are mentioned, relevant and timely maps need to be included, with these units, their movements, and areas identified. I believe this a more a problem with publishers than authors, via communication with an author years ago.That said, Buttar has written a very comprehensive book on Germany’s final collapse as the Soviet forces drove through Prussia, and the catastrophe that befell the civilian population (largely women, children and old men) of Prussia.

"Battleground Prussia: The Assault on Germany's Eastern Front 1944-45" by Dr. Prit Buttar, is an impressive work dealing with the German defense of East and West Prussia from late 1944 until the war's end. The first few chapters set the stage, describing the political situation in Prussia, the impacts of the earlier part of the war on the area, and introduces several major characters, such as Erich Koch, the Gauleiter of East Prussia from 1928 until 1945, who had a tremendous impact (mostly bad) on the fighting. The remainder of the book discusses, in detail, the various Soviet offensives and desperate German attempts to hold the Soviets back as long as possible, as well as covering the German civilians attempts to flee and the horrible revenge extracted by the Soviets on those portions of the German population that fell into their hands.In the course of the narrative, Dr. Buttar points out the many mistakes and criminal neglect by the German party officials and the German High Command, such as not allowing civilians to evacuate until it was literally too late, not evacuating the Courland Pocket to provide much needed reserves to the German front, transferring divisions around the various fronts so that they were in transit instead of being where they were needed, and forcing the German forces to defend so-called fortresses to the death rather than retreat in time and in good order. While, as the author points out, the Germans probably wouldn't been able to stop the Soviet offensive even if they had made more sensible decisions, they could have greatly increased the cost in blood to the Soviets.The book is very evenhanded in its evaluation of the two sides, but most of the anecdotes and details are from the German side. I personally don't have any problems with that, especially as the author takes great pains to as fair as possible ... even when describing the atrocities that occurred, he puts them into their historical context and doesn't paint the entire Soviet army with a black brush. I just mention it as part of this review.What I really like about this book is that it provides a lot of detail to a portion of the war that has not been well covered, in my opinion. In most books, this Eastern Front campaign is only briefly covered as a short bridge between Operation Bagration and the fall of Berlin, even though it included some of the most ferocious combat of the entire war. I consider myself an amateur historian and own well over 400 books on World War II, with an emphasis on the Eastern Front, and this book contains a lot of new information to me and fills in some of the gaps in my knowledge of the war in this theater.I do have two nits to pick though. First, while there are around a dozen or so maps, there really needs to be a lot more. Dr. Buttar provides tremendous written detail on the fighting, attacks, and counterstrokes of the campaign, but more maps accompanying his fine prose would have added greatly to my understanding. Second, I would have liked to have seen more information on the units themselves ... an order of battle perhaps, the manpower strengths of the units, the losses they took, and so on. I realize that reliable records were increasingly hard to come by at this point of the war, particularly from the German side, but some summaries during the battle would have helped put more of a face on the losses suffered by both sides. Overall, though, I did not find these nits to be fatal flaws in the book, just things I wish the author had done differently.Overall, I give this book 5 stars and highly recommend it to history buffs with an interest in World War II, and in the Eastern Front.

As an avid reader of the Eastern Front battles in WW2, I had not read any of Pritt Buttars books before this one. Pretty hard going initially and very very detailed. However warmed to the style of writing and enjoyed the book. Would definitely read further books by this author.Worthy of mention are the maps which are simply awful and contribute nothing to the narrative. This is a complicated subject and needed clearer and wider context maps throughout.

This book is probably the definitive account of the last few months of the Second World War on the northern sector of the eastern front. Following the Russian advance towards, through and beyond Prussia, it gives an almost day to day account of the conflict. It was the point at which the Russians finally threw the Germans off Russian soil, and started to push into German territory. The military campaigns are well explained, and backed up by many first hand accounts. The impact on the civilian population is also explored - in some graphic detail - showing how the Russians treated the German populations they encountered. It's not a happy story, but it's context is explored, and whilst there is no excuse for the brutality which was widespread, the reasons for it are outlined and discussed.The book is clearly written, has an abundance of maps - which are a little small on the kindle - and a few photos. For the general reader, it may be a little too detailed; I had some difficulty following all the units and commanders mentioned and tracked, but the author handles all this information well, without it becoming boring. He includes many first hand accounts form both sides, both soldiers and civilians.For those interested in military history, there are many books on the western front to choose from; books on the eastern front - especially at the end of the war - are rarer in English. This one is definitely worth reading.

This book tells you the history of the Russian Campaign against the Pomerania and the Eastern Prussia since September 1944 till the end of war.The book is a precious one because includes really a lot of first-hand accounts from the soldiers and the civilians involved in this crusade; i use this word because for the Germans was a crusade against the Slavs that were invading their own territories and for the Russians it was a crusade against the enemies that brought so much destruction to their homeland.All the campaign is followed with great accuracy and even with great attention to the atrocities committed by the second line troops (occupation troops) of the Red Army in Prussia. This aspect has been strongly neglected in the old historiographie, but now it's coming out.A separate complete order of battle is missing, but telling the history, the author is able to give a very detailed composition of the units involved; with this and with the detailed maps included PRIT BUTTAR is able to make you follow very easily all the very confused fightings that happened in this region. It is to appreciate the cure posed to describe the fightings around and at Konigsberg and Danzig.This book is a must for all the people interested to know the last free days of this region so important historically.

I was under the initial impression that this book was mainly concerned about the plight and flight of individual refugees from East Prussia in early 1945, but in fact most of it is about detailed military manoeuvres interwoven with harrowing individual accounts. It is certainly a scholarly and seemingly unbiased work. I knew a fair amount about this subject from other sources but the author goes into considerable depth and must have done a large amount of research.The book gives a picture of a brave and inventive military struggling under the malign ineptitude of political top brass. It is difficult not to feel sorry for individual Germans at this stage of the War and I recalled Lali Horstmann's "Nothing for Tears" but against this one has to take into account the terrible Nazi belligerence and atrocities which started and continued the whole disastrous process and above all the "interfering dead hand" of Adolf Hitler whose chronic obduracy and misdirection did so much to help the Allies win the War. He was, of course, culpable in every way, but a specific aspect that comes across in this book is his resistance to evacuations; this of itself cost hundreds of thousands of German lives, especially civilians.As an elderly German pastor is quoted as saying, "we Germans (will) have to pay dreadfully for our conduct". This book proves him right.

A most interesting and well-written account of the collapse of the Eastern Front as the Russians finally cross the border of the Third Reich. As others have already noted, this is a good blending of general strategic narrative with personal tales and observations from both sides, but mainly the German one, as I suppose is proper to a book bearing such a title.The judicious selection of the eye-witness accounts helps bring home the personal tragedy of those times and stops the reader getting swept away in the more impersonal military operations where Army Group clashes with Tank Corps. The names and numbers of these long-defunct units are given a relevance and immediacy. This is not just generals moving counters over a map, this is people fighting and dying to try and save their homes or their very lives.I agree with other comments about the maps: Some more would be welcome and perhaps their placing could be better. I sometimes had problems tracking down the places being described in the narrative. There is one howler right at the beginning where a map bears the caption (I don't have the book in front of me): 'Advance on XXX, November 1945'. This did initially make me think: 'Oh dear, what's teh rest going to be like?' but all doubts and msigivings were soon dispelled.Unlike the author of Königsberg - Hitler's Fortress City, Pritt has chosen not to cite Guy Sajer as a source, as has been noted by another reviewer. I believe this to be a sensible decision and the choice of sources quoted serves to bolsetr the narrative rather than make it a little suspect, as in the other book.I have read many of the German books on this subject but this is the first in English (with the exception of the disappointing Königsberg)and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with more than passing interest in the Eastern Front. I eagerly await Pritt's next offering.