Slaughter at Halbe: Hitler's Ninth Army in the Spreewald Pocket, April 1945

by Tony Le Tissier

Book Overview

Operation 'Berlin', the Soviet offensive launched on 16 April 1945 by Marshals Zhukov and Koniev, isolated the German 9th Army and tens of thousands of refugees in the Spreewald 'pocket', south-east... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0750936894
• ISBN13: 9780750936897
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: History Press
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Another excellent effort by Le Tissier

Add this work to his others that cover this period of WW II history and you will have a complete and accurate telling.

Strong, informative read

To say that the winners write the History books would be a simplification of generally accepted facts about any war. This book puts a voice to the losers side. To many, the story and carnage surrounding the greatest forced human migration in history is unknown and since it dealt with the Germans fleeing the Russian, very little care shown either. But the plight of the common citizen caught up in the storm of total war is both shocking and sad. This book does a very good job of detailing the desperate conditions which the military arm and the civilians had to face. Having read the German division logs from the units involved had prepared me for what this book contained. Knowing some of the surviving civilians caught up in the exodus only brings the story that much closer to home. It is very difficult for readers today to understand what happened late in WW2. It was difficult for the Soviet forces to seperate military from civilian targets so they bombed and attacked them all. The civilians clung to the hope of safety with the few surviving tanks and stayed in their shadow. Tragedy often followed. Countless died and to this day are still be discovered where they fell. This book uses many German sources to depict the facts and is well worth reading and learing the story.

To the last Gast of Effort

The last Battles of WWII and that of the depleted German Army are getting more and more attention these days which is a good thing. It is always good to know information about the other side of the coin and we get that with Tony Le Tissier "Slaughter at the Halbe" book. This is an excellent, well written book from the same author which brough us "With our Backs to Berlin" Mr. Tissier is an excellent writer and brings in lots of facts and eye witness accounts in this book. This is the battle fought by the 9th Armee in order to get to the Allied lines and not get captured by the Russian. Of course Hitler wanted this Armee to come and rescue Berlin in the final week of the war but its Commander, Gen. Busse thought of a better way to use his remaining strenght, to save as many lives as possible by deliviring them to the Allied side across the river Elbe which separated the Allied armies from the Russians. But before they could get to "freedom" they had to go through one of the most grueling and death filled journeys in the whole war. One of the main battles was over the city of Halbe in which so many German soldiers and civialians died. This whole book tells of that battle. How tanks got blown up and caught in cross fires, how some soldiers refused to fight and others did the imposible to get to this "freedom". To those who reached it, it was a bitter pill to swallow but at least it wasn't the Russians. To understand the whole overview of the importance of the 9th armee one should read "The fall of Berlin" by A. Beevor as it also speaks to some of the events in this book but gives you the overall situation of the final days of the war according to the Fuher Bunker. But concerning the series of events that 9th armee and its personel went through this is an excellent book and one of which one can jump off to other subject about WWII. If one needs to know about what happened to the losing side read "A terrible Revenge" by A. de Zayas as this will give you the rest and least thought of subject of WWII, the German people and there fate

Outstanding Book, well worth the price

This is an outstanding book, that is not only very interesting and exciting to read but very well researched, with end notes for each chapter and a detailed bibliography. The first hand accounts make this book better than many other "End of the Reich" books out there. A must own book.

Compelling story of the end of 9th Army.

This book, like Tony Le Tissier's "With our Backs to Berlin", is another excellent overview of the final, chaotic days of Hitler's Third Reich. Mr. Le Tissier does a superb job of using first-person accounts to tell the story of the brutal and horrible fighting that took place on the approaches to Berlin in the last weeks of the War. It's amazing how he found so many survivors, both military and civilian, to tell this little known history of the fighting in the Halbe Pocket. There are very few detailed accounts of the last days of the war on the Eastern Front, and as he has in the past, Le Tissier does not disappoint with this book. If you want to read a chilling, but true account of what it must have been like to fight for your life against an embittered enemy, this book will prove hard to put down. I strongly recommend it for any serious student of the war on the Eastern Front.