Volume 49, Number 9 · May 23, 2002
The Russians Are Coming!
By Gordon A. Craig
The Fall of Berlin 1945
by Antony Beevor
Viking, 490 pp., $29.95
On Christmas Eve 1944, General Heinz Guderian, chief of the German army's supreme command, drove to Adolf Hitler's headquarters near Ziegenberg and informed the Führer that, according to the latest report of the military intelligence department for the eastern front, the Red Army intended to launch a major invasion of Germany from the line of the Vistula River on or about January 12. Guderian's source calculated that the enemy would possess a superiority of eleven to one in available infantry forces, seven to one in tanks, and twenty to one in both artillery and aviation. To avoid disaster he asked that as many divisions as possible be redeployed from the west, where the German Ardennes offensive had now come to a virtual halt.
Review, 3422 words
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