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Fire and Steel - Peter Caddick-Adams

By Hawkeye7
A member of Hitler Youth aged 13 captured by the U.S. Army near Martinzell in April 1945.

As the Second World War fades into history, interest fades. What remains is very uneven. There seems to be little written about the campaigns in North West Europe in 1945. Delayed by the German offensives in the Ardennes and Alsace, the campaigns of 1945 commenced in the Rhineland in mud and flood conditions far worse than those of 1917. Once across the river, Allied units took off in pursuit of what German ones remained. Increasingly these were scratch formations hurriedly thrown together that looked good only on maps. German units became immobile due to lack of fuel.

The defence of many localities in Germany fell to the aged men of the Volksturm and fanatical teenagers of the Hitlerjugend. The Allies uncovered the horrors of concentration camps and slave labour camps that held thousands of men and women from all over Europe in appalling conditions. There were Hungarian troops and SS units drawn from all over Europe. Some fought on because they believed in Hitler's cause, some because they had nothing to lose, and many more because it never occurred to them not to.

This book is the third in a trilogy on the campaigns in North West Europe. It is mostly assembled from personal accounts, but the author is cognisant of recent scholarship. He notes inconsistencies and improbabilities in American accounts of the Rhine crossings. At times it also has aspects of a travelogue, with notes about what the sites look like today.

Publishing details: Caddick-Adams, Peter (2022). Fire and Steel: The End of World War Two in the West. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-060186-7. OCLC 1198018961.


Recent external reviews

A depiction of Philip II of France arriving in Palestine during the Third Crusade

Bennett, Stephen (2021). Elite Participation in the Third Crusade. Melton, United Kingdom: Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 978-1-78327-578-6.


Davies, Huw J. (2022). The Wandering Army: The Campaigns that Transformed the British Way of War. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300217162.


Brescia, Maurizio (2022). Italian Heavy Cruisers: From Trento to Bolzano. Barnsley, United Kingdom: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 9781399098854.


Mahler, Michael D. (2021). Tales from the Cold War: The U.S. Army in West Germany, 1960 to 1975. Dahlonega, Georgia: University Press of North Georgia. ISBN 9781940771922.


Various works


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