Publisher's Synopsis
A truly authentic account of what it was like to serve in the last year of World War Two.
This vivid history uncovers the final tragedies and triumphs of the Second World War before peace returned to a war-torn Europe. It is the perfect book for fans of Stephen E. Ambrose, E. B. Sledge, and Matthew Rozell. Although there were only five months of conflict before VE-Day in 1945, this does not mean that the war became any less ferocious. From the last-ditch German offensive in the Ardennes through to crossing the Rhine, the fire-bombing of Dresden to the capture of Hamburg, this final year of World War Two was a bloody and brutal conflict where many young men lost their lives. Charles Whiting, a veteran of World War Two and a renowned historian, recovers the lost voices of the ordinary soldiers from both sides who witnessed the final death throes of the Second World War. Drawing upon letters home, private diaries, interviews with combatants, as well as the regimental histories and journalists' reports, has allowed Whiting to reconstruct a soldier's-eye-view of the frontlines, from both Allied and Axis perspectives. '45 is a unique testament to the Second World War soldier, uncovering the world in which they lived and died, the weapons which they fought with, the food that they ate, the civilians and ruins they encountered, and what the end of the war meant to them. Praise for the work of Charles Whiting:'provides ... unique insights that most historians fail to capture' Armor, Bryant Love
