The Death of Hitler's War Machine

The Final Destruction of the Wehrmacht

By: Samuel W. Mitcham

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's Summary

The endgame for Hitler’s Reich

Hitler’s army had dared all to win all on the Western Front with its surprise winter campaign in the Ardennes, the “Battle of the Bulge”. But when American and Allied forces recovered from their initial shock, the German Army, the Wehrmacht, was left fighting for its very survival - especially on the Eastern Front, where the Soviet Army was intent on matching, or even surpassing, Nazi atrocities.

At the mercy of the Fuhrer - who refused to acknowledge reality and insisted on forbidding German retreats - the Wehrmacht was slowly annihilated in horrific battles that have rarely been adequately covered in histories of the Second World War, perhaps most especially the brutal Soviet siege of Budapest, which became known as “the Stalingrad of the Waffen-SS”.

Now, at last, veteran military historian Dr. Samuel Mitcham, in the capstone of a career covering of more than 40 books - most of them on the German Armed Forces in World War II - tells the extraordinary tale of how Hitler’s once-feared war machine came to a cataclysmic end, from the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 to the German surrender in May 1945.

Making use of German wartime papers and memoirs - some rarely seen in English-language sources - Mitcham’s sweeping narrative makes The Death of Hitler’s War Machine: The Final Destruction of the Wehrmacht a book that needs to be in the hands of of every student of World War II history.

©2021 Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

Get a map

This is a challenging story to follow if you are unfamiliar with European geography. To get the best out of this excellently told story, my recommendation is not to do it on the move but somewhere you can look at maps. Whilst listing names and unit numbers seems superfluous it is not and the narrator has done an excellent job in pronunciation.

Disappointing

The headline says it all.

This was a disappointing experience. The book is full of details about units from all sides of the conflict, but is is also full of large and small factual errors. Errors that the author should by no means make. Just to name three of the major errors.

Paul von Hindenburg was President in Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934, but he was never Chancellor of Germany!

The Russian counterattack at the gates of Moscow in December 1941, did not open on December 16th, but December 5th.

The German Reichkomissar in Norway was named Terboven, not Treboven.

Boring as.

A list of places and armies. Great for serious historians but not otherwise and not for me.

Detailed

Incredibly well researched and delivered.
My only potential negative comment would be the clear message that Russian troops reaction was improper at best and war crimes probably.
Towards men, women and children.
Rape, pillage etc. in the most brutal form.
If correct this does not bode well for future Russian special operations, where the media tell of similar acts.

Great History Lesson

Worth a listen, especially it was free, a new insight into how things went wrong for Germany

Narration is excellent.

Fast-paced and gripping from beginning to end. The narrator is great and it sounds like he actually knows the these things rather than reading from the book. This made it all the more enjoyable.

Disappointed

Interesting subject but the narrators voice is so dull it ruined it for me.