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Nazi Rule and the Soviet Offensive in Eastern Germany, 1944–1945 The Darkest Hour
Alastair Noble
Alastair Noble has been a Historian in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office since 2002, previously working at The National Archives, Kew. This, his second book, is based on a major revision of his PhD thesis, ‘Propaganda, Morale and Flight: Germany’s eastern provinces, summer 1944–spring 1945’, which was examined by the late Professor John Erickson, the foremost western authority on the Nazi–Soviet war.
The Darkest Hour is a groundbreaking English-language examination of the final period of Nazi rule in Germany’s eastern provinces at the end of the Second World War. It outlines the wartime role of this region and assesses the impact of Nazi ‘popular mobilisation’ initiatives during the closing months of the conflict. Major projects such as the preparation of the Ostwall defences and the raising of the Volkssturm (Home Guard) are examined in depth. The book concludes by weighing up the importance of propaganda and coercion to the Nazi regime as it attempted to prolong its existence in the face of crushing military defeats.
The Darkest Hour incorporates a unique synthesis of archival and printed source material from the English-speaking world, Germany, Poland and Russia. The eastern German Nazi leadership, their crimes and their corruption, are covered collectively to a greater extent in this book than in any English-language account hitherto. As the Third Reich was on the brink of defeat, its leader and lackeys wielded life or death powers and were loathed by the civilian population as much as the advancing Soviets were feared.
This extensive account of this important historical period and circumstance is essential reading for all scholars and students of the Third Reich and European military history.
