Reddit reviews Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945

February 1945. Over two days, almost 1300 bombers attacked the German city of Dresden, creating a firestorm and killing over 20,000 civilians.

July 1943, Operation Gomorrah. Again, over the course of several days, over a thousand bombers hit Hamburg. They create another firestorm, killing over 40,000 civilians. This one was so severe that the very roads were bursting into flames. Countless people suffocated in their shelters. That's 40,000 people in just a few days.

By 1945 Allied bombers were roaming Germany at will, blasting cities to the ground. This was entirely in accord with the the plans of "Bomber" Harris, who seemed to have almost a personal zeal for destroying Germany--not just the military, not just military targets, but Germany itself.

In Japan, the Americans did the same thing: they leveled cities all over the country. See http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Arnold-map-Japan-firebombing.jpg for a comparison to similarily-sized US cities, if it will help you get some sense of the scale of the devastation.

Would you not consider the area-bombing of civilians using highly sophisticated four-engine bombers to be 'industrial' slaughter? I certainly do.

With no civilians running around in COH2 you can feel very good about yourself as you battle the evil German foes, but in reality if a town presented opposition to the advancing American forces they would easily destroy it with artillery--German civilians didn't matter. American fighters were roaming the skies and strafing arbitrary targets. Not just military targets. They hit anything that moved. Many German civilians, women and children included, were destroyed by these pilots.

While it is true that the Western allies didn't have "death camps", the Soviets had plenty of creative ways to make use of undesirables. Millions died in prison camps, work camps, dangerous mining and factory work, penal battalions, or were simply executed.

If you think I'm trying to forgive Nazi war crimes, think again. But you seriously need to understand that war leaves everybody dirty. Check out Max Hasting's Armageddon if you want to have a very thorough and depressing read about what went down. He covers Western Allied combat operations including the area bombing of civilians and executions of POWs, the Soviet invasion of Eastern Germany and the mass-rapes and killing and complete subjugation of Eastern Europe. And of course, he also covers the genocide and mass killings by the Germans, with plenty of stories from soldiers and civilians alike to bring to life the horror of their experiences.

edit: Of course you yourself can ignore the moral problems that came with this morass that engulfed hundreds of millions of people around the world. Enjoy your video game.

You should read Max Hasting's Armageddon: Battle for Germany 1944-45. His assertion, which he backs up and which goes contrary to the prejudices of the west, is that western (US, British, French) troops were very poor soldiers compared to German and Japanese ones. The Germans and Japanese had been raised in an atmosphere of militarism and desire for revenge, while western soldiers were raised in an atmosphere of pacifism. This showed on the battlefield time and time again - western troops would not assault a position under fire without artillery support, would not coordinate with armor support, and simply were not very active or assertive on the western front. Against the Japanese this was not as true, simply because of the intense hatred that Americans felt for Japanese (as was true in reverse). Basically the western democracies lacked fighting spirit generally and substituted massive materiel superiority to compensate. US films about WWII tend to focus on elite formations like the 82nd Airborne, which were exceptions to the rule and were used time and time again because they were the only units that would press an attack or hold without breaking. On the other side, German infantry performance across the board tended to be on the level of the best units of the west.

In Max Hastings' (a very well respected WWII historian) book "Armageddon", he describes the average infantryman's reaction to enemy snipers in this way (on page 88) - "Almost every soldier on both sides shared a hatred of snipers, which frequently caused them to be shot out of hand if captured. There was no logic or provision of the Geneva Convention to justify such action. Sniping merely represented the highest refinement of the infantry soldier's art. Its exercise required courage and skill. Yet, sniping made the random business of killing, in which they were all engaged. become somehow personal and thus unacceptable to ordinary footsoldiers."

While Hastings is talking about WWII events here, the same feelings amongst the average foot soldier in regards to snipers absolutely held true during the earlier Great War as well. The average infantryman has always hated snipers, for the reasons I (and Hastings) outlined.

Indeed, sniping has long been considered one of the military's most "controversial jobs". Thanks to Hollywood, that view has changed a bit recently, but during WWI, there is little question that snipers were reviled by enemy forces due to their tactics and the indiscriminate lethality they introduced to the battlefield.

There are plenty of diary entries from WWI soldiers describing how soldiers would briefly forget themselves and stick their head above the lip of the trench, only to be sniped in the head or body and killed - "Apl 16 - One of our chaps killed by sniper. Forgot himself and put head above parapet. Got bullet clean through his head." or as another of countless examples "Nov 2 Heavy bombarding from Fritz this morning. Artillery men call it "morning hate". One man sitting eating his lunch on a pile of wood killed by a sniper. Bullet went straight through him."

Here is another article about sniping during the Great War that covers some of what I was talking about..

Even the historic "Christmas Day" truce of 1914, where British and German soldiers engaged in a sudden cease-fire, emerged from their respective trenches, and even played a game of football in "no mans land" in celebration of the holiday, was eventually broken up by deadly sniper fire, causing the soldiers to rush back to their trenches and resume fighting each other in earnest.

As for camouflage and concealment, WWI snipers and spotters sometimes went to great lengths to conceal themselves in "no man's land", even to the point of constructing hollowed-out fake tree stumps or using hollowed out dead animals as concealment to snipe from.

Snipers could expect no quarter from the enemy if captured - "Working day and night, trained marksmen would function essentially as assassins, often targeting any moving object behind enemy lines, even if they were engaged in peaceable tasks (which meant that if a sniper was taken prisoner he could expect no mercy, on either side)," and they were appreciating as having a severe effect on enemy morale "Although the overall number of casualties claimed by snipers were small (although many snipers kept count of their number of 'kills', often reaching triple figures), they played an important role in sapping enemy morale. Soldiers knew that they could not walk about freely along exposed trenches; anyone unwise enough to peep above the front line parapet could expect a well-aimed bullet in the head - as often happened."

Couldn't agree more. But the women weren't 'broken on the wheel', they were peasants who were nailed to a cart wheel on an actual cart while it drove through Germany. See [Armaggedon] (https://www.amazon.com/Armageddon-Germany-1944-1945-Max-Hastings/dp/0375714227) by Hastings.

Dmb24 already recommended Ryan's The Last Battle, so I'll just recommend one, Max Hasting's Armageddon: The Battle For Germany, 1944-1945. It's a very good read covering the time frame you're looking for.

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 by Max Hastings (Edit: Non Fiction, sorry)

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (might seem a somewhat crude choice, but it is a great novel about war, moral and suffrage)

Jarhead by Anthony Swofford (More about coping with war than war itself, somewhat non-fiction)

Edit: Some are between fiction and non-fiction, some are an odd choice, but worth reading nonetheless.

Fair enough. I personally would find it interesting which is why I enjoy the works of Max Hastings (Especially Armageddon: The Battle for Germany and Retribution: The Battle for Japan.) He talks about all fronts even little discussed ones like Burma and the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria in 1945.

I know I'm the exception because I find that interesting, but I agree that local bias plays a huge role and not just in the US or Britain.

The end game in Germany in WW2 was brutal. Here is a great book that covers it.

https://www.amazon.com/Armageddon-Germany-1944-1945-Max-Hastings/dp/0375714227?SubscriptionId=AKIAJA54JMESX73IGPXQ&amp=&ascsubtag=569363862-16-954414228.1537588116&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0375714227&linkCode=xm2&tag=d_2b_a_p-20