Rhineland : Hitler’s Last Defence, 1944–45

A dramatic retelling of the desperate battle of the Rhineland during World War II from the German perspective. The Rhineland was where Adolf Hitler sowed the seeds for the Second World War when he remilitarized it in breach of the Treaty of Versailles in 1936, and by late 1944 the Rhine provided the last major obstacle to the advancing Allied armies that were threatening the Fatherland itself. In this new history of this vital campaign, respected military historian Anthony Tucker-Jones describes the race against time as the Germans fought to stave off the inevitable.

It was essential that the Germans held the west bank in order to protect the Rhine crossings at Cologne, Bonn, Koblenz and Remagen, but Hitler was intent on counter-attacking in the Ardennes in the winter of 1944 and this meant there was little left to bolster the defences of the Rhine. Rhineland relates the course of this desperate defence, describing the build-up of forces and operational plans before going on to tell the story of the campaign from the point of view of the forces involved, from the ordinary German soldier through to the high command.