Hitler's Greatest Defeat - The Collapse of Army Group Centre, June 1944

It was indeed Hitler's worst defeat! Though he had to move forces to the West to counter the expected Second Front of the Western Allies, the shortest route to the heartland of the Third Reich, the German Army faced its greatest odds on the Eastern Front. Stalin was preparing a massive offensive to liberate the last remaining areas occupied by the Germans. However, Hitler's obsession with holding ground dulled his strategic thinking and nullified the efforts of his own generals to use their undoubted operational ability.

In this fine example of succinct analysis and accurate description, Paul Adair leads the reader through the build up to the campaign with studies of the German Army and its command structure and of the Soviet forces under Stalin. He demonstrates, utilising interviews with veterans of both sides and access to newly released documents, how both sides viewed the situation as the decisive year of 1944 began, before charting the progress of each thrust and counter-thrust.

Faced by a massive Soviet superiority, the hapless Army Group Centre lost some 30 irreplaceable divisions. It was a loss, to quote three German officers who became generals in the post-war Bundeswehr, which 'greatly accelerated the collapse of the German state' (Niepold), an indication that we could no longer win the war' (General von Plato) and ,the beginning of the end' (von Kiel-mannsegg).

With the world following the progress of the Normandy landings, these dramatic happenings on a distant front were for many years destined to be ignored. Now, 50 years later, a full length study of the defeat of Army Group Centre shows that a disaster greater even than the Allied invasion in France was afflicted upon the Germans many miles to the East.