The unexpected arrival of Soviet troops at the end of January 1945 at the ancient fortress and garrison town of Küstrin came as a tremendous shock to the German High Command - the Soviets were now only 50 miles from Berlin itself. The Red Army needed the vital road and rail bridges passing through Küstrin for their forthcoming assault on the capital, but flooding and their own high command's strategic blunders resulted in a sixty-day siege by two Soviet armies which totally destroyed the town. The delay in the Soviet advance also gave the Germans time to consolidate the defences shielding Berlin west of the Oder River. Despite Hitler's orders to fight on to the last bullet, the Küstrin garrison commander and 1,000 of the defenders managed a dramatic break-out to the German lines. The protracted siege had an appalling human cost ? about 5,000 Germans were killed, 9,000 wounded and 6,000 captured, and the Russians lost 5,000 killed and 15,000 wounded. Tony Le Tissier, in this graphic and painstakingly researched account, has recorded events in extraordinary detail, using the vivid eyewitness testimony of survivors to bring the story of the siege to life. AUTHOR: During many years working in several senior official positions in Berlin - including spells as provost marshal and British governor of Spandau prison - Tony Le Tissier has accumulated a vast knowledge of the campaign the led up to the fall of Berlin. He has researched every aspect of the 1945 battle for the city in unprecedented detail and has published a series of outstanding books on the subject - The Battle of Berlin 1945, Farewell to Spandau, Berlin Then and Now, Zhukov at the Oder, Race For the Reichstag, Slaughter at Halbe and Berlin Battlefield Guide: Third Reich and Cold War. SELLING POINTS: * Minutely detailed, gripping account of a notorious battle in the Red Army's final offensive of the Second World War * Records the devastating reality of the combat using extended eyewitness accounts * Insight into the experience of German soldiers and civilians in the midst of defeat ILLUSTRATIONS 30 illustrations
