In Britain, 1944 is remembered primarily as "the year of D-Day, when thousands of British, Canadian and American soldiers waded ashore on the Normandy beaches" , said Dominic Sandbrook in The Sunday Times. Yet as Jonathan Dimbleby shows in his superb new book, what was happening "hundreds of miles to the east" was in reality even more significant. There, in an offensive known as Operation Bagration, "more than six million men of Stalin's Red Army were driving back about two million of Hitler's best troops".
"Endgame" tells the story of this epic confrontation, which Dimbleby describes as the "most brutal mega-conflict in the annals of human warfare". Although best known as a broadcaster, Dimbleby is also a first-rate historian, able to "move deftly from the broad strategic picture and the tragic details of individuals' lives". This is his fourth book about the Second World War – "Barbarossa", his last, was about Hitler's attempt to invade Russia in 1941 – and it's "his best yet".
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Yet it wasn't all about brute force: the Soviets also made brilliant use of maskirovka, or deception tactics, including dummy tanks and radio disinformation. These ensured the Germans were "constantly wrong-footed". Although casualties were massive on both sides, Bagration was a resounding success for the Allies: in two months, the Red Army destroyed 28 of the 34 German divisions on the Eastern Front, and advanced to Poland, pushing the Germans out of much of eastern Europe.
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