Armageddon: The Battle For Germany

Forty-something years ago, when I was a teenager, even then avidly preoccupied with the Second World War,  the study of its history was still dominated by fiercely nationalistic perceptions.   Americans wildly overrated their battlefield contribution to victory, and perhaps underestimated their decisive industrial one.   The British, astonishingly enough, still perceived themselves as the inhabitants of middle earth.  The Russians barely acknowledged that the western allies had participated in the war at all.

Today, by contrast,  in Britain and the US there is an infinitely sharper understanding of reality.   Even some knowledgeable people are still amazed to be told that US and British troops on the battlefield, in the course of the entire war, killed around 200,000 German soldiers while the Russians killed over three million.   But there is a clear understanding first, that the Soviet Union did most of the fighting necessary to defeat the Wehrmacht, and second, that the United States provided a critical portion of the tools necessary to do so, for all the nations of the Grand Alliance.  In Russia, objectivity remains elusive.  The western contribution to the war is regarded, not only by veterans of the Red Army but by many historians, with something close to contempt