The Last Battle : : When U.s. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe

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Call Number: 940.54 Ha
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	940.54 Ha	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"May 1945. Hitler is dead, and the Third Reich little more than smoking rubble. No GI wants to be the last man killed in action against the Nazis. But for cigar-chewing, rough-talking, hard-drinking, hard-charging Captain Jack Lee and his men, there is one more mission: rescue fourteen prominent French prisoners held in an SS-guarded castle high in the Austrian Alps. It's a dangerous mission, but Lee has help from a decorated German Wehrmacht officer and his men, who voluntarily join the fight. Based on personal memoirs, author interviews, and official American, German, and French histories, The Last Battle is the nearly unbelievable story of the most improbable battle of World War II--a tale of unlikely allies, bravery, cowardice, and desperate combat between implacable enemies."--Provided by publisher.

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A little-known episode ... submitted by GJBarnett2 on August 22, 2013, 3:17pm ... of the end of the war. Interesting but not much substance so padded with extraneous details and biographies of all involved to make-up enough pages (barely) to be published as a small book. Here's the story: A group of high-ranking French political and military prisoners including Reynaud, Deladier, Weygand and Gemelin, being held in an Austrian castle and at risk of being executed by die-hard SS troops in the confusion at the end of the war, were rescued by a small number of US troops and German/Austrian anti-Nazi Wehrmacht soldiers. In an echo of the old-West, the cavalry rode to the rescue to save the day as the good-guys were about to be overwhelmed.
Now you don't need to read the book.