Part three in Rick Atkinson's World War II trilogy

  Lionel Wagner




Rick Atkinson is the premier war writer of our time. He has written a trilogy of World War II books like he was actually at the event and campaigns in his great researched books from three distinctive campaigns that helped defeat the Germans in WW II. In lights at Dawn ", Atkinson covers the final defeat of the Nazis from the D Day invasion to Adolfo Hitlers suicide in the bunker. Atkinson leaves no stone uncovered in the European campaign that moved East and finally drove the nail into the coffin into the most brutal regime in modern history.

 The author does a good job covering all the heroes from Audie Murphy to all the losers and goats like Eddie Slovak. Atkins book is breathtaking and long and covers the World War in a much better way of learning than any two hour movie can ever dream of repeating. The amount of human destruction and forgotten events of bombings and massacres are covered in this book. Atkinson brings up many tragic events long forgotten and never explored much in this war such as a V 2 German rocket attack that just happened to strike a crowded Dutch movie house packed with civilians and resting GIs in which six hundred were killed on this precise unlucky V2 rocket attack. Most of the German V rocket terror missed marks and proved unsuccessful especially compared to the more precise allied plane bombing that proved the ultimate decisive contributing factor for the reversal of fortunes in the war in the West. Perhaps the only recent books that are worth reading omelette from beginning to end are the various World War II books from this great author. The battles of generals such as Eisenhower and Patton  had their English counterparts in the direction of the war is another interesting act that only the real war buffs and history lovers might be aware that took place among the allies.  The at thrilling part of the book is definitely the battle of the Bulge chapters and where it papered that the Western front would be a continues long back and forth war such as the First World War. The only thing that might have prevented this was that Russia was still in the war out East and that modern warfare had evolved dramatically making killing more efficient. This book is so great that it is even hard to find another recent war book that is can be compared with and this should be in the shelf of every European history professor in America or Europe.