May 1945. Hitler is dead, and the Third Reich is 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.
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“The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding’s The
Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn’t
been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a
blockbuster Hollywood movie…Steven Spielberg, how did you miss this story?…Harding
is a respected military affairs expert…and his writing style carries immediacy
as well as authority…Everything that Harding reports in this exciting but also
historically accurate narrative is backed up with meticulous scholarship. This
book proves that history can be new and nail-bitingly exciting all at
once…While the book concentrates on the fight for Castle Itter, it also sets
that battle in the wider strategic contexts…This book is thus a fascinating
microcosm of a nation and society in collapse…Part Where Eagles Dare,
part Guns of Navarone, this story is as exciting as it is far-fetched,
but unlike in those iconic war movies, every word of The Last Battle is
true.”
—
Daily Beast