The Last Attack: Sixth SS Panzer Army and the defense of Hungary and Austria 1945 (Revised Edition)

I read author William Alan Webb's speculative/adventure fiction with great pleasure. When I bought The Last Attack, i fully expected to read more of the same. Silly me. Webb has produced a solid historical account of the death of the 6th Panzer Army in the closing weeks of WWII. Last stands have a certain morbid fascination for many of us and the sacrifice of this major panzer unit makes a good, if unpleasant. read. WWII fans and fans of tanks and tank warfare will be acquainted with the tale, at least in broad outline. Webb brings us up to date in every respect, from the high command to the men in the front line, he tells us everything. Webb has a straight forward but fluid writing style that brings us a great deal of information but he does so in a way that constantly keeps our interest. This is not some dusty tome written by and for academics and impenetrable to the rest of us. He lets us in on Hitler's decision making process, which might be indistinguishable from madness (my interpretation, not Mr. Webb;s). He includes amazing details like the Panther tank unit that fought the Soviets while actually mounted on flat cars awaiting their train to pull them to the West. In another detail, a telling one to me, he wrote of a pair of brand new, factory fresh Pz. IV tanks that arrived at the front only to be immediately destroyed by their crews. The troops were already fleeing and could not put the tanks to use. This is a short book but a very useful one to history buffs. I have read of the fighting in Austria at the close of the war but never as fully complete a rendering. The post war status of Austria might well have hinged on the sacrifice of the 6th Panzer Army. What a nice surprise for me to read this book without preconception, (The reviewer is the author of The Armed Forces of Iran)

Concise history of the last German offensive of the War that most likely saved Austria of becoming a Warsaw Pact member.

it is fine and short

I bought 3 Amazon books recently and finished this one first, the shortest, in one setting, not being able to put it down. The Last Battle, 6th SS Panzer Army, after the Ardennes defeat, transferred to Hungary and held off the Red Army advance on Vienna, saving Austria from post war absorption into the Soviet controlled Warsaw Pact. This last combat move by Hitler saved Austria, and Western Europe altering the Cold War. Great little read, about a forgotten battle not covered in historical accounts. The Ardennes was not the end. This was. I researched and bought this book because my grand uncle Heinz Werner fought in this engagement. I found it fascinating, and it definitely added to my knowledge base of this service record. It explains alot to me now. Including Hitler's infamous and bizzare cuff title removal order. And Werner's late war field award of the swords from Sepp Dietrich with no documentation or records. As well as their final surrender to Western forces. Small book. Only about 60 pages. But totally unfamiliar to me, and highly enlightening. I loved it.

This is a rather thin book, large type and double-spaced. I enjoyed reading about this last hurrah of German Armed Forces in Hungary, etc. As the Reich collapsed on all fronts, this force tried to protect Hungary from Soviet advances. Of course it was doomed to failure. I appreciate the author's efforts with research. It was an enjoyable read of this "not-so-well-known" episode at the end of WWII.

I picked this up because I am interested in the little known subject and because I have read William Alan Webb's superb "Last Brigade" series. The first thing to understand approaching this is that it is only 69 pages, and there is a limit of how much depth one can get in that space. That said and accepted, however, it give a marvelous synopsis of the last months of the 6th SS Panzer Army (of Battle of the Bulge fame) in its misbegotten attempts to save the Austria and the Hungarian oilfields for Hitler. As I expected, Webb is a master of both strategy and tactics as well as the military background to understand and explain, succinctly, events in Hungary in 1945. I left the slim volume with a much better grasp of "the big picture" of what happened and a desire to read more in detail. I strongly recommend the book to those interested in the fate of the legendary Waffen SS formations which had so distinguished themselves in the titanic struggle on the Eastern Front. No one struggling to understand the fall of Berlin should miss this account of events in Hungary which have everything to do with that event.

This is a new low for self-published history. The author claims this is his first entry into a series of WWII articles that go "beyond the myths." A book (pamphlet, really) has a hard time alleging that it is demolishing myths when it only uses a hand full of printed sources, and instead focuses on a few memoirs and narratives about the SS. His method of annotating his sources is bizarre, when sometimes we have a page number but no source, or sometimes a source with a publication date but no page number. Finally, preparing a book for an American audience on ground operations in Hungary and along the Danube with no maps is ridiculous. His basic thesis runs as follows. The deployment of the Sixth SS Panzer Army failed offensively, but its presence prevented the Russians from over running Austria and thereby potentially changing the Cold War. There is no consideration that a Russian failure to evacuate western zones of Austria could have been countered by the West's refusal to withdraw from the Elbe River. Stalin certainly valued maintaining control of German territory more than holding on to Austrian mountains. This is the first pamphlet in the series--with any luck, it will be the last.

To short with not enough detail

Although written in an easy style this “book” does not answer or give insight in the decisions made during the fights in Hungary or Austria. It refers to many other books a about the subject and tries to correct figures without facts to prove. Very dissapointing and a waste of mony.

Very informative book on a lesser known part of the end of the war in Europe

A brief but succinct description of the campaign.