![\"\"](\"http:\/\/liberationtrilogy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/the-guns-at-last-light.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>by Rick Atkinson<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>Just received a review copy courtesy of Callie<\/a>\u00a0 Oettinger<\/a> <\/strong>and Henry Holt and Company<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n I have not read the first two books in Atkinson’s well-regarded Liberation Trilogy, but Guns at Last Light<\/strong> is a deeply researched work with over two hundred pages of end notes and selected bibliography, which feature a very substantial amount of primary source material. The campaign maps are richly detailed and photographs are ample. \u00a0The author has aimed to satisfy academic critics, military history buffs and popular audience alike.<\/p>\n In vol. III Atkinson is telling the story of WWII from D-Day to the aftermath of Hitler’s suicide in defeated Berlin to overcome the savage but futile resistance of the Germans:<\/p>\n Although the National Redoubt in the Alps was a brown pipe dream, makeshift bastions here and there stoked SHAEF’s fear of a Germany bent on self-immolation. In Aschaffenberg, Bradley reported that ” women and children lined the rooftops to pelt our troops with hand grenades” while wounded veterans hobbled from their hospital beds into the firing line. In Heilbronn, on the Neckar River, already smashed by years of bombing, German officers shot down Hitler Youth detachments when they broke under American mortar fire\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n