This sweeping saga begins on the banks of the River Oder, as the Red Army launches its relentless drive towards Berlin and the ultimate victory. Only the Seelow Heights stood between the Soviet forces and the capital; almost one million Soviet troops would attack these last entrenched positions over the course of three days in April 1945. Once these defences were breached, it was guaranteed that a bitter street-by-street battle would take place in the city itself, between a vengeful Red Army and the last defenders of the Reich, a mixture of exhausted veterans, teenage conscripts, and fanatical Nazis, until eventual capitulation. 

Using vivid first-hand accounts, Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar details the brutal combat that defined these final death throes of the Third Reich. But the end of World War II was not the only thing at stake. As the Red Army rolled into Berlin, the outcome of this battle, and its dreadful toll in blood, was a foregone conclusion. The battlelines for the forthcoming Cold War, however, were just being drawn. 

Stalin, fearful that the Western Powers would not honour their wartime agreements, was determined to have boots on the ground to ensure his control of what would later become the Soviet occupation zone. 

Prit Buttar skilfully reveals the strategic machinations going on, far removed from the frontlines but crucial to the future of Europe as a whole.