The Reckoning: the defeat of Army Group South, 1944

The Eastern Front remains the forgotten child of Western histories of the Second World War. Even the phrase ‘Eastern Front’ is a reflection of a Western-centric view that sees the struggle between the USSR and Germany as an afterthought compared to exploits of Allied Forces for control of Western Europe.

Yet, as Prit Buttar makes clear in The Reckoning, the war in Eastern Europe was a whole different beast. The conflict here was existential. Two nations, with diametrically opposed ideologies, fought not just for victory, but at times the complete extinction of the other. The cost was catastrophic. Estimates vary, but some historians have placed the combined civilian and military death toll as high as 30 million.

Buttar’s focus in this text is on 1944. His well-argued thesis is that this was the pivotal year in hostilities between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht.