'The Reckoning is vivid history, the tragic Eastern Front brought to life through the widest range of Russian and German sources I've ever read. Bravo.' - Peter Caddick-Adams, author and broadcasterFrom critically acclaimed Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar, The Reckoning is a masterful re-evaluation of the fateful year of 1944, and how the Red Army irrevocably turned the tide of war until the final defeat within the heart of Germany itself was guaranteed.The fighting throughout the Ukraine and Romania was brutal, with the German defence dogged and desperate. But for too long the Wehrmacht had relied on the superior combat prowess of its fighting men. What had not been taken into account, however, was that the Red Army would not only rely on its sheer size, but would fine-tune its fighting performance from its senior commanders right down to the individual soldier battling both fear and the elements to take each line, each trench, each inch of land. Ultimately it is a story not of how the Germans lost, as is all too often told, but of how the Russians increasingly learned how to win.

List of Maps Dramatis Personae Preface Introduction1: The Protagonists 2: The Kirovograd Encirclement 3: Watutin and the Cherkassy-Korsun Encirclement 4: Another Stalingrad 5: Mud, Snow and Hill 239 6: Kamanets-Podolski: The Encirclement of First Panzer Army7: Malinovsky's Offensive 8: The Wandering Pocket 9: The Crimean Peninsula 10: The End of the Leash 11: Preparing for Summer 12: The Lviv-Sandomierz Operation 13: The Disintegrating Axis 14: The Approaching Endgame Notes Bibliography Index