The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (202 page)

Prisoners by the acre: an aerial photograph taken on April 25 shows some of the 160,000 Germans herded into a temporary encampment near Remagen. American stockades alone held more than 1.3 million enemy soldiers by mid-April, even before the haul from the Ruhr was complete.

Perched above Hitler’s vacation home in the remote Bavarian village of Berchtesgaden, a lavish mountaintop chalet known as the Eagle’s Nest had been built by the Nazi regime as a fiftieth birthday present for the Führer. American troops seized the area in early May, shortly after Hitler’s suicide in Berlin.

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt following his capture by American troops south of Munich on May 2. The former OB West commander is accompanied by a medic wearing a brassard, and his son, a German lieutenant.

The victorious American commanders, on May 11, 1945. Seated from left to right: Simpson; Patton; General Carl A. Spaatz, U.S. Strategic Air Forces Europe; Eisenhower; Bradley; Hodges; Lieutenant General Leonard T. Gerow, Fifteenth Army. Standing from left to right: Brigadier General Ralph F. Stearley, IX Tactical Air Command; Lieutenant General Hoyt S. Vandenburg, Ninth Air Force; Beetle Smith; Major General Otto P. Weyland, XIX Tactical Air Command; Brigadier General Richard E. Nugent, XXIX Tactical Air Command.

On the night of May 7, hours before the official end of the war in Europe, jubilant Americans celebrate with the British at Piccadilly in central London.

A bugler blows “Taps” at the close of Memorial Day ceremonies in May 1945 at the U.S. military cemetery at Margraten, Holland.

Also by Rick Atkinson

The Long Gray Line

Crusade

An Army at Dawn

In the Company of Soldiers

The Day of Battle

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

R
ICK
A
TKINSON
is the bestselling author of
An Army at Dawn
(winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history),
The Day of Battle, The Long Gray Line
,
In the Company of Soldiers
, and
Crusade
. His many other awards include a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, the George Polk award, and the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award. A former staff writer and senior editor at
The Washington Post
, he lives in Washington, D.C.