Holroyd, Jack The Second World War Illustrated. The Final Year

The Second World War Illustrated: The Final Year follows the author's visual tour of the war by means of painstakingly researched and digitally restored pictures from the period of the key battlefields and events of the period from September 1944 until the end of the war.

The book begins with Montgomery's Market Garden failure, devoting 60 pages to the planning, key individuals and forces involved in the operation and its outcome on both sides. Attention then turns to the Warsaw Uprising, where the Polish underground resistance attempted to liberate Warsaw from German occupation at the cost of thousands of resistance and civilian casualties. We then explore the importance of Walcheren and the port of Antwerp, culminating in the Battle of Scheldt.

A chapter is devoted to the fighting along the Siegfried Line at Aachen, the Battle for Hürtgen Forest and the liberation of Alsace, before switching to the Battle of the Bulge: Hitler's final major offensive campaign of the war. From here the author documents the decline of the Nazi war machine and the Allies' push to victory with Operation Varsity the largest airborne operation in history, leading the way to the battles for Berlin. Faced with impending defeat, Hitler's suicide marks the beginning of the end and the fate of the Führer's party leaders is addressed. The book concludes with VE celebrations, before turning attention to the Burmese Campaign, the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the dropping of the atomic bomb.

With hundreds of original photographs, this is a true labour of love and an ideal purchase for anyone interested in the history of the Second World War in a more accessible form.