Battleground Prussia by Prit Buttar

For an Abingdon doctor to write a book — and a tour de force at that — on the last days of the Reich in Prussia is a bold move. I have known only one other medical doctor to achieve fame in the wider history publishing world: Oliver Ransford, who wrote many excellent books on African history, including slavery.

Thus Buttar’s foray into what he terms is an almost forgotten episode — inspired by an 83-year-old patient who told him about her life as a nurse in East Prussia, near the end of the Second World War — is to be richly commended.

This is a story on a vast human scale as the Russians, who suffered the loss of millions in a war of attrition, now sought revenge in a juggernaut of horror as they headed for the Vistula and the final German collapse.

The book could have been written on the invasion of Konigsberg — a superbly sustained portrait of a dying city — or the torpedo strike of the evacuation ship Goya, as the Germans battled to escape in the icy Baltic waters.

However, Buttar’s narrative has a far more expansive embrace, setting the death throes of Prussia within a wider strategic context. It is as if the whole war is encapsulated in this terrible thrust towards Berlin and victory for the Russians.

It is a highly detailed account. In a village near Hanover ten years after the war, I encountered a German prisoner who had returned to his home village, one of thousands who had been captured in the Prussian onslaught, and somehow stayed alive in the Soviet Union until repatriation.

He was forever silent. This particular war, this bloodbath, was just too much for him to recount. However, this book, powerful and penetrating, does not let you forget.