Armageddon - Max Hastings [402]
In 2002, I travelled extensively in the countries whose experiences form the book’s theme. I owe a great deal to the people of five nations who endured my questioning, often for several hours. I am especially grateful to those such as Elfride Kowitz, now Johnson, who also passed me on to their friends and contemporaries—in her case to other witnesses who experienced the horrors of East Prussia in 1945.
Antony Beevor, who has written wonderfully well about Russia in the Second World War, introduced me to his enchanting researcher and translator, Dr. Luba Vinogradova, whose assistance and companionship has been one of the pleasures of preparing my own work. Luba’s charm, together with her obvious affection and admiration for the veterans of the Great Patriotic War, again and again made it possible to overcome the instinctive suspicions of elderly Russians in remote places about a foreign writer investigating their experience. At the outset Luba begged me not to follow the line of questioning pursued by a BBC interviewer, who established his agenda by asking every veteran: “Did you rape anybody?” I had no trouble acceding to her wishes. Interviewing veterans of the Red Army and Russians of both sexes who lived through the war has been among the most fascinating and emotional experiences of my professional life.
In Germany, Nathalie Hillsmann was responsible for locating veterans for me, and organizing my travels. Georgia Wimhöfer, Ingo Stinnes and Angelica von Hase shared the burden of interpreting on my various research trips. Angelica was also responsible for researching and translating extracts from documents in the German military archive in Freiburg. Major John Zimmermann, who is writing the volume covering the last phase of the Second World War in the Potsdam Military History Institute’s magnificent history of the period, gave me some important pointers when we met at the beginning of my project. He was afterwards generous enough to read and make significant comments on my manuscript.
I am indebted to my old journalistic friend Henri van der Zee both for his superb book The Hunger Winter, describing Holland’s experience in the last year of the war, and for his assistance in making connections in his country. My own account draws heavily upon his narrative. His former newspaper, De Telegraaf, published my appeal for Dutch memories of the period, which produced a deluge of letters and personal memoirs, and enabled me to meet and interview some important witnesses.
In Britain, I researched extensively in the wonderful manuscript collection of the Liddell Hart Archive at King’s College, London, of which I am privileged to be a trustee. Thanks are due to Patricia Methven, its director, and to her staff. Likewise to Stephen Walton and his colleagues at the Imperial War Museum, whose manuscript collection becomes more important to historians every year, with the passing of those who lived through the war. The Public Record Office remains a delightful place to work, as well as a peerless source of information. I am grateful to its military specialist, William Spencer, for his advice and assistance. The staff of the Tank Museum at Bovington provided much useful guidance and advice. I clambered about inside their remarkable collection of German and Soviet vehicles, and rode their working Sherman and Comet tanks. I always find such experience invaluable, in helping to understand what it was like to fight in an armoured vehicle sixty years ago. The London Library and the RUSI Library in Whitehall are peerless sources of relevant published works. I enjoyed the benefits of an exchange of material with Professor Norman Davies, from which he gained little and I learned much. He borrowed a collection of documents I had secured from the Russian State Archive to add to his own huge researches, and I was able to read before publication the manuscript of his authoritative new book on the Warsaw Rising. Roger Moorhouse, who