In the final months of the Second World War, one strategic question above all occupies the Allies: which liberating army will be the first to march into Berlin. On the western front, Montgomery lobbies for the honour, while Eisenhower becomes more and more determined to thwart him and put an American general -- Bradley or Patton -- in charge of the final thrust; in the east, Stalin's armies advance steadily and ruthlessly towards the apotheosis of their vengeance. David L. Robbins orchestrates the story of the final months of war through the eyes of a gallery of characters both invented and real. We see the western front through the eyes of an American war photographer; Berlin through a mother and daughter hiding a Jewish refugee in the cellar of their house; the eastern advance through soldiers in a punishment battalion, whose fate is to lead every assault. This is another brilliantly authentic and compulsively readable war novel, a worthy successor to WAR OF THE RATS.