Vincent Hunt Sent to Die in Berlin

A gripping, street-by-street account of Latvian soldiers defending Berlin in the final days of World War II, revealing frontline endurance and intimate eyewitness perspectives. Sent to Die in Berlin is the untold story of 300 Latvian soldiers ordered into the German capital in late April 1945 in a futile attempt to hold back the Red Army. Very few survived, and until now the stories of the veterans who escaped have been in Latvian. Translated into English for the first time, the book adds extensive eyewitness accounts of the final battles for the German capital to the classic texts. The book covers the defence of key locations in the southern sector of the city, from Belle-Alliance-Platz, Gestapo headquarters and the Aviation Ministry to the Fuhrerbunker itself, through the eyes of the men of the Latvian 15th SS Reconnaissance Battalion. Drawing from diaries, articles and archive testimony, the author constructs a street-by-street chronology as - alongside the Spanish Ezquerra Battalion - the 300 Latvians try to slow the Soviet advance. In pitched battles from the Landwehr Canal up Saarlandstrasse to the Anhalter Bahnhof and Potsdamer Platz, the Latvians become the last line of defence of Hitler's Reich, with orders not to concede an inch of ground. They are at key moments in the battle: Lieutenant Atis Neilands acts as translator in the surrender negotiations and the Latvians are left holding the front line when the Germans slip away to break out at the Weidendammer Bridge on 1 May. By then there are very few Latvians surviving, but some escape and some return after years in Soviet labour camps to tell their stories much later in life. Through extensive archival research, painstaking translation and the author's street-by-street reconstruction of the battle through Latvian eyes, these vivid personal stories add valuable and dramatic insight to the classic accounts of the Fall of Berlin.