In March 1945, against the advice of his top subordinates, Gen. George Patton created a special task force to venture more than fifty miles behind enemy lines and liberate a POW camp near Hammelburg, Germany. The camp held some 1,500 American prisoners, including Patton’s son-in-law. Hampered by ambushes and a lack of fuel and even maps, the raid was a disaster, one of the worst mistakes of Patton’s legendary career. Out of some 300 men, only three dozen returned. Based on memoirs, diaries, combat reports, and interviews with survivors, Patton’s Last Gamble vividly recounts a mission Gen. Omar Bradley later said “began as a wild goose chase and ended in tragedy.”
Praise for the author's The Maverick War: Chennault and the Flying Tigers
Schultz’s accounts of the Flying Tigers’ feats are superb and his interpretations of their military significance are succinct and satisfying.
Praise for the author’s Into the Fire: Ploesti: The Most Fateful Mission of World War II
A vivid chronicle [and] a fresh account of a particularly bloody mission.
Students of military history, World War II, and Patton will find the book useful. Readers of all backgrounds will find the book a pleasure to read. The reader who finishes this book will learn more about Patton, World War II, and an obscure piece of its history.
Praise for the author’s Into the Fire: Ploesti: The Most Fateful Mission of World War II
Schultz combines a historian’s meticulous research and a novelist’s hypnotic prose to produce this memorable popular history.
