Published in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the end of the 20th Century's biggest global conflict. A sweeping account of the last eight months of World War II on the European front from one of the foremost military historians of our time. In September 1944, the Allies expected that the war would end by Christmas, believing the German army had lost too many of its best soldiers. But a disastrous British airborne landing in Holland, an American defeat in the Hurtgen Forest, and the fierce Battle of the Bulge would all occur before the tide really turned. Max Hastings has scoured the archives of the major combatants and interviewed many survivors to give us an unprecedented understanding of the events themselves and of their impact on ordinary soldiers and citizens. Hastings raises provocative questions: Was the Allied cause compromised by a desire to get the Soviets to do most of the fighting? Why were the Russians and Germans more effective warriors than the Americans and the British? Why was strategic bombing continued until the last weeks of the war? The book also contains vivid portraits of Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Churchill, Montgomery, and the other major figures of this phase of the war: "Armageddon is a rousing and revealing chronicle of the crucial final months of the climax of World WarII.