Author Description

Bergström has made a painstaking research work for several years, interviewing veterans and others who participated or witnessed the battle. He has gone through all relevant documents in all relevant archives in the UK, the USA, Germany and the Netherlands, and that material forms the basis of his book. But even more so: Cross-referencing both sides' documents is absolutely crucial to form an opinion that is as close to the actual events as possible. The major part of the archive material about the World War II in official collections has now been made accessible, but this has obviously not been enough - for several reasons. To begin with, we have the fact that the German side destroyed most of its remaining military documents at the end of the war. Even if Germany's Bundesarchiv has an impressive collection of documents from World War II at its disposal, it only constitutes a small part of the German military documents that were produced during the war. This is especially true for the last years of the war. In order to get as good an image as possible from the German side, I have during the last few decades had access to large quantities of first-hand material (documents from the war) from private collections - veterans, veterans' associations, collectors, etc.