The Balaton Gambit

In the spring of 1945, German troops carried out in the area around Lake Balaton their final large-scale offensive operation called “Spring Awakening.” Timely countermeasures by Soviet troops prevented the Germans from achieving any serious success. However, over the course of a nonstop week and a half of fighting, German forces dealt the Russians a severe blow—almost derailing their advance on Vienna. And of course, success or failure of these operations depended not only on the wisdom of command, but above all on what soldiers and officers did at the front—face to face with an enemy who sometimes could unexpectedly become a comrade in misfortune…
In his new novel, the well-known German writer-historian Michel Gawen offers an entirely different way of looking at those events, first and foremost through the eyes of their direct participant, the military doctor Maren von Coburg.