Last Citadel: A Novel of the Battle of Kursk

The Last Citadel is one of the few (maybe the only) novels that centers around the Battle of Kursk, the last major German offensive in Russia. Many Americans are familiar with Stalingrad, a topic of another Robbins novel but far fewer know about this ghastly, titanic battle. Robbins does an outstanding job of describing the German plans and the Soviet counter-plans, not leaving out the very important and often overlooked role that espionage and treason played in the ultimate outcome of the war. Even though I have read extensively about the Russo-German war I never knew until I read this novel that non-Aryans could serve as Waffen SS officers or that Russian families fought together in the same tank. Robbins is to be commended for educating as well as entertaining his readers. Even though this book is informative it is first and foremost a novel, and here it succeeds brilliantly. Robbins is an excellent creator of interesting and sympathetic characters. On the Russian side there is a Cossack family, father and son fighting together in the same T-34 tank while the daughter flies night bomber mission. On the German side there is Robbins' best creation, the Spanish SS officer along with an SS colonel, an art historian turned intelligence officer with his own agenda. I grew to like all these characters so much I was afraid to read the ending for fear that I would lose one or more. Highly recommended.

This is an extremely well written work. Like the British historian-novelist David Howarth, David Robbins is able to take an enormous yet isolated incident and wrap it around three separate stories, a Spanish officer in the German Panzer Division trying to recapture his dignity after a near fatal shooting the year before, a young Russian woman trying to find her pilot lover shot down behind enemy lines, and a father and son on both sides of Russian Communism incarcerated in tight, hellish quarters in a Russian T-34 Tank during the Battle of Kursk in July of 1943.All this unfolds in the largest tank battle ever culminating with the American invasion of Sicily on July 11, 1943.You don't have to be a WWII buff to be thoroughly mesmerized by this book, but as in reading an Alan Furst novel, it helps. Professor Robbins deftly paints an accurate view of Hitler's last stand in Russia after the savage defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad, rolling the dice before the Americans enter the war in Europe, thereby turning his near impossible two front war into the resulting three front war.Yet Robbins does this with beautiful writing. At one point he describes a train station where a passenger train lays in wait while tracks are replaced from a bombing 12 hours earlier: "It had no roof left, just scored beams, and it's sills were marred with brows of soot." Later Katya, about whom one of the stories revolves, awakens before her night mission as some other aircraft take off. "Once they took off [she] listened to the silence return . . . serrated only by crickets and a mechanic hammering at something stubborn."While telling his stories the description of the battle takes on a more vivid meaning as the reader has humans to appreciate as Churchill wrote, 'their blood, sweat and tears.'An excellent novel. Rarely are we so intrigued about historical events that involve no Americans, on a plain in the Ukraine we never heard of, with the names of players for the most part we can't pronounce.Kudos to David Robbins. 5 stars. Easily 6 or 7. Larry Scantlebury

The Last Citadel is an incredibly intense and often breathtaking book! The battle scenes from the prospective of the tankers of both sides are of an intensity rarely glimpsed in any form. As a former Army tanker, I found the writer's style to be accurate and so very realistic. His use of words to describe all facets of the conflict, emotional, intellectual as well as physical, from the perspectives of the characters is excellent. This author brings alive a time that we Americans have only heard a little of, and does great justice to the bravery, dedication and suffering of those forgotten masses who participated in that greatest of all conflicts-the Russian Front of World War II. In the same class as "The Cross of Iron" by Willi Heinrich, "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer, and "War of the Rats; A Novel" by David Robbins. Don't miss this book!

Robbins follows his previous two Eastern Front novels with the final in the trilogy. Here he describes the horrific battle of Kursk. Still, as in all Robbins's novels, the combat scenes, so powerfully drawn and cleanly researched, serve as the backdrop for deep and insightful character studies. The relationship between father and son, trapped inside a tiny T-34 tank while they are trapped in opposing ideologies, crackles with tension and authenticity. The daughter, dauntless, a Night Witch pilot, embarks on a dangerous rescue, and fights her own reluctance to risk both physical danger and love. The villain, Luis, fights for a plausible and powerful reason, redemption. Breit, a German intel officer, decides to become a Soviet spy after reviewing his life through the lens of Cubist art, then embarks on a great and dangerous mission, to make sure the Russians win at Kursk. These are not the themes of any other writer of WWII fiction except Robbins. The rest of the crowd plow through with battle and machines, while only Robbins, time and again, delivers from the heart. Read this book if you like historical fiction, or if you just want a rousing tale of adventure. But especially read it if you admire fabulous and well-paced writing, beautiful language and vocabulary, and most of all, if you respect a writer who uses challenging backgrounds - like the greatest land battle in history - to bring out the best and worst in his characters. In every book, Robbins stretches and grows. Pick this one up, then go get his others if you haven't already. He is poetical and powerful at the same time. He'll become one of your favorite writers, like he is one of mine.

David Robbins' Last Citadel is one of the most compelling, exciting and impressive novels I've read in years. I can't remember the last time I read a book like this, one I literally couldn't put down. The epic backdrop of the battle for Kursk - where Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany engaged in history's largest and bloodiest battle - serves as an unforgettable stage, meticulously researched and panoramically rendered. Amazingly, the intense conflicts of the novel's characters exist larger than the titanic clash playing out behind them. Dimitri Berko, once a Cossack, now drives a Russian tank alongside his Communist son, still trying to teach a young man who no longer thinks he needs the wisdom of his father, hoping for one final chance of communion before the two of them face almost certain death. At the same time, Dimitri's daughter, Katya, guides Russian bombers to German targets, a "Night Witch" circling overhead. The stakes couldn't be higher for this family at war. Luis De Vega, the Spanish bullfighter commanding Germany's invincible Tiger tank, rolls closer and closer to Dimitri and Valentin, seething from past wounds, more dangerous than the stabbed bulls he once drove to the ground. The complexity of Abram Breit, a Nazi SS officer turned spy for the Russians, is particularly striking - a man who sees his apocalyptic world reflected in the work of the Cubist painters of his time, broken down into key universal elements that transcend both war and politics. The last battle scene is absolutely riveting, in itself worth the price of admission. The Last Citadel is a grand-slam novel, perfect.