We are thrilled to announce that Dr Bastiaan Willems's recent book, Violence in Defeat: The Wehrmacht on German Soil, 1944–1945, has been awarded the American Historical Association (AHA)'s Paul Birdsall Prize for European military and strategic history.

Dr Willems's book was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. The book provides the first study into the impact and behaviour of the armed forces of Nazi Germany on its own territory, focusing on the German units fighting in East Prussia and its capital Königsberg.

On its publication, Violence in Defeat was praised by Jeff Rutherford (Associate Professor of History at Xavier University) as 'an important study that demonstrates the evolution of total war during the Third Reich's death throes.' Willems's book has now deservedly received the commendation of the AHA, the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organisation in the world.

The Paul Birdsall Prize in European Military and Strategic History was established in 1985 by a generous gift from Professor Hans Gatzke, a historian of European diplomatic and military affairs and a foreign service officer. The Birdsall Prize is awarded biennially for the most important work published in English on European military or strategic history since 1870.