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Barbarossa Unleashed
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Book Synopsis Barbarossa Unleashed by : Craig W. H. Luther
Download or read book Barbarossa Unleashed written by Craig W. H. Luther and published by Schiffer Military History. This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines in unprecedented detail the advance of Germany's Army Group Center through central Russia, toward Moscow, in the summer of 1941, followed by brief accounts of the Battle of Moscow and subsequent winter battles into early 1942. Based on hundreds of veterans' accounts, archival documents, and exhaustive study of the pertinent primary and secondary literature, the book offers new insights into Operation Barbarossa, Adolf Hitler's attack on Soviet Russia in June 1941. While the book meticulously explores the experiences of the German soldier in Russia, in the cauldron battles along the Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow axis, it places their experiences squarely within the strategic and operational context of the Barbarossa campaign. Controversial subjects, such as the culpability of the German eastern armies in war crimes against the Russian people, are also examined in detail. This book is the most detailed account to date of virtually all aspects of the German soldiers' experiences in Russia in 1941.
Book Synopsis Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941 by : David Glantz
Download or read book Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941 written by David Glantz and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first half of a two-part study on Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s plan to invade Soviet Russia during World War II, and what went wrong. At dawn on 10 July 1941, massed tanks and motorized infantry of German Army Group Center’s Second and Third Panzer Groups crossed the Dnepr and Western Dvina Rivers, beginning what Hitler and most German officers and soldiers believed would be a triumphal march on Moscow, the Soviet capital. Less than three weeks before, on 22 June Hitler had unleashed his Wehrmacht’s massive invasion of the Soviet Union, code-named Operation Barbarossa, which sought to defeat the Soviet Red Army, conquer the country, and unseat its Communist ruler, Josef Stalin. Between 22 June and 10 July, the Wehrmacht advanced up to 500 kilometers into Soviet territory, killed or captured up to one million Red Army soldiers, and reached the western banks of the Western Dvina and Dnepr Rivers, by doing so satisfying the premier assumption of Plan Barbarossa that the Third Reich would emerge victorious if it could defeat and destroy the bulk of the Red Army before it withdrew to safely behind those two rivers. With the Red Army now shattered, Hitler and most Germans expected total victory in a matter of weeks. The ensuing battles in the Smolensk region frustrated German hopes for quick victory. Once across the Dvina and Dnepr Rivers, a surprised Wehrmacht encountered five fresh Soviet armies. Quick victory eluded the Germans. Instead, Soviet forces encircled in Mogilev and Smolensk stubbornly refused to surrender, and while they fought on, during July, August, and into early September, first five and then a total of seven newly mobilized Soviet armies struck back viciously at the advancing Germans, conducting multiple counterattacks and counterstrokes, capped by two major counteroffensives that sapped German strength and will. Despite immense losses in men and materiel, these desperate Soviet actions derailed Operation Barbarossa. Smarting from countless wounds inflicted on his vaunted Wehrmacht, even before the fighting ended in the Smolensk region, Hitler postponed his march on Moscow and instead turned his forces southward to engage “softer targets” in the Kiev region. The “derailment” of the Wehrmacht at Smolensk ultimately became the crucial turning point in Operation Barbarossa. This groundbreaking study, now significantly expanded, exploits a wealth of Soviet and German archival materials, including the combat orders and operational of the German OKW, OKH, army groups, and armies and of the Soviet Stavka, the Red Army General Staff, the Western Main Direction Command, the Western, Central, Reserve, and Briansk Fronts, and their subordinate armies to present a detailed mosaic and definitive account of what took place, why, and how during the prolonged and complex battles in the Smolensk region from 10 July through 10 September 1941. The structure of the study is designed specifically to appeal to both general readers and specialists by a detailed two-volume chronological narrative of the course of operations, accompanied by a third volume and a fourth, containing archival maps and an extensive collection of specific orders and reports translated verbatim from Russian. The maps, archival and archival-based, detail every stage of the battle.
Book Synopsis Operation Barbarossa by : David M Glantz
Download or read book Operation Barbarossa written by David M Glantz and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 22 June 1941 Hilter unleashed his forces on the Soviet Union. Spearheaded by four powerful Panzer groups and protected by an impenetrable curtain of air support, the seemingly invincible Wehrmacht advanced from the Soviet Union's western borders to the immediate outskirts of Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov in the shockingly brief period of less than six months. The sudden, deep, relentless German advance virtually destroyed the entire peacetime Red Army and captured almost 40 percent of European Russia before expiring inexplicably at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. An invasion designed to achieve victory in three to six weeks failed and, four years later, resulted in unprecendented and total German defeat. David Glantz challenges the time-honoured explanation that poor weather, bad terrain and Hitler's faulty strategic judgement produced German defeat, and reveals how the Red Army thwarted the German Army's dramatic and apparently inexorable invasion before it achieved its ambitious goals.
Book Synopsis The First Day on the Eastern Front by : Craig W. H. Luther
Download or read book The First Day on the Eastern Front written by Craig W. H. Luther and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sunday, June 22, 1941: three million German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union as part of Hitler’s long-planned Operation Barbarossa, which aimed to destroy the Soviet Union, secure its land as lebensraum for the Third Reich, and enslave its Slavic population. From launching points in newly acquired Poland, in three prongs—North, Central, South—German forces stormed western Russia, virtually from the Baltic to the Black Sea. By late fall, the invasion had foundered against Russian weather, terrain, and resistance, and by December, it had failed at the gates of Moscow, but early on, as the Germans sliced through Russian territory and soldiers with impunity, capturing hundreds of thousands, it seemed as though Russia would fall. In the spirit of Martin Middlebrook’s classic First Day on the Somme, Craig Luther narrates the events of June 22, 1941, a day when German military might was at its peak and seemed as though it would easily conquer the Soviet Union, a day the common soldiers would remember for its tension and the frogs bellowing in the Polish marshlands. It was a day when the German blitzkrieg decimated Soviet command and control within hours and seemed like nothing would stop it from taking Moscow. Luther narrates June 22—one of the pivotal days of World War II—from high command down to the tanks and soldiers at the sharp end, covering strategy as well as tactics and the vivid personal stories of the men who crossed the border into the Soviet Union that fateful day, which is the Eastern Front in microcosm, representing the years of industrial-scale warfare that followed and the unremitting hostility of Germans and Soviets.
Book Synopsis Soldiers of Barbarossa by : Craig W.H. Luther
Download or read book Soldiers of Barbarossa written by Craig W.H. Luther and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-11-15 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scope and scale of Operation Barbarossa—the German invasion of the Soviet Union—make it one of the pivotal events of the Second World War. Yet our understanding of both the military campaign as well as the “war of annihilation” conducted throughout the occupied territories depends overwhelmingly on “top-down” studies. The three million German soldiers who crossed the Soviet border and experienced this war are seldom the focus and are often entirely ignored. Who were these men and how did they see these events? Luther and Stahel, two of the leading experts on Operation Barbarossa, have reconstructed the 1941 campaign entirely through the letters (as well as a few diaries) of more than 200 German soldiers across all areas of the Eastern Front. It is an original perspective on the campaign, one of constant combat, desperate fear, bitter loss, and endless exertions. One learns the importance of comradeship and military training, but also reads the frightening racial and ideological justifications for the war and its violence, which at times lead to unrelenting cruelty and even mass murder. Soldiers of Barbarossa is a unique and sobering account of 1941, which includes hundreds of endnotes by Luther and Stahel providing critical context, corrections, and commentary.
Book Synopsis Operation Barbarossa by : Ian Baxter
Download or read book Operation Barbarossa written by Ian Baxter and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2010-11-30 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hitler's decision to renege on his alliance with Stalin and invade Russia in June 1941 was to have the most far reaching consequences for the world. Indeed, if there was one critical turning point in the Second World War, it would have to be this. The latest book in the Images of War series uses over 300 rare contemporary photographs to capture the scale, intensity and brutality of the fighting that was unleashed on 22 June 1941. No less than 4.5 million men of the Axis Power advanced on a 2,900 kilometer front. We see how the apparently unstoppable German led assaults crushed the Soviet resistance. But not for the first time Russian determination aided by the terrible winter conditions and over extended lines of communication checked the Nazi onslaught. In the annals of warfare there has never arguably been such a bitter and costly campaign.
Download or read book Barbarossa 1941 written by Frank Ellis and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's plan for invading the Soviet Union, has by now become a familiar tale of overreach, with the Germans blinded to their coming defeat by their initial victory, and the Soviet Union pushing back from the brink of destruction with courageous exploits both reckless and relentless. And while much of this version of the story is true, Frank Ellis tells us in Barbarossa 1941, it also obscures several important historical truths that alter our understanding of the campaign. In this new and intensive investigation of Operation Barbarossa, Ellis draws on a wealth of documents declassified over the past twenty years to challenge the conventional treatment of a critical chapter in the history of World War II. Ellis's close reading of an exceptionally wide range of German and Russian sources leads to a reevaluation of Soviet intelligence assessments of Hitler's intentions; Stalin's complicity in his nation's slippage into existential slaughter; and the influence of the Stalinist regime's reputation for brutality—and a fear of Stalin's expansionist inclinations—on the launching and execution of Operation Barbarossa. Ellis revisits two major controversies relating to Barbarossa—the Soviet pre-emptive strike thesis put forward in Viktor Suvorov's book Icebreaker; and the view of the infamous Commissar Order, dictating the execution of a large group of Soviet POWs, as a unique piece of Nazi malevolence. Ellis also analyzes the treatment of Barbarossa in the work of three Soviet-Russian writers—Vasilii Grossman, Alexander Bek, and Konstantin Simonov—and in the first-ever translation of the diary kept by a German soldier in 20th Panzer Division, brings the campaign back to the daily realities of dangers and frustrations encountered by German troops.
Book Synopsis Barbarossa Derailed by : David M. Glantz
Download or read book Barbarossa Derailed written by David M. Glantz and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study exploits a wealth of Soviet and German archival materials, including the combat orders and operational records of the German OKW, OKH, army groups, and armies of the Soviet Stavka, the Red Army General Staff, the Western Main Direction Command, the Western, Central, Reserve, and Briansk fronts, and their subordinate armies to present a detailed mosaic and definitive account of what took place, why and how during the prolonged and complex battles in the Smolensk region from 10 July through 10 September 1941 ... The series will consist of a detailed two-volume chronological narrative of the course of operations, accompanied by a third volume, containing an extensive collection of specific orders and reports translated verbatim from Russian, and a fourth (atlas) volume containing newly-commissioned colour maps"--Dust jacket.
Book Synopsis Moscow Tram Stop by : Heinrich Haape
Download or read book Moscow Tram Stop written by Heinrich Haape and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1957 and out of print for decades, Moscow Tram Stop is a classic of World War II on the Eastern Front. Heinrich Haape was a young doctor drafted into the German Wehrmacht just before the war began. He was with the spearhead of Operation Barbarossa, tasked with taking Moscow, when it invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Mere hours into the attack, Haape and his fellow soldiers learned the hard way that the Red Army fought with otherworldly tenacity even in defeat. The rapid advance of the early days slowed during the summer, and Haape’s division did not begin the final push on Moscow until October. It was a hard slog, plagued first by rain and mud, then by cold and snow. By early December, German forces had reached the gates of the Soviet capital but could press no farther. By winter’s end, Haape’s battalion of 800 had been reduced to a mere 28 soldiers. The doctor’s account is enthrallingly vivid. The drama and excitement never slacken as Haape recounts his experiences from the unique perspective of a doctor, who often had to join in the fighting himself and witnessed the physical and psychological toll of combat.
Book Synopsis Retreat from Moscow by : David Stahel
Download or read book Retreat from Moscow written by David Stahel and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping and authoritative revisionist account of the German Winter Campaign of 1941–1942 Germany’s winter campaign of 1941–1942 is commonly seen as its first defeat. In Retreat from Moscow, a bold, gripping account of one of the seminal moments of World War II, David Stahel argues that instead it was its first strategic success in the East. The Soviet counteroffensive was in fact a Pyrrhic victory. Despite being pushed back from Moscow, the Wehrmacht lost far fewer men, frustrated its enemy’s strategy, and emerged in the spring unbroken and poised to recapture the initiative. Hitler’s strategic plan called for holding important Russian industrial cities, and the German army succeeded. The Soviets as of January 1942 aimed for nothing less than the destruction of Army Group Center, yet not a single German unit was ever destroyed. Lacking the professionalism, training, and experience of the Wehrmacht, the Red Army’s offensive attempting to break German lines in countless head-on assaults led to far more tactical defeats than victories. Using accounts from journals, memoirs, and wartime correspondence, Stahel takes us directly into the Wolf’s Lair to reveal a German command at war with itself as generals on the ground fought to maintain order and save their troops in the face of Hitler’s capricious, increasingly irrational directives. Excerpts from soldiers’ diaries and letters home paint a rich portrait of life and death on the front, where the men of the Ostheer battled frostbite nearly as deadly as Soviet artillery. With this latest installment of his pathbreaking series on the Eastern Front, David Stahel completes a military history of the highest order.
Book Synopsis Enduring the Whirlwind by : Gregory Liedtke
Download or read book Enduring the Whirlwind written by Gregory Liedtke and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work seeks to address the notion of German numerical-weakness in terms of Germany's ability to replace its losses and regenerate its military strength, and assess just how accurate this argument was during the crucial first half of the Russo-German War (June 1941-June 1943).
Book Synopsis Hitler's Great Gamble by : James Ellman
Download or read book Hitler's Great Gamble written by James Ellman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-09-20 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On June 22, 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, one of the turning points of World War II. Within six months, the invasion bogged down on the outskirts of Moscow, and the Eastern Front proved to be the decisive theater in the defeat of the Third Reich. Ever since, most historians have agreed that this was Hitler’s gravest mistake. In Hitler’s Great Gamble, James Ellman argues that while Barbarossa was a gamble and perverted by genocidal Nazi ideology, it was not doomed from the start. Rather it represented Hitler’s best chance to achieve his war aims for Germany which were remarkably similar to those of the Kaiser’s government in 1914. Other options, such as an invasion of England, or an offensive to seize the oil fields of the Middle East were considered and discarded as unlikely to lead to Axis victory. In Ellman’s recounting, Barbarossa did not fail because of flaws in the Axis invasion strategy, the size of the USSR, or the brutal cold of the Russian winter. Instead, German defeat was due to errors of Nazi diplomacy. Hitler chose not to coordinate his plans with his most militarily powerful allies, Finland and Japan, and ensure the seizure of the ports of Murmansk and Vladivostok. Had he done so, Germany might well have succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union and, perhaps, winning World War II. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources (including many recently released), Hitler’s Great Gamble is a provocative work that will appeal to a wide cross-section of World War II buffs, enthusiasts, and historians.
Book Synopsis Hitler's Soldiers by : Ben H. Shepherd
Download or read book Hitler's Soldiers written by Ben H. Shepherd and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades after 1945, it was generally believed that the German army, professional and morally decent, had largely stood apart from the SS, Gestapo, and other corps of the Nazi machine. Ben Shepherd draws on a wealth of primary sources and recent scholarship to convey a much darker, more complex picture. For the first time, the German army is examined throughout the Second World War, across all combat theaters and occupied regions, and from multiple perspectives: its battle performance, social composition, relationship with the Nazi state, and involvement in war crimes and military occupation. This was a true people’s army, drawn from across German society and reflecting that society as it existed under the Nazis. Without the army and its conquests abroad, Shepherd explains, the Nazi regime could not have perpetrated its crimes against Jews, prisoners of war, and civilians in occupied countries. The author examines how the army was complicit in these crimes and why some soldiers, units, and higher commands were more complicit than others. Shepherd also reveals the reasons for the army’s early battlefield successes and its mounting defeats up to 1945, the latter due not only to Allied superiority and Hitler’s mismanagement as commander-in-chief, but also to the failings—moral, political, economic, strategic, and operational—of the army’s own leadership.
Book Synopsis Tip of the Spear by : Robert J. Edwards
Download or read book Tip of the Spear written by Robert J. Edwards and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2015-11-15 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, German armored reconnaissance laid the groundwork—often through small-unit actions—for the stunning tank and infantry operations that made the German military famous. Robert Edwards's follow-up to Scouts Out, the first extensive treatment of the subject in English, focuses on the battles and personalities found in ranks of the Waffen-SS, Luftwaffe, and other divisions. • Covers armored reconnaissance in Poland, France in 1940, the Balkans, North Africa, the Eastern Front, Italy, and the Western Front • Numerous firsthand accounts and after-action reports • Analysis of recon operations, from tactics and doctrine to vehicles and commanders
Download or read book To Besiege a City written by Prit Buttar and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-14 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ground-breaking history of one of the greatest ever sieges. Masterfully brought to life by a leading expert using original Russian and German source material. '[An] excellent account.' - Richard Overy, The Telegraph This new history of the first two years of this crucial battle for the heart and soul of Russia is the first in over a decade and also the first to look comprehensively at the wider military strategies of both sides. At a huge cost, the Red Army and the civilian population of Leningrad ultimately endured a bitter 900-day siege, struggling against constant bombing, shelling, and starvation. Throughout the siege, Soviet forces tried to break the German lines and restore contact with the garrison. To Besiege a City charts the first of these offensives which began in January 1942 and was followed by repeated assaults. Acclaimed Eastern Front historian Prit Buttar details how although the Red Army suffered huge casualties in the swampy and forested terrain, the German infantry divisions were also steadily eroded. Indeed, by keeping control of parts of the shores of Lake Ladoga, the Soviet Union was able to sustain Leningrad through the winters of the siege via the 'road of life', constructed across the frozen lake. This epic history details the dramatic race to create the road across the ice and first-hand accounts from both Soviet and German soldiers, many never previously translated, bring the horrific series of battles and assaults to life. Ultimately the determination of the defenders to hold out during this first phase of the siege and the desperate attempts to break it became a hugely significant part of Russian wartime history. The echoes of the battle persist to this day helping to define both a country and its politics. There is no better time to fully understand this history and To Besiege a City is the most comprehensive account to date.
Book Synopsis Anatomy of Victory by : John D. Caldwell
Download or read book Anatomy of Victory written by John D. Caldwell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-11-09 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking book provides the first systematic comparison of America’s modern wars and why they were won or lost. John D. Caldwell uses the World War II victory as the historical benchmark for evaluating the success and failure of later conflicts. Unlike WWII, the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraqi Wars were limited, but they required enormous national commitments, produced no lasting victories, and generated bitter political controversies. Caldwell comprehensively examines these four wars through the lens of a strategic architecture to explain how and why their outcomes were so dramatically different. He defines a strategic architecture as an interlinked set of continually evolving policies, strategies, and operations by which combatant states work toward a desired end. Policy defines the high-level goals a nation seeks to achieve once it initiates a conflict or finds itself drawn into one. Policy makers direct a broad course of action and strive to control the initiative. When they make decisions, they have to respond to unforeseen conditions to guide and determine future decisions. Effective leaders are skilled at organizing constituencies they need to succeed and communicating to them convincingly. Strategy means employing whatever resources are available to achieve policy goals in situations that are dynamic as conflicts change quickly over time. Operations are the actions that occur when politicians, soldiers, and diplomats execute plans. A strategic architecture, Caldwell argues, is thus not a static blueprint but a dynamic vision of how a state can succeed or fail in a conflict.
Book Synopsis Joining Hitler's Crusade by : David Stahel
Download or read book Joining Hitler's Crusade written by David Stahel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ground-breaking study that looks at why European nations sent troops to take part in Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.
