Download or read book Battleground Prussia written by Prit Buttar and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-20 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engrossing history of the last year of the Second World War, charting the battles fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazis across German soil. The terrible months between the arrival of the Red Army on German soil and the final collapse of Hitler's regime were like no other in the Second World War. The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished. From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this book recounts in chilling detail the desperate struggle of soldiers and civilians alike. These brutal campaigns are brought vividly to life by a combination of previously untold testimony and astute strategic analysis recognising a conflict of unprecedented horror and suffering.
Download or read book Ostfront 1944 written by Alex Buchner and published by Schiffer Military History. This book was released on 1991 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: OSTFRONT 1944: The German Defensive Battles on the Russian Front in 1944 Alex Buchner. In 1944, when the entire Russo-German front was "ablaze" under continual Soviet attacks, wrong estimations by the highest German command led to critical decisions with grave consequences. The Red Army was growing increasingly stronger, and launched a major offensive. They engaged the Germans in a series of battles - Cherkassy, Tarnopol, Crimea, Vetebsk, Brody, Jassy - That ended in the collapse of Army Group Center, and catastrophic German losses. These battles cost the German army in the east well over a half-million casualties. The entire story is set forth in this new book by Alex Buchner. This in-depth study uses presently available sources and the reports of still-living participants, to document the events on the Eastern Front of 1944. It tells the story from the German point of view, reflecting on what is considered the most barbarous fighting of World War II. Alex Buchner is the author of several World War II studies, including The German Infantry Handbook 1939-1945, available from Schiffer Military History.
Download or read book Armageddon Ost written by Nik Cornish and published by Ian Allan Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Armageddon Ost' examines in detail the final six months of the Second World War on the Eastern Front. It records the gradual and inexorable march of the Red Army towards ultimate victory. It includes first-hand accounts from those who actually fought in the war.
Download or read book Endkampf Um Das Reichsgebiet 1944 45 Ostfront written by Axel Urbanke and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Defeat to Victory written by Charles J. Dick and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2016-11-04 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the summer of 1944, the war in Europe had reached a critical point. Both the western Allies and the Soviets possessed the initiative and forces capable of mounting strategic offensives against the German enemy. Writing a study of operations on first the Western then the Eastern Front, respected military analyst C. J. Dick provides a uniquely informative comparison of the different war-fighting doctrines brought to bear by the Allies and the Red Army in contemporaneous campaigns. His book offers rare insights into the strengths and weaknesses of generalship on both fronts. In volume 2, From Defeat to Victory, Dick turns to the Eastern Front, where battle lines stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea—nearly 1,500 miles to the Allies' 600—and the Soviet armies and engagements dwarfed in scale those in the West. More importantly, they reflected a war-fighting philosophy significantly different than the Allies', which in turn produced different military operations. The Soviets were masters of deception-and-surprise, a concept called maskirovka that was an essential part of every military operation. The Soviets were committed to highly mobile and high-tempo offensives. They massed troops in heavy concentrations to achieve a breakthrough that would quickly set conditions for decisive operational maneuvers; they were relentless in their will to destroy the enemy's forces and, unlike their counterparts in the West, were willing to contend with an enormous amount of casualties. Dick's analysis shows us how the Red Army, largely free of the political problems that constrained the Allies, was able to develop more radical operational ideas and implement them with a daring and ruthlessness impossible for the armies of democratic states. From Defeat to Victory also offers a critical lesson in the enduring importance of finding, inculcating, and implementing operational and tactical doctrine that fits the conditions of contemporary war, as well as in the technology, politics, and psychology of the times.
Download or read book Hitler s War in the East 1941 1945 written by Rolf-Dieter Müller and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a guide to the extensive literature on the war in the East, including largely unknown Soviet writing on the subject. Sections on policy and strategy, the military campaign, the ideologically motivated war of annihilation in the East, the occupation, and coming to terms with the results of the war offer a wealth of bibliographic citations, and include introductions detailing history of the period and related issues. For military historians, and for scholars who approach this period in history from a socio-economic or cultural perspective. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book The German Defeat in the East 1944 45 written by Samuel W. Mitcham and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last place a German soldier wanted to be in 1944 was the eastern front. That summer, Stalin hurled millions of men and thousands of tanks and planes against German forces across a broad front. In a series of massive, devastating battles, the Red Army decimated Hitler's Army Group Center in Belorussua, annihilated Army Group South in the Ukraine, and inflicted crushing casualties while taking Rumania and Hungary. By the time Budapest fell to the Soviets in Febuary 1945, the German Army had been slaughtered--and the Third Reich was in its death throes.
Download or read book Endgame 1944 written by Jonathan Dimbleby and published by Random House. This book was released on 2024-05-23 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Terrific . . . a tour de force' Sir Richard Evans 'Military history at its very best' Keith Lowe A gripping and authoritative account of the year that sealed the fate of the Nazis, from the bestselling historian June 1944: In Operation Bagration, more than two million Red Army soldiers, facing 500,000 German soldiers, finally avenged their defeat in Operation Barbarossa in 1941. The same month saw the Allies triumph on the beaches of Normandy, but, despite the myths that remain, it was the events on the Eastern Front that sealed Hitler's fate and destroyed Nazism. In his new book, bestselling historian Jonathan Dimbleby describes and analyses this momentous year, covering the military, political and diplomatic story in his evocative style. Drawing on previously untranslated German, Russian and Polish sources, we see how sophisticated new forms of deception and ruthless Partisan warfare shifted the Soviets’ fortunes, how their triumphs effectively gave Stalin authority to occupy Eastern Europe and how it was the events of 1944 that enabled Stalin to dictate the terms of the post-war settlement, laying the foundations for the Cold War . . . 'Visceral and compelling authoritative' Sinclair McKay 'Extraordinarily vivid and absorbing' Brendan Simms
Download or read book Panzer Gunner written by Bruno Friesen and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few memoirs available of German Panzer crews that focus on the climactic last 12 months of the war on the Eastern Front, 1944-45. What makes Bruno Friesen's account virtually unique is his family background: his parents came from a German-speaking Mennonite community in Ukraine, and were to all intents and purposes culturally German. To make matters even more complex, in 1924 his parents left the Ukraine for Canada, where Bruno was born. In March 1939 he and his brother Oscar found themselves on a ship bound for Bremerhaven in Germany. He barely spoke German, and had never been to Germany, nevertheless his father envisaged that a better life awaited them in the Third Reich. Needless to say, Bruno became caught up in the Second World War, and in 1942 was drafted into the Wehrmacht. The author provides a full account of his family background, and how, through these unusual circumstances, he found himself a Canadian-born German soldier. The bulk of the book is a detailed account of the author's training, and his subsequent service with 25th Panzer Regiment, part of 7th Panzer Division. As the title suggests, Bruno Friesen served as a gunner aboard, initially, Panzer IVs, before crewing the lesser-known Jagdpanzer IV tank hunter. The author provides a fantastic amount of information about these two vehicles, and how the crews actually fought in battle with them. This kind of 'hands-on' detail has almost never been available before, particularly such extensive information concerning the characteristics and combat performance of the Jagdpanzer IV. Apart from providing a large fund of information about specific German tanks and their combat performance, the author writes in great detail about the combat the experienced on the Eastern Front, including tank battles in Rumania, spring 1944, Lithuania in the summer of 1944, and West Prussia during early 1945. If one wants to know how German tank crews fought the Soviets in the last year of the war, then this book provides an outstanding account, containing material simply not found elsewhere. The author closes his account by reflecting on his postwar efforts to return to Canada, which eventually succeeded in 1950, and his subsequent life there. This book is not just a critique of armored fighting vehicles and tank warfare, it is above all a very human story, told in a lively, conversational and fluid manner, and is a remarkable contribution to the literature of the Second World War.
Download or read book Battleground Prussia written by Prit Buttar and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The terrible months between the arrival of the Red Army on German soil and the final collapse of Hitler's regime were like no other in the Second World War. The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished. From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this book recounts in chilling detail the desperate struggle of soldiers and civilians alike. These brutal campaigns are brought vividly to life by a combination of previously untold testimony and astute strategic analysis recognising a conflict of unprecedented horror and suffering."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
Download or read book Korsun Pocket written by Niklas Zetterling and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the second half of 1943, after the failure at Kursk, GermanyÕs Army Group South fell back from Russia under repeated hammer blows from the Red Army. Under Erich von Manstein, however, the Germans were able to avoid serious defeats, while at the same time fending off HitlerÕs insane orders to hold on to useless territory. Then, in January 1944, a disaster happened. Six divisions of Army Group South became surrounded after sudden attacks by the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts under command of generals Nikolai Vatutin and Ivan Konev around the village of Korsun (near the larger town of Cherkassy on the Dnieper). The GermansÕ greatest fear was the prospect of another Stalingrad, the catastrophe that had occurred precisely one year before. This time, though, Manstein was in control from the start, and he immediately rearranged his Army Group to rescue his trapped divisions. A major panzer drive got underway, led by General der Panzertruppen Hans Hube, a survivor from Stalingrad pocket, which promptly ran up against several soviet tank armies. Leading the break-in was Franz Baeke with his Tiger and Panther-tanks. Due to both weather and ferocious resistance, the German drive stalled. Ju-52s still flew into KorsunÕs airfield, delivering supplies and taking out wounded, but it soon became apparent that only one option remained for the beleaguered defenders: breakout. Without consulting Hitler, on the night of February 16 Manstein ordered the breakout to begin. Led by the strongest formation within the pocket, SS Wiking, the trapped forces surged out and soon rejoined the surrounding panzer divisions who had been fully engaged in weakening the ring. When dawn broke, the Soviets realized their prey was escaping. Although the Germans within the pocket lost nearly all of their heavy weapons and left many wounded behind, their escape was effected. Stalin, having anticipated another Stalingrad, was left with little but an empty bag, as Army Group SouthÑthis timeÑhad pulled off a rescue. In The Korsun Pocket, Niklas Zetterling, a researcher at the Swedish Defense College since 1995 and Anders Frankson, have provided a highly detailed and often breathtaking account of one of the most dramatic battles of World War II. From grand strategy to soldiersÕ voices on the ground, including expert statistical analysis, the action, and the stakes, of the battle at Korsun are made vividly clear.
Download or read book The Crushing of Army Group North 1944 1945 on the Eastern Front written by Ian Baxter and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2017-01-30 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Crushing of Army Group North 1944-45 on the Eastern Front tells the story in words and images of the last bitter months fought on Russian soil and the battle of the Baltic States that ensued. Drawing on rare and unpublished photos it reveals in detail how remnants of Army Group North were driven back to the borders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In the battles that followed, the retreating German Panzer and infantry divisions were encircled and annihilated. With the remnants were pushed back into East Prussia, and then fought to the death in the last few small pockets of land surrounding three ports of Libau in Kurland, Pillau in East Prussia and Danzig at the mouth of the River Vistula. It was here that the final battle of Army Group North would take place after Hitler ordered his troops to `stand and fight` and wage an unprecedented battle of attrition.
Download or read book The Reckoning written by Prit Buttar and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Reckoning is vivid history, the tragic Eastern Front brought to life through the widest range of Russian and German sources I've ever read. Bravo.' – Peter Caddick-Adams, author and broadcaster From critically acclaimed Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar, The Reckoning is a masterful re-evaluation of the fateful year of 1944, and how the Red Army irrevocably turned the tide of war until the final defeat within the heart of Germany itself was guaranteed. The fighting throughout the Ukraine and Romania was brutal, with the German defence dogged and desperate. But for too long the Wehrmacht had relied on the superior combat prowess of its fighting men. What had not been taken into account, however, was that the Red Army would not only rely on its sheer size, but would fine-tune its fighting performance from its senior commanders right down to the individual soldier battling both fear and the elements to take each line, each trench, each inch of land. Ultimately it is a story not of how the Germans lost, as is all too often told, but of how the Russians increasingly learned how to win.
Download or read book The History of the Galician Division of the Waffen SS written by Michael James Melnyk and published by Fonthill Media. This book was released on 2017-05-17 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume of a two part set on the history of the Galician Division is based on over 25 years research by accomplished historian Michael James Melnyk who has sourced additional new and hitherto unseen original material on all aspects of the Division's history from archives and private collections in Europe, Australia, North American and Canada. Complemented by the individual accounts and contributions of many veterans which add an engaging personal dimension, this new definitive two volume account supersedes his earlier divisional history published in 2002. As a recognised authority on the subject he has produced the most reliable and exhaustive account to date lavishly illustrated with many rare and unique photos and crammed full of details, notes and references in this last ever book to include direct and new material from the participants.
Download or read book Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front written by Serhii Plokhy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The full story of the first and only time American and Soviets fought side-by-side in World War IIAt the conference held in Tehran November 1943, American officials proposed to their Soviet allies a new operation in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany. The Normandy Invasion was already in the works; what American officials were suggesting until then was a second air front: the US Air Force wouldestablish bases in Soviet-controlled territory. Though pushing relentlessly for the United States and Great Britain to do more to help the war effort - the Soviet body count was staggering - Stalin, recalling the presence of foreign troops during the Russian Revolution, balked. His concern was thatthe American presence would inflame regional and ideological differences. Eventually in early 1944, Stalin was persuaded to give in, and Operation Baseball and then Frantic were initiated. B-17 Superfortresses were flown from bases in Italy to the Poltova region (in what is today Ukraine).As Plokhy's fascinating and utterly original book shows, what happened on these airbases mirrors the fate of the Grand Alliance itself. While both sides were fighting for Germany's unconditional surrender, differences arose that no common purpose could overcome. Soviet secret policeman watched overthe Americans, shadowing every move, and eventually trying to prevent fraternization between American airmen and local women. A catastrophic air raid by the Germans revealed the limitations of Soviet air defenses. Relations soured and the operations went south. Based on previously inaccessiblearchives, Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front offers a bottom-up history of the Grand Alliance itself, showing how it first began to collapse on the airfields of World War II.
Download or read book Panther Medium Tank written by DENNIS. OLIVER and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-04-28 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the summer of 1944 a series of massive Soviet offensives threatened to destroy the entire German army on the Eastern Front. As the Wehrmacht scrambled to hold what ground it could many formations simply disappeared and the available armoured units were used to plug the gaps in the frontline. One of the most important elements of the defence was the newly raised IV.SS-Panzerkorps which contained the veteran Totenkopf and Wiking divisions. Although both were well equipped their real striking power lay in the battalion of Pzkpfw V Panther tanks with which each was outfitted, perhaps the most effective armoured fighting vehicle produced by Germany during the Second World War. In Dennis Oliver's latest volume in the TankCraft series he uses archive photos and extensively researched colour illustrations to examine the Panther battalions of these famous units that fought to hold back the Soviet advance during the last months of 1944. A key section of his book displays available model kits and aftermarket products, complemented by a gallery of beautifully constructed and painted models in various scales. Technical details as well as modifications introduced during production and in the field are also examined providing everything the modeller needs to recreate an accurate representation of these historic tanks.
Download or read book 500 Days written by Sean M. Mcateer and published by Dorrance Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
