Download or read book Prelude to Berlin written by Richard W. Harrison and published by Helion. This book was released on 2016 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prelude to Berlin: The Red Army's Offensive Operations in Poland and Eastern Germany, 1945, offers a panoramic view of the Soviet strategic offensives north of the Carpathians in the winter of 1945. During the course of this offensive the Red Army broke through the German defenses in Poland and East Prussia and eventually occupied all of Germany east of the Oder River. The book consists primarily of articles that appeared in various military journals during the first decade after the war. The General Staff's directorate charged with studying the war experience published these studies, although there are other sources as well. A particular highlight of these is a personal memoir that offers a rare insight into Soviet strategic planning for the winter-spring 1945 campaign. Also featured are documents relating to the operational-strategic conduct of the various operations, which were compiled and published after the fall of the Soviet Union. The book is divided into several parts, corresponding to the operations conducted. These include the Vistula-Oder operation by the First Belorussian and First Ukrainian Fronts out of their respective Vistula bridgeheads. This gigantic operation, involving over a million men and several thousand tanks, artillery and other weapons sliced through the German defenses and, in a single leap, advanced the front to the Oder River, less than 100 kilometres from Berlin, from which they launched their final assault on the Reich in April. Equally impressive was the Second and Third Belorussian Fronts' offensive into Germany's East Prussian citadel. This operation helped to clear the flank further to the south and exacted a long-awaited revenge for the Russian Army's defeat here in 1914. This effort cut off the German forces in East Prussia and concluded with an effort to clear the flanks in Pomerania and the storming of the East Prussian capital of Konigsberg in April. The study also examines in considerable detail the First Ukrainian Front's Upper and Lower Silesian operations of February-March 1945. These operations cleared the army's flanks in the south and deprived Germany of one of its last major industrial and agricultural areas.

Download or read book The Berlin Crisis written by Deane Heller and published by . This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Berlin Operation 1945 written by Soviet General Staff and published by Grub Street Publishers. This book was released on 2016-08-19 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the Red Army’s penultimate offensive operation in the war in Europe. The forces of three fronts—Second and First Belorussian and First Ukrainian—reached the Oder River and surrounded the defenders of the German capital, reduced the city and drove westward to link up with the Western allies in central Germany. This is another in a series of studies compiled by the Soviet Army General Staff, which during the postwar years gave itself the task of gathering and generalizing the experience of the war for the purpose of training the armed forces’ higher staffs in the conduct of large-scale offensive operations. The study is divided into three parts. The first contains a brief strategic overview of the situation, as it existed by the spring of 1945, with special emphasis on German preparations to meet the inevitable Soviet attack. This section also includes an examination of the decisions by the Stavka of the Supreme High Command on the conduct of the operation. As usual, materiel-technical and other preparations for the offensive are covered in great detail. These include plans for artillery and engineer support, as well as the work of the rear services and political organs and the strengths, capabilities, and tasks of the individual armies. Part two deals with the Red Army’s breakthrough of the Germans’ Oder defensive position up to the encirclement of the Berlin garrison. This covers the First Belorussian Front’s difficulty in overcoming the defensive along the Seelow Heights, which has a direct path to Berlin, as well as the First Ukrainian Front’s easier passage over the Oder and its secondary attack along the Dresden axis. The Second Belorussian Front’s breakthrough and its sweep through the Baltic littoral is also covered. Part three recounts the intense fighting to reduce the city’s defenders from late April until the garrison’s surrender on May 2, as well as operations in the area up to the formal German capitulation. This section contains a number of detailed descriptions of urban fighting at the battalion and regimental level, closing with conclusions about the role of the various combat arms in the operation.

Download or read book The Path to the Berlin Wall written by Manfred Wilke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long path to the Berlin Wall began in 1945, when Josef Stalin instructed the Communist Party to take power in the Soviet occupation zone while the three Western allies secured their areas of influence. When Germany was split into separate states in 1949, Berlin remained divided into four sectors, with West Berlin surrounded by the GDR but lingering as a captivating showcase for Western values and goods. Following a failed Soviet attempt to expel the allies from West Berlin with a blockade in 1948–49, a second crisis ensued from 1958–61, during which the Soviet Union demanded once and for all the withdrawal of the Western powers and the transition of West Berlin to a “Free City.” Ultimately Nikita Khrushchev decided to close the border in hopes of halting the overwhelming exodus of East Germans into the West. Tracing this path from a German perspective, Manfred Wilke draws on recently published conversations between Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, head of the East German state, in order to reconstruct the coordination process between these two leaders and the events that led to building the Berlin Wall.

Download or read book Bloody Streets written by A. Stephan Hamilton and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 16th, 1945 the Red Army launched their fourth largest offensive along the Eastern Front during World War II. The objective was to seize Berlin before the Western Allies.Sixteen days later, the former capital of the Third Reich fell to the conquering armies of Generals Georgi Zhukov and his rival Ivan Koniev. The cost to capture the largest urban complex on mainland Europe from a handful of understrength Heer and Waffen-SS divisions, supported by Volkssturm and Hitlerjugend formations armed mainly with Panzerfaust anti-armour rockets, was exceptionally high. The Red Army suffered more casualties among its soldiers than during the six month siege of Stalingrad, and it lost more armoured vehicles than during the Battle of Kursk.Total losses among the defenders and civilian population remain unknown. Central Berlin was left a wasteland. The scars of the street fighting are still visible today, seventy-five years after the battle.When Bloody Streets was first published in 2008 it detailed the tactical street fighting in Berlin day-by-day for the first time through vivid first person accounts and period aerial imagery of the city. Ten years later this ground breaking study is back in print completely revised. Previously unpublished first person accounts from both the German and Soviet perspectives supplement archival documents that include new data from the operational war diaries of the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts. The book is highly illustrated throughout with period images of the city, aerial overviews, and wartime photos.Building on more than 15 years of research, the second edition of Bloody Streets is a capstone to the author's prior works on the final climatic battles along the Eastern Front. It will remain a benchmark study of the Battle of Berlin for years to come.

Download or read book The Berlin Wall written by Susan B. Mason and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Berlin Diary written by William L. Shirer and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2011-10-23 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the international bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers a personal account of life in Nazi Germany at the start of WWII. By the late 1930s, Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Nazi Party, had consolidated power in Germany and was leading the world into war. A young foreign correspondent was on hand to bear witness. More than two decades prior to the publication of his acclaimed history, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer was a journalist stationed in Berlin. During his years in the Nazi capital, he kept a daily personal diary, scrupulously recording everything he heard and saw before being forced to flee the country in 1940. Berlin Diary is Shirer’s first-hand account of the momentous events that shook the world in the mid-twentieth century, from the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia to the fall of Poland and France. A remarkable personal memoir of an extraordinary time, it chronicles the author’s thoughts and experiences while living in the shadow of the Nazi beast. Shirer recalls the surreal spectacles of the Nuremberg rallies, the terror of the late-night bombing raids, and his encounters with members of the German high command while he was risking his life to report to the world on the atrocities of a genocidal regime. At once powerful, engrossing, and edifying, William L. Shirer’s Berlin Diary is an essential historical record that illuminates one of the darkest periods in human civilization.

Download or read book Kristallnacht written by Martin Gilbert and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early hours of November 10, 1938, Nazi storm troopers and Hitler Youth rampaged through Jewish neighborhoods across Germany, leaving behind them a horrifying trail of terror and destruction. More than a thousand synagogues and many thousands of Jewish shops were destroyed, while thirty thousand Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Kristallnacht—the Night of Broken Glass—was a decisive stage in the systematic eradication of a people who traced their origins in Germany to Roman times and was a sinister forewarning of the Holocaust. With rare insight and acumen, Martin Gilbert examines this night and day of terror, presenting readers with a meticulously researched, masterfully written, and eye-opening study of one of the darkest chapters in human history.

Download or read book Berlin The Wicked City Unveiling the Mythos in Weimar Berlin written by David Larkins and published by Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying. This book was released on 2019-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Call of Cthulhu 7th edition Sourcebook and scenarios.

Download or read book Schwann Long Playing Record Catalog written by and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 898 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Berlin on the Brink written by Daniel F. Harrington and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-06-24 with total page 635 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin blockade brought former allies to the brink of war. Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union defeated and began their occupation of Germany in 1945, and within a few years, the Soviets and their Western partners were jockeying for control of their former foe. Attempting to thwart the Allied powers' plans to create a unified West German government, the Soviets blocked rail and road access to the western sectors of Berlin in June 1948. With no other means of delivering food and supplies to the German people under their protection, the Allies organized the Berlin airlift. In Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Cold War, Daniel F. Harrington examines the "Berlin question" from its origin in wartime plans for the occupation of Germany through the Paris Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in 1949. Harrington draws on previously untapped archival sources to challenge standard accounts of the postwar division of Germany, the origins of the blockade, the original purpose of the airlift, and the leadership of President Harry S. Truman. While thoroughly examining four-power diplomacy, Harrington demonstrates how the ingenuity and hard work of the people at the bottom—pilots, mechanics, and Berliners—were more vital to the airlift's success than decisions from the top. Harrington also explores the effects of the crisis on the 1948 presidential election and on debates about the custody and use of atomic weapons. Berlin on the Brink is a fresh, comprehensive analysis that reshapes our understanding of a critical event of cold war history.

Download or read book Betrayal in Berlin written by Steve Vogel and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A riveting and vivid account. ... A remarkable story. ... It reads like a Hollywood screenplay." —Foreign Affairs The astonishing true story of the Berlin Tunnel, one of the West’s greatest espionage operations of the Cold War—and the dangerous Soviet mole who betrayed it. Its code name was “Operation Gold,” a wildly audacious CIA plan to construct a clandestine tunnel into East Berlin to tap into critical KGB and Soviet military telecommunication lines. The tunnel, crossing the border between the American and Soviet sectors, would have to be 1,500 feet (the length of the Empire State Building) with state-of-the-art equipment, built and operated literally under the feet of their Cold War adversaries. Success would provide the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service access to a vast treasure of intelligence. Exposure might spark a dangerous confrontation with the Soviets. Yet as the Allies were burrowing into the German soil, a traitor, code-named Agent Diamond by his Soviet handlers, was burrowing into the operation itself. . . Betrayal in Berlin is Steve Vogel’s heart pounding account of the operation. He vividly recreates post-war Berlin, a scarred, shadowy snake pit with thousands of spies and innumerable cover stories. It is also the most vivid account of George Blake, perhaps the most damaging mole of the Cold War. Drawing upon years of archival research, secret documents, and rare interviews with Blake himself, Vogel has crafted a true-life spy story as thrilling as the novels of John le Carré and Len Deighton. Betrayal in Berlin includes 24 photos and two maps.

Download or read book Views of Berlin written by KIRCHHOFF and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Walking in Berlin written by Franz Hessel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English translation of a lost classic that reinvents the flaneur in Berlin. Franz Hessel (1880–1941), a German-born writer, grew up in Berlin, studied in Munich, and then lived in Paris, where he moved in artistic and literary circles. His relationship with the fashion journalist Helen Grund was the inspiration for Henri-Pierre Roche's novel Jules et Jim (made into a celebrated 1962 film by Francois Truffaut). In collaboration with Walter Benjamin, Hessel reinvented the Parisian figure of the flaneur. This 1929 book—here in its first English translation—offers Hessel's version of a flaneur in Berlin. In Walking in Berlin, Hessel captures the rhythm of Weimar-era Berlin, recording the seismic shifts in German culture. Nearly all of the essays take the form of a walk or outing, focusing on either a theme or part of the city, and many end at a theater, cinema, or club. Hessel deftly weaves the past with the present, walking through the city's history as well as its neighborhoods. Even today, his walks in the city, from the Alexanderplatz to Kreuzberg, can guide would-be flaneurs. Walking in Berlin is a lost classic, known mainly because of Hessel's connection to Benjamin but now introduced to readers of English. Walking in Berlin was a central model for Benjamin's Arcades Project and remains a classic of “walking literature” that ranges from Surrealist perambulation to Situationist “psychogeography.” This MIT Press edition includes the complete text in translation as well as Benjamin's essay on Walking in Berlin, originally written as a review of the book's original edition. “An absolutely epic book, a walking remembrance.” —Walter Benjamin

Download or read book Prelude to War written by P.A.M. Esch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scope of this book is confined to the international aspects of the Spanish civil war. It is primarily a study in international relations at a crucial period in the inter-war years. The separate military campaigns of the civil war itself, the political situation in Spain, and the historical forces that gave rise to the conflict have only been sketched in the opening chapters as a background to the diplomatic relations which took place among the European nations as a result of the civil war. The history and causes of the conflict itself are dealt with fully and authoritatively in the publications of scholars such as Gerald Brenan, Salvador de Madariaga, E. Allison Peers and Franz Borkenau in England, Alfred Mousset and Robert Brasillach in France and E. J. Hughes in the United States. It is the most serious handicap in dealing with contemporary history that it is impossible to write a definitive work because all the necessary documentation has not appeared. Nevertheless, many new facts have emerged in this study on the basis of mate rial published in the last ten years. Stories that were thought to be true at the time can now be supported or refuted by document ary evidence. There is proof in Serrano Su er's memoirs, for example, relative to the plotting of the civil war by the Spanish generals which corroborates the account of General Mola's secretary, Jose Ibarren.

Download or read book What I Saw written by Joseph Roth and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2014-07-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1920, Joseph Roth, the most renowned German correspondent of his age, arrived in Berlin, the capital of the Weimar Republic. He produced a series of impressionistic and political writings that influenced an entire generation of writers, including Thomas Mann and the young Christopher Isherwood. Roth, like no other German writer of his time, ventured beyond Berlin's official veneer to the heart of the city, chronicling the lives of its forgotten inhabitants - the Jewish immigrants, the criminals, the bathhouse denizens, and the nameless dead who filled the morgues. Warning early on of the threat posed by the Nazis, Roth evoked a landscape of moral bankruptcy and debauched beauty, creating in the process an unforgettable portrait of a city.

Download or read book The Szymanowski Companion written by Dr Paul Cadrin and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-09-28 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion constitutes the most significant and comprehensive reference source to the composer in English. Edited by two of the leading scholars in the field, the collection consists of over 50 contributions from an international array of contributors, including recognized Polish experts. The Companion thus provides a systematic, authoritative and up-to-date compilation of information concerning the composer's life, thought and works.