Download or read book The Defense of Berlin written by Jean Edward Smith and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1963. In 1958 Nikita Khrushchev demanded that the United States, Great Britain, and France withdraw from West Berlin. His demands eventually resulted in the division of Germany's capital city through the building of the Berlin Wall. In The Defense of Berlin, Jean Edward Smith discusses Berlin from the time of arrangements set during the war through 1962, with an emphasis on the effect that the crisis of division had on the city.

Download or read book The German Defense Of Berlin written by Oberst a.D. Wilhem Willemar and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often written during imprisonment in Allied War camps by former German officers, with their memories of the World War fresh in their minds, The Foreign Military Studies series offers rare glimpses into the Third Reich. In this study Oberst a.D. Wilhem Willemar discusses his recollections of the climatic battle for Berlin from within the Wehrmacht. “No cohesive, over-all plan for the defense of Berlin was ever actually prepared. All that existed was the stubborn determination of Hitler to defend the capital of the Reich. Circumstances were such that he gave no thought to defending the city until it was much too late for any kind of advance planning. Thus the city’s defense was characterized only by a mass of improvisations. These reveal a state of total confusion in which the pressure of the enemy, the organizational chaos on the German side, and the catastrophic shortage of human and material resources for the defense combined with disastrous effect. “The author describes these conditions in a clear, accurate report which I rate very highly. He goes beyond the more narrow concept of planning and offers the first German account of the defense of Berlin to be based upon thorough research. I attach great importance to this study from the standpoint of military history and concur with the military opinions expressed by the author.”-Foreword by Generaloberst a.D. Franz Halder.

Download or read book The Last Battle written by Cornelius Ryan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-02-16 with total page 749 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic account of the final offensive against Hitler’s Third Reich. The Battle for Berlin was the culminating struggle of World War II in the European theater, the last offensive against Hitler’s Third Reich, which devastated one of Europe’s historic capitals and marked the final defeat of Nazi Germany. It was also one of the war’s bloodiest and most pivotal battles, whose outcome would shape international politics for decades to come. The Last Battle is Cornelius Ryan’s compelling account of this final battle, a story of brutal extremes, of stunning military triumph alongside the stark conditions that the civilians of Berlin experienced in the face of the Allied assault. As always, Ryan delves beneath the military and political forces that were dictating events to explore the more immediate imperatives of survival, where, as the author describes it, “to eat had become more important than to love, to burrow more dignified than to fight, to exist more militarily correct than to win.” The Last Battle is the story of ordinary people, both soldiers and civilians, caught up in the despair, frustration, and terror of defeat. It is history at its best, a masterful illumination of the effects of war on the lives of individuals, and one of the enduring works on World War II.

Download or read book Special Forces Berlin written by James Stejskal and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The previously untold story of a Cold War spy unit, “one of the best examples of applied unconventional warfare in special operations history” (Small Wars Journal). It is a little-known fact that during the Cold War, two US Army Special Forces detachments were stationed far behind the Iron Curtain in West Berlin. The existence and missions of the two detachments were highly classified secrets. The massive armies of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies posed a huge threat to the nations of Western Europe. US military planners decided they needed a plan to slow the expected juggernaut, if and when a war began. This plan was Special Forces Berlin. Their mission—should hostilities commence—was to wreak havoc behind enemy lines and buy time for vastly outnumbered NATO forces to conduct a breakout from the city. In reality, it was an ambitious and extremely dangerous mission, even suicidal. Highly trained and fluent in German, each of these one hundred soldiers and their successors was allocated a specific area. They were skilled in clandestine operations, sabotage, and intelligence tradecraft, and were able to act, if necessary, as independent operators, blending into the local population and working unseen in a city awash with spies looking for information on their every move. Special Forces Berlin left a legacy of a new type of soldier, expert in unconventional warfare, that was sought after for other deployments, including the attempted rescue of American hostages from Tehran in 1979. With the US government officially acknowledging their existence in 2014, their incredible story can now be told—by one of their own.

Download or read book Berlin 1945 written by Peter Antill and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2005-10-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hitler's Third Reich was on the brink of total ruin in mid-April 1945, and the Red Army was poised less than 60 miles to the east and ready to seize the German capital. Peter Antill describes the events in this engaging history, examining the Soviets' march towards Berlin and the Germans' final resistance. This book, supplemented with a host of maps and illustrations, provides a vivid portrayal of the death throes of the Third Reich and the end of World War II (1939-1945) in Europe, exploring the strategy of both sides and the tactics of impromptu urban warfare.

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 To Save a City written by Roger G. Miller and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2008-04-21 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following World War II, the Soviet Union drew an Iron Curtain across Europe, crowning its efforts with a blockade of West Berlin in a desperate effort to prevent the creation of an independent, democratic West Germany. The United States and Great Britain, aided by France, responded with a daring air logistical operation that in fifteen months delivered almost three million tons of coal, food, and other necessities to the people of Berlin. Now, drawing on rare U.S. Air Force files, recently declassified documents from the National Archives, records released since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the memories of airlift veterans themselves, Roger G. Miller provides an original study of the Berlin Airlift. The Berlin Airlift was an enterprise of epic proportions that demonstrated the power of air logistics as a political instrument. What began as a hastily organized operation by a small number of warweary cargo airplanes evolved into an intricate bridge of aircraft that flowed in and out of Berlin through narrow air corridors. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, a stream of airplanes delivered everything from food and medicine to coal and candy in defiance of breakdowns, inclement weather, and Soviet hostility. And beyond the airlift itself, a complex system of transportation, maintenance, and supply stretching around the world sustained operations. Historians, veterans, and general readers will welcome this history of the first Western victory of the Cold War. Maps, diagrams, and more than forty photographs illustrate the mechanical inner workings and the human faces that made that triumph possible.

Download or read book Defense of the Third Reich 1941 45 written by Steven J. Zaloga and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-20 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting in 1940, Germany was subjected to a growing threat of Allied bomber attack. The RAF night bombing offensive built up in a slow but unrelenting crescendo through the Ruhr campaign in the summer of 1944 and culminating in the attacks on Berlin in the autumn and early winter of 1943-44. They were joined by US daylight raids which first began to have a serious impact on German industry in the autumn of 1943. This book focuses on the land-based infrastructure of Germany's defense against the air onslaught. Besides active defense against air attack, Germany also invested heavily in passive defense such as air raid shelters. While much of this defense was conventional such as underground shelters and the dual use of subways and other structures, Germany faced some unique dilemmas in protecting cities against night fire bomb raids. As a result, German architects designed massive above-ground defense shelters which were amongst the most massive defensive structures built in World War II.

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 682 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 The Berlin Defence written by Michael Roiz and published by . This book was released on 2021-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every chessplayer who meets 1.e4 with 1...e5 needs a reliable response to the Ruy Lopez, and The Berlin Defence is an ideal solution. Ever since Kramnik used it to shut down Kasparov's best efforts in their 2000 World Championship match, many top players have successfully employed the "Berlin Wall". GM Michael Roiz presents a complete repertoire for Black after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6, offering top-class antidotes to anything White may try.

Download or read book The Modernized Berlin Wall Defense written by Priyadharshan Kannappan and published by Thinkers Publishing. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Defense is one of the most popular openings for Black against 1.e4 for the last two decades in the higher echelons of the chess world. In this book, the critical ideas are explained in a way that even Club players will feel the confidence to add this evergreen opening to their repertoire by explaining the opening concepts lucidly in such a way that anyone who reads this Book will have the courage to play Berlin in their games. In this book, GM Priyadharshan Kannappan has chosen some off-beat tracks on the Berlin endgame and also has considered 4.d3 as the mainline of Berlin, the 1st for any Berlin book, but is a modern necessity due to the increasing popularity of 4.d3. The book packs enough punch in novelties for the opening aficionados, and this up to date book presents new ideas and variations that were previously never shed light on in the Berlin. GM Priyadharshan has given equal importance to the various sidelines that lead up to the Berlin endgame, and also in the Berlin endgame, and has suggested options where Black actively fights for dynamic positions, and not just gets satisfied with equal positions. The book also has 100 games suggestion that one must study to improve their overall understanding of the various pawn structures and ideas involved in the Queenless endgame.

Download or read book Eisenhower and Berlin 1945 written by Stephen E. Ambrose and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2000 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historian Ambrose studies the political and military aspects of Eisenhower's decision to leave Berlin to the Russian army in the waning days of the European War.

Download or read book After the Berlin Wall written by Hope M. Harrison and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory history of the commemoration of the Berlin Wall and its significance in defining contemporary German national identity.

Download or read book Maxwell Taylor s Cold War written by Ingo Trauschweizer and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-04-19 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General Maxwell Taylor served at the nerve centers of US military policy and Cold War strategy and experienced firsthand the wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as crises in Berlin and Cuba. Along the way he became an adversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's nuclear deterrence strategy and a champion of President John F. Kennedy's shift toward Flexible Response. Taylor also remained a public critic of defense policy and civil-military relations into the 1980s and was one of the most influential American soldiers, strategists, and diplomats. However, many historians describe him as a politicized, dishonest manipulator whose actions deeply affected the national security establishment and had lasting effects on civil-military relations in the United States. In Maxwell Taylor's Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam, author Ingo Trauschweizer traces the career of General Taylor, a Kennedy White House insider and architect of American strategy in Vietnam. Working with newly accessible and rarely used primary sources, including the Taylor Papers and government records from the Cold War crisis, Trauschweizer describes and analyzes this polarizing figure in American history. The major themes of Taylor's career, how to prepare the armed forces for global threats and localized conflicts and how to devise sound strategy and policy for a full spectrum of threats, remain timely and the concerns he raised about the nature of the national security apparatus have not been resolved.

Download or read book Stalin s War on Japan written by Charles Stephenson and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-07-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did Japan surrender in 1945 because of the death and devastation caused by the atomic bombs dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or because of the crushing defeat inflicted on their armies by the Soviet Union in Manchukuo, the puppet state they set up in north-east China? Indeed, the Red Army's rapid and total victory in Manchukuo has been relatively neglected by historians. Charles Stephenson, in this scholarly and highly readable new study, describes the political, diplomatic and military build-up to the Soviet offensive and its decisive outcome. He also considers to what extent Japan's capitulation is attributable to the atomic bomb or the stunningly successful entry of the Soviet Union into the conflict. The military side of the story is explored in fascinating detail - the invasion of Manchukuo itself where the Soviet 'Deep Battle' concept was employed with shattering results, and secondary actions in Korea, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. But equally absorbing is the account of the decision-making that gave rise to the offensive and the political and diplomatic background to it, and in particular the Yalta conference. There, Stalin allowed the Americans to persuade him to join the war in the east; a conflict he was determined on entering anyway. Charles Stephenson's engrossing narrative throws new light on the last act of the Second World War.

Download or read book Over the Hump written by William H. Tunner and published by . This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The memoirs of Lieutenant General William H. Tunner, a key leader in the development of military airlift from World War II through 1960. He recounts major challenges of his career: organizing the aircraft ferrying effort of World War II, flying the "Hump" route of supply from India to China, managing the Berlin Airlift in 1948 and 1949, and commanding the Combat Cargo Command of Far East Air Forces in the crucial early months of the Korean War. Photos.

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.