Download or read book The Fall of Hitler s Fortress City written by Isabel Denny and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The harrowing, tragic story of a city and a people ravaged by one of the most brutal battles of World War II. In 1945, in the face of the advancing Red Army, two and a half million people were forced out of Germany’s most easterly province, East Prussia, and in particular its capital, Königsberg. Their flight was a direct result of Hitler’s ill-fated decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941. Now that the Germans were in retreat, the horrors of Leningrad and Stalingrad were to be avenged by an army determined not only to invade Germany but to take over its eastern territories. The Russians launched Operation Bagration in June 1944 to coincide with the D-Day landings. As US and British forces pushed west, the Russians liberated Eastern Europe and made their first attacks on German soil in the autumn of 1944. Königsberg itself was badly damaged by two British air raids at the end of August 1944, and the main offensive against the city by the Red Army began in January 1945. The depleted and poorly armed German army could do little to hold it back, and by the end of January, East Prussia was cut off. The Russians exacted a terrible revenge on the civilian population, who were forced to flee across the freezing Baltic coast in an attempt to escape. On April 9, the city surrendered to the Russians after a four-day onslaught. Through firsthand accounts as well as archival material, The Fall of Hitler’s Fortress City tells the dramatic story of a place and its people that bore the brunt of Russia’s vengeance against the Nazi regime. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Download or read book The Fall of Hitler s Fortress City written by Isabel Denny and published by Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal. This book was released on 2007 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First full-length study of the Battle for Königsberg. Charts the destruction of the medieval East Prussian city ; reveals the desperate civilian exodus.

Download or read book Hitler s Final Fortress written by Richard Hargreaves and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 1945, the Red Army plunged into the Third Reich from the east, rolling up territory and crushing virtually everything in its path, with one exception: the city of Breslau, which Hitler had declared a fortress-city, to be defended to the death. This book examines in detail the notorious four-month siege of Breslau. • The first full-length English-language account of the bloody siege • Chronicles the bitter struggle as the Red Army encircled Breslau and eventually pillaged the city, taking savage retribution on the survivors • Details the brutal methods used by the city's Nazi leaders to keep German troops fighting and maintain order

Download or read book Violence in Defeat written by Bastiaan Willems and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how the Wehrmacht's defensive conduct contributed to the radicalisation of behavioural patterns in Germany during the war's final months.

Download or read book Battle of the Cities written by Anthony Tucker-Jones and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2023-07-30 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Stalingrad battle and the Leningrad siege were just two of the brutal, devastating urban conflicts that marked the awful struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The cities were strategic fixed points in the sweeping advances and retreats of the opposing armies across eastern Europe. Yet no one has concentrated on these city battles before or has sought to tell the story of the campaigns through the fighting that took place in and around them. That is Anthony Tucker-Jones’s purpose in this concise and vivid history of the urban war on the Eastern Front. Early in the war, during the Wehrmacht’s crushing offensives of 1941 and 1942, the Red Army was forced out of a series of key cities. Moscow was threatened, Leningrad surrounded. Then, after the climactic battle at Stalingrad, the Red Army with increasing confidence, speed and power drove the Germans from the Soviet and East European capitals they had occupied. The final urban battles were fought in Germany's cities, culminating in Berlin. As he traces the course of the fighting for each city, Anthony Tucker-Jones looks at the local circumstances, the opposing forces, the strategic significance and the tactics employed. He focuses not only on the destruction and cruelty of such warfare, but on the heroism displayed on both sides and on the fate of the civilians who found themselves on the front line.

Download or read book Hitler s Fortresses in the East written by Alexey Isaev 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: 'Fortresses must carry out the same tasks as the fortresses of old....They must allow themselves to be surrounded and thus tie down as many enemy forces as possible.' So Hitler directed in March 1944 and, in so doing, sealed the fate of Ternopol', Kovel', Poznan and Breslau, cities in the Ukraine and Poland that were in the path of the Red Army's advance towards Nazi Germany. German forces, under orders to resist at all costs, adopted all-round defence and struggled to hold out while waiting for relief - which never came. In this gripping and original book, Alexey Isaev describes, in vivid detail, what happened next -intense and ruthless fighting, horrendous casualties among soldiers and civilians, the fabric of these historic cities torn apart. His account is based on pioneering archival research which offers us an unrivalled insight into the tactics on both sides, the experience of the close-quarter fighting in the streets and houses, and the dreadful aftermath. At the same time he shows why these cities were chosen and how the wider war passed them by as the Wehrmacht retreated and the battlefront moved westward. Each of these cities suffered a similar fate to Stalingrad but their story has never been told before in such graphic and circumstantial detail.

Download or read book Normandy written by Wayne Vansant and published by Zenith Press. This book was released on 2012-09-15 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Normandy depicts the planning and execution of Operation Overlord in 96 full-color pages. The initial paratrooper assault is shown, as well as the storming of the five D-Day beaches: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. But the story does not end there. Once the Allies got ashore, they had to stay ashore. The Germans made every effort to push them back into the sea. This book depicts the such key events in the Allied liberation of Europe as: 1. Construction of the Mulberry Harbors, two giant artificial harbors built in England and floated across the English Channel so that troops, vehicles, and supplies could be offloaded across the invasion beaches.2. The Capture of Cherbourg, the nearest French port, against a labyrinth of Gennan pillboxes.3. The American fight through the heavy bocage (hedgerow country) to take the vital town of Saint-Lô.4. The British-Canadian struggle for the city of Caen against the “Hitler Youth Division,” made up of 23,000 seventeen- and eighteen-year-old Nazi fanatics.5. The breakout of General Patton’s Third Army and the desperate US 30th Division’s defense of Mortaine.6. The Falaise Pocket, known as the “Killing Ground, ” where the remnants of two German armies were trapped and bombed and shelled into submission. The slaughter was so great that 5,000 Germans were buried in one mass grave. 7. The Liberation of Paris, led by the 2nd Free French Armored Division, which had been fighting for four long years with this goal in mind.

Download or read book Ostkrieg written by Stephen G. Fritz and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On June 22, 1941, Germany launched the greatest land assault in history on the Soviet Union, an attack that Adolf Hitler deemed crucial to ensure German economic and political survival. As the key theater of the war for the Germans, the eastern front consumed enormous levels of resources and accounted for 75 percent of all German casualties. Despite the significance of this campaign to Germany and to the war as a whole, few English-language publications of the last thirty-five years have addressed these pivotal events. In Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East, Stephen G. Fritz bridges the gap in scholarship by incorporating historical research from the last several decades into an accessible, comprehensive, and coherent narrative. His analysis of the Russo-German War from a German perspective covers all aspects of the eastern front, demonstrating the interrelation of military events, economic policy, resource exploitation, and racial policy that first motivated the invasion. This in-depth account challenges accepted notions about World War II and promotes greater understanding of a topic that has been neglected by historians.

Download or read book Exorcising Hitler written by Frederick Taylor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 was an event nearly unprecedented in history. Only the fall of the Roman Empire fifteen hundred years earlier compares to the destruction visited on Germany. The country's cities lay in ruins, its economic base devastated. The German people stood at the brink of starvation, millions of them still in POW camps. This was the starting point as the Allies set out to build a humane, democratic nation on the ruins of the vanquished Nazi state-arguably the most monstrous regime the world has ever seen. In Exorcising Hitler, master historian Frederick Taylor tells the story of Germany's Year Zero and what came next. He describes the bitter endgame of war, the murderous Nazi resistance, the vast displacement of people in Central and Eastern Europe, and the nascent cold war struggle between Soviet and Western occupiers. The occupation was a tale of rivalries, cynical realpolitik, and blunders, but also of heroism, ingenuity, and determination-not least that of the German people, who shook off the nightmare of Nazism and rebuilt their battered country. Weaving together accounts of occupiers and Germans, high and low alike Exorcising Hitler is a tour de force of both scholarship and storytelling, the first comprehensive account of this critical episode in modern history.

Download or read book Baltic Cities written by Neil Taylor and published by Bradt Travel Guides. This book was released on 2008 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revamped and expanded version of Bradt's Baltic Capitals, this guide recognises a shift in the nature of travel in the region. No longer limited to a Baltics' itinerary covering Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, the guide incorporates the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, the Baltic coast from Klaipeda to Liepaja, and inland cities of Kaunas and Tartu.Whereas the Baltic states reflect western European influence, Kaliningrad - an offshoot of Russia - is very different: the Cyrillic alphabet remains and tourists can still see a statue of Lenin, or walk along a Revolution Road. The perfect companion, Baltic Cities details each city's historic sights, from museums to churches, together with scenic walking tours and essential details of where to eat and stay.

Download or read book Fortress Ploesti written by Jay A. Stout and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2003-11-19 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of the World War II Allied bombing campaign to destroy pivotal Romanian oil refineries—by the retired Marine Corps fighter pilot. Unlike previous books on Ploesti, Jay Stout goes well beyond the famous big and bloody raid of August 1943 and depicts the entire 1944 strategic campaign of twenty-plus missions that all but knocked Ploesti out of the war and denied the German war machine the fuel and lubricants it so desperately needed. Stout’s account is also a launching point for the author’s inquiries into many aspects of the American strategic bombing effort in World War II. It delivers across the board. Stout, who served as a Marine F/A-18 pilot in the First Gulf War, asks questions about aviation combat history and technique that any modern combat pilot would be dying to ask. He carries the ball far beyond the goal post set by all other Ploesti historians. He has gone out of his way to describe the defenses throughout the campaign, and he brings in the voices of Ploesti’s defenders to complement the tales of Allied airmen who brought Ploesti to ruin. He describes the role of the bombers, as well as that of the fighters, the antiaircraft defenses, even the technique of obscuring the Ploesti complex with smoke. Stout’s lucid presentation of complex issues at the tactical and strategic levels makes his narrative “a must for those with a special interest in the attacks on Ploesti” (World War II History Magazine).

Download or read book British Intelligence and Hitler s Empire in the Soviet Union 1941 1945 written by Ben Wheatley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first detailed study of Britain's open source intelligence (OSINT) operations during the Second World War, showing how accurate and influential OSINT could be and ultimately how those who analysed this intelligence would shape British post-war policy towards the Soviet Union. Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the enemy and neutral press covering the German occupation of the Baltic states offered the British government a vital stream of OSINT covering the entire German East. OSINT was the only form of intelligence available to the British from the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union, due to the Foreign Office suspension of all covert intelligence gathering inside the Soviet Union. The risk of jeopardising the fragile Anglo-Soviet alliance was considered too great to continue covert intelligence operations. In this book, Wheatley primarily examines OSINT acquired by the Stockholm Press Reading Bureau (SPRB) in Sweden and analysed and despatched to the British government by the Foreign Research and Press Service (FRPS) Baltic States Section and its successor, the Foreign Office Research Department (FORD). Shedding light on a neglected area of Second World War intelligence and employing useful case studies of the FRPS/FORD Baltic States Section's Intelligence, British Intelligence and Hitler's Empire in the Soviet Union, 1941-1945 makes a new and important argument which will be of great value to students and scholars of British intelligence history and the Second World War.

Download or read book Breslau 1945 Hitler s final fortress written by Eduardo Manuel Gil Martínez and published by Soldiershop Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1944 Adolf Hitler ordered the creation of a defensive line based on fortress cities (festung) capable of stopping the enemy and then serving as a base for a counter-offensive that few saw as possible. Breslau, in Lower Silesia, was one of the chosen cities. For its fortification defensive rings and bunkers were built, artillery was reinforced and the civilian population was militarized. At the time of the Soviet attack the city was immediately surrounded. From February 13th, 1945 to May 6th, 1945, its supply could only come by air and was directed from Berlin. Parachute units arrived on gliders, while on the ground regiments such as the SS “Besslein” repelled the enemy and carried out hand attacks that forced the Russians to defend themselves. Breslau was not conquered: its military commander surrendered the city only when Berlin had already fallen and the fighting in Europe had stopped almost everywhere. During the siege, German forces suffered more than 6.000 deaths and 23.000 wounded to defend Breslau, while the Soviet losses were more than 60.000. The civilian casualties were as high as 80.000. Breslau was the last major city in Germany to surrender, capitulating only two days before the end of the war in Europe. This new issue of the Witness to War collection, illustrated with over a hundred pictures, offers the reader the exciting story of what was the last stronghold of the Reich.

Download or read book The Fall of Europe written by Fred Majdalany and published by New Word City. This book was released on 2018-05-24 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He boasted his empire would last a thousand years; it collapsed within a decade. This was Adolf Hitler's Europe - the formidable fortress that cast its last shadow across half the world and which, indeed, seemed nearly ready to sustain itself for a millennium. But it was corroding from within before the Allies stormed the walls. The Fall of Europe tells us why. Fred Majdalany's sweeping history condenses an enormous amount of material with precision and grace, unraveling the story of the Nazi collapse and offering fresh insights into the men who shaped the most massive of wars.

Download or read book Understanding War written by Christian P. Potholm and published by UPA. This book was released on 2016-08-03 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third book in Professor Christian Potholm’s war trilogy (which includes Winning at War and War Wisdom), Understanding War provides a most workable bibliography dealing with the vast literature on war and warfare. As such, it provides insights into over 3000 works on this overwhelmingly extensive material. Understanding War is thus the most comprehensive annotated bibliography available today. Moreover, by dividing war material into eighteen overarching themes of analysis and fifty seminal topics, and focusing on these, Understanding War enables the reader to access and understand the broadest possible array of materials across both time and space, beginning with the earliest forms of warfare and concluding with the contemporary situation. Stimulating and thought-provoking, this volume is essential for an understanding of the breadth and depth of the vast scholarship dealing with war and warfare through human history and across cultures.

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 Life Theory and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt s Thought written by Karin Fry and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy typically ignores biographical, historical, and cultural aspects of theoriss’ lives in an attempt to take a supposedly abstract and objective view of their work. This book makes some new conclusions about Arendt’s theory by emphasizing how her experience of the world as displayed in her archival materials impacted her thought. Some aspects of Arendt’s life have been examined in detail before, including the fact she was stateless as well as her affair with Heidegger. Instead, this work explores different topics including the biographical and narrative moments of Arendt's own work, the role of archiving in her thought, pivotal events that have not been archived, her understanding of her own identities, and how it affected the role of identity politics in her work. Typically, group action is underemphasized in Arendt scholarship in comparison to individual action and often identity politics questions are considered to lie within the realm of the private. Although Arendt’s theory is problematic when discussing issues concerning identity politics, she did think identity politics could be public and political and that effective political actions may occur within groups. What makes this project unique are the innovative conclusions made by moving the archival and biographical evidence to the center in order to understand her theory more accurately and within its historical and cultural context. This volume will be of interest to professional scholars in Arendt’s work, but also to those who have a more general interest in her life and theory.