Download or read book Kiev 1941 written by David Stahel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-03 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In just four weeks in the summer of 1941 the German Wehrmacht wrought unprecedented destruction on four Soviet armies, conquering central Ukraine and killing or capturing three quarters of a million men. This was the Battle of Kiev - one of the largest and most decisive battles of World War II and, for Hitler and Stalin, a battle of crucial importance. In this book, David Stahel charts the battle's dramatic course and aftermath, uncovering the irreplaceable losses suffered by Germany's 'panzer groups' despite their battlefield gains, and the implications of these losses for the German war effort. He illuminates the inner workings of the German army as well as the experiences of ordinary soldiers, showing that with the Russian winter looming and Soviet resistance still unbroken, victory came at huge cost and confirmed the turning point in Germany's war in the East.
Download or read book The First Battle of Kiev written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-12 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the fighting *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." - Adolf Hitler In the warm predawn darkness of June 22, 1941, 3 million men waited along a front hundreds of miles long, stretching from the Baltic coast of Poland to the Balkans. Ahead of them in the darkness lay the Soviet Union, its border guarded by millions of Red Army troops echeloned deep throughout the huge spaces of Russia. This massive gathering of Wehrmacht soldiers from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and his allied states - notably Hungary and Romania - stood poised to carry out Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's surprise attack against the country of his putative ally, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The Soviets were so caught by surprise at the start of the attack that the Germans were able to push several hundred miles into Russia across a front that stretched dozens of miles long, reaching the major cities of Leningrad and Sevastopol in just three months. The first major Russian city in their path was Minsk, which fell in only six days. In order to make clear his determination to win at all costs, Stalin had the three men in charge of the troops defending Minsk executed for their failure to hold their position. This move, along with unspeakable atrocities by the German soldiers against the people of Minsk, solidified the Soviet will. In the future, Russian soldiers would fight to the death rather than surrender, and in July, Stalin exhorted the nation, "It is time to finish retreating. Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan. ... Henceforth the solid law of discipline for each commander, Red Army soldier, and commissar should be the requirement - not a single step back without order from higher command." Backed by extremely shrewd and professionally executed logistics arrangements based on rapidly-advanced railways, Army Group Center plunged forward through Minsk, then Smolensk, like an arrow aimed at Moscow, a crucial Soviet rail hub and manufacturing center. The Wehrmacht's leadership initially tasked Army Groups North and South with guarding the flanks of Army Group Center. They, too, smashed forward through Soviet defenses, but only as secondary operations supporting the main thrust. However, as the Germans began taking Smolensk, Hitler suddenly diverted significant forces to the northern and southern flanks. Heinz Guderian's Panzer Group 2 found itself sent to assist in the Ukraine rather than smashing directly through to Moscow. The diversion of this force increased the scope of the Kiev encirclement and the eventual haul of prisoners, but Guderian himself opposed it: "Hoth and myself - in contradiction to this - were anxious to continue the advance eastwards with our panzer forces according to the original, expressed intentions of the supreme command, and to capture the objective initially assigned to us." (Guderian, 1996, 166-167). Despite the logistical difficulties generated by the new emphasis on a rapid advance in the south, and the stubborn, courageous, but disastrously uncoordinated resistance of the Red Army, the Germans succeeded in winning the gigantic struggle for Kiev and the Ukraine. While the First Battle of Kiev represented an operational triumph for the Germans, resulting in an astounding number of Red Army prisoners and the complete collapse of the Ukraine's defenses, the victory came at a high price. Hitler's diversion of Heinz Guderian's Panzer Group II south from the Army Group Center Schwerpunkt increased the power and effectiveness of the Kiev encirclement, but cast away the near certainty of taking Moscow itself in August. Meanwhile, for their part, the Soviets tried hard to forget the disastrous battle ever occurred, going so far as to omit its mention in subsequent histories of the war.
Download or read book The German Campaign in Russia written by George E. Blau and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Kiev 1941 written by David Stahel and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In just four weeks in the summer of 1941 the German Wehrmacht wrought unprecedented destruction on four Soviet armies, conquering central Ukraine and killing or capturing three quarters of a million men. This was the Battle of Kiev - one of the largest and most decisive battles of World War II and, for Hitler and Stalin, a battle of crucial importance. For the first time, David Stahel charts the battle's dramatic course and aftermath, uncovering the irreplaceable losses suffered by Germany's 'panzer groups' despite their battlefield gains, and the implications of these losses for the German war effort. He illuminates the inner workings of the German army as well as the experiences of ordinary soldiers, showing that with the Russian winter looming and Soviet resistance still unbroken, victory came at huge cost and confirmed the turning point in Germany's war in the East"--
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.
Download or read book Fighting the Russians in Winter Three Case Studies written by A. F. Chew and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1981 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Zhitomir Berdichev written by Stephen Barratt and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Soviet Night Operations in World War II written by Claude R. Sasso and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1982 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bloody Triangle written by Victor Kamenir and published by Zenith Imprint. This book was released on 2008 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in-depth account of one of the great tank battles of WWII, when more than 2000 German and Soviet tanks met in northwestern Ukraine in 1941.
Download or read book The Soviet Airborne Experience written by David M. Glantz and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1984 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents: The Prewar Experience; Evolution of Airborne Forces During World War II; Operational Employment: Vyaz'ma, January-February 1942; Operational Employment: Vyaz'ma, February-June 1942; Operational Employment: On the Dnepr, September 1943; Tactical Employment; The Postwar Years.
Download or read book The Pogroms in Ukraine 1918 19 Prelude to the Holocaust written by Nokhem Shtif and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2019-06-10 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1918 and 1921 an estimated 100,000 Jewish people were killed, maimed or tortured in pogroms in Ukraine. Hundreds of Jewish communities were burned to the ground and hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless and destitute, including orphaned children. A number of groups were responsible for these brutal attacks, including the Volunteer Army, a faction of the Russian White Army. The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-19: Prelude to the Holocaust is a vivid and horrifying account of the atrocities committed by the Volunteer Army, written by Nokhem Shtif, an eminent Yiddish linguist and social activist who joined the relief efforts on behalf of the pogrom survivors in Kiev. Shtif’s testimony, published in 1923, was born from his encounters there and from the weighty archive of documentation amassed by the relief workers. This was one of the earliest efforts to systematically record human rights atrocities on a mass scale. Originally written in Yiddish and here skillfully translated and introduced by Maurice Wolfthal, The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-19 brings to light a terrible and historically neglected series of persecutions that foreshadowed the Holocaust by twenty years. It is essential reading for academics and students in the fields of human rights, Jewish studies, Russian and Soviet studies, and Ukraine studies. Maurice Wolfthal has also written the award-winning translation of Bernard Weinstein’s The Jewish Unions in America, also published by Open Book Publishers.
Download or read book Operation Barbarossa and Germany s Defeat in the East written by David Stahel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an important reassessment of the failure of Germany's 1941 campaign against the Soviet Union.
Download or read book Heroes and Villains written by David R. Marples and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Certain to engender debate in the media, especially in Ukraine itself, as well as the academic community. Using a wide selection of newspapers, journals, monographs, and school textbooks from different regions of the country, the book examines the sensitive issue of the changing perspectives ? often shifting 180 degrees ? on several events discussed in the new narratives of the Stalin years published in the Ukraine since the late Gorbachev period until 2005. These events were pivotal to Ukrainian history in the 20th century, including the Famine of 1932?33 and Ukrainian insurgency during the war years. This latter period is particularly disputed, and analyzed with regard to the roles of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) during and after the war. Were these organizations "freedom fighters" or "collaborators"? To what extent are they the architects of the modern independent state? "This excellent book fills a longstanding void in literature on the politics of memory in Eastern Europe. Professor Marples has produced an innovative and courageous study of how postcommunist Ukraine is rewriting its Stalinist and wartime past by gradually but inconsistently substituting Soviet models with nationalist interpretations. Grounded in an attentive reading of Ukrainian scholarship and journalism from the last two decades, this book offers a balanced take on such sensitive issues as the Great Famine of 1932-33 and the role of the Ukrainian nationalist insurgents during World War II. Instead of taking sides in the passionate debates on these subjects, Marples analyzes the debates themselves as discursive sites where a new national history is being forged. Clearly written and well argued, this study will make a major impact both within and beyond academia." - Serhy Yekelchyk, University of Victoria
Download or read book Babi Yar written by А Анатолий and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1970 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published in censored form in Yunost 1966, under the title 'Babi Yar'"--T.p. verso.
Download or read book Cross Channel Attack written by Gordon A. Harrison and published by BDD Promotional Books Company. This book was released on 1993-12 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the Allied invasion of Normandy, with extensive details about the planning stage, called Operation Overlord, as well as the fighting on Utah and Omaha Beaches.
Download or read book Killing in War written by Jeff McMahan and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-04-23 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Killing a person is in general among the most seriously wrongful forms of action, yet most of us accept that it can be permissible to kill people on a large scale in war. Does morality become more permissive in a state of war? Jeff McMahan argues that conditions in war make no difference to what morality permits and the justifications for killing people are the same in war as they are in other contexts, such as individual self-defence. This view is radically at odds with the traditional theory of the just war and has implications that challenge common sense views. McMahan argues, for example, that it is wrong to fight in a war that is unjust because it lacks a just cause.
Download or read book Stalin s Folly written by Konstantin Pleshakov and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stalin's cunning and ruthlessness brought him to supreme power in the Soviet Union. Yet in the summer of 1941 he appeared to lose his touch. With unparalleled access to the Soviet archives, this text reveals why the dictator behaved as he did.
