Download or read book The German Way of War on the Eastern Front 1943 1945 written by Jaap Jan Brouwer and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2024-11-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early 1943 marked a turning point in the battle on the Eastern Front. After the devastating defeat at Stalingrad, the German army was no longer able to take the initiative and control the battle. In the following years, despite tactical victories, the German army would be gradually pushed back until Soviet units eventually reached Berlin and captured the Reichstag. In the meantime, both enemies had learned a great deal and new weapons were rapidly introduced onto the battlefield. On 8 May 1945, this bloody confrontation between the two giants ended in the unconditional surrender of Germany and a new geopolitical equilibrium was created. This titanic battle is illustrated with witness accounts from generals, soldiers and civilians. Attention is not only paid to the course of the battle, but also to the tactics and organizational dimensions of the armies involved, the challenges of the vastness of the country, the dilemmas for civilians caught between the fighting parties and the flight of millions of Germans to the West in an attempt to escape from the atrocities of the Soviet army. The book also considers the role of the Reichsbahn in the field of logistics, and the importance of the innovation and production capacity of both armies. In also pays attention to the origins of the Cold War that was to follow this confrontation and which would last until 1989.

Download or read book The German Way of War on the Eastern Front 1941 1943 written by Jaap Jan Brouwer and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2024-03-30 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 22 June 1941, at 0410hrs, Operation Barbarossa began. More than 3 million German soldiers crossed the border with the Soviet Union and moved east, where 4.7 million Soviet soldiers were waiting for them. Hitler expected his troops would be on the Volga before the end of the year and that important cities such as Moscow and Leningrad would have been captured. But the reality was very different; the Germans made impressive territorial gains, but their offensive eventually came to a halt at Stalingrad in December 1942, which proved to be a turning point in the war. This titanic battle is illustrated here using eyewitness accounts from generals, soldiers and civilians. Attention is not only paid to the course of the battle, but also to the tactics and organizational dimensions of the armies involved, the challenges of the vastness of the country, the dilemmas for people in the conquered areas, and the way the Germans tried to conquer their hearts while at the same time fighting a fierce guerrilla war. The role of the Reichsbahn in the field of logistics is also examined, as is the importance of the innovation and production capacity of both armies.

Download or read book The Wehrmacht Retreats written by Robert M. Citino and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout 1943, the German army, heirs to a military tradition that demanded and perfected relentless offensive operations, succumbed to the realities of its own overreach and the demands of twentieth-century industrialized warfare. In his new study, prizewinning author Robert Citino chronicles this weakening Wehrmacht, now fighting desperately on the defensive but still remarkably dangerous and lethal. Drawing on his impeccable command of German-language sources, Citino offers fresh, vivid, and detailed treatments of key campaigns during this fateful year: the Allied landings in North Africa, General von Manstein's great counterstroke in front of Kharkov, the German attack at Kasserine Pass, the titanic engagement of tanks and men at Kursk, the Soviet counteroffensives at Orel and Belgorod, and the Allied landings in Sicily and Italy. Through these events, he reveals how a military establishment historically configured for violent aggression reacted when the tables were turned; how German commanders viewed their newest enemy, the U.S. Army, after brutal fighting against the British and Soviets; and why, despite their superiority in materiel and manpower, the Allies were unable to turn 1943 into a much more decisive year. Applying the keen operational analysis for which he is so highly regarded, Citino contends that virtually every flawed German decision-to defend Tunis, to attack at Kursk and then call off the offensive, to abandon Sicily, to defend Italy high up the boot and then down much closer to the toe-had strong supporters among the army's officer corps. He looks at all of these engagements from the perspective of each combatant nation and also establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt the synergistic interplay between the fronts. Ultimately, Citino produces a grim portrait of the German officer corps, dispelling the longstanding tendency to blame every bad decision on Hitler. Filled with telling vignettes and sharp portraits and copiously documented, The Wehrmacht Retreats is a dramatic and fast-paced narrative that will engage military historians and general readers alike.

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 Death of the Wehrmacht written by Robert M. Citino and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2007-10-22 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Hitler and the German military, 1942 was a key turning point of World War II, as an overstretched but still lethal Wehrmacht replaced brilliant victories and huge territorial gains with stalemates and strategic retreats. In this major reevaluation of that crucial year, Robert Citino shows that the German army's emerging woes were rooted as much in its addiction to the "war of movement"-attempts to smash the enemy in "short and lively" campaigns-as they were in Hitler's deeply flawed management of the war. From the overwhelming operational victories at Kerch and Kharkov in May to the catastrophic defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Death of the Wehrmacht offers an eye-opening new view of that decisive year. Building upon his widely respected critique in The German Way of War, Citino shows how the campaigns of 1942 fit within the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions. He examines every major campaign and battle in the Russian and North African theaters throughout the year to assess how a military geared to quick and decisive victories coped when the tide turned against it. Citino also reconstructs the German generals' view of the war and illuminates the multiple contingencies that might have produced more favorable results. In addition, he cites the fatal extreme aggressiveness of German commanders like Erwin Rommel and assesses how the German system of command and its commitment to the "independence of subordinate commanders" suffered under the thumb of Hitler and chief of staff General Franz Halder. More than the turning point of a war, 1942 marked the death of a very old and traditional pattern of warmaking, with the classic "German way of war" unable to meet the challenges of the twentieth century. Blending masterly research with a gripping narrative, Citino's remarkable work provides a fresh and revealing look at how one of history's most powerful armies began to founder in its quest for world domination.

Download or read book German Army on the Eastern Front The Retreat 1943 1945 written by Ian Baxter and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-02-29 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pictorial history of the German Army retreating west from the Soviet Army in the final stages of World War II. After the defeat at Stalingrad in January 1943, the German Army’s front lines were slowly smashed to pieces by the growing might of the Soviet Army. Yet these soldiers continued to fight. Even after the failed battle of the Kursk in the summer of 1943, and then a year later when the Russians launched their mighty summer offensive, code names Operation Bagration, the German Army continued to fight on, withdrawing under constant enemy ground and air bombardments. As the final months of retreat were played out on the Eastern Front in early 1945, it depicts how the once vaunted German Army, with diminishing resources, withdrew back across the Polish/German frontier to Berlin itself.

Download or read book War on the Eastern Front 1941 1945 written by James Lucas and published by Random House Value Publishing. This book was released on 1982 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Text and photos record the conditions and experiences of German soldiers on the battle front with Russia.

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 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 The Wehrmacht s Last Stand written by Robert M. Citino and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 1943, the war was lost, and most German officers knew it. Three quarters of a century later, the question persists: What kept the German army going in an increasingly hopeless situation? Where some historians have found explanations in the power of Hitler or the role of ideology, Robert M. Citino, the world’s leading scholar on the subject, posits a more straightforward solution: Bewegungskrieg, the way of war cultivated by the Germans over the course of history. In this gripping account of German military campaigns during the final phase of World War II, Citino charts the inevitable path by which Bewegungskrieg, or a “war of movement,” inexorably led to Nazi Germany’s defeat. The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand analyzes the German Totenritt, or “death ride,” from January 1944—with simultaneous Allied offensives at Anzio and Ukraine—until May 1945, the collapse of the Wehrmacht in the field, and the Soviet storming of Berlin. In clear and compelling prose, and bringing extensive reading of the German-language literature to bear, Citino focuses on the German view of these campaigns. Often very different from the Allied perspective, this approach allows for a more nuanced and far-reaching understanding of the last battles of the Wehrmacht than any now available. With Citino’s previous volumes, Death of the Wehrmacht and The Wehrmacht Retreats, The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand completes a uniquely comprehensive picture of the German army’s strategy, operations, and performance against the Allies in World War II.

Download or read book The First Day on the Eastern Front written by Craig W. H. Luther and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: June 22, 1941: three million German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union as part of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, aiming to destroy the Soviet Union and secure its land for the Third Reich. In the spirit of the classic First Day on the Somme, Craig Luther narrates the events of that fateful day on the Eastern Front, one of the pivotal days of WW II.

Download or read book War on the Eastern Front written by James Lucas and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dawn on Sunday 22 June 1941 saw the opening onslaughts of Operation Barbarossa as German forces stormed forward into the Soviet Union. Few of them were to survive the five long years of bitter struggle.??A posting to the Eastern Front during the Second World War was rightly regarded with dread by the German soldiers. They were faced by the unremitting hostility of the climate, the people and even, at times, their own leadership. They saw epic battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk, and yet it was a daily war of attrition which ultimately proved fatal for Hitler's ambition and the German military machine. ??In this classic account leading military historian James Lucas examines different aspects of the fighting, from war in the trenches to a bicycle-mounted anti-tank unit fighting against the oncoming Russian hordes. Told through the experiences of the German soldiers who endured these nightmarish years of warfare, War on the Eastern Front is a unique record of this cataclysmic campaign.

Download or read book The Eastern Front 1943 1944 written by Karl-Heinz Frieser and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The latest volume in the magisterial Germany and the Second World War series, volume VIII, deals with one of the most eventful phases of the Second World War: the battles on the eastern front in 1943 and 1944. In no other period of the war, apart from its concluding phase in 1945, did the Wehrmacht suffer such enormous losses. The land battles of those years, first and foremost the battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943, were among the biggest in world history. In the winter of 1943 and 1944 the Red Army showed itself for the first time capable of conducting large-scale offensives against all German army groups simultaneously. It was no longer a matter of isolated flare-ups: the whole eastern front was in flames. The dramatic climax was reached in the summer of 1944, when the collapse of Army Group Centre led to what was then the heaviest defeat in German military history. It was nevertheless overshadowed by events on the western front, with the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. And it is that which dominates perceptions in western societies to this day and has relegated the catastrophe in the east, despite its unprecedented proportions, to the rank of an almost 'forgotten war'."--Dust jacket.

Download or read book Hitler Versus Stalin The Eastern Front 1944 1945 Warsaw to Berlin written by Nik Cornish and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fourth and final volume of Nik Cornish's photographic history of the Second World War on the Eastern Front the defeat of the German army, the destruction and occupation of the cities in eastern Germany and the humiliation of the German people are shown in over 150 mostly unpublished wartime photographs. The extent of the fighting, from the Baltic in the north to the Balkans in the south, is recorded in a selection of graphic images, as is the tenacity and desperation of the German resistance and the unstoppable force of the Red Army as offensive after offensive crushed the Third Reich. While most of the photographs show the Red Army, its troops, equipment and the conditions in which it fought, the shattered cities of Germany and eastern Europe and the suffering and destitution of the civilians are recorded in graphic detail.

Download or read book Germany and the Second World War The Eastern Front 1943 1944 the war in the east and on the neighbouring fronts written by and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second in the comprehensive ten-volume Germany and the Second World War. The five volumes so far published in German take the story to the end of 1941, and have achieved international acclaim as a major contribution to historical study. Under the auspices of the Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Research Institute for Military History), a team of renowned historians has combined a full synthesis of existing material with the latest research to produce what will be the definitive history of the Second World War. This volume surveys the first year of the war deliberately begun by Nazi Germany. The authors examine the train of interconnected political and military events, and set military operations against the background of Hitler's war policy and general aims, both immediate and long term. The authors show that the conflict took a course quite different from that which Hitler had intended, but nevertheless resulted in a series of conquests for the Third Reich.

Download or read book Enduring the Whirlwind written by Gregory Liedtke and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the best efforts of a number of historians, many aspects of the ferocious struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War remain obscure or shrouded in myth. One of the most persistent of these is the notion - largely created by many former members of its own officer corps in the immediate postwar period - that the German Army was a paragon of military professionalism and operational proficiency whose defeat on the Eastern Front was solely attributable to the amateurish meddling of a crazed former Corporal and the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Red Army. A key pillar upon which the argument of German numerical-weakness vis-à-vis the Red Army has been constructed is the assertion that Germany was simply incapable of providing its army with the necessary quantities of men and equipment needed to replace its losses. In consequence, as their losses outstripped the availability of replacements, German field formations became progressively weaker until they were incapable of securing their objectives or, eventually, of holding back the swelling might of the Red Army. This work seeks to address the notion of German numerical-weakness in terms of Germany's ability to replace its losses and regenerate its military strength, and assess just how accurate this argument was during the crucial first half of the Russo-German War (June 1941-June 1943). Employing a host of primary documents and secondary literature, it traces the development and many challenges of the German Army from the prewar period until the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. It continues on to chart the first two years of the struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union, with a particular emphasis upon the scale of German personnel and equipment losses, and how well these were replaced. It also includes extensive examinations into the host of mitigating factors that both dictated the course of Germany's campaign in the East and its replacement and regeneration capabilities. In contrast to most accounts of the conflict, this study finds that numerical-weakness being the primary factor in the defeat of the Ostheer - specifically as it relates to the strength and condition of the German units involved - has been overemphasized and frequently exaggerated. In fact, Germany was actually able to regenerate its forces to a remarkable degree with a steady flow of fresh men and equipment, and German field divisions on the Eastern Front were usually far stronger than the accepted narratives of the war would have one believe.

Download or read book Operation Barbarossa written by Christian Hartmann and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the war in the East between 1941 and 1945 from both the German and the Soviet perspectives, covering the crimes of both sides.