German Army On The Eastern Front The Retreat 1943 1945

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.

From Retreat to Defeat is a unique insight into the last desperate years of the German Army at war on the Eastern Front 1943-45. On the vast steppes of the Soviet Union, it describes how the German Army together with the elite mountain troops and Luftwaffe field divisions played a decisive role in trying to stem the rout along the disintegrating front lines. Drawing on previously rare and unpublished photographs with in-depth captions, the book provides an absorbing analysis of this traumatic period of the war. It reveals in detail how the beginning of the end began at the battle of Kursk, and how this massive operation led to the Red Army recapturing huge areas of the Soviet Union and bleeding white the German armies it struck. Despite the adverse situation in which the German Army was placed, soldiers were still infused to fight to the bitter end and attempt to build new lines of defense. But as the Red Army launched its long-awaited summer offensive in 1944, code-named `Operation Bagration`, the book reveals how the German Army were forced to withdraw under the constant hammer blows of ground and air bombardments. Those German forces that survived the artillery barrages, the onslaught of the tank armadas, and mass infantry assaults, streamed back from the battlefield and fought vicious battles through the Baltic states, Byelorussia, and built up new defenses along the Vistula in Poland. As the final months of the war were played out on the Eastern Front it depicts how the German Army, with diminishing resources, withdrew across a devastated Reich and fought out the last battles with party militia forces around a bombed and blasted Berlin.

This classic WWII history presents a comprehensive yet vividly detailed account of the Third Reich’s epic and bitter clash with the Red Army. The opening onslaughts of Operation Barbarossa began on June 22nd, 1941, as German forces stormed 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 faced the unremitting hostility of the climate, the people and even, at times, their own leadership. There were epic conflicts, such as the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk. But surrounding these famous events was a daily war of attrition which ultimately ground Hitler’s war machine to a halt. In this classic account, military historian James Lucas examines the Eastern Front from trench warfare to a bicycle-mounted antitank 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.

The Crushing of Army Group North 1944-45 on the Eastern Front tells the story in words and images of the last bitter months fought on Russian soil and the battle of the Baltic States that ensued. Drawing on rare and unpublished photos it reveals in detail how remnants of Army Group North were driven back to the borders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In the battles that followed, the retreating German Panzer and infantry divisions were encircled and annihilated. With the remnants were pushed back into East Prussia, and then fought to the death in the last few small pockets of land surrounding three ports of Libau in Kurland, Pillau in East Prussia and Danzig at the mouth of the River Vistula. It was here that the final battle of Army Group North would take place after Hitler ordered his troops to `stand and fight` and wage an unprecedented battle of attrition.

This WWII memoir of a Nazi officer is one of the most revealing firsthand accounts of the German retreat on the Eastern Front. A second lieutenant of the 4th Panzer division, Hans Schäufler commanded a Jagdpanther tank destroyer in rearguard actions against the Red Army in East Prussia in 1945. Then, as an infantryman, he took part in the doomed defense of Danzig before escaping across the Baltic in a small boat. His personal story offers a rare glimpse into the chaos and suffering endured by tens thousands of soldiers and civilians during the collapse of the Third Reich in the east. Along with vivid descriptions of the appalling conditions in Danzig and the fear and panic that gripped the city, Schäufler’s account provides valuable insight into the German army’s tactics as they fell back before the Soviet advance. While acute shortages of men, equipment, ammunition and fuel crippled the defense, the soldiers went on fighting for a lost cause in the face of certain defeat.

A Nazi infantryman recalls the horrors of combat against the Soviet Union in this WWII memoir as told to his son. Friedrich “Fritz” Sauer was posted to the Eastern Front in 1942. A soldier in the 132nd Infantry Division, he was deployed in Hitler’s grand invasion of Russia. But instead of the swift knockout blow the Germans had anticipated, Operation Barbarossa ground on for almost four years. Sent first to the Crimea and then the region around Leningrad, Fritz experienced horrors of all kinds. In this memoir, Fritz recalls losing his best friend to a sniper, rescuing the body of a fallen comrade from No Man’s Land, enduring Soviet tank assaults, and his own wounding during a counterattack. Fritz was later transferred to a tank assault regiment where, on a mission to contact another unit, he lost his way in the snow. After sheltering with a farmer’s family, Fritz headed west to flee the advancing Red Army. His subsequent journey home took many twists and turns.

The Italian Army’s participation in Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union has remained unrecognized and understudied. Bastian Matteo Scianna offers a wide-ranging, in-depth corrective. Mining Italian, German and Russian sources, he examines the history of the Italian campaign in the East between 1941 and 1943, as well as how the campaign was remembered and memorialized in the domestic and international arena during the Cold War. Linking operational military history with memory studies, this book revises our understanding of the Italian Army in the Second World War.