The First Day On The Eastern Front

Sunday, June 22, 1941: three million German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union as part of Hitler’s long-planned Operation Barbarossa, which aimed to destroy the Soviet Union, secure its land as lebensraum for the Third Reich, and enslave its Slavic population. From launching points in newly acquired Poland, in three prongs—North, Central, South—German forces stormed western Russia, virtually from the Baltic to the Black Sea. By late fall, the invasion had foundered against Russian weather, terrain, and resistance, and by December, it had failed at the gates of Moscow, but early on, as the Germans sliced through Russian territory and soldiers with impunity, capturing hundreds of thousands, it seemed as though Russia would fall. In the spirit of Martin Middlebrook’s classic First Day on the Somme, Craig Luther narrates the events of June 22, 1941, a day when German military might was at its peak and seemed as though it would easily conquer the Soviet Union, a day the common soldiers would remember for its tension and the frogs bellowing in the Polish marshlands. It was a day when the German blitzkrieg decimated Soviet command and control within hours and seemed like nothing would stop it from taking Moscow. Luther narrates June 22—one of the pivotal days of World War II—from high command down to the tanks and soldiers at the sharp end, covering strategy as well as tactics and the vivid personal stories of the men who crossed the border into the Soviet Union that fateful day, which is the Eastern Front in microcosm, representing the years of industrial-scale warfare that followed and the unremitting hostility of Germans and Soviets.

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.

Photo chronicle of the German-Soviet campaign on the Eastern Front during its first brutal winter after Operation Barbarossa ground to a halt outside MoscowHundreds of photos, many of them rare and never published beforePhotos of men, tanks, weapons, uniforms, terrain, winter conditions, soldier life, and much moreColor insert features uniforms, guns, and equipmentIdeal reference for military history fans, scholars, modelers, and reenactorsPerfect complement to the narrative accounts in the Stackpole Military History Series

Putting a human face and voices to the Battle of Kursk (Operation Zitadelle)

The warriors, the weapons, and the furious battles

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.

The full story of the first and only time American and Soviets fought side-by-side in World War IIAt the conference held in Tehran November 1943, American officials proposed to their Soviet allies a new operation in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany. The Normandy Invasion was already in the works; what American officials were suggesting until then was a second air front: the US Air Force wouldestablish bases in Soviet-controlled territory. Though pushing relentlessly for the United States and Great Britain to do more to help the war effort - the Soviet body count was staggering - Stalin, recalling the presence of foreign troops during the Russian Revolution, balked. His concern was thatthe American presence would inflame regional and ideological differences. Eventually in early 1944, Stalin was persuaded to give in, and Operation Baseball and then Frantic were initiated. B-17 Superfortresses were flown from bases in Italy to the Poltova region (in what is today Ukraine).As Plokhy's fascinating and utterly original book shows, what happened on these airbases mirrors the fate of the Grand Alliance itself. While both sides were fighting for Germany's unconditional surrender, differences arose that no common purpose could overcome. Soviet secret policeman watched overthe Americans, shadowing every move, and eventually trying to prevent fraternization between American airmen and local women. A catastrophic air raid by the Germans revealed the limitations of Soviet air defenses. Relations soured and the operations went south. Based on previously inaccessiblearchives, Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front offers a bottom-up history of the Grand Alliance itself, showing how it first began to collapse on the airfields of World War II.

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.