The Unknown Eastern Front

When Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa with his attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Wehrmacht deployed 600,000 troops to the Eastern Front. Their numbers were later swelled by a range of foreign volunteers so that, at the height of World War II, astonishingly one in three men fighting for the Germans in the East was not a native German. Hitler's declaration of the 'struggle against Bolshevism' reverberated throughout all of Europe - it attracted convinced fascists as well as non-Russian eastern Europeans seeking to regain their independence from the USSR. Many of these volunteers subsequently became involved in the atrocities of the Wehrmacht and the SS. Many historical accounts of the war in the East, the bloodiest struggle in world history, not only overlook the role of local helpers and thereby unwittingly play up to subsequent Stalinist propaganda; they also underestimate the importance of German-allied armies fighting on the Eastern Front. Yet it was not just Eastern Europe which provided volunteer soldiers for the Wehrmacht - a number of men from occupied countries, such as France, Norway and Denmark also signed up as volunteers, as well as a small number from neutral countries. For the first time, this book tells the story of these men. Vilified by Hitler for their supposed failures, condemned and forgotten by their homelands for treason and collaboration, their involvement in the war has been largely ignored or swept aside by historians. Rolf-Dieter Müller here offers a fascinating new perspective on a little-known aspect of World War II.

When Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa with his attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Wehrmacht deployed 600,000 troops to the Eastern Front. Their numbers were later swelled by a range of foreign volunteers so that, at the height of World War II, astonishingly one in three men fighting for the Germans in the East was not a native German. Hitler's declaration of the 'struggle against Bolshevism' reverberated throughout all of Europe - among convinced fascists as well as among non-Russian eastern Europeans seeking to regain their independence from the USSR. Many of these volunteers subsequently became involved in the atrocities of the Wehrmacht and the SS. Vilified by Hitler for their supposed failures, condemned and forgotten by their homelands for treason and collaboration, their involvement in the war has been largely ignored or swept aside by historians. Rolf-Dieter Müller here offers a fascinating new perspective on a little-known aspect of World War II.

Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, led to one of the most brutal campaigns of World War II: of the estimated 70 million people who died in World War II, over 30 million died on the Eastern Front. Although it has previously been argued that the campaign was a pre-emptive strike, in fact, Hitler had been planning a war of intervention against the USSR ever since he came to power in 1933. Using previously unseen sources, acclaimed military historian Rolf-Dieter Muller shows that Hitler and the Wehrmacht had begun to negotiate with Poland and had even considered an alliance with Japan soon after taking power. Despite the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, at the declaration of war in September 1939, military engagement with the Red Army was still a very real and imminent possibility. In this book, Muller takes us behind the scenes of the Wehrmacht High Command, providing a fascinating insight into an unknown story of World War II.

Collision of Empires is the first major historical work on the Eastern Front during World War I since the 1970s. One of the primary triggers of the outbreak of World War I was undoubtedly the myriad alliances and suspicions that existed between the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian empires in the early 20th century. Yet much of the actual fighting between these nations has been largely forgotten in the West. Driven by first-hand accounts and detailed archival research, Collision of Empires seeks to correct this imbalance. The first in a four-book series on the Eastern Front in World War I, Prit Buttar's dynamic retelling examines the tumultuous events of the first year of the war and reveals the chaos and destruction that reigned when three powerful empires collided. A war that was initially seen by all three powers as a welcome opportunity to address both internal and external issues would ultimately bring about the downfall of them all.

'Without question one of the classics of post-war historical scholarship, Stone's boldly conceived and brilliantly executed book opened the eyes of a generation of young British historians raised on tales of the Western trenches to the crucial importance of the Eastern Front in the First World War' Niall Ferguson 'Scholarly, lucid, entertaining, based on a thorough knowledge of Austrian and Russian sources, it sharply revises traditional assumptions about the First World War.' Michael Howard

Chilling and authentic historical novel.

“Remarkable personal journals . . revealing the combat experience of the German-Russian War as seldom seen before . . . a harrowing yet poignant story” (Military Times). Hans Roth was a member of the anti-tank panzerjager battalion, 299th Infantry Division, attached to the Sixth Army, as the invasion of Russia began. As events transpired, he recorded the tension as the Germans deployed on the Soviet frontier in June 1941. Then, a firestorm broke loose as the Wehrmacht tore across the front, forging into the primitive vastness of the East. During the Kiev encirclement, Roth’s unit was under constant attack as the Soviets desperately tried to break through the German ring. At one point, after the enemy had finally been beaten, a friend serving with the SS led him to a site—possibly Babi Yar—where he witnessed civilians being massacred. After suffering through a brutal winter against apparently endless Russian reserves, his division went on the offensive again when the Germans drove toward Stalingrad. In these journals, attacks and counterattacks are described in you-are-there detail. Roth wrote privately, as if to keep himself sane, knowing his honest accounts of the horrors in the East could never pass Wehrmacht censors. When the Soviet counteroffensive of winter 1942 begins, his unit is stationed alongside the Italian 8th Army, and his observations of its collapse, as opposed to the reaction of the German troops sent to stiffen its front, are of special fascination. Roth’s three journals were discovered many years after his disappearance, tucked away in the home of his brother. After his brother’s death, his family discovered them and sent them to Rosel, Roth’s wife. In time, Rosel handed down the journals to Erika, Roth’s only daughter, who had emigrated to America. Roth was likely working on a fourth journal before he was reported missing in action in July 1944. Although his ultimate fate remains unknown, what he did leave behind, now finally revealed, is an incredible firsthand account of the horrific war the Germans waged in Russia.