Eyewitness to Wehrmacht Atrocities on the Eastern Front

Eyewitness to Wehrmacht Atrocities on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Luis Raffeiner
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399097733
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
A German soldier deployed to Russia recounts his harrowing experience as both victim and perpetrator of Nazi atrocities in this WWII memoir. Serving his country on the Eastern Front, Luis Raffeiner witnessed devastating acts committed by the German army that couldn’t be reconciled with the heroic propaganda back home. Caught up in the turmoil of the vast conflict, he struggled to make sense of the ruthlessness he witnessed—and the part he himself played in it. In this bracingly candid memoir, Raffeiner offers a detailed firsthand account of the Nazi war of annihilation in the Soviet Union. Raffeiner chronicles his family life in a remote village in the Tyrol in the 1930s, his military service in Italy, his transfer to the Wehrmacht and his training as a mechanic on assault guns. He then proceeds to his march into the Soviet Union in 1941. There he experienced, as he says, ‘war in its brutal and cruel reality’. Captured by the Red Army, Raffeiner barely survived as a prisoner of war. His dramatic and honest recollections shatter the myth of the clean conduct of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. He testifies to vicious actions, including some in which he himself was involved. His memoir is not a heroic tale – it shows how a man from an ordinary background can come to participate in the horrors of war.

Eyewitness to Wehrmacht Atrocities on the Eastern Front

Eyewitness to Wehrmacht Atrocities on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Luis Raffeiner
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399097733
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Get Book Here

Book Description
A German soldier deployed to Russia recounts his harrowing experience as both victim and perpetrator of Nazi atrocities in this WWII memoir. Serving his country on the Eastern Front, Luis Raffeiner witnessed devastating acts committed by the German army that couldn’t be reconciled with the heroic propaganda back home. Caught up in the turmoil of the vast conflict, he struggled to make sense of the ruthlessness he witnessed—and the part he himself played in it. In this bracingly candid memoir, Raffeiner offers a detailed firsthand account of the Nazi war of annihilation in the Soviet Union. Raffeiner chronicles his family life in a remote village in the Tyrol in the 1930s, his military service in Italy, his transfer to the Wehrmacht and his training as a mechanic on assault guns. He then proceeds to his march into the Soviet Union in 1941. There he experienced, as he says, ‘war in its brutal and cruel reality’. Captured by the Red Army, Raffeiner barely survived as a prisoner of war. His dramatic and honest recollections shatter the myth of the clean conduct of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. He testifies to vicious actions, including some in which he himself was involved. His memoir is not a heroic tale – it shows how a man from an ordinary background can come to participate in the horrors of war.

Eyewitness to Wehrmacht Atrocities on the Eastern Front

Eyewitness to Wehrmacht Atrocities on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Luis Raffeiner
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399097717
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A German soldier deployed to Russia recounts his harrowing experience as both victim and perpetrator of Nazi atrocities in this WWII memoir. Serving his country on the Eastern Front, Luis Raffeiner witnessed devastating acts committed by the German army that couldn’t be reconciled with the heroic propaganda back home. Caught up in the turmoil of the vast conflict, he struggled to make sense of the ruthlessness he witnessed—and the part he himself played in it. In this bracingly candid memoir, Raffeiner offers a detailed firsthand account of the Nazi war of annihilation in the Soviet Union. Raffeiner chronicles his family life in a remote village in the Tyrol in the 1930s, his military service in Italy, his transfer to the Wehrmacht and his training as a mechanic on assault guns. He then proceeds to his march into the Soviet Union in 1941. There he experienced, as he says, ‘war in its brutal and cruel reality’. Captured by the Red Army, Raffeiner barely survived as a prisoner of war. His dramatic and honest recollections shatter the myth of the clean conduct of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. He testifies to vicious actions, including some in which he himself was involved. His memoir is not a heroic tale – it shows how a man from an ordinary background can come to participate in the horrors of war.

Marching into Darkness

Marching into Darkness PDF Author: Waitman Wade Beorn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067472660X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
On October 10, 1941, the Jewish population of the Belarusian village of Krucha was rounded up and shot. This atrocity was not the routine work of the SS but was committed by a regular German army unit acting on its own initiative. Marching into Darkness is a bone-chilling exposé of the ordinary footsoldiers who participated in the Final Solution on a daily basis. Although scholars have exploded the myth that the Wehrmacht played no significant part in the Holocaust, a concrete picture of its involvement has been lacking. Marching into Darkness reveals in detail how the army willingly fulfilled its role as an agent of murder on a massive scale. Waitman Wade Beorn unearths forced labor, sexual violence, and grave robbing, though a few soldiers refused to participate and even helped Jews. Improvised extermination progressively became methodical, with some army units going so far as to organize "Jew hunts." The Wehrmacht also used the pretense of Jewish anti-partisan warfare as a subterfuge by reporting murdered Jews as partisans. Through military and legal records, survivor testimonies, and eyewitness interviews, Beorn paints a searing portrait of an army's descent into ever more intimate participation in genocide.

Battleground Prussia

Battleground Prussia PDF Author: Prit Buttar
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1780964641
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
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.

Through the Maelstrom

Through the Maelstrom PDF Author: Борис Горбачевский
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
A junior officer in the Red Army provides one of the richest and most detailed memoirs of life and warfare on the Eastern Front, from his combat training in early 1942 until the surrender and occupation of Germany.

Red Sniper on the Eastern Front

Red Sniper on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Joseph Pilyushin
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1848846983
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
A gripping memoir of a Soviet sniper who fought against the Nazis during the siege of Leningrad and throughout World War II. Joseph Pilyushin, a top Red Army sniper in the ruthless fight against the Germans on the Eastern Front, was an exceptional soldier. His first-hand account of his wartime service gives a graphic insight into his lethal skill with a rifle and into the desperate fight put up by Soviet forces to defend Leningrad. Pilyushin, who lived in Leningrad with his family, was already 35 years-old when the war broke out and he was drafted. He started in the Red Army as a scout, but once he had demonstrated his marksmanship and steady nerve, he became a sniper. He served throughout the Leningrad siege, from the late 1941 when the Wehrmacht’s advance was halted just short of the city to its liberation during the Soviet offensive of 1944. His descriptions of grueling front-line life, of his fellow soldiers, and of his sniping missions are balanced by his vivid recollections of the protracted suffering of Leningrad’s imprisoned population and of the grief that was visited upon him and his family. His narrative will be fascinating reading for anyone eager to learn about the role and technique of the sniper during the Second World War. It is also a memorable eyewitness account of one man’s experience on the Eastern Front.

Born Under a Lucky Star

Born Under a Lucky Star PDF Author: Ivan Makarov
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Synopsis.History is written by the victors, but the harsh reality of war can only be depicted by its soldiers. As a Russian recruit in World War II, Ivan Makarov witnessed General Chuikov pull out his pistol and shoot their regimental commander as a traitor. Then thrown into an open field to face German tank and artillery fire with only rifles and machine guns of their own, it took only six days at the Eastern Front for three-quarters of a regiment of 2,000 men to be wiped out. Not only by the Germans, but also by their own Russian blocking detachment. At this rate, Ivan struggled to comprehend how he would survive the hundreds of battles that lay before him, with death seeming to be the only certainty. But Ivan was a wise soul and a brave soldier, who fought for his life, no matter how hopeless or fatal the situation. In his raw and trenchant memoir, Ivan recounts in detail the terror and despair faced by a Red Army soldier on the Eastern Front.He has no sympathy for Stalin and his incompetent commanders, who sought awards and recognition at the expense of their soldiers' lives. He simply wanted to serve his country. It is rare to find first-hand accounts of the Great Patriotic War from Red Army soldiers, as many did not survive to tell the tale. For the first time, Ivan reveals his gripping recollections of battles, times, places, and people encountered over the course of World War II from when he was drafted in 1941 until their victory. These recollections re-lived over a lifetime he dared not put on paper until 1992. About the Author. Ivan Makarov was my grandfather on my mother's side. He was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. From my childhood, I remember that he loved to tell stories about the war--about his childhood and life. Ivan also had an old typewriter and was constantly typing on it. In early 2000, he came to visit us, gave a bundle of printed stories to my mother, and said, "These are my memoirs of the war, one day you should publish a book. Let people know the real truth about the war, as all my life, I have never seen the real war portrayed in any book or movie."There are hardly any accounts detailing what the war was like for a Red Army soldier from the front line, especially in the first years. A profoundly changed man returned from there. Those who managed to return, as a rule, did not like and could not recount the real events that had transpired, and many of the Russian military documents of those years are still inaccessible to the public.Ivan wrote these stories from 1992 to 1998, after the Soviet Union collapsed and it became possible to talk about what had really happened openly. Before this time, he could easily go to prison for such writings. This book is a collection of individual stories. These events Ivan recalls in detail, from Stalingrad to Germany. During the first half of the war, Ivan was a machine gunner and a regimental scout during the second. He talks about what he personally saw and experienced during the war, and what difficulties were faced by ordinary soldiers. Ivan describes how he was captured by the Germans, escaped, and returned to the Red Army, and how he served in the machine gun company once more. Later, he was assigned to the army's intelligence services and performed special tasks. Despite all the difficulties on the front line, he maintained his desire to live, managed to survive, and returned to Russia.These stories I found in my mother's house before I moved to Australia in 2014. I started reading and could not stop, I found them captivating. After reading and making copies, I decided that it was necessary to publish the book and even translate it into English. Usually, the authors of Russian war memoirs were commanders or political workers, whose stories were vastly different

The Eastern Front

The Eastern Front PDF Author: Leon Degrelle
Publisher: Institute for Historical Review
ISBN: 9780939484775
Category : Soldiers
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
A gripping first-person memoir of soldierly sacrifice, heroism and fierce combat against numerically superior Soviet forces during World War II, by a charismatic Belgian writer and politician turned Waffen SS front-line infantryman. In a laudatory review appearing in an official US Army Department magazine, US Army Brigadier General John C. Bahnsen wrote: "The pace of the writing is fast; the action is graphic, and a warrior can learn things from reading this book. I recommend its reading by students of the art of war. It is well worth the price." Here is the epic story of the Walloon Legion, a volunteer Belgian unit of the World War II pan-European SS force, as told by the legendary figure whose unmatched frontline combat experience and literary talent made him the premier spokesman for his fallen comrades. Captures the grit, the terror and the glory of Europe's crusade against Communism in absorbing prose. Includes fascinating first-person descriptions of Hitler, Himmler and other Third Reich personalities. Degrelle vividly describes how he and his comrades endured danger, privation and torrents of shot and shell -- on the sun-baked steppes of Ukraine, at the foothills of the Caucasus, in the depths of bone-chilling winter, through the stinking mud and the flaming hell of Cherkassy, and across the rolling plains of Estonia and the Pomeranian lake country. You'll learn what moved the 35-year-old Degrelle -- a brilliant intellectual and his country's most colorful political leader -- to enlist as a private in the volun-teer legion he himself organized to join with Third Reich Germany and its allies in their titanic fight against the Bolshevik enemy."

I Somehow Survived

I Somehow Survived PDF Author: Klaus G. Förg
Publisher: Greenhill Books
ISBN: 1784385468
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
“The selection of remembered events from a cross section of Germans provides a very human account of instances in war.” —Firetrench The first in a series of books, I Somehow Survived is an extraordinary collection of true stories giving testimony to those who survived World War II. Based on interviews with numerous veterans from across the spectrum of wartime experience, the book documents and reflects upon one of the most gruesome times in history. From anti-partisan warfare in the French mountains and atrocities in East Prussia to the experience of a Norwegian concentration camp, the accounts include rarely heard stories from a range of people caught up in the war. With the distance of time, these survivors have been able to offer new perspectives on their experiences and expose truths they would not have dared admit several decades ago. German Army officers reveal their role in the Vercors and Kiev massacres. A Luftwaffe officer-applicant who never flew describes service on the ground. And a Norwegian woman writes of marrying a German Kriegsmarine while her mother was in a Norwegian concentration camp for political activity and her father was in hiding from the Gestapo. “I have no objection to your marrying him,” her father told her, “I just want them to give us our country back.” “It is always refreshing to hear the German side of the story. The recollections seem pretty open and candid, and the supporting photos help reassure one . . . fascinating stuff.” —A Question of Scale

Death March Into Russia

Death March Into Russia PDF Author: Klaus Willmann
Publisher: Greenhill Books
ISBN: 9781784385033
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In this rare World War II memoir, Lothar Herrmann, a soldier from the Wehrmacht, details his unimaginable experience as a German Prisoner-of-War in the Soviet Union. Hermann grew up in Bavaria, going through the RAD (Nazi Labor Service) before being conscripted into a Wehrmacht Mountain Division (the Gebirgsdivision) in 1940. He participated in Germany's advance through southern Ukraine in 1941 and, in 1944, was arrested in Romania while retreating to Germany. The Romanians passed him onto the Soviets, who placed him in a forced labor camp, where he watched two-thirds of prisoners around him die. In 1949, Herrmann was finally released to Germany and returned to Bavaria. Three million German troops were taken prisoner by the Red Army and around two-thirds of them survived to return to Germany in 1949, but their stories are little known. Klaus Willmann draws on interviews he conducted with Herrmann, to recount these astonishing recollections in the first-person. Depicting the challenges of growing up in Nazi Bavaria to becoming a Soviet prisoner-of-war, this is a gripping and enlightening account from a necessary but rarely explored perspective.