Author: Simon Forty
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1636240232
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
An illustrated history of how the Red Army pushed west and into Berlin in 1945 during World War II. The last year of the war saw Russian offensives that cleared the Germans out of their final strongholds in Finland and the Baltic states, before advancing into Finnmark in Norway and the east European states that bordered Germany: Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. By spring 1945 the Red Army had reached to Vienna and the Balkans, and had thrust deep into Germany where they met American, French and British troops advancing from the west. The final days of the Third Reich were at hand. Berlin was first surrounded, then attacked and taken. Hitler’s suicide and his successors’ unconditional surrender ended the war. For writers and historians who concentrate on the Western Allies and the battles in France and the Low Countries, the Eastern Front comes as a shock. The sheer size of both the territories and the forces involved; the savagery of both weather and the fighting; the appalling suffering of the civilian populations of all countries and the wreckage of towns and cities—it’s no wonder that words like Armageddon are used to describe the annihilation. Red Army into the Reich combines a narrative history, contemporary photographs and maps with images of memorials, battlefield survivors and then & now views. It may come as a surprise to the western reader to see how many memorials there are to Russia’s Great Patriotic War and those to the losses suffered by the countries who spent so long under the murderous Nazi regime. Praise for Red Army into the Reich “If you have any interest in understanding the final cataclysm that overtook the Third Reich and delineated the hows and whys of the Cold War—and Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union—Red Army into the Reich will give you a glimpse into a generally underreported past...a small slice of heaven for the East Front fan.” —ARMOR Magazine “Carries the reader into the Eastern Front with clear writing, good maps, and lavish illustration. Many of the photographs are accompanied by images of how the scene they depict appears today.” —WWII History Magazine “A better-illustrated recent volume would be hard to find, especially one that covers the breadth of Red Army combat operations in the third period of the war.” —Journal of Slavic Military Studies
Author: Evgeni Bessonov
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1473897904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
Fighting in a somewhat forgotten corner of Empire during the Second World War, the British and Indian armoured regiments called upon to harness the power of tank warfare to extreme new levels did so in an effort to outwit an army until that point considered invincible - the Imperial Japanese Army. Their collective efforts were heroic and massively effective, giving the Japanese a taste of mechanised warfare from which they never recovered. Bryan Perrett describes the full course of the armoured units' efforts, illustrating the importance of the mighty 7th Armoured Brigade; a 'magnificent formation' in General Slim's estimation. In a conflict that saw much development in the field of tank design and production, Perrett illustrates the practical repercussions of such advances in this most extreme of wartime environments. Detailed research has produced hard evidence of the Japanese use of gas against British tanks, and countless instances of Japan's human-bomb anti-tank technique. Above all, this book shows to what extent the tank can prove a decisive weapon in the unlikeliest areas.
Author: George E. Blau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Author: Christopher Duffy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136360336
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
The Eastern Front witnessed the critical battles between the German and Russian armies which won and lost the Second World War. In Red Storm on the Reich, Christopher Duffy uncovers a military campaign of unprecedented scale and ferocity during which thirty million lives were lost - a deadly harvest in which the slaughter and suffering of German civilians reached unfathomable dimensions. By quoting extensively from the memoirs of Soviet and German commanders and the diaries of infantrymen, Red Storm on the Reich brings to life not only the Russian military assault on the lands of Germany, but also the human drama behind what can only be called epic seiges of the fortress cities of Danzig, Kolberg and Breslau. Christopher Duffy's gripping narrative of this unexplored offensive and the psyches behind it makes for essential reading for all those interested in the Second World War and European history.
Author: Evgeni Bessonov
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1510712437
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
A sobering account of conflict on the Eastern Front of World War II told from the perspective of a Russian soldier. Honest and irrepressibly frank, these are the dramatic memoirs of a Russian officer on the Eastern Front, where he played his part in a clash of titans and witnessed the shuddering collapse of the Third Reich. The cataclysmic battle of Kursk in 1943 put an end to Hitler’s hopes of victory on the Eastern Front, and it was Evgeni Bessonov’s first battle. From then on the Germans were forced into a long, bitter retreat that ended in the ruins of Berlin in 1945. An officer in an elite guards unit of the Red Army, Bessonov rode tanks from Kursk, through a western Russia and Poland devastated by the Germans, and right into the heart of Nazi Germany. Tank Rider is the riveting memoir of Evgeni Bessonov telling of his years of service at the vanguard of the Red Army and daily encounters with the German foe. He brings large-scale battles to life, recounts the sniping and skirmishing that tried and tested soldiers on both sides, and narrates the overwhelming tragedy and horror of apocalyptic warfare on the Eastern Front. So much of the Soviet experience of World War II remains untold, but this memoir provides an important glimpse into some of the most decisive moments of this overlooked history. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750951419
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
Stalin’s Red Army entered World War II as a relatively untried fighting force. In 1941, with the launch of Operation Barbarossa, it joined battle with Hitler’s army, the most powerful in history. After a desperate war of attrition over four years, the Red Army beat the Nazis into defeat on the Eastern Front and won lasting fame and glory in 1945 by eclipsing the military might of the Third Reich. This book begins with a review of the historical background of the Red Army in the years leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939, and follows with a discussion of the major themes in the development of Soviet forces during the "Great Patriotic War" that ensued in 1941. The Red Army’s organizational structures are examined, from high command down to divisional level and below; Soviet combat arms and weaponry are also described in detail.
Author: Petr Mikhin
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811709086
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
Rare memoir of Eastern Front combat by a frontline artillery officer in the Red Army Details on Stalingrad, Kursk, and other harrowing battles with the Germans Candid opinions about superiors and political officers Captures all the horrors of fighting in this brutal theater of World War II
Author: Alexander Hill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316720519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 757
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Book Description
In a definitive new account of the Soviet Union at war, Alexander Hill charts the development, successes and failures of the Red Army from the industrialisation of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s through to the end of the Great Patriotic War in May 1945. Setting military strategy and operations within a broader context that includes national mobilisation on a staggering scale, the book presents a comprehensive account of the origins and course of the war from the perspective of this key Allied power. Drawing on the latest archival research and a wealth of eyewitness testimony, Hill portrays the Red Army at war from the perspective of senior leaders and men and women at the front line to reveal how the Red Army triumphed over the forces of Nazi Germany and her allies on the Eastern Front, and why it did so at such great cost.
Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher: History PressLtd
ISBN: 9780750932097
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Stalin's Red Army entered World War II as a relatively untried fighting force. In 1941, with the launch of Operation Barbarossa, it joined battle with Hitler's army, the most powerful in history. After a desperate war of attrition lasting more than four years, the Red Army beat the Nazis into submission on the Eastern Front and won lasting fame and glory in 1945 by eclipsing the military might of the Third Reich. From the army's development prior to the outbreak of war in 1939 to its peak in 1945, every aspect of its force is examined here: the organizational structures, combat arms infantry, amour and mechanized forces, cavalry, airborne, and special forces. A technical overview of infantry weapons, armored vehicles, artillery, and support equipment is also provided. Fully illustrated with a comprehensive selection of archive photographs, charts, and tables of organization, this is a useful source of reference for anyone interested in the armies of World War II.
Author: Ben H. Shepherd
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300219520
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
For decades after 1945, it was generally believed that the German army, professional and morally decent, had largely stood apart from the SS, Gestapo, and other corps of the Nazi machine. Ben Shepherd draws on a wealth of primary sources and recent scholarship to convey a much darker, more complex picture. For the first time, the German army is examined throughout the Second World War, across all combat theaters and occupied regions, and from multiple perspectives: its battle performance, social composition, relationship with the Nazi state, and involvement in war crimes and military occupation. This was a true people’s army, drawn from across German society and reflecting that society as it existed under the Nazis. Without the army and its conquests abroad, Shepherd explains, the Nazi regime could not have perpetrated its crimes against Jews, prisoners of war, and civilians in occupied countries. The author examines how the army was complicit in these crimes and why some soldiers, units, and higher commands were more complicit than others. Shepherd also reveals the reasons for the army’s early battlefield successes and its mounting defeats up to 1945, the latter due not only to Allied superiority and Hitler’s mismanagement as commander-in-chief, but also to the failings—moral, political, economic, strategic, and operational—of the army’s own leadership.
