Stormtrooper on the Eastern Front

Stormtrooper on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Mintauts Blosfelds
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1781596514
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
The memoir of a reluctant soldier coerced into military service by the Nazis and driven from his homeland by the Russians. Following the conquest of his native Latvia by the Nazis, Mintauts Blosfelds was given the stark choice: service in the SS or forced labor in a slave camp. So he “volunteered” to fight for the Nazis. In this memoir he describes his training and how he became an instructor before being sent into Russia. He nearly perished during the terrible winter of 1943–44 after being wounded and finding himself with his friend lying dead on top of him. As the tide turned, the Russians advanced remorselessly through. He would be wounded twice more and awarded the Iron Cross for bravery. With German resistance collapsing, he had to flee for his life—capture by the Russians meant almost certain death. He surrendered to the Americans, but describes the neglect he suffered at their hands. Unable to return to Latvia, which was now occupied by the Russians, he became a Displaced Person, eventually settling in the UK. This book tells his compelling story.

Stormtrooper on the Eastern Front

Stormtrooper on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Mintauts Blosfelds
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1781596514
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book

Book Description
The memoir of a reluctant soldier coerced into military service by the Nazis and driven from his homeland by the Russians. Following the conquest of his native Latvia by the Nazis, Mintauts Blosfelds was given the stark choice: service in the SS or forced labor in a slave camp. So he “volunteered” to fight for the Nazis. In this memoir he describes his training and how he became an instructor before being sent into Russia. He nearly perished during the terrible winter of 1943–44 after being wounded and finding himself with his friend lying dead on top of him. As the tide turned, the Russians advanced remorselessly through. He would be wounded twice more and awarded the Iron Cross for bravery. With German resistance collapsing, he had to flee for his life—capture by the Russians meant almost certain death. He surrendered to the Americans, but describes the neglect he suffered at their hands. Unable to return to Latvia, which was now occupied by the Russians, he became a Displaced Person, eventually settling in the UK. This book tells his compelling story.

The Defeat of the Luftwaffe

The Defeat of the Luftwaffe PDF Author: Jonathan Trigg
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445651874
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
In 1941 the Luftwaffe was the most powerful air force in the world. This is the story of how it was utterly defeated on the Eastern Front

Stormtrooper Families

Stormtrooper Families PDF Author: Andrew Wackerfuss
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 1939594065
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Based on extensive archival work, Stormtrooper Families combines stormtrooper personnel records, Nazi Party autobiographies, published and unpublished memoirs, personal letters, court records, and police-surveillance records to paint a picture of the stormtrooper movement as an organic product of its local community, its web of interpersonal relationships, and its intensely emotional internal struggles. Extensive analysis of Nazi-era media across the political spectrum shows how the public debate over homosexuality proved just as important to political outcomes as did the actual presence of homosexuals in fascist and antifascist politics. As children in the late-imperial period, the stormtroopers witnessed the first German debates over homosexuality and political life. As young adults, they verbally and physically battled over these definitions, bringing conflicts over homosexuality and masculinity into the center of Weimar Germany's most important political debates. Stormtrooper Families chronicles the stormtroopers' personal, political, and sexual struggles to explain not only how individual gay men existed within the Nazi movement but also how the public meaning of homosexuality affected fascist and antifascist politics—a public controversy still alive today.

Storm of Steel

Storm of Steel PDF Author: Ernst Junger
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0143108255
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
One of the great war memoirs, published here in a stunning Deluxe Edition for the centenary of World War I and the Battle of the Somme—and featuring a foreword by the New York Times bestselling author of Matterhorn A worldwide bestseller published shortly after the end of World War I, Storm of Steel is a memoir of astonishing power, savagery, and ashen lyricism. It illuminates not only the horrors but also the fascination of total war, as seen through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier. Young, tough, patriotic, but also disturbingly self-aware, Ernst Jünger exulted in the Great War, which he saw not just as a great national conflict but also—more importantly—as a unique personal struggle. Leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart, Jünger keeps testing himself, braced for the death that will mark his failure. His account is ripe for rediscovery upon the centennial of the Battle of the Somme—a major set piece in Storm of Steel—and a bracing read for fans of Redeployment and American Sniper. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Devil's General

The Devil's General PDF Author: Raymond Bagdonas
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1612002234
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
A detailed military biography of the most highly decorated Nazi regimental commander in WWII. The most highly decorated German regimental commander of World War II, Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz first won the Iron Cross in the Great War. He was serving with the 1st Panzer Division when the Polish campaign inaugurated World War II. Strachwitz’s exploits as commander of a panzer battalion during the French campaign earned him further decorations before he transferred to the newly formed 16th Panzer Division. There, he participated in the invasion of Yugoslavia and then Operation Barbarossa, where he earned the Knight’s Cross. At Stalingrad, he reached the Volga and fought on the northern rim of Sixth Army’s perimeter. Severely wounded during battle, he was flown out of the Stalingrad pocket and was thus spared the fate of the rest of Sixth Army. Upon recuperation, he was named commander of the Grossdeutschland Division’s panzer regiment and won the Swords to the Knight’s Cross during Manstein’s counteroffensive at Kharkov. Wounded twelve times during the war, and barely surviving a lethal car crash, Strachwitz finally surrendered to the Americans in May 1945. Historian Raymond Bagdonas, though impaired by the disappearance of 16th Panzer Division’s official records at Stalingrad, and the fact that many of the Panzer Graf’s later battlegroups never kept them, has written a vividly detailed account of this combat leader’s life, as well as ferocious armored warfare in World War II.

Eastern Front

Eastern Front PDF Author: Ian Baxter
Publisher: B.E.S. Publishing
ISBN: 9780764156724
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"The war on the Eastern Front was a bloody struggle between two conflicting ideologies, and no one organization personified Nazism more than the SS, of which the Waffen-SS was the military arm. Using 250 previously unpublished photographs, many of which have come from the albums of individuals who took part in the war, SS: The Secret Archives--Eastern Front depicts the titanic battles between the Waffen-SS and the Red Army on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945. The photographs convey an impression of the life of an SS stormtrooper in the frontline during Hitler's crusade against communism." -- Jacket

Barbarossa Through German Eyes

Barbarossa Through German Eyes PDF Author: Jonathan Trigg
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1398107239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
The story of the world’s largest ever invasion through the voices of the men – and women – who witnessed it first-hand.

Eastern Inferno

Eastern Inferno PDF Author: Christine Alexander
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 161200024X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
“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.

Stormtroop Tactics

Stormtroop Tactics PDF Author: Bruce I. Gudmundsson
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 0275954013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Describing the radical transformation in German Infantry tactics that took place during World War I, this book presents the first detailed account of the evolution of stormtroop tactics available in English. It covers areas previously left unexplored: the German Infantry's tactical heritage, the squad's evolution as a tactical unit, the use of new weapons for close combat, the role of the elite assault units in the development of new tactics, and detailed descriptions of offensive battles that provided the inspiration and testing ground for this new way of fighting. Both a historical investigation and a standard of excellence in infantry tactics, Stormtroop Tactics is required reading for professional military officers and historians as well as enthusiasts. Contrary to previous studies, Stormtroop Tactics proposes that the German Infantry adaption to modern warfare was not a straightforward process resulting from the top down intervention of reformers but instead a bottom up phenomenon. It was an accumulation of improvisations and ways of dealing with pressing situations that were later sewn together to form what we now call Blitzkrieg. Focusing on action at the company, platoon, and squad level, Stormtroop Tactics provides a detailed description of the evolution of German defensive tactics during World War I—tactics that were the direct forbears of those used in World War II.

To VE-Day Through German Eyes

To VE-Day Through German Eyes PDF Author: Jonathan Trigg
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445699451
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
'If Germany stays united and marches to the rhythm of its revolutionary socialist outlook, it will be unbeatable. Our indestructible will to life, and the driving force of the Führer’s personality guarantee this.' (Joseph Goebbels, 4 June 1943.) It wasn't and it didn't.