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Author: Hendrick Verton Publisher: Helion and Company ISBN: 1907677402 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 517
Book Description
Dutch SS accounts are very rare, particularly ones such as this, covering recruitment, training, and frontline service first with 5th SS Panzer Division 'Wiking', then later with SS Regiment Besslein. He not only informs and illustrates the general politics of the time, but also explains how Dutch views of the Third Reich changed so radically, discusses the founding of the Waffen-SS, the recruitment of Dutch volunteers into it and why so many non-German Europeans volunteered to fight and risk their lives for Germany. His discussion of the intensity of the SS's training is also noteworthy. Of course, the core of the book lies in Hendrik's recollections of his service on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945, initially with the 5th SS Panzer Division 'Wiking'. He offers the reader an impressive and fluid account, whether it be describing the midst of battle, surviving 50 degrees below zero, frosts and frozen ground, or traversing a quagmire of roads. Of particular historical interest are his later recollections of service during 1944-45 with SS Regiment Besslein on the Eastern Front, focusing on his participation in the epic defense of Breslau - this siege remains little-known in the West, and first-hand accounts such as Hendrik's are even scarcer, making this title a worthy addition to the literature on the Second World War.
Author: Hendrick Verton Publisher: Helion and Company ISBN: 1907677402 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 517
Book Description
Dutch SS accounts are very rare, particularly ones such as this, covering recruitment, training, and frontline service first with 5th SS Panzer Division 'Wiking', then later with SS Regiment Besslein. He not only informs and illustrates the general politics of the time, but also explains how Dutch views of the Third Reich changed so radically, discusses the founding of the Waffen-SS, the recruitment of Dutch volunteers into it and why so many non-German Europeans volunteered to fight and risk their lives for Germany. His discussion of the intensity of the SS's training is also noteworthy. Of course, the core of the book lies in Hendrik's recollections of his service on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945, initially with the 5th SS Panzer Division 'Wiking'. He offers the reader an impressive and fluid account, whether it be describing the midst of battle, surviving 50 degrees below zero, frosts and frozen ground, or traversing a quagmire of roads. Of particular historical interest are his later recollections of service during 1944-45 with SS Regiment Besslein on the Eastern Front, focusing on his participation in the epic defense of Breslau - this siege remains little-known in the West, and first-hand accounts such as Hendrik's are even scarcer, making this title a worthy addition to the literature on the Second World War.
Author: Timofeeva-Egoro Publisher: Casemate Publishers ISBN: 1906033277 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 209
Book Description
During the 1930s the Soviet Union launched a major effort to create a modern Air Force. That process required training tens of thousands of pilots. Among those pilots were larger numbers of young women, training shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts. A common training program of the day involved studying in ''flying clubs'' during leisure hours, first using gliders and then training planes. Following this, the best graduates could enter military schools to become professional combat pilots or flight navigators. The author of this book passed through all of those stages and had become an experienced training pilot when the USSR entered the war.Volunteering for frontline duty, the author flew 130 combat missions piloting the U2 biplane in a liaison squadron. In the initial period of the war, the German Luftwaffe dominated the sky. Daily combat sorties demanded bravery and skill from the pilots of the liaison squadron operating obsolete, unarmed planes. Over the course of a year the author was shot down by German fighters three times but kept flying nevertheless.In late 1942 Anna Egorova became the first female pilot to fly the famous Sturmovik (ground attack) plane that played a major role in the ground battles of the Eastern Front. Earning the respect of her fellow male pilots, the author became not just a mature combat pilot, but a commanding officer. Over the course of two years the author advanced from ordinary pilot to the executive officer of the Squadron, and then was appointed Regimental navigator, in the process flying approximately 270 combat missions over the southern sector of the Eastern Front initially (Taman, the Crimea) before switching to the 1st Belorussian Front, and seeing action over White Russia and Poland.Flying on a mission over Poland in 1944 the author was shot down over a target by German flak. Severely burned, she was taken prisoner. After surviving in a German POW camp for 5 months, she was liberated by Soviet troops. After experiencing numerous humiliations as an ''ex-POW'' in 1965 the author finally received a top military award, a long-delayed ''Golden Star'' with the honorary title of ''Hero of the Soviet Union''. This is a quite unique story of courage, determination and bravery in the face of tremendous personal adversity. The many obstacles Anna had to cross before she could fly first the Po-2, then the Sturmovik, are recounted in detail, including her tough work helping to build the Moscow Metro before the outbreak of war. Above all, Over Fields of Fire is a very human story - sometimes sad, sometimes angry, filled with hope, at other times with near-despair, abundant in comradeship and professionalism - and never less than a large dose of determination! ABOUT THE AUTHORAnna Alexandrovna Timofeeva-Egorova was born on 23 September 1916. After attending school she had hoped to learn to fly but this wish was delayed due to one of her brother''s becoming a victim of the Communist security system, which deemed him an ''enemy of the people''. After a number of setbacks Anna learned to fly, and during the first part of the Great Patriotic War flew Po-2 biplanes for the 130th Aviation Signals Squadron, being shot down three times. She then switched to flying the fearsome Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik ground-attack aircraft with the 805th Ground Attack Regiment (805 ShAP), 197th Ground Attack Division. Anna flew approximately 270 combat missions before being shot down in the summer of 1944, being severely injured and taken prisoner by the Germans. Thanks to her determination, and the skill, dedication, care and kindness of numerous individuals, she made a remarkable recovery and was liberated when the Soviets overran her POW camp near K�strin in 1945. However, her troubles were not over, as the Soviet authorities initially believed her to be a traitor and collaborator and subjected her to 11 days of continuous interrogations. She was released, although her injuries were such that was medically discharged from the Air Force in 1945. She continued to fight to clear her name after the war - she was eventually reinstated into the Communist Party and in 1965 finally received the award of ''Hero of the Soviet Union''. She died in October 2009.
Author: Norman Stone Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0141938854 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
'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
Author: James Lucas Publisher: Frontline Books ISBN: 1473841224 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 403
Book Description
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.
Author: Nikolai Litvin Publisher: ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 250
Book Description
Litvin's stark, candid memoir focuses on his more than two years of service in the Red Army during its war with Germany. Originally written in 1962 and recently revised through extended interviews between author and translator, the result is a gripping account--in a straightforward, matter-of-fact tone--of the trials and tribulations of being a common Soviet soldier on the Eastern Front during World War II.
Author: Hans Heinz Rehfeldt Publisher: Greenhill Books ISBN: 178438366X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 469
Book Description
This second volume of a Nazi soldier’s WWII diary continues the chronicle of his experiences on the Easter Front. A member of the Hitler Youth before the outbreak of World War II, Hans Heinz Rehfeldt volunteered for the Grossdeutschland’s panzer arm in 1940 and fought with them for nearly the entire war. He was decorated with the Iron Cross First and Second Class, the Eastern Front Medal, the Close Combat Clasp, and the Infantry Assault Badge. His diaries offer a historically significant chronicle of German military actions on the Eastern Front as well as a rare look inside the mind of a committed Nazi soldier. This second volume of Rehfeldt’s wartime diary covers his experience as a platoon commander in Romania, East Prussia and Lithuania during 1944. After being transferred by ship from Memel to Königsberg later that year, he took part in the battles for Ostprussen. Fleeing Russian imprisonment, he traveled west, where he fell into American captivity on May 3rd, 1945. In July, he was released and returned home.
Author: Craig W. H. Luther Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 0811767655 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 504
Book Description
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.
Author: Léon Degrelle Publisher: Hyperion Books ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 388
Book Description
This book offers a detailed account of a soldier's life on the eastern front in the former USSR. Written from the participant's point of view, the author reveals the horror and brutality of the war between Nazi Germany and Russia.
Author: Joseph Pilyushin Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1848846983 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 484
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.
Author: Arno Sauer Publisher: Frontline Books ISBN: 1526733366 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
On 22 June 1941, German forces launched Operation Barbarossa – Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Instead of the swift knockout blow that the Germans had anticipated, the war against the Soviets ground on relentlessly for almost four years. It was into this bloody theater of war that Fritz Sauer was sent. Having initially joined the ranks of the Reichsarbeitsdienst, the Reich Labour Service, Fritz was posted to Infantry Regiment No. 437 in April 1942. Part of the 132nd Infantry Division, the regiment was serving on the Eastern Front having been deployed to the Crimea. The regiment was then transferred to the region around Leningrad, where, for the first time, Fritz truly experienced the horrors of war. As well as his best friend being killed by a sniper, Fritz recalled events such as recovering the body of a fallen colleague from No Man’s Land, the terrifying experience of facing a Red Army infantry attack, Soviet tank assaults, and the moment when a group of comrades in a neighboring crater were hit by a shell. He became a casualty himself when he was badly wounded in the legs during a counterattack. After his recovery and retraining in a convalescent unit, Fritz was detailed to serve as a guard in a prisoner of war camp – still on the Eastern Front. Transferred to a tank assault regiment during the last year of the war, he was ordered to make contact with another unit, but lost his way in the snow. After sheltering with a farmer’s family, Fritz decided to head west, fleeing before the advancing Red Army. His subsequent journey home took many twists and turns. Based on Fritz’s own recollections and narrative, this account of a young soldier’s experiences in the Second World War was brought together by his son. It is a moving and graphic description of one man’s involvement in the largest military confrontation in history – the Hell that was the Eastern Front.
Author: Hendrick Verton
Author: Hendrick Verton
Author: Timofeeva-Egoro
Author: Norman Stone
Author: James Lucas
Author: Nikolai Litvin
Author: Hans Heinz Rehfeldt
Author: Craig W. H. Luther
Author: Léon Degrelle
Author: Joseph Pilyushin
Author: Arno Sauer