In the summer of 1941, a collective madness overtook Adolf Hitler and his senior generals. They convinced themselves that they could take on and defeat a superpower in the making – the Soviet Union. Foolishly, they thought in a swift campaign they could smash the Red Army and force Stalin to sue for peace, despite dire warnings that Stalin was amassing a reserve army of more than 1 million men on the Volga. The end result would be such carnage that it would tear the German forces apart. In his major reassessment of the war on the Eastern Front, Anthony Tucker-Jones casts new light on the brutal fighting, including such astounding German defeats as at Stalingrad, Kursk, Minsk and, finally, Berlin. He controversially contends that from the very start intelligence officers on both sides failed to influence their leadership resulting in untold slaughter. He also reveals the shocking blunders by Hitler, Stalin and even Churchill that led to the appalling, needless destruction of Hitler’s armed forces as early as the winter of 1941–42. Step by step, Tucker-Jones describes how the German war machine fought to its very last against a relentless enemy, fully aware that defeat was inevitable.

In the summer of 1941, a collective madness overtook Adolf Hitler and his senior generals. They convinced themselves that they could take on and defeat a superpower in the making – the Soviet Union. Foolishly, they thought in a swift campaign they could smash the Red Army and force Stalin to sue for peace, despite dire warnings that Stalin was amassing a reserve army of more than 1 million men on the Volga. The end result would be such carnage that it would tear the German forces apart. In his major reassessment of the war on the Eastern Front, Anthony Tucker-Jones casts new light on the brutal fighting, including such astounding German defeats as at Stalingrad, Kursk, Minsk and, finally, Berlin. He controversially contends that from the very start intelligence officers on both sides failed to influence their leadership resulting in untold slaughter. He also reveals the shocking blunders by Hitler, Stalin and even Churchill that led to the appalling, needless destruction of Hitler's armed forces as early as the winter of 1941–42. Step by step, Tucker-Jones describes how the German war machine fought to its very last against a relentless enemy, fully aware that defeat was inevitable.

With the opening of long-sealed Soviet archives beginning in the 1990s, English-speaking readers have begun to better comprehend the enormity and decisive nature of the fighting between Germany and her many allies and the Soviet Union. Despite the massive scale of the fighting, much of its history remains obscure and imperfectly understood. Slaughterhouse is the first book of its kind to present a history of the Eastern Front that includes up-to-date information culled from long-sealed archives and synthesized by some of the foremost historians of the Soviet and German militaries. occurred on the Eastern Front, with nine detailed maps; Forgotten battles of the Eastern Front * Thumbnail histories of 487 units - army groups, armies, corps, and divisions - that saw combat on the Eastern Front with the German Armed Forces and their allies * Thumbnail histories of 881 Red Army and Air Force units - fronts, armies, corps, and divisions - on the Eastern Front * Biographical sketches of 57 key Axis and Soviet wartime personalities * Highly-detailed organizational diagrams of 55 types of Axis and Red Army divisions that served on the Eastern Front * Comprehensive, meticulously-researched performance data comparisons of hundreds of Axis and Red Army weapons, including small arms, mortars, artillery, tanks, assault guns, combat aircraft, and more

In his major reassessment of the war on the Eastern Front, Anthony Tucker-Jones casts new light on the brutal fighting on the Eastern Front, in such astounding German defeats as at Stalingrad and Kursk.

Günter Koschorrek wrote his illicit diary on any scraps of paper he could lay his hands on, storing them with his mother on infrequent trips home on leave. The diary went missing, and it was not until he was reunited with his daughter in America some forty years later that it came to light and became Blood Red Snow. The author’s excitement at the first encounter with the enemy in the Russian Steppe is obvious. Later, the horror and confusion of fighting in the streets of Stalingrad are brought to life by his descriptions of the others in his unit – their differing manners and techniques for dealing with the squalor and death. He is also posted to Romania and Italy, assignments he remembers fondly compared to his time on the Eastern Front. This book stands as a memorial to the huge numbers on both sides who did not survive and is, some six decades later, the fulfilment of a responsibility the author feels to honour the memory of those who perished.

Operation 'Berlin', the Soviet offensive launched on 16 April, 1945, by Marshals Zhukov and Koniev, isolated the German Ninth Army and tens of thousands of refugees in the Spreewald 'pocket', south-east of Berlin. Stalin ordered its encirclement and destruction and his subordinates, eager to win the race to the Reichstag, pushed General Busse's 9th Army into a tiny area east of the village of Halbe. To escape the Spreewald pocket, the remnants of 9th Army had to pass through Halbe, where barricades constructed by both sides formed formidable obstacles and the converging Soviet forces subjected the area to heavy artillery fire. By the time 9th Army eventually escaped the Soviet pincers, it had suffered 40,000 killed and 60,000 taken prisoner. Teenaged refugees recount their experiences alongside Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS veterans attempting to maintain military discipline amid the chaos and carnage of headlong retreat. While army commanders strive to extricate their decimated units, demoralised soldiers change into civilian clothing and take to the woods. Relating the story day by day, Tony Le Tissier shows the impact of total war upon soldier and civilian alike, illuminating the unfolding of great and terrible events with the recollections of participants.

“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.

This lavishly illustrated WWII history examines the bitter aerial combat of the Eastern Front through rare wartime photographs and informative text. Though the air war was a major aspect of the Eastern Front conflict, it has long been neglected by historians. Anthony Tucker-Jones’s photographic history offers a vividly detailed introduction to the subject. With more than 150 archival images—most of which have never been published before—this volume examines Stalin’s Red Air Force and Hitlers Luftwaffe, their equipment, and the role they played in supporting the war on the ground. Just before Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin had decimated the leadership of the Red Air Force in a series of purges. Thousands of Russian fighter aircraft were swiftly destroyed in the German Blitzkrieg. But a remarkable recovery followed as the Red Air Force turned the tide against the ravages of the Luftwaffe to wrestle back air superiority by 1944.

Chilling and authentic historical novel.

A full century later, our picture of World War I remains one of wholesale, pointless slaughter in the trenches of the Western front. Expanding our focus to the Eastern front, as David R. Stone does in this masterly work, fundamentally alters—and clarifies—that picture. A thorough, and thoroughly readable, history of the Russian front during the First World War, this book corrects widespread misperceptions of the Russian Army and the war in the east even as it deepens and extends our understanding of the broader conflict. Of the four empires at war by the end of 1914—the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German, and Russian—none survived. But specific political, social, and economic weaknesses shaped the way Russia collapsed and returned as a radically new Soviet regime. It is this context that Stone's work provides, that gives readers a more judicious view of Russia's war on the home front as well as on the front lines. One key and fateful difference in the Russian experience emerges here: its failure to systematically and comprehensively reorganize its society for war, while the three westernmost powers embarked on programs of total mobilization. Context is also vital to understanding the particular rhythm of the war in the east. Drawing on recent and newly available scholarship in Russian and in English, Stone offers a nuanced account of Russia's military operations, concentrating on the uninterrupted sequence of campaigns in the first 18 months of war. The eastern empires' race to collapse underlines the critical importance of contingency in the complete story of World War I. Precisely when and how Russia lost the war was influenced by the structural strengths and weaknesses of its social and economic system, but also by the outcome of events on the battlefield. By bringing these events into focus, and putting them into context, this book corrects and enriches our picture of World War I, and of the true strengths and weaknesses, triumphs and successes of the Russian Army in the Great War.