800 Days on the Eastern Front

800 Days on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Nikolai Litvin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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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.

800 Days on the Eastern Front

800 Days on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Nikolai Litvin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book

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.

800 Days on the Eastern Front

800 Days on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Nikolai Litvin
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700624430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
During his 800 days of war, Nikolai Litvin fought at the front lines in the ferocious tank battles at Kursk, was wounded three times, and witnessed unspeakable brutalities against prisoners and civilians. But he survived to pen this brief but powerful memoir of his wartime experiences. Barely out of his teens, Litvin served for three years in the Red Army on the killing fields of the Eastern Front. His memoir presents an unadorned, candid narrative of the common soldier's lot in Stalin's army. Unlike the memoirs of Russian officers--usually preoccupied with large military operations and political concerns--this narrative offers a true ground-level view of World War II's deadliest theater. It puts a begrimed human face on the enormous toll of casualties and provides a rare perspective on battles that were instrumental in the defeat of the German army. Litvin's varied roles, ranging from antitank gunner at Kursk to heavy machine gunner in a penal battalion to staff driver for the 352nd Rifle Division, offer unique perspectives on the Red Army in World War II as it fought from the Ukraine deep into the German heartland. Litvin documents such significant battles as Operation Kutuzov, Operation Bagration, and the German counterattack on the Narev, while also providing unique personal observations on fording the Dnepr River under enemy fire, the rape of German women by Russian troops, and literally seeing his life pass before his eyes as he watched a Stuka's bomb fall directly on his position. And, because part of his duties involved chauffeuring Red Army generals, he also presents revealing glimpses into their personalities and behaviors. Originally written in 1962, with events still fresh in his mind, Litvin's memoir lay unpublished and unseen until translator Stuart Britton and a Russian colleague approached him about publishing it in English. Britton interviewed Litvin to flesh out the details of his original recollection and annotated the resulting work to provide historical context for the campaigns and battles in which he participated. Remarkably free of Soviet-era propaganda, this gem of a memoir provides a view of the war never seen by western readers, including photographs from Litvin's personal collection. An invaluable historical document, as well as a remarkable testament of survival, Litvin's memoir offers unique and penetrating insights into the Soviet wartime experience unavailable in any other source.

Stalin's Folly

Stalin's Folly PDF Author: Konstantin Pleshakov
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618367016
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Reassessing the Soviet response to the Nazi invasion of Russia, the author portrays Stalin as an ineffective military leader who allowed hundreds of thousands of his soldiers to be slaughtered in the first ten days of the invasion.

In the Hell of the Eastern Front

In the Hell of the Eastern Front PDF Author: Arno Sauer
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 152673334X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
A Nazi infantryman recalls the horrors of combat against the Soviet Union in this WWII memoir as told to his son. Friedrich “Fritz” Sauer was posted to the Eastern Front in 1942. A soldier in the 132nd Infantry Division, he was deployed in Hitler’s grand invasion of Russia. But instead of the swift knockout blow the Germans had anticipated, Operation Barbarossa ground on for almost four years. Sent first to the Crimea and then the region around Leningrad, Fritz experienced horrors of all kinds. In this memoir, Fritz recalls losing his best friend to a sniper, rescuing the body of a fallen comrade from No Man’s Land, enduring Soviet tank assaults, and his own wounding during a counterattack. Fritz was later transferred to a tank assault regiment where, on a mission to contact another unit, he lost his way in the snow. After sheltering with a farmer’s family, Fritz headed west to flee the advancing Red Army. His subsequent journey home took many twists and turns.

The Second World War on the Eastern Front

The Second World War on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Lee Baker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317865049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Russia's engagement with Germany on the Eastern Front during World War II was ferocious, unprecedented and bloody, costing millions of civilian and military lives. In this challenging new book, Lee Baker distinguishes myth from reality and deflates the idea that this war, while gargantuan in scale, was in essence a war like any other.

Tank Rider

Tank Rider PDF 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.

The First Day on the Eastern Front

The First Day on the Eastern Front PDF Author: Craig W. H. Luther
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780811737807
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
June 22, 1941: three million German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union as part of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, aiming to destroy the Soviet Union and secure its land for the Third Reich. In the spirit of the classic First Day on the Somme, Craig Luther narrates the events of that fateful day on the Eastern Front, one of the pivotal days of WW II.

Driven West, Taken East

Driven West, Taken East PDF Author: VILNIS BANKOVI?S
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1514403633
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
THIS is a translation of a WWII memoir written by a Latvian who was conscripted into the German army in 1943 at age nineteen during the German occupation of the Baltic states. He was called out of his classes at a teacher preparatory institute, along with other boys of his age group, and drafted into the newly formed Latvian Legion, created by the Germans after their defeat at Stalingrad as an adjunct force against the Soviets on the Eastern Front. The memoir, written by Vilnis Bankovics and published in a second Latvian edition in August 2014 (Mansards), provides an eyewitness-participant account of the war in Russia and Eastern Europe that has remained largely unreported in English and American histories focused on Western Europe and the Pacifi c. As such, Bankovicss account is authentic history, told in spare, straightforward prose detailing the unalterable rush of events in the wars latter half and several varieties of captivity in the years afterward. The events he recounts form an absorbing story with a natural arc: the end of his carefree schooldays, induction, basic training in Germany, battles against the Red army, being wounded several times, losing his girl and his family in the war, being betrayed by the Germans and captured by the Russians. The second half of the book depicts nighttime interrogations; mass burials; a forced march to an overcrowded, typhus-affl icted prison; bodies littering the fields and roadsides and tossed like trash into burial pits; transportation by cattle car to a forced-labor camp in the Gulag above the Arctic Circle; illness and injury and near-starvation; but an ultimate survival and a return to the Baltic states and to Latvia at the end of his ordeal. The book draws its power from this last circumstance and the gradual revelation of an even more signifi cant kind of survivalpreservation of the authors own integrity and humanity despite the trials he undergoes. As the book shows, Vilnis Bankovics remains the thoughtful, generous, and sociable person he was before his ordeal began. Maris Roze

In Deadly Combat

In Deadly Combat PDF Author: Gottlob Herbert Bidermann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
This book offers a ground soldier's perspective on life and death on the front lines, providing details of day-to-day operations and German army life. Wounded five times and awarded numerous decorations, Bidermann fought in the Crimea and the siege of Sebastopol, participated in the battles in the forests to the south of Leningrad, and found himself in the Courland Pocket at the end of the war. He shares his impressions of Russian POWs, of peasants struggling to survive the war, and of his fellow German soldiers. He also recounts the humiliation of surrender and offers a sober glimpse of life in a Soviet gulag. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Fighting in Hell

Fighting in Hell PDF Author: Peter G. Tsouras
Publisher: Tantor eBooks
ISBN: 1618030183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
On 22 June 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union, one hundred fifty divisions advancing on three axes in a surprise attack that overwhelmed and destroyed whatever opposition the Russians were able to muster. The German High Command was under the impression that the Red Army could be destroyed west of the Dnepr River and that there would be no need for conducting operations in cold, snow, and mud. They were wrong. In reality, the extreme conditions of the German war in Russia were so brutal that past experiences simply paled before them. Everything in Russia--the land, the weather, the distances, and above all the people--was harder, harsher, more unforgiving, and more deadly than anything the German soldier had ever faced before. Based on the recollections of four veteran German commanders of those battles, FIGHTING IN HELL describes in detail what happened when the world's best-publicized "supermen" met the world's most brutal fighting. It is not a tale for the squeamish.