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The Crushing of Army Group North 1944-45 on the Eastern Front tells the story in words and images of the last bitter months fought on Russian soil and the battle of the Baltic States that ensued. Drawing on rare and unpublished photos it reveals in detail how remnants of Army Group North were driven back to the borders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In the battles that followed, the retreating German Panzer and infantry divisions were encircled and annihilated. With the remnants were pushed back into East Prussia, and then fought to the death in the last few small pockets of land surrounding three ports of Libau in Kurland, Pillau in East Prussia and Danzig at the mouth of the River Vistula. It was here that the final battle of Army Group North would take place after Hitler ordered his troops to `stand and fight` and wage an unprecedented battle of attrition.
The last place a German soldier wanted to be in 1944 was the eastern front. That summer, Stalin hurled millions of men and thousands of tanks and planes against German forces across a broad front. In a series of massive, devastating battles, the Red Army decimated Hitler's Army Group Center in Belorussua, annihilated Army Group South in the Ukraine, and inflicted crushing casualties while taking Rumania and Hungary. By the time Budapest fell to the Soviets in Febuary 1945, the German Army had been slaughtered--and the Third Reich was in its death throes.
For Hitler and the German military, 1942 was a key turning point of World War II, as an overstretched but still lethal Wehrmacht replaced brilliant victories and huge territorial gains with stalemates and strategic retreats. In this major reevaluation of that crucial year, Robert Citino shows that the German army's emerging woes were rooted as much in its addiction to the "war of movement"-attempts to smash the enemy in "short and lively" campaigns-as they were in Hitler's deeply flawed management of the war. From the overwhelming operational victories at Kerch and Kharkov in May to the catastrophic defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Death of the Wehrmacht offers an eye-opening new view of that decisive year. Building upon his widely respected critique in The German Way of War, Citino shows how the campaigns of 1942 fit within the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions. He examines every major campaign and battle in the Russian and North African theaters throughout the year to assess how a military geared to quick and decisive victories coped when the tide turned against it. Citino also reconstructs the German generals' view of the war and illuminates the multiple contingencies that might have produced more favorable results. In addition, he cites the fatal extreme aggressiveness of German commanders like Erwin Rommel and assesses how the German system of command and its commitment to the "independence of subordinate commanders" suffered under the thumb of Hitler and chief of staff General Franz Halder. More than the turning point of a war, 1942 marked the death of a very old and traditional pattern of warmaking, with the classic "German way of war" unable to meet the challenges of the twentieth century. Blending masterly research with a gripping narrative, Citino's remarkable work provides a fresh and revealing look at how one of history's most powerful armies began to founder in its quest for world domination.
* The latest in the ever popular Images of War Series. * Describes the bitter fighting and extreme conditions of the Eastern Front. * Superb and rare images of Axis and Russian armour and other weapons/equipment in action. * Compiled by our foremost Images of War author and photographic collector.
Battle in the Baltics 1944 - 1945 is an exclusive insight into the last frantic months of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1944 - 1945. From mid-August 1944 there was nothing but a drum-beat of defeats for the German Army as it fought to the grim death to try and hold back the overwhelming might of the Russians from reaching the borders of the Reich. It was in the Baltic`s where Army Group North played a decisive role in trying to stem the rout and preventing the fragile lines from finally being smashed to pieces. Drawing on a host of rare and unpublished photographs accompanied by in-depth captions, the book provides a revealing insight into the last desperate months of the war. It reveals in detail how the remnants of Army Group North were driven back across a scarred and devastated wasteland to the borders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, East Prussia and Pomerania. What followed was the Battle of the Baltic`s where exhausted and undermanned German forces fought to almost near extinction against the constant hammer blows of Soviet ground and aerial bombardments. Everywhere disintegrating German forces tried to cling onto vital ground. Eventually after many precious German Panzer and infantry divisions were encircled and annihilated the remnants of Hitler`s once vaunted force was pushed back through the Baltic states into East Prussia, and then fought to the death in the last few small pockets of land surrounding three ports: Libau in Kurland, Pillau in East Prussia and Danzig at the mouth of the River Vistula. It was here that the final battle of the Baltic`s would take place where German troops were ordered to `stand and fight` and wage an unprecedented battle of attrition.
This entry in the popular Images of War series features graphic contemporary images of Göring and other leading Nazis. A former Great War fighter pilot, Hermann Göring became, at his height, the second most powerful Nazi. Ambitious and ruthless, in addition to being a primary architect of the Third Reich state police and Gestapo, his numerous appointments included Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Director of the Four Year Plan and playing a leading role in the Final Solution to the ‘Jewish Question’. By the outbreak of the war in 1939, he was acknowledged as Hitler’s successor and in 1940 was given the special rank of Marshal of the Empire and senior to all field marshals through the German armed services. Due to being held responsible for a number of military disasters, Göring’s pre-eminent position declined as the war dragged on to the point where he was expelled from the Party for ‘illegally attempting to seize control of the State’. Captured by the Allies, he was found guilty at Nuremberg of being a leading war aggressor and advocate of the persecution of Jews and other races. He cheated the hangman by committing suicide. The career of this leading Nazi is admirably described here in words and copious images.
During the Second World War, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were occupied on three separate occasions – twice by the Soviet Union and once by Nazi Germany. The signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939 allowed the Soviets to dominate the Baltic states without fear of German reprisals, causing many in the German-Baltic populations to flee to Poland. Soviet rule of the Baltics was brutal with the purging of political elites and deportation of many tens of thousands in a bid to turn them into vassal states. Consequently, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, many Balts saw it as a liberation from Soviet cruelties. The reality was, however, that it turned out to be the beginning of something much worse. During their occupation of Poland prior to Barbarossa the Nazis had decimated the Polish political elites, and the Jews there had been herded into ghettos in preparation for deportation to the east where they would serve as slave labour in the Nazi economy after the conquest of the Soviet Union. Similar policies were to be adopted in the Baltics when Heinrich Himmler's murder squads, the Einsatzgruppen, were allowed to move into the newly-occupied territories. Operating behind the advancing German forces Einsatzgruppen A, B, C, and D – four special mobile killing units, each made up of about a thousand men from the security police and the German intelligence service – proved to be more than willing to carry out Himmler's orders. He had called for the removal of every vestige of opposition to Nazi rule, which primarily meant complete elimination of the ‘inferior’ races who were unfit for work and the ghettoization of others in preparation for their economic exploitation. On foreign soil, away from scrutiny and free of all constraint, the Einsatzgruppen discovered that through the mass shootings of communists, Jews and gypsies it was possible to accelerate the pace of the Holocaust, slaughtering men, women and children in their tens of thousands. The Einsatzgruppen were assisted by local ‘volunteers’ who helped to identify victims as well as kill them; in places whole Jewish communities were swiftly eliminated. Many of the killers and victims had known one another as neighbors and colleagues. This massive slaughter of civilians convinced Heydrich and Himmler that complete extermination of Jews was within their grasp and before very long, in the death camps, new industrial methods of killing would be devised.
The historic 872 day siege of Leningrad by German Army Group North began in earnest on 8 September 1941 and was not lifted until 27 January 1944. During this period the Red Army made numerous desperate attempts to break the blockade, which the Nazis and their Spanish and Finnish allies doggedly resisted. Eventually, due to overwhelming enemy pressure, Hitler’s forces were compelled to retreat, but not before looting and destroying numerous historic palaces and landmarks and looting their priceless art collections. The bitter and prolonged fighting often under appalling climatic conditions resulted in many thousands of casualties for both sides from direct action and constant indirect artillery and air attack. Arguably most shocking was the loss of life due to the systematic starvation of the civilian population trapped inside and the intentional destruction of its buildings. Drawing on a superb collection of rare and unpublished photographs with detailed captions and explanatory text, this dramatic book vividly portrays every aspect of the siege which has the dubious claim of being arguably the most costly in human and material terms of any in recent military history.