Looking for any decent books on the Eastern Front in WW2.
I've read Stalingrad by Anthony Beever, Barbarossa by Alan Clark and Enemy at the Gates by William Craig.
Can any of the good people of STW recommend some others?
A bit OT, but covers a lot of the 1945 Eastern Front and the subsequent westwards movement of Poland - Germany 1945 - very good read.
While I like to think I'm well read I didn't realise how little I knew about this piece of history - such as how one million people lost their lives in Germany in January 1945!
Mine was £10 from WHSmith
If you've read Stalingrad you probably ought to read the follow up - Berlin, the Downfall. Max Hastings also did a good book that covered eastern and western front
Armageddon
The Forgotten Soldier - a French/German teenager's account of serving on the eastern front is good.
+1, excellent read
Not a book, but have you seen the 1973 Thames series the world at War. I received it for Xmas and its great, loads of interviews with people who fought or held power of some sort at the time including the eastern front.
I once camped at the farm of a man who fought on the eastern front for six years. He was in his 80s at the time; quiet, rather pleasant, but hard as nails
If you're specifically interested in the Eastern Front [url=
Without Garlands [/url] is well worth a read.
[url=
Road To Stalingrad[/url] and the second part, Road To Berlin by John Erickson is incredibly detailed but a bit of a slog because of that. Very good though, and the mass of data seems somehow to capture the scale of the conflict in a way that the more populist stuff by Hastings and Beevor misses.
The time of light by Gunnar Kopperad.
[url=
fiction but factually based...
Thanks for all the help gents.
+1 For the Forgotten Soldier and +10 for The World at War TV series!
reserved the Germany,1945 by Richard Bessel at my local library through the website.
Mrs is as fed up of the piles of books I keep buying as much as the inner tubes and multi tools on the kitchen table! Try the cheaper lending option!
[url=
Approaches[/url] - a classic true tale of an Englishman's adventures abroad
Second call Eastern Approaches, Fitzroy Maclean i think great story.
Just read Richard Holmes, Redcoat, not exactly the era you were asking about but a good read.
Adventures in my youth ( a german soldier on the eastern front 1941-45)
by Armin Scheiderbauer.
ISBN 1-874622-06-X
a very good read as it is a memoir of a man who fought for the 252nd infantry division ending up
with the rank of oberleutnant and winning the iron cross and close combat clasp. he was finally captured by the russians but survived and was freed in 47.
well worth a look, one of my favourite books, hard to find but a quick search and you can find it in amazon.com/US site and price though,
Both the Erickson books are good,as stated above
You can't have enoiugh books.
Was going to do +1 for The Forgotten Soldier, bit it looks like you've read it already.
The forsaken army Heinrich Gerlach
On 2 February 1943, having been defeated at Stalingrad and surrounded by the Russian Army, 91,000 starved and exhausted soldiers of the German Sixth Army finally surrendered. By 1945 only 6,000 of these were still alive - and only a handful ever returned from Russia. Heinrich Gerlach was one of the survivors. From the moment of surrender he began to collect the personal stories of hundreds of his fellow prisoners: everyone from generals to veteran infantrymen to boys who had only just left the Hitler Youth. The result is a horrifying and uniquely authentic novel about the battle of Stalingrad, describing in detail one of the defining events of the twentieth century.
About the Author
Heinrich Gerlach was captured by the Russian Army after Stalingrad, and spent the next 5 years in a prison camp. He wrote this book while in prison, but the manuscript was discovered and confiscated by the guards. After release, he reconstructed it from memory over the course of 5 years. The book contains nothing which did not in fact happen.
I must stop reading these threads - this one has cost me a copy of Adventures in My Youth and a copy of Abenteur meiner Jugend ( I told myself it would be good for my language skills 🙂 )
[tongue in cheek] How long before the peaceniks come along and tell us these books glorify war?[/tongue in cheek]
More into the western front history myself, ploughing through the book of the Pacific at the moment, that is an eye opner as haven't read much about the Pacific conflict before.
Just bought Notes of a Russian Sniper: Vassili Zaitsev and the Battle of Stalingrad: from Amazon. Apparently enemy at the gate was based on it.
Sorry for the thread resurrection - but this one has had me thinking over the last weeek...
The chap I mentioned up there ^ - a very interesting character, and this thread got me thinking about whether it was possible (or ethical even) to try and find out a little more...(perhaps not about the individual, but maybe about the units etc)
So, way OT for a bike forum, but WTH, seems like there are plenty on here with WW2 / military interest etc.
What I do know about the person I met:
- [b]His name[/b], but wont be revealing that on a public forum...this relates to one of the most controversial periods in modern history.
- [b]Fought the Russians[/b] - from at least 1939 (possibly earlier), [u]continuously[/u] through to 1945, and he survived (obviously, but possibly unusually given the brutality of the Eastern Front...).
- He was [b]decorated for bravery[/b], personally by Adolf Hitler
- For at least part of 1939-45 he was in the [b]Waffen SS[/b], but was NOT German!
What I don't know, but has kind of captured my curiosity...
- I believe that he was in the SS Wiking / Nordland Division / Regiment
- I have been told that he was in a front fighting unit throughout (not camp guard type SS etc). Seven years is a long time to have been fighting the Russians on the front line - where? when? etc come to mind...
- How the hell did he survive? I can't imagine that SS troops would have survived in Russian hands, although have read that many of the hardened German units fought their way back to areas of Germany occupied by the Western Allies.
- As a non-German in the SS, I guess he didn't just get told to go home at the end of the war...?
Anyone got any thoughts on sources for more info?
I am accutely aware that it is a very controversial topic. I am in no way a right wing sympathiser or apologist - just interested in what a non-German did in a 7 year campaign against the Russians. I have been told that many of his countrymen did the same, not necessarily through any National Socialist leanings, but through a fear of being annihilated by the Soviets.
Given that Germany didn't attack the USSR until 1941 I'd suggest that the 1939 date is a bit out unless he was Finnish in which case he could have fought against them in the Winter War (began 1939 I think?) before joining a non-German division.
That's exactly the puzzled question that I asked when told that he had fought the Russians for that length of time...
But yes, basically he fought the Winter War with the Finns and then carried on. Not sure about any "unofficial" skirmishes before / after the Winter War (ie pre 39 and between 39 and 41).
As I said, some difficult ethical questions here, but a potentially fascinating story
rkk01 - Finnish I presume?
oops, been away from the PC, should have updated earlier :blush:
No, not Finnish. Scandinavian though.
At the time I was told that many of them fought the Soviets from way before Hitler got involved on the Eastern Front. The way it was put to me - they carried on and fought with Hitler's armies, not through a common ideology, but through fear of a common enemy.
- As NATO always feared post war, the Scandinavian peninsula is very narrow when you have a very large, militarised, revolutionary neighbour
That view of my enemies enemy is my friend was not uncommon at the time. Many people made choices of the least worst variety which moved them toward one or other side. Quite a few of the Oxbridge intellectuals that ended up as spies for the USSR actually started out with a genuine belief that what they were doing was a moral thing for similar reasons.
I think there were quite a few red team volunteers from around here (S Wales Valleys) for the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.
A dangerous generalisation, but the only current parallel, perhaps (but without the religious dimension), would be UK born people joining overseas campaigns that are diametrically opposed to our own Government's actions. Not something you see that often...
A very interesting, volatile period in relatively recent history - extreme diffrences in views / acceptability between personal beliefs and action and National interests and actions. And of course, we view it with all through a lens focused by the horror of post war realisation of what the Nazis really did, and a long Cold War stand off against an equally despicable Soviet regime.
