In January 1944 the Red Army at last succeeded in putting to an end one of the most dramatic sieges in the history of warfare, that of Leningrad. The Soviet spearheads quickly expelled the Wehrmacht from the vicinity of the city, but once they reached the prewar border with Estonia, they were stopped dead in their tracks by a very determined Axis resistance. There, at river Narva, Germans, Estonians, and Waffen SS volunteers and conscripts from all over Europe stood firm for several months against numerous Soviet violent attacks. By doing so, they were able to cripple the ambitious military and political plans of Joseph Stalin, and to effectively postpone the Soviet re-conquest of the Baltic States for more than half a year. Penned by a leading Bulgarian researcher, the book provides an expert analysis of this lesser-known battle. A considerable number of German and Soviet wartime documents were accessed, and this allowed the author to tell the story from perspective of both sides. It also contains many never-before-published photographs.
Based on an unparalleled access to Russian archival sources and going far beyond the military aspects of other historical works, Glantz's book is a testament to the nearly two million Russians who lost their lives during the battle for Leningrad. 90 illustrations. 16 maps.
Danske frivillige indgik ikke alene i Regiment 24 "DANMARK", men var ihvertfald for officerernes vedkommende jævnt fordelt i korpsets enheder, vel primært i "NORDLAND", men også i "LANGEMARCK". Nævnt er også "Kampfgruppe Küste", hvis chef var generalmajor Kryssing.
The siege of the Swedish stronghold of Narva by the Russians in 1704 is very typical yet rather unusual operation of this kind. Its study covers both operational and tactical levels, deals with peculiarities of the siege warfare, and describes everyday life of the participants.
The complete and unredacted autobiography by Stalin’s star general, chronicling his many campaigns throughout WWII. At Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin—as well as virtually all the principal battles on the Eastern Front during the Second World War—Georgy Zhukov played a major role. He was Stalin’s pre-eminent general throughout the conflict, and he chronicled his brilliant career as he saw it in this essential text. Here, Zhukov reveals intriguing insights into who he was, both as a man and as a commander. He also delves into the military thinking and decision-making at the highest level of the Soviet command—making this volume essential reading for anyone studying the conflict in the east. This edition of the memoirs, which were first published in heavily censored form, features an introduction by Professor Geoffrey Roberts in which he summarizes the additional material omitted from previous editions. He also provides, in an appendix, a translation of Zhukov’s account of the 1953-7 period as well as an interview with Zhukov that has previously not been available in English.
"The foremost purpose of this book is to document the course of the battle, but also to put into context the part played by the volunteers who fought on the "wrong" side in this epic World War II battle"--Foreword.
With scarcely an interlude, the German-Soviet conflict in World War II lasted for 3 years, 10 months, and 16 days. The conflict seesawed across eastern and central Europe between the Elbe and the Volga, the Alps, and the Caucasus. The total number of troops continuously engaged averaged between 8 and 9 million, and the losses were appalling. Wehrmacht losses numbered between 3 and 3.5 million. Deaths on the Soviet side reached more than 12 million, about 47 percent of the grand total of soldiers of all nations killed in World War II. The war and the occupation cost the?Soviet Union some 7 million civilians and Germany about 1.5 million. The losses, civilian and military, of Finland, the Baltic States, and eastern and southeastern European countries added millions more.??The great struggle completely unhinged the traditional European balance of power. The war consolidated the Soviet regime in Russia, and enabled it to impose the Communist system on its neighbours, Finland excepted, and on the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. The victory made the Soviet Union the second-ranking world power.??This book follows the conflict from Stalingrad to Berlin. Topics include strategy and tactics, partisan and psychological warfare, coalition warfare, and manpower and production problems faced by both countries, but by the Germans in particular.??With a new introduction by Emmy AwardTM winning historian Bob Carruthers and numerous rare illustrations this powerful book makes for a welcome addition to any Second World War library.
Fire brigades, the Panzer Divisions 1943-1945 relates the full story of the Panzer Divisions from the turn of the tide against the Germans in 1943 to the bitter end in 1945. The author has compiled an unprecedented amount of detail on the 46 divisions designated or equipped as Panzer. All the active divisions from mid-1943 onwards, from the well known to the obscure, are comprehensively described -- Army, SS and Luftwaffe. The topics covered are; combat history, organization of the various formations and units within the division, monthly deliveries of armor, monthly condition reports and attachments to higher formations. There is also a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the development of the Panzer divsions and how their structure and role changed as the war situation deteriorated. The figures quoted are not those for a theoretical order of battle; these are the actual figures of troop and vehicle strengths, casualties, replacements, etc. This book is the definitive work on the subject and is an absolutely indispensible reference for the armored warfare enthusiast, military historian, wargamer and World War 2 researcher.
From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour comes a captivating novel about war, courage, survival and a remarkable friendship. Stumped by a magazine assignment to write about his own uneventful life, a man visits his retired grandparents in Florida to document their experience during the infamous siege of Leningrad. Reluctantly, his grandfather commences a story that will take almost a week to tell: an odyssey of two young men determined to survive.
What happens to legacies that do not find any continuation? In Estonia, a new generation that does not remember the socialist era and is open to global influences has grown up. As a result, the impact of the Soviet memory in people’s conventional values is losing its effective power, opening new opportunities for repair and revaluation of the past. Francisco Martinez brings together a number of sites of interest to explore the vanquishing of the Soviet legacy in Estonia: the railway bazaar in Tallinn where concepts such as ‘market’ and ‘employment’ take on distinctly different meanings from their Western use; Linnahall, a grandiose venue, whose Soviet heritage now poses diffi cult questions of how to present the building’s history; Tallinn’s cityscape, where the social, spatial and temporal co-evolution of the city can be viewed and debated; Narva, a city that marks the border between the Russian Federation, NATO and the European Union, and represents a place of continual negotiation of belonging; and the new Estonian National Museum in Raadi, an area on the outskirts of Tartu, that has been turned into a memory field. The anthropological study of all these places shows that national identity and historical representations can be constructed in relation to waste and disrepair too, also demonstrating how we can understand generational change in a material sense. Praise for Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia 'By adopting the tropes of ‘repair’ and ‘waste’, this book innovatively manages to link various material registers from architecture, intergenerational relations, affect and museums with ways of making the past present. Through a rigorous yet transdisciplinary method, Martínez brings together different scales and contexts that would often be segregated out. In this respect, the ethnography unfolds a deep and nuanced analysis, providing a useful comparative and insightful account of the processes of repair and waste making in all their material, social and ontological dimensions.' Victor Buchli, Professor of Material Culture at UCL 'This book comprises an endearingly transdisciplinary ethnography of postsocialist material culture and social change in Estonia. Martínez creatively draws on a number of critical and cultural theorists, together with additional research on memory and political studies scholarship and the classics of anthropology. Grappling concurrently with time and space, the book offers a delightfully thick description of the material effects generated by the accelerated post-Soviet transformation in Estonia, inquiring into the generational specificities in experiencing and relating to the postsocialist condition through the conceptual anchors of wasted legacies and repair. This book defies disciplinary boundaries and shows how an attention to material relations and affective infrastructures might reinvigorate political theory.' Maria Mälksoo, Senior Lecturer, Brussels School of International Studies at the University of Kent
