German Northern Theater of Operations 1940-1945 [Illustrated Edition]
German Northern Theater of Operations 1940-1945 [Illustrated Edition]

Author: Earl Ziemke

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 1782899774

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[Includes 23 maps and 31 illustrations] This volume describes two campaigns that the Germans conducted in their Northern Theater of Operations. The first they launched, on 9 April 1940, against Denmark and Norway. The second they conducted out of Finland in partnership with the Finns against the Soviet Union. The latter campaign began on 22 June 1941 and ended in the winter of 1944-45 after the Finnish Government had sued for peace. The scene of these campaigns by the end of 1941 stretched from the North Sea to the Arctic Ocean and from Bergen on the west coast of Norway, to Petrozavodsk, the former capital of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic. It faced east into the Soviet Union on a 700-mile-long front, and west on a 1,300-mile sea frontier. Hitler regarded this theater as the keystone of his empire, and, after 1941, maintained in it two armies totaling over a half million men. In spite of its vast area and the effort and worry which Hitler lavished on it, the Northern Theater throughout most of the war constituted something of a military backwater. The major operations which took place in the theater were overshadowed by events on other fronts, and public attention focused on the theaters in which the strategically decisive operations were expected to take place. Remoteness, German security measures, and the Russians’ well-known penchant for secrecy combined to keep information concerning the Northern Theater down to a mere trickle, much of that inaccurate. Since the war, through official and private publications, a great deal more has become known. The present volume is based in the main on the greatest remaining source of unexploited information, the captured German military and naval records. In addition a number of the participants on the German side have very generously contributed from their personal knowledge and experience.

Stalingrad To Berlin - The German Defeat In The East [Illustrated Edition]
Stalingrad To Berlin - The German Defeat In The East [Illustrated Edition]

Author: Earl F. Ziemke

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 1185

ISBN-13: 1782893202

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Contains 72 illustrations and 42 maps of the Russian Campaign. After the disasters of the Stalingrad Campaign in the Russian winters of 1942-3, the German Wehrmacht was on the defensive under increasing Soviet pressure; this volume sets out to show how did the Russians manage to push the formerly all-conquering German soldiers back from Russian soil to the ruins of Berlin. Save for the introduction of nuclear weapons, the Soviet victory over Germany was the most fateful development of World War II. Both wrought changes and raised problems that have constantly preoccupied the world in the more than twenty years since the war ended. The purpose of this volume is to investigate one aspect of the Soviet victory-how the war was won on the battlefield. The author sought, in following the march of the Soviet and German armies from Stalingrad to Berlin, to depict the war as it was and to describe the manner in which the Soviet Union emerged as the predominant military power in Europe.

Moscow To Stalingrad - Decision In The East [Illustrated Edition]
Moscow To Stalingrad - Decision In The East [Illustrated Edition]

Author: Earl F. Ziemke

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 1225

ISBN-13: 1782893199

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Contains 92 illustrations and 45 maps of the Russian Campaign. A brilliant modern history of the German invasion of Russia to their bloody crushing defeat by the re-invigorated Russian forces at the siege of Stalingrad. During 1942, the Axis advance reached its high tide on all fronts and began to ebb. Nowhere was this more true than on the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union. After receiving a disastrous setback on the approaches to Moscow in the winter of 1941-1942, the German armies recovered sufficiently to embark on a sweeping summer offensive that carried them to the Volga River at Stalingrad and deep into the Caucasus Mountains. The Soviet armies suffered severe defeats in the spring and summer of 1942 but recovered to stop the German advances in October and encircle and begin the destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in November and December. This volume describes the course of events from the Soviet December 1941 counteroffensive at Moscow to the Stalingrad offensive in late 1942 with particular attention to the interval from January through October 1942, which has been regarded as a hiatus between the two major battles but which in actuality constituted the period in which the German fortunes slid into irreversible decline and the Soviet forces acquired the means and capabilities that eventually brought them victory. These were the months of decision in the East.

Hitler's Northern War
Hitler's Northern War

Author: Adam R. A. Claasen

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13:

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Adolf Hitler had high hopes for his conquest of Norway, which held both great symbolic and great strategic value for the Fuhrer. Despite early successes, however, his ambitious northern campaign foundered and ultimately failed. Adam Claasen for the first time reveals the full story of this neglected episode and shows how it helped doom the Third Reich to defeat. Hitler and Raeder, the chief of the German navy, were determined to take and keep Norway. By doing so, they hoped to preempt Allied attempts to outflank Germany, protect sea lanes for German ships, access precious Scandinavian minerals for war production, and provide a launchpad for Luftwaffe and naval operations against Great Britain. Beyond those strategic objectives, Hitler also envisioned Norway as part of a pan-Nordic stronghold—a centerpiece of his new world order. But, as Claasen shows, Hitler's grand expectations were never realized. Gring's Luftwaffe was the vital spearhead in the invasion of Norway, which marked a number of wartime firsts. Among other things, it involved the first large-scale aerial operations over sea rather than land, the first time operational objectives and logistical needs were fulfilled by air power, and the first deployment of paratroopers. Although it got off to a promising start, the German effort, particularly against British and arctic convoys, was greatly hampered by flawed strategic thinking, interservice rivalries between the Luftwaffe and navy, the failure to develop a long-range heavy bomber, the diversion of planes and personnel to shore up the German war effort elsewhere, and the northern theater's harsh climate and terrain. Claasen's study covers every aspect of this ill-fated campaign from the 1940 invasion until war's end and shows how it was eventually relegated to a backwater status as Germany fought to survive in an increasingly unwinnable war. His compelling account sharpens our picture of the German air force and widens our understanding of the Third Reich's way of war.

Air Base Defense In The Republic Of Vietnam 1961-1973 [Illustrated Edition]
Air Base Defense In The Republic Of Vietnam 1961-1973 [Illustrated Edition]

Author: Lt.-Colonel Roger P. Fox

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 1782895914

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Includes 78 photos and 16 maps / charts This book explores the unique problem of defending air bases during the Vietnam War. It centers on the primary efforts of the United States Air Force and allied air units to defend 10 key air bases within the Republic of Vietnam. Bien Hoa, on 1 November 1964, was the first base to be attacked and until the cease-fire in January 1973, these bases suffered a total of 475 attacks. Although there were initial deficiencies in staff support for base defense in such key areas as intelligence, motor vehicles, weapons procurement and maintenance, communications, and civil engineering, significant improvements had been made by the end of the Air Force’s part in the war. The author, Lt. Col. Roger P. Fox, USAF (Ret.), wrote this volume while assigned to the Office of Air Force History. He brings judgments to his research based on his personal experience as a base security officer during the conflict. Thus, early on the morning of 4 December 1966, he rallied Air Force and South Vietnamese security forces to repel an enemy attempt to penetrate Tan Son Nhut Air Base, the center of Air Force operations in South Vietnam. For his gallantry in action on this occasion, he was awarded the Silver Star. This personal experience formed a foundation upon which he developed a keen insight into exploring the entire spectrum of air base defense, and upon which he has built a strong case for testing future plans and operations.

From Stalingrad to Berlin
From Stalingrad to Berlin

Author: Earl Zeimke

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2014-02-04

Total Pages: 565

ISBN-13: 1473847869

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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 theSoviet 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.