A companion volume to our very successful In a Raging Inferno - Combat Units of the Hitler Youth, Hans Kissel's study offers a highly detailed account of the German Volkssturm, or Home Guard. Formed from men unfit for military service, the young, and the old, this ad-hoc formation saw extensive combat during the desperate defense of the Reich, 1944–45. The author describes the Volkssturm’s training, leadership, organization, armament and equipment, in addition to its active service on both the Eastern and Western fronts. The text is supported by an extensive selection of appendices, including translations of documents and many fascinating eyewitness combat reports. This edition also includes over 150 previously unpublished b/w photos, and 4 pages of specially commissioned color uniform plates by Stephen Andrew.
On 16 October, 1944, the 3rd White Russian Front launched its massive offensive against Heeresgruppe Mitte. The German 4th Armee, whose line of defense stretched from Nowograd on the Narew to Memel, was quickly broken through. This is the very personal war-diary of the adjutant of Volkssturm Einsatz Bataillon Goldap (25/235), which was activated, with a strength of 400 men, on 17 October, 1944. Inadequately armed with Russian infantry rifles lacking slings, light machine guns and Panzerfäuste, with no uniforms, entrenching tools, identity discs, blankets or medical packets, the battalion was hastily thrown into action three days later, on October 20, in the Goldap sector of the 4th Armee front, losing 76 killed and wounded in its first action. Withdrawn on 23 October for urgently needed training and better armament, the battalion went back into action on 18 January in the Eichwald northeast of Insterburg, near Stobingen, and fought on, with hardly a break, falling back to the city of Königsberg and taking a valiant part in the bitter defense that enabled the escape of refugees and most of the surviving military units by sea. The 70 survivors of the battalion owed their personal survival to an order forged by their last battalion commander that led to their relief by a Wehrmacht division and enshipment for Denmark. The author chronicles daily life dominated by desperate military action, interspersed with brief glimpses of his family, as he crosses paths with his wife and daughter, caught up in the mass of refugees fleeing before the advancing Russians. There are very few personal accounts of Hitler's last levy, the Volkssturm. For years, the handwritten diary and a copy typed by the author, remained in the files of the Bundesarchiv (L) in Bayreuth. The author's granddaughter approved publication for distribution, in photocopied form, to survivors and family members of the battalion. Such copies, in German, are hard to find. Now at last, this precious document from the closing days of World War II in East Prussia has become available in English translation, with careful footnotes filling in details regarding the Volkssturm, a unique force called into being by the Nazi Party in the closing months of the war, conceived as a party-led alternative to the Wehrmacht. Ill-equipped, pitifully armed (when armed at all) and poorly led, nevertheless on the Eastern Front - where the youngsters and older men comprising its battalions were highly motivated in a desperate attempt to delay the onrushing Russian hordes so that their wives and children could escape rape, torture, mutilation and murder at Russian hands - the Volkssturm sometimes achieved their goal.
In the final year of the Second World War, as bitter defensive fighting moved to German soil, a wave of intra-ethnic violence engulfed the country. Bastiaan Willems offers the first study into the impact and behaviour of the Wehrmacht on its own territory, focusing on the German units fighting in East Prussia and its capital Königsberg. He shows that the Wehrmacht's retreat into Germany, after three years of brutal fighting on the Eastern Front, contributed significantly to the spike of violence which occurred throughout the country immediately prior to defeat. Soldiers arriving with an ingrained barbarised mindset, developed on the Eastern Front, shaped the immediate environment of the area of operations, and of Nazi Germany as a whole. Willems establishes how the norms of the Wehrmacht as a retreating army impacted behavioural patterns on the home front, arguing that its presence increased the propensity to carry out violence in Germany.
By early 1945, the destruction of the German Nazi State seems certain. The Allied forces, led by American generals George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower, are gaining control of Europe, leaving German leaders scrambling. Facing defeat, Adolf Hitler flees to a secret bunker with his new wife, Eva Braun, and his beloved dog, Blondi. It is there that all three would meet their end, thus ending the Third Reich and one of the darkest chapters of history. Hitler's Last Days is a gripping account of the death of one of the most reviled villains of the 20th century—a man whose regime of murder and terror haunts the world even today. Adapted from Bill O'Reilly's historical thriller Killing Patton, this book will have young readers—and grown-ups too—hooked on history. This thoroughly-researched and documented book can be worked into multiple aspects of the common core curriculum.
The East Wall was where the final battles for the stricken Third Reich were fought, amid scenes of utter carnage. Beginning life at the end of World War I, the wall became a pet project of Adolf Hitler's, whose ascent to power saw building work accelerated, with plans for a grand, 'Maginot-style' defence put in place. But with a characteristically erratic change of heart, Hitler began to systematically strip the wall of its best defensive assets to bolster the Atlantic Wall, never dreaming that he would face an attack on two fronts. Despite belated and somewhat bungled reinforcements later in the War, the East Wall would face a monstrous challenge as it became the Reich's last redoubt in the face of the mighty Soviet war machine. Neil Short brings his expert knowledge to bear with an analysis of different stages of the wall's construction, the years of neglect and decay and the hasty, drastic redevelopment in the face of the looming Soviet threat.
Pressed by advancing enemy armies on both fronts, Adolf Hitler played his final card in World War II by mobilizing all German civilian males between sixteen and sixty and indoctrinating them for a final apocalyptic defense of the Reich. The Volkssturm, created as much to boost national morale as to bolster sagging defenses, has been viewed as a negligible factor in the war. David Yelton counters that view with new insights into why the German high command sought this means to prolong an unwinnable war-and why so many civilians chose to fight to the bitter end. Hitler's Volkssturm is the only book in English-and the most comprehensive in any language-on the German militia, illuminating its role and contributions to the Nazi war effort and shedding new light on the last days of the Third Reich. It examines the militia's strategic purpose, organization, training, and combat performance on both war fronts and explores factors contributing to its sporadic tactical successes and its overall failure. Yelton reveals why the Nazi leadership chose to assemble such last-ditch units rather than negotiating for peace and also why civilians in these units were more than willing to serve. The Volkssturm was, in fact, part of a broader, ideologically based strategy intended to turn the tide of the war. Yelton tracks the impact of this ideology on Nazi decision-making throughout the war's final year and illustrates how ideological assumptions were often a major reason for the failure of Nazi policies and strategies. In an unprecedented examination of the Volkssturm at the local level, Yelton also shows the negative impact of national power struggles and demonstrates how the Wehrmacht, industry, and public opinion exerted influence on the militia in ways often contrary to its official objectives. His extensive and insightful analysis illuminates German mobilization priorities, reveals that a substantial number of its commanders had experience in both the military and the Nazi Party, and clarifies the impact of Volkssturm mobilizations on the overall German war economy. Pathbreaking in both scope and depth, Hitler's Volkssturm stresses the factional lines and conflicting centers of power within the Nazi bureaucracy, clarifies policy formulation and implementation in the late Third Reich, and assesses the shifting power relationships among various groups and individuals. Ultimately, it gives us a more complete portrait of the Third Reich during the final phase of a devastating war and conveys important lessons about the use of militia forces in modern warfare.
The history of art has produced few works as ambitious and as valuable as the Amber Room. Famous throughout Europe as "the eighth wonder of the world," its vast and intricately worked amber panels were sent in 1717 by Frederick I of Prussia as a gift to Peter the Great of Russia. Erected some years later, they quickly became a symbol of Russia's imperial might. For more than two hundred years the Amber Room remained in its Russian palace outside St. Petersburg (Leningrad), but when the Nazi army invaded Russia and swept towards Leningrad in 1941, the panels were wrenched from the walls, packed into crates, and disappeared from view, never to be seen again. Dozens of people have tried to trace the whereabouts of the Amber Room, and several of them have died in mysterious circumstances. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark have gone further along the trail of this great lost treasure than anyone before them, and have unraveled the jumble of evidence surrounding its fate. Their search catapulted them across eastern Europe and into the menacing world of espionage and counterespionage that still surrounds Russia and the former Soviet bloc. In archives in St. Petersburg and Berlin, amid boxes of hitherto unseen diaries, letters, and classified reports, they have uncovered for the first time an astounding conspiracy to hide the truth. In a gripping climax that is a triumph of detection and narrative journalism, The Amber Room shows incontrovertibly what really happened to the most valuable lost artwork in the world, and why the truth has been withheld for so long.
The illustrated history of Hitler's land forces – from the Panzer crewman on the Eastern Front to the infantryman in Normandy and the last ditch defence units of Waffen-SS and Hitler Youth. Hitler's Armies is the definitive work on Hitler's war machine charting its evolution from the formidable force which won stunning victories during the Blitzkrieg in 1940, to the hard campaigns it fought in the deserts of North Africa and the frozen wastelands of the Soviet Union to the eventual retreat to the Fatherland itself. Drawing upon Osprey Publishing's unique archive, this volume expertly weaves together the story of the development and deployment of Hitler's armies displayed alongside a stunning collection of original artwork and photographs to show the kit and equipment of the various land forces.
