Red Star at War
Red Star at War

Author: Colin Turbett

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2020-07-30

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1526763311

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Russia’s losses during the Second World War were beyond imagination and touched the lives of an entire population caught between a brutal and murderous invader and a ruthless leadership at home. Soviet victory over the Nazis, which effectively won the war, was the end result of effort and sacrifice by the ordinary millions who were totally committed to saving their ‘motherland’. The humanity of the ordinary Soviet citizen in uniform is often forgotten because of later Cold War narratives propagated East and West for differing ideological reasons. This book seeks to redress these imbalances. In its pages the tragedy of war and loss are captured in the faces of those who lived through some of the most momentous years in human history. Many of the pictures show the women who fought alongside men in the front line – a unique feature among the belligerent nations. Red Star at War is centered on photographs taken before, during and after the Second World War, which illustrate the human face of the immense Soviet war effort. These show soldiers, sailors, airmen (men and women) not in battle, but in photographs taken for their families and friends, and the messages that often went with these images. A number were taken in the knowledge that they might be the last image of a loved one as death was almost a certainty for many. The photographs and captions are backed up by text that provides both context and baseline - drawn from writings of the period as well as more recent historical accounts and research.

Death in the Baltic
Death in the Baltic

Author: Cathryn J. Prince

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2013-04-09

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1137333561

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The worst maritime disaster ever occurred during World War II, when more than 9,000 German civilians drowned. It went unreported. January 1945: The outcome of World War II has been determined. The Third Reich is in free fall as the Russians close in from the east. Berlin plans an eleventh-hour exodus for the German civilians trapped in the Red Army's way. More than 10,000 women, children, sick, and elderly pack aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a former cruise ship. Soon after the ship leaves port and the passengers sigh in relief, three Soviet torpedoes strike it, inflicting catastrophic damage and throwing passengers into the frozen waters of the Baltic. More than 9,400 perished in the night—six times the number lost on the Titanic. Yet as the Cold War started no one wanted to acknowledge the sinking. Drawing on interviews with survivors, as well as the letters and diaries of those who perished, award-wining author Cathryn J. Prince reconstructs this forgotten moment in history with Death in the Baltic. She weaves these personal narratives into a broader story, finally giving this WWII tragedy its rightful remembrance.

Black Earth, Red Star
Black Earth, Red Star

Author: R. Craig Nation

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780801480072

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Although it once issued a radical challenge that shook the existing world order, the USSR was soon thrown back to seek security within its own confines. Black Earth, Red Star vividly chronicles the Soviet experience from Lenin's 1917 revolution to the disintegration of the union in December 1991. R. Craig Nation provides the first post-Cold War history of the Soviets' seventy-four-year struggle to maintain an effective national security policy in a hostile world without altogether abandoning the commitment to their original internationalist ideals. Drawing on an unprecedented body of primary and secondary sources, Nation presents a nuanced overview of Soviet history from the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution to the emergence of Stalin, the shattering victory over Hitler, Khrushchev's frustrated efforts at reform during the Cold War, the degeneration of Soviet power under Brezhnev, and the convulsive changes since 1985. Shaped by a dynamic conflict between often contradictory aims - the promotion of Communist internationalism and the defense of national self-interest - Soviet security policy was far from static, he shows. Nation reconstructs the military, political, and economic strategies behind the succession of security policies with which the Kremlin responded to the rapid changes in the international environment and in Soviet society itself. While the red star that shines above the Kremlin no longer symbolizes a commitment to world revolution, the rich black earth of the Slavic east remains of lasting importance in international affairs. This book will be essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of the former Soviet republics, including historians of the USSR and political scientists working in international relations and security studies.

Critical Convoy Battles of WWII
Critical Convoy Battles of WWII

Author: Jurgen Rohwer

Publisher: Stackpole Books

Published: 2015-11-15

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 081176267X

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The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous campaign of World War II, climaxed in 1943, when Germany came closest to interrupting Allied supply lines and perhaps winning the war. In March of that year, German U-boats scored their last great triumph, destroying nearly 150,000 tons of supplies and fuel.

Submarine Operational Effectiveness in the 20th Century
Submarine Operational Effectiveness in the 20th Century

Author: Captain John F. O'Connell, USN (RET.)

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2011-08-18

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1462042619

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The submarine emerged as a serious weapons system during the First World War (1914 - 1918). During that conflict Germany with its unrestricted submarine warfare campaign of 1917 nearly drove Great Britain to the negotiating table. Its U-boats sank 6,196 ships of 13,438,632 gross register tons. Despite post-war attempts to ban the submarine from warfare, it survived. Both Italy and Germany used submarines, covertly, during the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939). This book, Part Two of a series, discusses the use of submarines during World War Two (1939 - 1945) and their effectiveness. It focuses principally on two strategic submarine campaigns. The first is about German U-boats against British and neutral commerce. That campaign finally failed during the Battle of The Atlantic in 1943. The second deals with American submarines against Japanese shipping from Southeast Asia to the home islands, a campaign that successfully isolated Japan from its sources of raw materials and foodstuffs during 1944 and effectively defeated Japan.

The First Day on the Eastern Front
The First Day on the Eastern Front

Author: Craig W. H. Luther

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-11-01

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 0811767655

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Sunday, June 22, 1941: three million German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union as part of Hitler’s long-planned Operation Barbarossa, which aimed to destroy the Soviet Union, secure its land as lebensraum for the Third Reich, and enslave its Slavic population. From launching points in newly acquired Poland, in three prongs—North, Central, South—German forces stormed western Russia, virtually from the Baltic to the Black Sea. By late fall, the invasion had foundered against Russian weather, terrain, and resistance, and by December, it had failed at the gates of Moscow, but early on, as the Germans sliced through Russian territory and soldiers with impunity, capturing hundreds of thousands, it seemed as though Russia would fall. In the spirit of Martin Middlebrook’s classic First Day on the Somme, Craig Luther narrates the events of June 22, 1941, a day when German military might was at its peak and seemed as though it would easily conquer the Soviet Union, a day the common soldiers would remember for its tension and the frogs bellowing in the Polish marshlands. It was a day when the German blitzkrieg decimated Soviet command and control within hours and seemed like nothing would stop it from taking Moscow. Luther narrates June 22—one of the pivotal days of World War II—from high command down to the tanks and soldiers at the sharp end, covering strategy as well as tactics and the vivid personal stories of the men who crossed the border into the Soviet Union that fateful day, which is the Eastern Front in microcosm, representing the years of industrial-scale warfare that followed and the unremitting hostility of Germans and Soviets.