Eastern Germans

Bloomsbury presents Generalship on the Eastern Front, 1941–45: A Study in Command by Robert Forczyk, read by Elliot Chapman A comprehensive evaluation of generalship on the most important front in World War II. The war on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945 was the largest sustained air-ground...

Dawn on Sunday, June 22, 1941 saw the opening onslaughts of Operation Barbarossa as German forces stormed forward into the Soviet Union. Few of them were to survive the five long years of bitter struggle. A posting to the Eastern Front during the Second World War was rightly regarded with dread by the German soldiers. They saw epic battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk, and yet it was a daily war of attrition which ultimately proved fatal for Hitler's ambition and the German military machine.

This book presents the remarkable personal journals of German soldier Hans Roth. Writing as events transpired, he recorded the mystery and tension as the Germans deployed on the Soviet frontier in June 1941. In these journals, battles are described in "you are there" detail, as Roth wrote privately, as if to keep himself sane, knowing that his honest accounts of the horrors in the East could never pass through Wehrmacht censors. 

Markus Bauer tells the moving story of his great-uncle, Leonhard März, who experienced the madness of the Eastern Front as an anti-tank gunner – and never returned from the Tarnopol encirclement in 1944. “If things continue as they are now, there won’t be anything left of our regiment within a month. Every day ten to twenty of the boys are wounded or killed.” “We drove the Russians out of the city. They had suffered terrible losses. They lie around in heaps.” Drafted into the Wehrmacht in early 1941 and trained on an anti-tank gun, the young soldier is thrown into the hell of ...

Erhard Steiniger joined his Wehrmacht unit on October 12, 1940, as a radio operator, a role which required his constant presence with troops at the Front, right in the midst of combat. On June 22, 1941, he accompanied his division to Lithuania where he experienced the catastrophic first day of Operation Barbarossa. He later witnessed intense clashes during the conquest of the Baltic islands and the battles leading up to Leningrad on the Volkhov and Lake Ladoga.

Considered one of the finest tanks of WWII, the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger tank killed 11.52 tanks for every one Tiger destroyed in battle. Tigers suffered a large number of non-combat losses, however, as the chaos of wartime and the Tiger’s mechanical reliability reduced the number of deployable tanks, then along with frequent breakdowns the Tiger managed only 5.25 enemy tanks killed for every lost Tiger. The Second World War began with the lightning German Blitzkrieg as their Wehrmacht raced across Europe, spearheaded by the most dreaded weapon of the 20th century. No German tank better ...

At seventeen, he was thrown into the deadliest front of World War II. In 1942, a young German soldier was sent to the Eastern Front—into the icy Caucasus Mountains. Surrounded by cold, fear, and despair, he faced horrors that no teenager should ever endure. Wounded three times, every day could have been his last. More than eighty years later, his memories come to light—a raw and unfiltered testimony of survival, fear, and resilience—also available as an unabridged audiobook on Audible and Spotify. Inside this powerful World War II memoir, you will discover: • Survival against all ...

Gunter K. Koschorrek was a machine-gunner on the Russian front in WWII. He wrote his illicit diary on any scraps of paper he could lay his hands on. As keeping a diary was strictly forbidden, he sewed the pages into the lining of his thick winter coat and deposited them with his mother on infrequent trips home on leave. The diary went missing, and it was when he was reunited with his daughter in America some 40 years later that it came to light and became Blood Red Snow. 

Narrated by Derek Perkins From a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (The New Yorker) comes the most authoritative, readable single-volume military history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land. Nine hundred years ago, a vast Christian army, summoned to holy war by the Pope...

In no less than seven concentration and extermination camps, the Polish-Jew Noach (Natan) Żelechower was imprisoned during World War II. His first wife and their daughter were transported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka and perished there during the Great Deportation of the Warsaw Jews in the summer of 1942, and he was left alone to face the threat of Nazi persecution and death. With great resilience, fortitude, and the hope to be reunited with his wife and daughter, Noach was able to withstand and survive the hardships of the camp world, forced labor, and death marches. Throughout the...

Experience hard-hitting military science fiction from Germany! Immerse yourself in a gripping story that tells of an alternate war. Author Hermann Weinhauer, known for his nerve-wracking frontline reports, presents “Imperium Germanicum,” an alternate history of the highest order. His series skillfully blends the genres of political thriller and war novel as Weinhauer answers what is arguably the most intriguing of all questions: What if …? February 1943: The Italian and German troops fighting in North Africa are urgently needed in Europe. The Kaiser has long since decided to abandon ...

Wounded five times and awarded numerous decorations for valor, Gottlob Herbert Bidermann saw action in the Crimea and siege of Sebastopol, participated in the vicious battles in the forests south of Leningrad, and ended the war in the Courland Pocket. In his memoir, he shares his impressions of countless Russian POWs seen at the outset of his service, of peasants struggling to survive the hostilities while caught between two ruthless antagonists, and of corpses littering the landscape.

The Third Reich has fallen. The war continues. The overthrow of Hitler saved Germany from destruction—but it did not bring peace. As the newly restored German Empire struggles to secure its future, the Eastern Front erupts once more. Vast Soviet armies gather for a decisive offensive aimed at crushing Germany before the new government can consolidate its power. The city of Rostov becomes the focal point of the coming storm. German infantrymen dig in along frozen defensive lines. Panzer crews prepare for battles of annihilation. Fighter pilots clash for control of the skies while ...

The author could be described as a veteran in every sense of the word, even though he was only age 21 when the war ended. Armin Scheiderbauer served as an infantry officer with the 252nd Infantry Division, German army, and saw four years of bitter combat on the Eastern Front, being wounded six times. This is an outstanding personal memoir, written with great thoughtfulness and honesty.

Before the first light of dawn on the morning of June twenty-second, 1941 Oskar Scheja stood on the western shore of the Bug River, looking to the east. The Russian army was camped on the other side. When the signal came to begin Operation Barbarossa he and his comrades from the German Wehrmacht stormed over the River and began an assault that took millions of Germans deep into Russian territory. For some the journey was brief. For others, like Oskar, it would last for years, and the struggle did not end when the fighting was over. This is the story of one German soldier’s experience in ...

2026 PEN AMERICA AWARD FOR TRANSLATION FINALIST From “one of the great—if not the greatest—contemporary Yiddish novelists” (Elie Wiesel), the long-awaited English translation of a work, Tolstoyan in scope, that chronicles the last, tumultuous decade of a world succumbing to the march...

A rare, unfiltered memoir of a seventeen-year-old German soldier on the Eastern Front during the final winter of the Second World War—presented in a faithful English translation by his grandson. In the winter of 1944/45, the author—then a teenage Flakhelfer turned infantryman—found himself in East Prussia as the Red Army advanced toward the heart of the collapsing Third Reich. Written decades later, from memory and from notes scribbled during his time as a prisoner of war, his account offers a stark and deeply personal perspective on the brutal final months of the Secon World War. ...

Bloomsbury presents The Reckoning by Prit Buttar, read by Richard Trinder. 'The Reckoning is vivid history, the tragic Eastern Front brought to life through the widest range of Russian and German sources I've ever read. Bravo.' – Peter Caddick-Adams, author and broadcaster From critically...

This book explores the Nazi occupation of Poland 1939-1945--and how ordinary people survived, resisted and endured during those horrible years. Here, with information smuggled out of Poland by the underground resistance, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs documented the Nazi regime’s systematic plan to erase an entire nation: to destroy its culture, enslave its people, and extinguish resistance through terror. Inside this rare report are: Translations of Nazi laws designed to annihilate Polish identity Eyewitness accounts of deportations, executions, and village massacres Chilling ...

The terrible months between the arrival of the Red Army on German soil and the final collapse of Hitler's regime were like no other in the Second World War. The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished. From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this book recounts in chilling detail the desperate struggle of soldiers and civilians alike.