Soviet German War

This program is read by the author. From a master of popular history, the lively, immersive story of the race to seize Berlin in the aftermath of World War II as it’s never been told before BERLIN’S FATE WAS SEALED AT THE 1945 YALTA CONFERENCE: the city, along with the rest of Germany, was...

As early as 1941, Allied victory in World War II seemed all but assured. How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years? In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of primary source materials - personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence - to answer this question. He offers an unprecedented portrait of wartime Germany, bringing the hopes and expectations of the German people to vivid life.

The German army did not lose the Soviet Union in the snow outside Moscow. It lost in August, in warm weather, on dry roads — and the snow arrived afterwards to take the blame. On 22 June 1941, more than three million men crossed the Soviet frontier on a front of eighteen hundred miles, on a timetable of ten weeks. The timetable rested on an estimate of roughly two hundred Soviet divisions. By 11 August the identified count stood past three hundred and sixty, with the Red Army still forming more, and the chief of the German general staff wrote in his diary that the colossus had been ...

BARBAROSSA is the story of the campaign that changed the Second World War forever. At 03:15 on 22 June 1941, Hitler unleashed the largest land invasion in history. Along a front stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, German guns opened fire, Soviet airfields burned, and entire armies were thrown into chaos before dawn had fully broken. The Wehrmacht came east expecting a short, annihilating campaign. What followed was one of the most savage military collisions ever fought — a campaign of breathtaking early victories, colossal encirclements, mass death, and a fatal illusion that the ...

STALINGRAD Hell on the Volga: The Battle That Broke Hitler’s Army On 23 August 1942, the sky over Stalingrad fell in fire. Hitler’s armies had already thundered across the steppe in search of oil, glory, and a victory grand enough to break the Soviet Union for good. Ahead of them stood one long industrial city on the Volga — a city of factories, ferries, rail yards, workers’ districts, and a name that carried enormous symbolic weight. To Berlin, Stalingrad was a prize. To Moscow, it was a commandment. To the men, women, and children trapped inside it, it was about to become hell. In...

A "riveting" (Wall Street Journal) book tells the unbelievable true story of an escape tunnel under the Berlin Wall--the people who built it, the spy who betrayed it, and the media event it inspired. In September 1961, at the height of the Cold War, 22-year-old Joachim Rudolph escaped from East...

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.

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...

A gripping history of the Nazi invasion of Poland, the true onset of World War II “Exemplary...About as good as military history can be.” —Timothy Snyder, New York Times For Americans, World War II began in December 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Europe, the war began on...

In the summer of 1944, Nazi Germany still held a deep salient across Belarus. Army Group Centre guarded the approaches to Poland and East Prussia, protected by fortified cities, difficult terrain and a command system that treated withdrawal as betrayal. The Soviet high command intended to destroy it. Operation Bagration opened on 22 June. Behind a mask of deception, four Soviet fronts assembled overwhelming artillery, armour, aircraft and manpower. Their attack did not produce one clean breakthrough. It created a chain of crises: Vitebsk encircled, Orsha forced, Mogilev abandoned, Bobruisk ...

Bloomsbury presents To Besiege a City by Prit Buttar, read by Leighton Pugh. '[An] excellent account.' - Richard Overy, The Telegraph Shortlisted for the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award 2024 A ground-breaking history of the siege of Leningrad, masterfully brought to life by a...

Named a Best History Book of 2019 by The Times (UK) The astounding true story of how thousands of ordinary Germans, overcome by shame, guilt, and fear, killed themselves after the fall of the Third Reich and the end of World War II. By the end of April 1945 in Germany, the Third Reich had fallen...

“A poignant, tender story of families and sisters divided by the cruelty of political chance–my heart ached for them on every page." Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network *contains exclusive audio content* A city divided. When the Berlin Wall goes up, Karin is on...

A finalist for the 75th National Jewish Book Award in nonfiction A major new history that transforms our understanding of World War II—tracing the conflict and its most infamous crime, the Holocaust, to Germany’s implacable hostility toward Soviet Russia In the West, World War II is commonly...

Bloomsbury presents Hero City: Leningrad 1943–44 by Prit Buttar, read by Gordon Griffin One of the greatest ever sieges is masterfully brought to life by a leading expert on the Eastern Front. At the height of World War II the people of Leningrad endured a bitter 900-day siege, struggling...

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...

Bloomsbury presents Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive by Prit Buttar, read by Leighton Pugh. A fascinating history of the great summer offensive launched by the Red Army in 1944 which turned the tide of the war. Throughout the war on the Eastern Front, there were two consistent trends...

Beginning in the years immediately after the First World War and continuing for more than a decade, the German military and the Soviet Union, despite having been bitter enemies, entered into a partnership designed to overturn the order in Europe. Centering on economic and military cooperation, the arrangement led to the establishment of a network of military bases and industrial facilities on Soviet soil, away from the oversight established by Versailles.  

Stalingrad was the battle that broke Hitler’s army. In the summer of 1942, Adolf Hitler turned south, chasing oil, the Volga, and the symbolic prize of a city that bore Stalin’s name. The German Sixth Army advanced with confidence, believing that one more great offensive could shatter the Soviet Union. Instead, it marched into one of the most brutal traps in military history. This concise and gripping account follows the road to Stalingrad, the fight for the Volga, the savage street battles in the ruins, the Soviet counteroffensive, the encirclement of the German Sixth Army, the failed ...

By 1943, after the catastrophic German defeat at Stalingrad, the Wehmacht's panzer armies gradually lost the initiative on the Eastern Front. The tide of the war had turned. Their combined arms technique, which had swept Soviet forces before it during 1941 and 1942, had lost its edge. Thereafter the war on the Eastern Front was dominated by tank-led offensives and, as Robert Forczyk shows, the Red Army's mechanized forces gained the upper hand, delivering a sequence of powerful blows that shattered one German defensive line after another.