This book examines in detail the final six months of the war on the Eastern Front. It records the gradual and inexorable march of the Red Army towards the ultimate victory. With a narrative drawn from a variety of sources, including first-hand accounts from those who actually fought in the war, the book records the advance of the Red Army through Poland, Hungary and the Balkans and into Germany itself, and is a sobering account of the destruction of this final phase of the war in the East.

Armageddon Ost: The German Defeat on the Eastern Front 1944-5

History

Cornish, Nik.

Europe

Ian Allan Pub

From the start of Barbarossa, large numbers of Soviet troops and civilians were cut off behind Nazi German lines in what Stalin termed the Great Patriotic War. We know this in the West as the Russo-German part of World War II, but for many partisans it began as a life and death struggle simply to survive.
The partisan war in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944 has been the subject of considerable political manipulation in the decades following 1945. In great part this was due to the need to project the image of a country united behind Joseph Stalin and the Communist regime when the truth was much more complex than that. The opening weeks of Operation Barbarossa had exposed the lack of unity in the Soviet Empire as nationalist and anti-Communist groups emerged in the western provinces such as Belo Russia, Galicia, Bukovina, Ukraine and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Consequently it was vital for the survival of the Soviet Union that such groups were countered in situ and that the authority of Moscow was maintained in what were known as the Occupied Territories. During the summer of 1941 plans, dormant since the 1930s, for the conduct of partisan warfare behind the lines of an invading force were resurrected. The plans were intended to make life for the invaders as problematic as possible by acts of sabotage, by bleeding off troops from the front line to provide security for the ever lengthening supply lines, to discourage collaborators through acts of retaliation but most important of all to maintain the physical presence of Soviet authority. The term Soviet Partisan of covers a wide variety of warrior types ranging from the highly trained, well-armed and motivated NKVD volunteer to the ordinary civilian refugee fighting for his or her life with precious little training, experience or weaponry. Between these two groups are the isolated formations of Red Army men cut off from their units by the speed of the Axis invasion in 1941, ad hoc local formations that gathered around a charismatic local Communist Party official or simply patriotic Russian civilians who wanted to fight back. One group often overlooked is the Jewish partisan bands who sought refuge in the forests and marshes from the tentacles of the Einsatzgruppen and the ethnic cleansing policies of the Third Reich. During the course of 1942-43 these and other groups fell under the control of the Central HQ of the Partisan Movement (CHQPM). However, The very nature of partisan warfare still required the individual to think for themselves and to bend the letter of the order to local circumstance consequently it remained much more the fight of an individual warrior as opposed to the faceless of mass of army versus army warfare.

Soviet Partisan 1941–44 (Warrior, 171)

Osprey_Publishing

The third volume in Nik Cornish’s photographic history of the Second World War on the Eastern Front records in vivid visual detail the sequence of Red Army offensives that pushed the Wehrmacht back across Russia after the failure of Operation Citadel, the German attack at Kursk. Previously unpublished images show the epic scale of the build-up to the Kursk battle and the enormous cost in terms of lives and material of the battle itself. They also show that the military initiative was now firmly in Soviet hands, for the balance of power on the Eastern Front had shifted and the Germans were on the defensive and in retreat. Subsequent chapters chronicle the hard-fought and bloody German withdrawal across western Russia and the Ukraine, recording the Red Army’s liberation of occupied Soviet territory, the recovery of key cities like Orel, Kharkov and Kiev, the raising of the siege of Leningrad and the advance to the borders of the Baltic states. Not only do the photographs track the sequence of events on the ground, they also show the equipment and weapons used by both sides, the living conditions experienced by the troops, the actions of the Soviet partisans, the fight against the Finns in the north, the massive logistical organization behind the front lines, and the devastation the war left in its wake.

Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1943 - 1944: Kursk to Bagration (Images of War)

Military

Pen and Sword Military

In the fourth and final volume of Nik Cornish's photographic history of the Second World War on the Eastern Front the defeat of the German army, the destruction and occupation of the cities in eastern Germany and the humiliation of the German people are shown in over 150 mostly unpublished wartime photographs. The extent of the fighting, from the Baltic in the north to the Balkans in the south, is recorded in a selection of graphic images, as is the tenacity and desperation of the German resistance and the unstoppable force of the Red Army as offensive after offensive crushed the Third Reich. While most of the photographs show the Red Army, its troops, equipment and the conditions in which it fought, the shattered cities of Germany and eastern Europe and the suffering and destitution of the civilians are recorded in graphic detail.

Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1944–1945 - Warsaw to Berlin (Images of War)

Images of Kursk is an illustrated account of a pivotal battle on the eastern front during World War II. At Kursk, the Germans threw 900,000 men and 2,500 tanks against more than 1 million soldiers and 3,000 tanks of the Red Army in a savage battle of attrition. Unlike many pictorial accounts of the war on the eastern front, Images of Kursk draws upon both German and Russian archive material. All the photographs of the Red Army at Kursk, moreover, are previously unpublished images. The book begins with the buildup of forces before the battle and then illustrates the offensive by two German army groups against the Kursk salient. The images convey the true scale, intensity, and horror of the fighting as the Germans tried in vain to batter their way through the Soviet defensive systems. A chapter is devoted to the climactic battle at the village of Prokhorovka, in which 1,000 tanks engaged each other furiously at point-blank range. With authoritative text and extended captions,Images of Kursk is an enthralling pictorial record of the battle that shifted the strategic initiative on the eastern front to the Red Army for good. Written in an informative yet exciting style, it will appeal to military specialists and laymen alike.

Images of Kursk: History's Greatest Tank Battle, July 1943

Brassey's, Inc

A detailed narrative of how the Red Army pushed west and into Berlin in 1945. The last year of the war saw Russian offensives that cleared the Germans out of their final strongholds in Finland and the Baltic states, before advancing into Finnmark in Norway and the east European states that bordered Germany: Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. By spring 1945 the Red Army had reached to Vienna and the Balkans, and had thrust deep into Germany where they met American, French and British troops advancing from the west. The final days of the Third Reich were at hand. Berlin was first surrounded, then attacked and taken. Hitler's suicide and his successors' unconditional surrender ended the war.For writers and historians who concentrate on the Western Allies and the battles in France and the Low Countries, the Eastern Front comes as a shock. The sheer size of both the territories and the forces involved; the savagery of both weather and the fighting; the appalling suffering of the civilian populations of all countries and the wreckage of towns and cities--it's no wonder that words like Armageddon are used to describe the annihilation.Red Army into the Reich combines a narrative history, contemporary photographs and maps with images of memorials, battlefield survivors and then & now views. It may come as a surprise to the western reader to see how many memorials there are to Russia's Great Patriotic War and those to the losses suffered by the countries who spent so long under the murderous Nazi regime.

Red Army into the Reich: The 1945 Russian Offensive

Hook, Patrick

Forty, Simon

Americas

Casemate

The greatest tank battle in history began during the early hours of 5 July 1943, and its outcome was to determine the course of the war on the Eastern Front. Kursk is a detailed account of this pivotal battle, when the Germans threw 900,000 men and 2500 tanks against 1,300,000 soldiers and 3000 tanks of the Red Army in a savage battle of attrition. Unlike many accounts of the war on the Eastern Front, Kursk draws upon both German and Russian archive material. With an authoritative text and detailed maps, this book is an enthralling account of one of the most decisive battles in history.

Kursk: History's Greatest Tank Battle

Brown Bear Books Ltd

The world was not prepared for the massive onslaught launched by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 – the scale of the invasion, the speed of the German advance, the hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers taken prisoner, the chaotic, headlong retreat of Stalin’s forces eastwards, towards Leningrad and Moscow. But equally it was not prepared for the Soviet fight back. For, despite all the predictions, the Red Army stemmed the Wehrmacht’s advance, held the lines before Leningrad and Moscow, and mounted a counter-offensive that changed the course of the campaign and the outcome of the Second World War. These are the historic events that Nik Cornish portrays in the selection of rare wartime images he’s selected for this graphic history of the war on the Eastern Front. The key aspects of the opening year of the war are vividly recorded – Operation Barbarossa; the German and Soviet forces as they marched and fought their way across the countryside and through the villages and towns of the Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states; the clashes at Brest, Smolensk, Kiev; the failure of Operation Typhoon, the turning point in this phase of the war which denied to Hitler the anticipated quick victory in the East.

Hitler Versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1941 - 1942: Barbarossa to Moscow (Images of War)

The second year of the Second World War on the Eastern Front was dominated by Stalingrad, the protracted battle for the city on the Volga, and this is the major episode in this volume of Nik Cornish’s four-volume photographic history of the conflict. Stalingrad was a turning point in the war, the moment when the Red Army seized the initiative and threw back the German invaders. But the struggle at Stalingrad was far from the only focus of the fighting during 1942 and 1943. German forces conquered the Crimea, besieged Leningrad and advanced deep into the Caucasus. The Red Army took the offensive, not only at Stalingrad but at Rzhev, Kharkov and Kursk. So this phase of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union saw dramatic changes of fortune, offensives and counteroffensives on a massive scale, and these events are also illustrated in these rare photographs. These vivid images show the front-line fighting, the troops and the conditions on both sides, but they also document the consequences of war for the civilians under German occupation and the devastation of the Russian towns and cities.

Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1942 - 1943: Stalingrad to Kharkov (Images Of War)

Often overshadowed by the drama of its catastrophic collapse in the November 1917 Revolution, the Imperial Russian Army's record in 1914-16 included some notable victories. Its human qualities of patriotism and endurance were remarkable, and in 1916 the 'Brusilov Offensive' on the South-Western Front outdistanced anything that was being achieved in France. The variety and romance of its uniforms - infantry and cavalry, Guards and Line, Cossacks, armour and Air Service crewmen, even a priest - are splendidly captured here by Russia's leading military artist; and Nik Cornish's expert text is supported by tables of insignia and many rare photographs.

The Russian Army 1914–18 (Men-at-Arms, 364)

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