Feldpost: The Wartime Letters of Friedrich Reiner Niemann documents the life and frontline experiences of a German soldier from the 6th Infantry Division from 1941-1945. Niemann, a well-educated youth from an artist family in Cologne, was sent to the Russian Front four times. In his extensive correspondence, Niemann describes the fighting at Rzhev, Russia, 1942-1943, and his survival of the destruction of his division during the Soviet summer offensive in 1944. His is a rare view of battles that annihilated entire German divisions and armies. He wrote his final two letters home from the front in Poland on 12 January 1945 before he disappeared during the Soviet Vistula-Oder Offensive. After the Second World War, the Niemann family preserved Reiner's letters and photographs, and shipped them to New Orleans when Reiner's sister, Liselotte Andersson, had emigrated. Neglected in an attic for over fifty years, the documents surfaced only after Hurricane Katrina flooded the family house. Andersson's daughter-in-law, author Whitney Stewart, discovered the letters in 2012 and contacted Denis Havel to translate them. Together, Havel and Stewart uncovered historical details that enabled them to follow Reiner's trail and tell his story.

Feldpost: The War Letters of Friedrich Reiner Niemann

Biographies & Memoirs

Havel, Denis

Historical

Fonthill Media

Soldiers to the Last Day: Rhineland- Westphalian 6th Infantry Division, 1935-1945 recounts the history of the German 6th Infantry Division from its formation in 1935 to its destruction at Babruysk in July 1944; then its resurrection and continued fighting until the end of the war. Among the first divisions established by the Wehrmacht, the 6th Infantry Division had one of the longest and bloodiest records of continuous combat of any division--Allied or Axis. Engaging in combat within weeks of the outbreak of WWII, the division fought to the last hour of the war. Based primarily on German sources, in particular the rare divisional and regimental histories and war diaries, and on personal accounts and letters of its soldiers, Soldiers to the Last Day presents the German view of the war from inside divisional headquarters and down to the individual Landser as the division marches across France in 1940, advances to the Volga during Operation Barbarossa, fights the brutal battles of Rzhev, Kursk, Babruysk; and makes last desperate attempts to defend the homeland in 1945. It is a tale of courage, determination, suffering, and in the end--betrayal.

Soldiers to the Last Day: The Rhineland-Westphalian 6th Infantry Division, 1935-1945

History

Americas

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Books by Havel, Denis