A multi-faceted book built around an intensely personal and vivid memoir of infantry combat in the last brutal winter of WWII. The author combines these carefully-verified recollections with an insightful description and analysis of the social dynamics within an incompletely-trained infantry platoon thrown into combat unexpectedly and prematurely in the face of Operation NORDWIND, the last German offensive on the Western Front in WWII. Framed by a comprehensive and detailed account of the US Seventh Army's tenacious struggle to halt a combined German force including Tiger tanks, Luftwaffe paratroopers, previously-undefeated SS mountain infantry, and the last of Germany's manpower reserves, The Final Crisis provides credit to the American infantrymen and tankers who halted the last threat to the Western Alliance. Long overshadowed by the Ardennes Offensive, the so-called "Battle of the Bulge," which barely preceded it, the struggle to halt the NORDWIND offensive comes to life at every level from foxhole to field army. 
8.5" x 11" format; 25 original maps; 20 original pen and ink drawings, rendered by Colonel (then-Lieutenant) Ted MacKechnie, 42d Infantry Division, WWII; index

The Final Crisis: Combat on Northern Alsace, January 1945

History

Engler, Richard E., Jr.

Military

The Aberjona Press

Five Years, Four Fronts: The War Years of Georg Grossjohann

Wartime memoir of a professional German soldier who rose from sergeant to major during WWII, commanding infantry units from platoon to regiment. Includes unusually candid recollections of not only combat, but of professional and personal relations with superiors, peers, and subordinates alike during combat duty on four fronts across Europe. 26 original photos, 27 original maps, appendices, notes, index.

Biographies & Memoirs

Grossjohann, Georg

Arts & Literature

Wartime memoir of a professional German soldier who rose from sergeant to major during WWII, commanding infantry units from platoon to regiment. Includes unusually candid recollections of not only combat, but of professional and personal relations with superiors, peers, and subordinates alike during combat duty on four fronts across Europe. 26 original photos, 27 original maps, appendices, notes, index.

The verified, uncensored diary of an American WWII infantryman, from enlistment in 1943 through his baptism of fire in the rugged Vosges Mountains of France in late 1944. This book is purely the candid, point-blank thoughts of an intelligent 18-year old infantry scout, and includes honest accounts and reflections on leadership, training, and comradeship, good and bad, inspirational and disappointing. Kept in violation of US Army policies which forbade the maintenance of personal journals in combat, what was once an operational security violation is now a brilliant vehicle for understanding the experiences of an American infantryman...the last time America defeated a world-class foe! 6" x 9" soft cover format; 255 pp.; seven highly-detailed, original maps and diagrams; 40 photos and illustrations; index.

Into the Mountains Dark: A Ww II Odyssey from Harvard Crimson to Infantry Blue

Gurley, Franklin L.

Normandy . . . Arnhem . . . Aachen . . . the Hürtgen Forest . . . the Ardennes Offensive . . . the Reichswald . . . the Ruhr Pocket . . . Only the men of one unit on either side fought in them all--the 116th Panzer Division! 
Organized in France in March, 1944 from elements of the 16th Panzer-Grenadier Division and the 179th Reserve Panzer Division, the 116th Panzer Division was one of the relatively rare German armored formations that fought exclusively on the Western Front. As a result, its opponents included some of the most formidable and famous US Army units of World War II, including the 1st, 4th, 28th, 29th, and 30th Infantry Divisions, and the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 8th Armored Divisions, to name only some. The 116th also fought the British and Canadians, bitterly contesting the areas around Arnhem and the Reichswald against outfits like the 2d and 3d Canadian Infantry Divisions, the 43d (Wessex) and the 53d (Welsh) Divisions. 
The "Greyhound" Division's history has now been meticulously chronicled in narrative form and lavishly documented by the wartime Division Chief of Staff and Operations Officer, Heinz Günther Guderian. This comprehensive history was first published in the German language in 1994, but is now being made available in the English language exclusively by The Aberjona Press, the company Military Heritage magazine pronounced "Publisher of the Year 2000" in the Small Publisher Category. 
Rarely does the student of the Second World War (or any war) have the opportunity to see military operations through the eyes of the men who planned and directed the battles at the tactical level. Thanks to General Guderian's keen recollections and careful research, readers of From Normandy to the Ruhr can do exactly this. 
Rarer still is the author who can lucidly and comprehensively analyze and explain the course of those battles. As the Division's First General Staff Officer throughout its training and combat, General Guderian possessed a unique point of view to do just that. Beyond the tactical decisions—and consequences of those decisions in the deadly and unforgiving arena of WWII armored combat—the author also explains the institutional and political influences on his division's leadership. General Guderian sheds stunning new light on the reasons, operational and political, behind the fateful deployment of the elements of the German armored reserve before and during the early days of OVERLORD. He details the intrigue behind his Division Commander's reliefs for cause (twice in two months!) and the impact of the accompanying turbulence on the division in combat. Perhaps most importantly of all, the author provides graphic, specific evidence of the catastrophic consequences of political correctness when it infects the chain of command and results in lost battles and squandered lives. As the son of a famous general officer who had a close but dynamic relationship with Hitler, the author was especially well placed for observing and judging this insidious phenomenon. 
Most unusual of all is the combat veteran who can honestly and candidly examine what went right, what went wrong, and why . . . and present his findings for all to see and judge. Fortunately, as a life-long soldier in the Wehrmacht and later, the West German Bundeswehr, Major General Guderian is just such a man. 
This hard cover book is has been expertly translated by Ulrich and Esther Abele (Ulrich Abele's previous translation credits include Five Years, Four Fronts: The War Years of Major Georg Grossjohann, proclaimed by Military Heritage magazine as the best non-US military memoir of 2000). At 648 pages, with 26 highly detailed maps and 64 photos of the unit in action and key members of the Division, From Normandy to the Ruhr is not only the definitive history of this important formation, but much more.

From Normandy to the Ruhr: With the 116th Panzer Division in World War II

Heinz Gunther Guderian

Originally written while the author was a prisoner of the US Army in 1945–46, Black Edelweiss is a boon to serious historians and WWII buffs alike. In a day in which most memoirs are written at half a century’s distance, the former will be gratified by the author’s precise recall facilitated by the chronologically short-range (a matter of one to seven years) at which the events were captured in writing. Both will appreciate and enjoy the abundantly detailed, exceptionally accurate combat episodes. 
Even more than the strictly military narrative, however, the author has crafted a searingly candid view into his own mind and soul. As such, Black Edelweiss is much more than a "ripping yarn" or a low-level military history. Black Edelweiss joins not only the growing body of German military memoirs, but the more select, more narrowly-focused group of personal memoirs by other Waffen-SS enlisted men. Beyond the microcosmic view of combat these books relate—to the extent that they are honest and candid—such books are important for what they can reveal about their authors’ motivations and reflections on those impulses and their consequences. To date, these works differ significantly. 
As it joins the ranks of the books in this genre, Black Edelweiss makes a unique and very important contribution. It is a true, personal account of the author’s war years, first at school and then with the Waffen-SS, which he joined early in 1943 at the age of seventeen. For a year and a half, the author fought as a machine gunner in SS-Mountain Infantry Regiment 11 "Reinhard Heydrich," mainly in the arctic and sub-arctic reaches of Soviet Karelia and Finland, and later at the Western frontier of the Third Reich. The characters in the story are real, and the conversations and actions are recounted to the best of his ability from the short distance at which he wrote the manuscript in 1945–46. 
Apart from the piercing insights into the question of why the German soldier fought as he did, what makes this book truly unique is the author’s anguished, yet resolute examination of the dialectic between the honorable and valorous comportment of his comrades and the fundamentally reprehensible conduct of about 35,000 men behind the front lines who nevertheless wore the same uniform. 
During his captivity, the author was assigned for a time as a clerk to a US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps officer, and in the performance of his administrative duties, the author had access to the mounting reams of documentation of the Holocaust. His growing recognition of the involvement of Waffen-SS personnel in the monstrous crimes of that process caused him to dig deeply into his soul, to examine his most intimate and private motivations and thoughts, and to reevaluate the most basic assumptions of his life to that point. The author captured this process and the result in the notes which became this book. 
Honestly, forthrightly, and courageously told, Black Edelweiss is a precious gift to historians and other students of World War II. It not only provides a glimpse into the attributes that made the German armed forces a formidable and tenacious foe, but squarely confronts the most painful issue facing German World War II veterans in general, and Waffen-SS veterans in particular. 
Supported by 22 photos, 8 maps, and notes.

Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-Ss

Voss, Johann

Historical

Alfred Novotny was born in Vienna on 1 April 1924, and was perfectly placed to suffer the ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." His times were interesting and deadly, but that he survived them is not the greatest surprise. Rather, what stands out is that Fred never lost his compassion, nor his humanity, nor his mind. Growing up in 1930s Vienna, the former home of a young, frustrated, and fuming artist named Adolf Hitler, Fred was the stepson of an ardent Social Democrat. As such, he grew up with a visceral and deep dislike and distrust of their rival parties, including the National Socialists, or "Nazis." Although the political situation in Austria throughout the 1930s was stormy, the German annexation of Austria absolutely ended effective opposition to the "New Order." Attracted by the superficial benefits of unity with Germany and the evident achievements of the Nazis, young Alfred gradually parted ways with his stepfather. He performed his duty to the Reich when called up for service in the Labor Corps, and later proudly served in the most elite division of the German Army in World War II, Panzer-Grenadier Division "Grossdeutschland" ("Greater Germany"). From 1942 forward, Fred saw more than his share of combat. Starting with action as a member of a hurriedly-armed labor detachment in the famous British naval and commando raid at St. Nazaire, France, in March 1942, Fred later joined the Grossdeutschland Division in time to participate in some of the most well-known—and most bloody—battles of the war on the Eastern Front. During the Germans’ last great offensive in the Soviet Union in 1943, Fred fought at Poltava and in the titanic clash of thousands of tanks at Kursk. Wounded there, he later returned to his unit and fought in the long series of fiercely-contested defensive battles that ended only when the Soviets occupied much of eastern and central Germany and Austria. . . and when Hitler and the Thousand Year Reich were finally destroyed. Like so many members of German units, Fred was happy to surrender to the US Army at the end of the war, but under the terms of inter-Allied agreements reached months before, units which had fought only against the Soviets were turned over to the Red Army, en masse. Thus began the ordeal after the ordeal—2½ years in Soviet prison camps. After being freed from Soviet captivity, Fred eventually escaped the old world and the old conflicts . . . and started a new life in the United States, free of the competing "isms" of Europe that had wreaked misery on millions. Supported by detailed commentary by author/historian Marc Rikmenspoel, The Good Soldier contains 62 illustrations, including original diagrams and sketches drawn before the war and during the author's captivity; comprehensive documentary authentication of the author's military service; and extensive wartime photography.

The Good Soldier: From Austrian Social Democracy to Communist Captivity With a Soldier of Panzer-Grenadier Division Grossdeutschland

Novotny, Alfred

Leaders & Notable People

Contents. In an age of exaggeration and hype, when words like "great," "famous," and "legendary" are often used to describe the ordinary and slightly-above-average, it is difficult to describe the truly special. Further, when so much has been written about a subject, it is hard to find fresh perspectives and new ways to approach it.
 With Vanguard of the Crusade, author Mark Bando has accomplished just these things. Through decades of painstakingly collecting and verifying first-hand accounts of some of the fiercest fighting in the European Theater, he has illuminated the personal experiences of the members of this truly and justly famous American airborne division. From their baptism of fire in the advance echelon of Operation Overlord, to capturing the first objectives of Operation Market-Garden, and defiantly holding the key crossroads at Bastogne during the German Ardennes Offensive, the exploits of the "Screaming Eagles" are expertly recounted in this heavily-illustrated single volume.
 Expanding significantly on the author's previous work, Vanguard of the Crusade includes dozens of previously unpublished, rare photos as well as significantly enhanced versions of photos which have appeared in some of his works before. Historians, buffs, reenactors, and collectors alike will be fascinated by the extensive new sections about airborne equipment and parachutists' uniforms, as well as the all-new special feature segments about the major German formations defeated by the 101st in its campaigns in France, Holland, and Belgium. Ten brand new, highly-detailed maps based directly on primary source documents also support the text, which, like Bando's previous works, draws heavily on vividly-recounted, authentic anecdotes gleaned from the airborne veterans themselves.
 Significance More than any of the other combatant forces in the Second World War, the US Army standardized its divisions' organization, training, and doctrine. This allowed unparalleled flexibility of employment and a consistency of battlefield performance rivaled by the tactical forces of no other army. Airborne divisions, on the other hand, were the closest thing the US Army had to specially trained and organized "assault" units, designed specifically for striking behind enemy lines and holding key terrain while isolated and cut off.
 The 101st Airborne Division thus required and attracted a special kind of soldier, of whom unusual-and deadly-demands were made routinely, in training as well as combat. By chronicling the Division's combat experience through the eyes and in the words of its soldiers themselves, Vanguard of the Crusade provides priceless insights into what made this division so distinctive and the traditions it built so worthy. Perhaps one of their own, Private First Class Tex McMorries, put it best, "The best and toughest of the paratroopers were cold, fearless killers, who went to great extremes to kill the enemy." Vanguard of the Crusade is their story.
 Told without a shred of sentimentality, but with an implicit and profound respect for the paratroopers and glidermen who wore the Screaming Eagle patch, the book captures the spirit and the deeds of the Division which, from Normandy to Holland to the Ardennes, was the vanguard-and a bulwark-of the Crusade in Europe.

Vanguard of the Crusade: The 101st Airborne Division in World War II

Bando, Mark

The Tiger and King Tiger tanks gained legendary status during World War II. Numerous tank commanders attained phenomenal tallies of kills and accomplished extraordinary feats during combat in these tanks, building the legend to near mythic proportions after the war. 
During WWII, the Germans created eleven Army and three Waffen-SS heavy tank battalions. These heavy tank battalions were employed in nearly every part of Europe against almost every enemy of Germany. As vast in breadth and scope as the employment of Tiger battalions themselves, Sledgehammers provides historical examples and analysis of heavy tank battalions’ actions in North Africa, Normandy, Italy, the Ardennes Offensive, and numerous battles on the Eastern Front including Operation ZITADELLE/the Battle of Kursk, Operation BAGRATION, the battle of the Cherkassy Pocket, late war attacks to relieve Budapest, and many other more minor engagements. 
Although a great deal has already been published about Tiger tanks’ technical details and some of the units which used them, until now, very little has been written concerning the organization and tactical employment of these tanks throughout the German armed forces and across the theaters in which they were employed. Sledgehammers provides an in-depth look at heavy tank battalions’ organizations and tactics, including the tactical doctrine by which these elite units were supposed to fight and how they were actually employed on the battlefield by their commanders and crews. 
Even given the Tiger’s reputation, many readers will be amazed by the fearsome casualties inflicted by the crews of many of these behemoth armored vehicles. It is safe to say that no other armored vehicle of the war wreaked as much havoc among enemy formations as Tigers. Many will, however, also find it equally stunning to learn of the Tigers’ many technical and tactical vulnerabilities. Through the systematic use of extremely detailed primary source and other impeccably reliable research, Sledgehammers demolishes several major myths about Tigers in World War II. 
Meticulously researched and written with the perspective and respect for Tigers' crews that only a professional tanker can bring to the subject, Sledgehammers synthesizes information to provide new and definitive insights into the strengths and flaws of World War II’s most feared and legendary tanks. 
Prologue by famed Tiger ace Otto Carius. Epilogue by Tiger killers Viktor Iskrov and Ray Holt. 
35 original maps. 42 photos.

Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II

Otto Carius

Christopher W. Wilbeck

Viktor Iskrov

Ray Holt

From the invasions of Algeria, Sicily, and Normandy, to bursting open the very gates of the Reich at Aachen and in the gloomy and bloody Hürtgen Forest, to halting the great German offensive in the Ardennes, and to sealing the fate of the German Army in the Ruhr Pocket, the soldiers of the 18th Infantry Regiment established a battle record that is, in many ways, a microcosm of the American Army’s experiences in World War II. After bloody setbacks in their first actions in North Africa, the Regiment persevered and overcame every conceivable obstacle placed in their path by their enemies, to include Panzers, elite paratroopers, and tenacious garrisons of concrete and steel stretching from Sicily to the Westwall. Not only did they uphold the honor of their regimental forebears, but they set the standard for their successors who have fought in Vietnam, the Gulf War of 1991, and the current war in Iraq, where the Regiment’s 1st Battalion serves at the time of this book’s publication. 
American Iliad is, however, more than an especially complete and comprehensive regimental history. By combining information carefully culled from wartime reports with first-hand accounts provided by the riflemen and machinegunners to battalion commanders and regimental staff officers, the authors have created an exceptionally clear picture of an American infantry regiment’s tactical operations. Hundreds of actions, chronicled and analyzed at every level from squad through regiment, are woven together to create a brilliant mosaic that illustrates exactly how the 18th Infantry Regiment of the famed 1st Infantry Division—the "Big Red One"—defeated its Vichy French, Italian, and German adversaries from Algeria to the Harz Mountains. 
American Iliad is assured an important place in the burgeoning literature that documents the US Army’s WWII combat record in an analytical, factual fashion. Unlike most of the regimental and division histories published shortly after the war which were intended to be mementos of soldiers’ service and necessarily are often sentimental accounts based on unclassified information, American Iliad is an objective history based on reports not available to authors of unit histories in the immediately post-war era. The authors have artfully combined intelligence reports, captured operational documents, personal accounts by enemy participants, and myriad other facts relating to other American and Allied units to ensure the accuracy and integrity of this work. 
Most importantly, American Iliad makes a highly significant contribution to the long-running controversy about the quality of American combat units in WWII. In Citizen Soldiers, the late Stephen Ambrose argued that the Army which entered the European continent in Normandy was good, but by the end of the war, it had achieved excellence; in The GI Offensive in Europe, Pete Mansoor documented the generally superior combat effectiveness of American infantry divisions in the ETO; in When the Odds Were Even, Keith E. Bonn proved that even when the US Seventh Army did not enjoy numerical, air, or armor superiority, its soldiers succeeded due to superior cohesion, organization, and training; and in Draftee Division, John Sloan Brown illustrated the decisive strengths of the 88th Infantry Division, the first American division to see action that was overwhelmingly of conscripts. More recently, in Hell in Hürtgen Forest, Robert Rush has chronicled how the extraordinary tenacity of a regiment of the 4th Infantry Division enabled it to overcome every conceivable obstacle and prevail against an enemy enjoying innumerable advantages. 
Now, Bob Baumer and Mark Reardon show exactly how an infantry regiment achieved victory after victory against three different armies on two continents. Combining Baumer’s years of meticulous research with the professional and historical expertise that Reardon, a serving US Army officer, has previously exhibited in his book Victory at Mortain, American Iliad documents how the leaders of the 18th Infantry Regiment crafted combined arms teams and used effective, sometimes brilliant, maneuver to win battle after battle over 2 1/2 years of combat. The initiative, flexibility, and creativity these officers displayed is made abundantly evident, yet their failures and mistakes are also examined as well. Carefully crafted missions affording subordinate leaders maximum latitude were clearly the norm, and combined armor, artillery, engineer, and infantry combat teams, supported by air power (when available) were consistently preferred, in accordance with the American tactical precepts of the time. However, the authors make clear that when the tanks bogged down or were knocked out by the enemy, when the fighter bombers were grounded by bad weather or reallocated to higher priority targets, and when the artillery couldn’t shoot for lack of observation or because targets were "danger close," the 18th Infantry Regiment was always prepared to whatever it took to accomplish the mission. 
From the foxhole to the regimental command post, through firefights in dense forests and forbidding hedgerows, in desperate assaults up rocky desert heights and tenaciously defended beaches, American Iliad takes the reader through the epic journey in which 1,513 American soldiers lost their lives…and a regiment gained immortality. 
424 pages; 17 original maps; 45 photos; endnotes; index.

American Iliad: The 18th Infantry Regiment in World War II

Baumer, Robert W.

Reardon, Mark J.

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Books by The Aberjona Press

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the The Aberjona Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Final Crisis: Combat on Northern Alsace, January 1945

Five Years, Four Fronts: The War Years of Georg Grossjohann

Five Years, Four Fronts: The War Years of Georg Grossjohann

Into the Mountains Dark: A Ww II Odyssey from Harvard Crimson to Infantry Blue

From Normandy to the Ruhr: With the 116th Panzer Division in World War II

Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-Ss

The Good Soldier: From Austrian Social Democracy to Communist Captivity With a Soldier of Panzer-Grenadier Division Grossdeutschland

Vanguard of the Crusade: The 101st Airborne Division in World War II

Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II

American Iliad: The 18th Infantry Regiment in World War II