Books on the Eastern Front of WW2

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Very true Mike!

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - Another Soviet counterattack during the early stages of Operation Barbarossa:

"At first light on 28 June, 46th Tank Division thundered down the highway to Leningrad, the vanguard of Dmitri Lelyushenko's under-strength and ill-prepared XXI Mechanized Corps. Despite its weaknesses, the corps smashed its way into Daugavpil's eastern suburbs, where its armour engaged panzers at point-blank range and, when low on ammunition, Red Army crews resorted to attempting to crush and ram their foe. One Soviet soldier, Ivan Sereda, jumped on to a panzer and hacked its crew to death with an axe before using an anti-tank mine to destroy a second tank. He would be named a Hero of the Soviet Union for his actions."

Ivan Pavlovich Sereda:
https://www.grunge.com/1012788/a-germ...

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - Fort VII at Kaunas:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-s...

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/t...

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - More hard fighting as the German armoured units advance:

"4th Panzer was still following in 3rd Panzer's wake - and it had been a spectacularly successful day for the Berliners. By dusk, their spearhead was across the River Szczara, outside the town of Bereza Kartuska. In two days, the division had advanced nearly 90 miles. Whatever counter-attacks XIV Mechanised Corps had been able to mount were smashed; 36 t-26s were finished off in a single action by 6th Panzer Regiment in the mid-afternoon, 12 of them dispatched by just one company in a matter of minutes. By the time a small bridgehead had been forged over the Szczara, the main road all the way back to Kobrin was littered with the burned-out and abandoned hulks of more than 100 tanks and other armoured vehicles."

Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941 by Richard Hargreaves

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - An account of the T-34 in action:

"In a duel with one panzer, Borodin's turret was gazed by an enemy shell. He responded by sending a 76mm round in the opposite direction. 'Flames and smoke come from the turret of the enemy tank,' he wrote. 'Victory! But there was no time to rejoice.' He disabled a second panzer by shooting off its caterpillar track, before his radio operator gunned down every member of the crew who leaped out of the crippled vehicle. Hit by a German shell, Boris Borodin withdrew from the field of battle. 'Thank you for the T-34 tank,' he wrote. 'How many lives it saved! This is not a T-26, BT-5 or BT-7, whose armour can be pierced by heavy machine-guns. Surrounded on three sides by petrol tanks, they burned like matchboxes'."

Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941 by Richard Hargreaves

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - Desperate times call for desperate actions like crashing your bomber into advancing German vehicles.

Captain Nikolai Gastello:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai...

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - The author described the terrible events that took place in Iași, Romania, at the start of the war in the East:

The Iași pogrom:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ia%C8%9...

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - The German General Staff think all is proceeding well with Operation Barbarossa - some of those on the ground think a bit differently:

"Wolfgang Werthen, 16th Panzer Division's chronicler, gave a far more realistic assessment of the titanic clash of armour, comparing the advance in Ukraine with that across France and Belgium 12 months before. 'After ten days in France German panzers stood on the Atlantic following an 800-kilometre journey, driving terrified French and Englishmen before them,' he wrote. 'After ten days in the East, 100 kilometres had been covered and the German armoured spearheads faced an enemy who was technically and numerically superior and who often used hitherto unknown yet effective fighting methods.' Put simply, after ten days of bitter fighting, there had been no collapse on the Southern Front."

Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941 by Richard Hargreaves

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - The author covered in great detail the heavy fighting and large tank battle around Dubno that occurred during the early stages of Operation Barbarossa:

https://www.operationbarbarossa.net/t...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...

[Mike, Assisting Moderator US Forces]

'Aussie Rick' wrote: " 'After ten days in the East, 100 kilometres had been covered and the German armoured spearheads faced an enemy who was technically and numerically superior and who often used hitherto unknown yet effective fighting methods.' ..."

You don't often read praise of the Soviet forces during the early parts of Barbarossa. Clearly this experienced German commander had a different impression of his enemy. Great posts AR.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - The author describes not only the numerous and bloody pogroms against the Jewish population but also the gruesome massacre of Soviet prisoners by the NKVD before the Germans arrived:

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war...

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - NKVD prisoner massacres in Lvov:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_pr...

[Mike, Assisting Moderator US Forces]

'Aussie Rick' wrote: ""Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - The author describes not only the numerous and bloody pogroms against the Jewish population but also the gruesome massacre of Sov..."

Russians killing Ukrainians and others...still happening. Informative link AR, thanks.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - The cost of Operation Barbarossa:

"The first ten days of Barbarossa had cost the Reich 54,000 casualties, 11,822 of them dead. Every day 1,161 German soldiers had died on the nascent Eastern Front - a higher rate than in any of Hitler's military adventures to date. The Officer Corps was hit particularly hard: 61 were killed daily, double the losses of the western campaign 12 months earlier. 'Our best officers are fading away in this cruel war, which is so very different from that against Poland or even that in the West,' XXXXVII Panzer Corps' commander Joachim Lemelsen complained in mid-July.

As the vanguard of the advance into the Soviet Union, corps like Lemelsen's invariably suffered the heaviest losses. When his 29th Motorised Infantry Division was pulled out of the line after a month's fighting, it had lost more than 2,600 men, nearly 700 of them dead or missing, while just 12 of the 212 tans with which 18th Panzer Division had crossed the Bug on 22 June were still in working order. It had suffered 3,100 casualties, including 750 dead and upwards of 400 men thought to have fallen into enemy hands. The latter probably survived no more than a few days in Soviet hands - as the advancing Wehrmacht all too often discovered. Perhaps as many as three-quarters of Germans captured in 1941 were killed or died of maltreatment.

By mid-August 1941, one in every ten German soldiers in the East had become a casualty - more than 375,000 men killed or wounded. Infantry divisions possessed perhaps two-thirds of the strength they enjoyed when the invasion began, panzer divisions perhaps half. No division would ever make good the losses it suffered during the opening weeks of Barbarossa - replacements did not even half-fill the denuded ranks."

Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941 by Richard Hargreaves

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941" - The valiant defence of the citadel at Brest-Litovsk in 1941 led to it receiving the title of Hero Fortress in 1965:

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/art...