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    German Army on the Eastern Front—The Advance
    German Army on the Eastern Front—The Advance
    German Army on the Eastern Front—The Advance
    Ebook266 pages1 hour

    German Army on the Eastern Front—The Advance

    By Ian Baxter

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    About this ebook

    “A photographic record of Operation Barbarossa . . . The conditions endured by the invaders, the defenders and civilians caught up in the conflict.”—Stuart Asquith, author of Military Modelling
     
    German Army on the Eastern Front: TheAdvance is a highly illustrated record of the extraordinary feat of arms that saw the Nazi armies drive deep into the vast terrain of the Soviet Union, to the gates of Stalingrad and Moscow. It traces the campaign from these hopeful beginnings until, on the brink of victory, the defenders and the winter contrived to slow and then halt the advance. It vividly conveys the appalling conditions endured by the invaders. By early 1943 the German advance finally petered out, leaving some 1.5 million dead from the battle of Stalingrad alone. The long and costly retreat was about to begin.
     
    “This is a book of photographs, featuring some hitherto unseen images of the German Army on the Eastern Front in WWII . . . The pictures and accompanying text have been well researched by the author and in my view this is an ideal book for those interested in that theatre of war in WWII. The pictures alone tell the story.”—The Armourer
     
    “The rare photographs will be of great interest to professionals and enthusiasts, but this is also a very good starting point for the novice and represents very good value for money . . . This book provides a strong impression of the happy months before the weaknesses led into an increasing string of defeats as the Allied forces began to advance on German homeland.”—FIRE Project
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJan 30, 2015
    ISBN9781473852792
    German Army on the Eastern Front—The Advance
    Author

    Ian Baxter

    Ian Baxter is a military historian who specialises in German twentieth-century military history. He has written more than fifty books. He has also reviewed numerous military studies for publication, supplied thousands of photographs and important documents to various publishers and film production companies worldwide, and lectures to various schools, colleges and universities throughout the United Kingdom and Southern Ireland.

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    • 4/5
      Germany Army on the Eastern Front – The AdvanceGermany Army on the Eastern Front – The Advance is an excellently compiled photographs from Wartime Archives by Ian Baxter with an explanation in the three chapters. What is forgotten about the Eastern Front and during the advance Germany was actually winning it was not until a lot further in to the war that the tide began to turn. They had advanced to the outskirts of Leningrad, heading towards Stalingrad and head long down the highway to Moscow. This book is a pictorial account of that advance in all weathers and the soldiers are the stars of the book.When Operation Barbarossa was launched in the early hours of 22nd June 1941, through the dividing line in Poland towards Russia herself the Infantry and Panzer Divisions went through the Russians like a hot knife through butter. The Russians were facing a front that spread from Poland down to the Black Sea, 3,332 Panzers, over 7,000 artillery pieces, 60, 000 vehicles, 625,000 horses and 3 million men.Chapter One covers The Advance and there is a picture of the some soldier who have commandeered a child’s pram in order to transport their kit as the distances some of the soldiers had to cover on foot were immense. There are also plenty of pictures of the soldiers making their way on foot, in panzers or on horseback in all weathers including the dreaded winter snows. But they were still doing well at this point.Chapter Two covers Army Group South who at this time had not been trapped and surrounded in Stalingrad yet but were heading towards the Great Dictator’s City. This chapter has some excellent information for the reader as well as excellent pictures. There is a picture of where German Soldiers have built an igloo as shelter from the weather. Plenty of pictures of the Germans advancing in the snow and using dogs to pull sledges. There is also a picture of a cameraman filming above the Volga towards the heart of Stalingrad in 1942 for the Reich News films.Chapter Three covers the Winter and Spring Campaign 1943 before the tide turned against the German invasion and the might of the Soviet War Machine slowly turned the tide and began the push back. There are pictures here where we can start to see the mud that would hold up the Germans and make them easy targets for the Russians. It is hard to explain how bad the mud was due to the lack of decent roads and highways but the pictures show you how easy it was to be stuck in the mud and there is a great picture of a staff car stuck.The three chapters in this book along with the appendices are well written and the pictures well compiled so that you can see how well the Germans had advanced in to the Soviet Union. The research that has gone in to this book is excellent, and a wonderful addition to the growing history of the Eastern Front that is oft forgotten in the West. It is often overlooked that the Germans did well with the initial advance and this is a great addition to that cannon that will help to give students a broader perspective of the war there.

    Book preview

    German Army on the Eastern Front—The Advance - Ian Baxter

    First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

    PEN & SWORD MILITARY

    An imprint of

    Pen & Sword Books Ltd

    47 Church Street

    Barnsley

    South Yorkshire

    S70 2AS

    Copyright © Ian Baxter, 2015

    ISBN 978-1-47382-266-5

    eISBN 9781473852792

    The right of Ian Baxter to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

    A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

    Typeset by Concept, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire HD4 5JL.

    Printed and bound in England by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY.

    Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Social History, Transport, True Crime, and Claymore Press, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Wharncliffe.

    For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

    PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED

    47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

    E-mail: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk

    Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

    Contents

    About the Author

    Chapter One

    Advance to the East

    Chapter Two

    Army Group South, 1942

    Chapter Three

    Winter and Spring Campaign, 1943

    Appendix I

    Assessment of the German Soldier, 1941–1943

    Appendix II

    German Infantry

    Appendix III

    6th Army Order of Battle, 19 November 1942

    Appendix IV

    Rank Equivalents

    About the Author

    Ian Baxter is a military historian who specialises in German twentieth-century military history. He has written more than forty books including Poland – The Eighteen Day Victory March, Panzers in North Africa, The Ardennes Offensive, The Western Campaign, The 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitlerjugend, The Waffen-SS on the Western Front, The Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front, The Red Army at Stalingrad, Elite German Forces of World War II, Armoured Warfare, German Tanks of War, Blitzkrieg, Panzer-Divisions at War, Hitler’s Panzers, German Armoured Vehicles of World War Two, Last Two Years of the Waffen-SS at War, German Soldier Uniforms and Insignia, German Guns of the Third Reich, Defeat to Retreat: The Last Years of the German Army at War 1943–1945, Operation Bagration – the destruction of Army Group Centre, German Guns of the Third Reich, Rommel and the Afrika Korps, U-Boat War, and most recently The Sixth Army, the Road to Stalingrad, German Mountain Troops, and Himmler’s Nazi Concentration Camp Guards. He has also written over 100 articles including ‘Last Days of Hitler’, ‘Wolf’s Lair’, ‘Story of the V1 and V2 Rocket Programme’, ‘Secret Aircraft of World War Two’, ‘Rommel At Tobruk’, ‘Hitler’s War with his Generals’, ‘Secret British Plans to Assassinate Hitler’, ‘SS At Arnhem’, ‘Hitlerjugend’, ‘Battle Of Caen 1944’, ‘Gebirgsjäger at War’, ‘Panzer Crews’, ‘Hitlerjugend Guerrillas’, ‘Last Battles in the East’, ‘Battle of Berlin’ and many more. He has also reviewed numerous military studies for publication, supplied thousands of photographs and important documents to various publishers and film production companies worldwide, and lectures to various schools, colleges and universities throughout the United Kingdom and Southern Ireland.

    Chapter One

    Advance to the East

    For the invasion of Russia, code-named ‘Barbarossa’, the German Army assembled some 3 million men, divided into a total of 105 infantry divisions and 32 Panzer divisions. There were 3,332 tanks, over 7,000 artillery pieces, 60,000 motor vehicles and 625,000 horses. This massive force was distributed into three German Army groups:

    Heeresgruppe Nord – commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, which provided the main spearhead for the advance on Leningrad and assembled in East Prussia on the Lithuanian frontier.

    Heeresgruppe Mitte – commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock, which assembled on the 1939 Polish/Russian Frontier, both north and south of Warsaw. Bock’s force consisted of forty-two Infantry Divisions of the 4th and 9th Armies, and Panzergruppen II and III. This army contained the largest number of German infantry and Panzer divisions in all three army groups.

    Army Group Süd – commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, which was deployed down the longest stretch of border with Russia.

    The front, reaching from central Poland to the Black Sea, was held by one Panzergruppe, three German and two Rumanian armies, plus a Hungarian motorized corps, under German command.

    During the early morning of 22 June 1941, the German Army finally unleashed the maelstrom that was ‘Barbarossa’. Both the Infantry and Panzer Divisions wasted no time and soon sliced through the bewildered Russian forces on every front. The ferocity and effectiveness of both the Infantry and Panzer Divisions were so great that groups of up to fifteen Russia divisions were trapped at a time and slowly and systematically annihilated in a hurricane of fire.

    In the North, Leeb’s rapid two-pronged offensive along the Baltic opened up at first light on the morning of 22 June 1941. His force, consisting of 16th and 18th Armies, smashed through the Soviet defences. Russian soldiers stood helpless in its path, too shocked to take action. Over the next weeks to come, German troops of Heeresgruppe Nord continued to chew through enemy positions heading through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, straight towards their objective – Leningrad. Fortunately for Leeb, the earth was baked under the blistering summer heat and his army was able to advance rapidly through the Baltic states.

    By 10 July, Leeb’s units broke south of Pskov and rolled towards Luga. At the rate they were advancing, they would need no more than nine or ten days to reach the outskirts of Leningrad. But following their surge of success, the Wehrmacht were losing momentum. Not only were their supply lines being overstretched, but enemy resistance began to stiffen on the road to Leningrad. In a desperate attempt to blunt the German advance and prevent them from reaching the imperial city, brigades of Russian marines, naval units, and more than 80,000 men from the Baltic Fleet were hastily sent into action against Leeb’s forces. These Russian soldiers were now the sole barrier between Leningrad and the Germans. Although the advance was hampered by these Russian forces, by the end of August 1941, Leeb’s Panzers were finally within sight of Leningrad. The terrified civilians left inside the city walls were now going to endure one of the most brutal sieges in twentieth-century history.

    As the summer of 1941 passed and the Germans drew closer to the city gates, Leningraders were given the grim orders to defend their city to the death. Although Leeb’s forces had arrived within shelling distance of Leningrad, the advance had not gone as planned. Already units had been badly disrupted and were mired on the Leningrad Front by stiffening resistance.

    By 17 September, the Moscow Front could wait no longer for victory in the north. The shift of the main weight, the powerful 41.Panzerkorps which Leeb required to sledge-hammer his way to the outskirts of Leningrad, was taken out of line and ordered to the Moscow Front. Without the 41.Panzerkorps the whole dynamics of Heeresgruppe Nord had altered. There would now be no attack on Leningrad. Instead, Hitler ordered that the city would be encircled and the inhabitants defending inside would be starved to death. During October and November 1941, some ten German divisions were tied down

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