Log In
Or create an account ->
Imperial Library
Home
About
News
Upload
Forum
Help
Login/SignUp
Index
Glossary, Abbreviations and Rank Comparisons
Introduction
Chapter 1: ‘The world will hold its breath’
Saturday, 21 June 1941
‘Forget the concept of comradeship’
‘The Führer has got it all in hand’
Tomorrow ‘we are to fight against World Bolshevism’
Chapter 2: ‘Ordinary men’ – the German soldier on the eve of ‘Barbarossa’
‘Endless pressure to participate’
‘Order and Duty’ and the Führer
‘Prepared… to face what is coming!’ The German Army, June 1941
Chapter 3: The Soviet frontier
‘There was no information…’
‘We’ve never had such a situation… Will there be any instructions?’
Chapter 4: H-hour 03.15
The River Bug… Brest-Litovsk
Air strike… First light
The shortest night of the year… H-hour
Daybreak… Berlin
Chapter 5: The longest day of the year
The first Soviet pocket is formed – Brest-Litovsk
‘Only 1,000km as the crow flies to Moscow’
Where was the Red Air Force?
Dusk… 22 June 1941
Chapter 6: Waiting for news
The home fronts… Victory will be ours! Germany
Victory will be ours! Russia
‘Don’t die without leaving a dead German behind you’… Brest-Litovsk
Across the Dvina… Army Group North
No news
Brest-Litovsk… ‘I wonder how it is I am still alive!’
Chapter 7: Blitzkrieg
The ‘smooth’ period… The Panzers
Frontier tank battles
Panzer vanguard
On to Smolensk
Finale: Brest-Litovsk
Chapter 8: Smolensk
The infantry
The Smolensk pocket
‘Do not cry’… Soviet defeat in the West
Chapter 9: Refocusing victory conditions
The longest campaign
Conditions for victory
A city ‘pulsing with life’… Leningrad
Chapter 10: A war without garlands
‘Better three French campaigns than one Russian’
The pressures on the German soldier
‘Kein Kindergarten Krieg’. Prisoners and partisans
Chapter 11: ‘Kesselschlacht’ – victory without results
Cannae at Kiev
The reduction of the Kiev pocket
Chapter 12: ‘Victored’ to death
Objective Moscow
A logistic ‘trip-wire’
‘Totsiegen’… victored to death
A dying army
Chapter 13: The last victory
Double encirclement… Vyazma and Bryansk
The great illusion
Chapter 14: ‘The eleventh hour’
Moscow… A defence crust forms
Dilemma at Orscha
‘The eleventh hour
Chapter 15: The spires of Moscow
‘Flucht nach Vorn’
The frozen offensive
‘The spires of the city’… Moscow
Chapter 16: The devil loose before Moscow
The Soviet counter-offensive
The German soldier does not go ‘Kaputt!’… The crisis of confidence
The German Army in retreat
Chapter 17: The order of the frozen flesh
‘Not one single step back’ – the Hold Order
Frozen flesh
Postscript – ‘Barbarossa’ Notes to the text
Notes to the text
Appendices
1. German casualties Operation ‘Barbarossa’ 1941–42
2. German casualties reflected in division manning equivalents
3. The fighting elements within a German division
4. A snapshot of Soviet battle casualties
Sources
← Prev
Back
Next →
← Prev
Back
Next →