A German commander's " very readable and thought-provoking" study of Operation Barbarossa ( Military Review).This book unveils a wealth of experiences and analysis about Operation Barbarossa, perhaps the most important military campaign of the twentieth century, from a perspective rarely encountered.Hermann Hoth led Germany's 3rd Panzer Group in Army Group Center—in tandem with Guderian's 2nd Group—during the invasion of the Soviet...

The author of Case White: The Invasion of Poland delves into the strategy and weaponry of armored warfare during the early years of the Russo-German War.The German panzer armies that swept into the Soviet Union in 1941 were an undefeated force that had honed their skill in combined arms warfare to a fine edge. The Germans focused their panzers and tactical air support at points on the battlefield defined as Schwerpunkt—main effort—to smash through any defe...

A soldier with the German Army's Wallonian Legion chronicles his experience as a foreign volunteer for the Nazi war machine during WWII.A french-speaking Belgian, Fernand Kaisergruber volunteered to fight with the military force that occupied his country. His detailed chronicle of that time reads like a travelogue of the Eastern Front campaign. Until recently, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals who fought with the Germans. Kaisergru...

German general Hermann Balck (1897–1982) was considered to be one of World War II's greatest battlefield commanders. His brilliantly fought battles were masterpieces of tactical agility, mobile counterattack, and the technique of Auftragstaktik, or "mission command." However, because he declined to participate in the U.S. Army's military history debriefing program, today he is known only to serious students of the war.Drawing heavily on his meticulously kept wartime journals, Balck...

The first volume of the tactical and operational history of World War II Germany's fourth SS-Panzerkorps division and its leader.During World War II, the armed or Waffen-SS branch of the Third Reich's dreaded security service expanded from two divisions in 1940 to 38 divisions by the end of the war, eventually growing to a force of over 900,000 men until Germany's defeat in May, 1945.The histories of the first three SS corps are well known—the actions of I,...

A Green Beret's gripping memoir of American Special Forces in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.In 1970, on his second tour to Vietnam, Nick Brokhausen served in Recon Team Habu, CCN. Officially, it was known as the Studies and Observations group. In fact, this Special Forces squad, which Brokhausen calls "an unwashed, profane, ribald, joyously alive fraternity," undertook some of the most dangerous and suicidal reconnaissance missions ever in the enemy-control...

A collaborationist who fought for Germany during WWII and later for the French in Vietnam tells his eventful life story in this military memoir.This is the riveting true story of Paul Martelli who fought on the Eastern Front in 1945 as a fifteen-year-old member of the 33rd Waffen-Grenadier-Division of the SS Charlemagne, and later, as a soldier with French forces in the Tonkin area of Vietnam.Paul recounts his time at the Sennheim military training base; hi...

The most comprehensive English-language study of the German Imperial Navy's WWI battlecruisers, fully illustrated with drawings, diagrams and photographs.In this in-depth study, naval historian and author of Battle on the Seven Seas Gary Staff presents a full analysis of Imperial Germany's battlecruisers. Known as Panzerkreuzer, the eight ships of this class were involved in several early North Sea skirmishes before their historic victory against the Royal...

How Nazi forces were driven back by the Soviets amid mud and freezing temperatures: "Excellent . . . well researched, fast paced and enjoyable to read." — Military ReviewAt the end of September 1941, more than a million German soldiers lined up along the frontline just 180 miles west of Moscow. They were well-trained, confident, and had good reasons to hope that the war in the East would be over with one last offensive. Facing them was an equally large Sov...

In the wake of the Red Army's signal victory at Stalingrad, which began when its surprise counteroffensive encircled German Sixth Army in Stalingrad region in mid-November 1942 and ended when its forces liquidated beleaguered Sixth Army in early February 1943, the Soviet High Command (Stavka) expanded its counteroffensive into a full-fledged winter offensive which nearly collapsed German defenses in southern Russia. History has recorded the many dramatic triumphs the Red Army achieved duri...

From an expert on the Eastern Front of World War II, this book chronicles the cataclysmic experience of the region that includes modern-day Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.The Baltic States suffered more than almost any other territory during World War II, caught on the front-line of some of the war's most vicious battles and squeezed between the vast military might of the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army.Combining new archival research and numerous f...

The second half of a two-part study on Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's plan to invade Soviet Russia during World War II, and what went wrong.At dawn on 10 July 1941, massed tanks and motorized infantry of German Army Group Center's Second and Third Panzer Groups crossed the Dnepr and Western Dvina Rivers, beginning what Hitler and most German officers and soldiers believed would be a triumphal march on Moscow, the Soviet capital. Less than three weeks before, on 22 J...