Moscow Stalingrad 1941 1942

In the winter of 1941, 78 choice Nazi divisions, 1,700 tanks and over 1,000 planes were drawn up near Moscow to carry out Operation Typhoon. The Germans had come so close to Moscow that German could be heard on the radio on any wave length, and the very air was polluted by enemy breath. Leningrad, the second largest ctiy in the Soviet Union, was besieged, and the noose of the enemy blockade had tightened round it. The Wehrmacht commanders were planning the capture of Stalingrad on the Volga, the country's main route for grain and oil supplies. It was in those days and months, in the early period of the Great Patriotic War, that Hitler's army which was then at the zenith of its power suffered its first serious defeat. About half a million German soldiers and officers were killed in the battle for Moscow alone. The offensive launched by the Red Army in December, 1941 recaptured enemy-occupied territory with a pre-war population of approximately 5,000,000. Leningrad held out, and soon the whole world was to hear of the heroic battle of Stalingrad. This book tells about the battle for Moscow and Stalingrad, and other major events in the first period of the Great Patriotic War. The articles and stories are by Marshals Zhukov, Vassilevsky and Rokossovky, and by such well-known authors as Alexander Fadeyev, Konstantin Simonov, Vassily Grossman and Alexander Bek.

A gripping and authoritative revisionist account of the German Winter Campaign of 1941–1942 Germany’s winter campaign of 1941–1942 is commonly seen as its first defeat. In Retreat from Moscow, a bold, gripping account of one of the seminal moments of World War II, David Stahel argues that instead it was its first strategic success in the East. The Soviet counteroffensive was in fact a Pyrrhic victory. Despite being pushed back from Moscow, the Wehrmacht lost far fewer men, frustrated its enemy’s strategy, and emerged in the spring unbroken and poised to recapture the initiative. Hitler’s strategic plan called for holding important Russian industrial cities, and the German army succeeded. The Soviets as of January 1942 aimed for nothing less than the destruction of Army Group Center, yet not a single German unit was ever destroyed. Lacking the professionalism, training, and experience of the Wehrmacht, the Red Army’s offensive attempting to break German lines in countless head-on assaults led to far more tactical defeats than victories. Using accounts from journals, memoirs, and wartime correspondence, Stahel takes us directly into the Wolf’s Lair to reveal a German command at war with itself as generals on the ground fought to maintain order and save their troops in the face of Hitler’s capricious, increasingly irrational directives. Excerpts from soldiers’ diaries and letters home paint a rich portrait of life and death on the front, where the men of the Ostheer battled frostbite nearly as deadly as Soviet artillery. With this latest installment of his pathbreaking series on the Eastern Front, David Stahel completes a military history of the highest order.

An account of the most crucial period of fighting on the Eastern Front, from the defeat of Germany at the gates of Moscow to their crushing loss at Stalingrad. The path from Moscow to Stalingrad was littered with successes and losses for both the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, culminating in one of the harshest battles of the Second World War. Part of the Casemate Illustrated series, this volume outlines how it was that, less than a year after their defeat at Moscow, the German army had found a way to make the Soviet troops waver in their defense, with their persistence eventually leading to the Battle of Stalingrad. The successful expulsion of the German troops from Moscow in the winter of 1941 came at a cost for the Red Army. Weaknesses in the Soviet camp inspired the Wehrmacht, under Adolf Hitler’s close supervision, to make preparations for offensives along the Eastern Front to push the Russians further and further back into their territory. With a complex set of new tactics and the crucial aid of the Luftwaffe, the German army began to formulate a deadly two-pronged attack on Stalingrad to reduce the city to rubble. In the lead-up to this, Timoshenko’s failed attack on Kharkov, followed by the Battle of Sebastopol in June 1942, prompted Operation Blue, the German campaign to advance east on their prized objective. This volume includes numerous photographs of the ships, planes, tanks, trucks, and weaponry used by both sides in battle, alongside detailed maps and text outlining the constantly changing strategies of the armies as events unfolded. “The wonderful photos and illustrations make this book entertaining.” —New York Journal of Books