Barbarossa: The Russian German Conflict, 1941-45

Description

On June 22, 1941, before dawn, German tanks and guns began firing across the Russian border. It was the beginning of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, one of the most brutal campaigns in the history of warfare. Four years later, the victorious Red Army has suffered a loss of seven million lives. Alan Clark's incisive analysis succeeds in explaining how a fighting force that in one two-month period lost two million men was nevertheless able to rally to defeat the Wehrmacht. The Barbarossa campaign included some of the greatest episodes in military history: the futile attack on Moscow in the winter of 1941-42, the siege of Stalingrad, the great Russian offensive beginning in 1944 that would lead the Red Army to the historic meeting with the Americans at the Elbe and on to victory in Berlin. Title page......Page 2 Contents......Page 3 LIST OF MAPS AND CHARTS......Page 10 AUTHOR’S NOTE......Page 12 PREFACE......Page 14 BOOK I | The “Eastern Marshals”......Page 17 1 The State of the Wehrmacht......Page 19 2 Mother Russia......Page 41 3 The Clash of Arms......Page 58 4 The First Crisis......Page 86 5 The Lötzen Decision......Page 103 6 Leningrad: Hypothesis and Reality......Page 117 7 Slaughter in the Ukraine......Page 129 8 The Start of the Moscow Offensive......Page 143 9 The Battle of Moscow......Page 154 BOOK II Stalingrad......Page 177 10 Planning and Preliminaries......Page 178 11 The Wehrmacht at High Tide......Page 193 12 Verdun on the Volga......Page 206 13 The Entombment of the 6th Army......Page 222 14 The Advent of General von Manstein......Page 230 BOOK III | Zitadelle......Page 251 15 Crisis and Recovery......Page 252 16 The “Consolidation Period”......Page 273 17 The Greatest Tank Battle in History......Page 289 18 The Aftermath......Page 305 BOOK IV | Nemesis......Page 326 19 “The Floodgates Are Creating”......Page 329 20 Eastern Europe Changes Hands......Page 341 21 Black January......Page 367 22 The Fall of Berlin......Page 388 EPILOGUE......Page 408 1 Facts about the Russian and German Leaders......Page 410 2 Chronology......Page 421 3 Waffen SS Rank Conversion Table......Page 423 4 Glossary of Abbreviations......Page 424 5 Text of Führer Directive #34......Page 425 BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 426 NOTE ON SOURCES......Page 431 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS......Page 474 INDEX......Page 476 AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY......Page 529 ALSO BY ALAN CLARK......Page 530 ILLUSTRATIONS......Page 531 Copyright......Page 552