Search results for ""author craig w.h. luther""

This book examines in unprecedented detail the advance of Germany's Army Group Center through central Russia, toward Moscow, in the summer of 1941, followed by brief accounts of the Battle of Moscow and subsequent winter battles into early 1942. Based on hundreds of veterans’ accounts, archival documents, and exhaustive study of the pertinent primary and secondary literature, the book offers new insights into Operation Barbarossa, Adolf Hitler’s attack on Soviet Russia in June 1941. While the book meticulously explores the experiences of the German soldier in Russia, in the cauldron battles along the Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow axis, it places their experiences squarely within the strategic and operational context of the Barbarossa campaign. Controversial subjects, such as the culpability of the German eastern armies in war crimes against the Russian people, are also examined in detail. This book is the most detailed account to date of virtually all aspects of the German soldiers’ experiences in Russia in 1941.

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The 12th SS Panzer Division “Hitler Youth” was formed in early 1943 following the German disaster at Stalingrad in Russia, and was trumpeted by German propaganda as a symbol of the willingness of German youth to make the ultimate sacrifice for Führer und Vaterland. Most of the division’s soldiers were born in 1926, and averaged barely eighteen years of age when they underwent their baptism of fire among the verdant fields and hedgerows of Normandy on 7 June 1944. Anchoring the eastern flank of the Normandy front, these young SS soldiers successfully defended the strategically vital town of Caen against British and Canadian forces until finally overwhelmed a month later by the Allies’ enormous superiority in men and materiel. Although the “Hitler Youth” Division was largely annihilated in the process, it won the grudging respect of Allied forces as the finest German division faced in Normandy. The author’s account of its history is based largely on primary source materials, including extensive archival holdings, published memoirs, official histories, and numerous interviews with former division members.

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