THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP discussion

The February theme read is any book or books of your choice that covers the war on the Eastern Front (can be a battle, partisan operations or any other subject that covers the conflict on the Russian Front - land, air or sea).

My book for this theme read is Jonathan Dimbleby's book on Operation Bagration; "Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War".

Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War by Jonathan Dimbleby

'Aussie Rick' wrote: "My book for this theme read is Jonathan Dimbleby's book on Operation Bagration; "Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War".

[book:Endgame 1944..."

I have both of his books on the Eastern Front, will get to them someday!

Im currently reading “Grimm Fate” by Jason D. Mark. He follows the 305th pioneer battalion and their journey from France to Stalingrad. This is the first Mark book I’ve read, and it’s a very well written page turner.

Mark will also appear on WW2TV YouTube channel on February 12 to discuss the book, so now is a great time to read this.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Is Snyder's Blood Lands OK for the theme read Rick?

zed wrote: "Is Snyder's Blood Lands OK for the theme read Rick?"

Sure, why not, more books the merrier and it's a good book to read.

Colton wrote: "Im currently reading “Grimm Fate” by Jason D. Mark. He follows the 305th pioneer battalion and their journey from France to Stalingrad. This is the first Mark book I’ve read, and it’s a very well w..."

I recently downloaded the Kindle edition, and I have the original HB edition; "Into Oblivion" signed by the author. Glad to hear you are enjoying the book.

Into Oblivion: The Story of Pionier-Batallion 305 by Jason D. Mark

'Aussie Rick' wrote: "zed wrote: " Sure, why not, more books the merrier and it's a good book to read."

I'm in.

Sounds great! I’m thinking I’ll read Armor and Blood by Dennis Showalter

My book for this month is Hitler’s Bandit Hunters: The SS and Nazi Occupation in Europe by Philip Blood, which examines the role of the SS in anti-partisan warfare and occupation policy across Nazi-occupied Europe (heavy focus on Eastern Front). I discovered it through the WW2TV YouTube channel, hosted by military historian Paul “Woody” Woodadge, whose lectures are a primary source of my book recommendations.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...

A book I inherited from my father and I've had on my bookshelf, unread for longer than I care to admit. What better time to dive into it. Alan Clark's "Barbarossa".

Richard wrote: "Sounds great! I’m thinking I’ll read Armor and Blood by Dennis Showalter"

One that I am yet to read, so I will be keen to hear your thoughts on the book.

Tommy wrote: "

A book I inherited from my father and I've had on my bookshelf, unread for longer than I care to admit. What better time to dive into it. Alan Clark's "Barbarossa"."

That's a classic account! I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did.

Zygmunt wrote: "My book for this month is Hitler’s Bandit Hunters: The SS and Nazi Occupation in Europe by Philip Blood, which examines the role of the SS in anti-partisan warfare and occupation policy across Nazi..."

Sounds like a very interesting book, keep us all posted!

My book on this subject is "Aces at Kursk: The Battle for Aerial Supremacy on the Eastern Front, 1943" by Christopher A. Lawrence



While Kursk is best known as where the greatest tank battle in history took place in July 1943, "there was an intense air battle going on overhead that was bigger than the Battle of Britain.

"As part of the German offensive, the Luftwaffe’s VIII Air Corps deployed around 1,100 aircraft in the south alone, while the opposing Soviet Second and Seventeenth air armies initially deployed over 1,600 aircraft. There was a similar effort surrounding the German attack in the north."

My books for the February challenge - two I want to finish and one I've had on my "want to read" shelf for a while:

Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third ReichJochen Hellbeck: Contains interviews conducted by historians with Soviet soldiers, commanders, party officials, and workers both during the battle and soon afterwards. It's an eye-opening read... I'm about half way through this book.

Until the Eyes Shut: Memories of a machine gunner on the Eastern Front, 1943-45: I'm listening to this one as an audiobook (about 70% finished) and would recommend it!

The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture If I can finish the other two (above), then I'll get after this one. It was recommended to me by a WWII historian who focuses their studies on the Eastern Front.

KOMET wrote: "My book on this subject is "Aces at Kursk: The Battle for Aerial Supremacy on the Eastern Front, 1943" by Christopher A. Lawrence

Another Eastern Front book I've been wanting to read! Looking forward to your comments on it.

Some very good books being mentioned for this theme read!

I will be reading Soviet Cavalry Operations During the Second World War: and the Genesis of the Operational Manoeuvre Group

Mike wrote: "I will be reading Soviet Cavalry Operations During the Second World War: and the Genesis of the Operational Manoeuvre Group

[bookcover:Soviet Cavalry Operations During the Second W..."

A very interesting book, Mike, keep us posted!

"Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War" starts off with an extract from one of my favourite Eastern Front books; "Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front". I checked the bibliography and found that the author has referenced a few of my favourite books, including "In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front". If anyone is interested in a very good first-hand account of fighting on the Eastern Front I highly recommend these two titles.

Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front by Günter K. Koschorrek

In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann

I’ll have to peruse my bookshelf and see what suitable unread books I have

Steve wrote: "I’ll have to peruse my bookshelf and see what suitable unread books I have"

I hope you find a good book to join in with :)

I’ll let you all know what I choose, I know I have “Endgame” to read, beyond that I’m not sure

The Wolf children of the eastern front by Sonia Winterberg and ‘In the hell of the Eastern Front: the fate of a young soldier during the fighting in Russia in World War II’ by Arno Sauer

Yes, it’s gonna be Jonathan Dimbleby’s “End Game”… no other unread eastern front books on my bookshelves 👍

I'm in a little bit of trouble bc this is my favorite topic and there are many books about it in hungarian. But I will probably read one of my favorites again, Stalingrad from Antony Beevor. Or something about the Don calach.

Nikolett wrote: "I'm in a little bit of trouble bc this is my favorite topic and there are many books about it in hungarian. But I will probably read one of my favorites again, Stalingrad from Antony Beevor. Or som..."

Stalingrad by Antony Beevor is an excellent book, can't hurt to read that again :)

Steve wrote: "Yes, it’s gonna be Jonathan Dimbleby’s “End Game”… no other unread eastern front books on my bookshelves 👍"

Nice choice :)

My read will be “Decision in the Ukraine Summer 1943: IISS and III Panzercorps

This is by George Nipe Jr. and has been in my library for years. (1996) I’ll need Google Earth to find all the villages/towns mentioned, but, it should be fun!

"Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War" - The Russian essayist and novelist Ilya Ehrenburg knew how to motivate the soldiers into deadly combat and the mood to take no prisoners:

"Ehrenburg sought to harness the anguish and outrage this provoked. In widely publicized diatribes in the pages of Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), the official newspaper of the Soviet armed forces, which was widely read by the troops, he sanctified hatred as a weapon of war:

Hate loads our rifles for us, hate drives us into the attack. We never knew it was possible to hate so much . . . the Germans are not human beings . . . Let us kill! If you haven’t killed a German in the course of the day, your day has been wasted. If you don’t kill the German, he will kill you. If you can’t kill a German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet! If you have killed one German, kill another: nothing gives us so much joy as German corpses. Your mothers say to you: kill the German! Your children beg of you: kill the German! Your country groans and whispers: kill the German! Don’t miss him! Don’t let him escape! Kill!"

Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War by Jonathan Dimbleby

I select the following book for the February theme
Stalin's Revenge: Operation Bagration and the Annihilation of Army Group Centre

Dipanjan wrote: "I select the following book for the February theme
Stalin's Revenge: Operation Bagration and the Annihilation of Army Group Centre
[bookcover:Stalin's Revenge: Operation Bagration an..."

Good one Dipanjan!

"Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War" - The Soviet encirclement of the German forces in the Korsun Pocket has been completed and now the hard work begins in its destruction:

"The noose around the encircled troops was slowly being drawn tighter. 'As for the "bag"' (a slang term for the area within which the Germans were now trapped), Kampov told the British journalist Alexander Werth, 'our policy was to slice it into bits and deal with each bit separately. In this way we wiped out village after village in which the Germans had entrenched themselves - it was bloody murder. I'm afraid some of our own villagers perished, too, in the process: that's one of the cruelest aspects of this kind of war'."

The Korsun Pocket:
https://www.historynet.com/the-korsun...

I decided on this one: A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944 by Willy Peter Reese

A poem by Reese:

We are war. Because we are soldiers.
I have burned all the cities,
Strangled all the women,
Brained all the children,
Plundered all the land.
I have shot a million enemies,
Laid waste the fields, destroyed the churches,
Ravaged the souls of the inhabitants,
Spilled the blood and tears of all the mothers. I did it, all me.—I did
Nothing. But I was a soldier.

At the time Willy Peter Reese wrote this poem in 1943, he had been serving on the Eastern Front for two years.

Mike wrote: "I decided on this one: A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944 by [author:Willy..."

That author/soldier was recent mentioned in my book and his poem quoted - sure as hell a pretty accurate portray of war on the Eastern Front!

"Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War" - A Soviet soldier had this experience when inspecting the area after the final destruction of the Korsun Pocket:

"Soon afterwards, he came across a local woman who was carrying a bulky object under her winter shawl. As he peered at her more closely, she quite happily revealed that she was carrying 'an axe and a pair of glossy officer boots with protruding legs cut off above the knees'. The reason for this, she explained, was she liked the boots but 'could not take them off because they stuck right to the stiff's frozen legs'. At home, they could be thawed out in front of a fire, and 'the legs could be easily removed without damage to the boots'."

Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War by Jonathan Dimbleby

"Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War" - Heavy fighting by the Sokolovsky's Soviet Western Front:

"After two weeks of savage fighting, his troops had advanced no more than six kilometres along a thirteen-kilometre front as a cost of at least 76,000 casualties. Of these, 9,600 were killed and 32,000 wounded, the remainder being either lost in action or taken prisoner. By the end of March, with no let-up in the fighting the Western Front's losses had grown by a further 58,000. And it had been to negligible effect. Sokolovsky was no closer to destroying the German positions at Vitebsk than he had been at the beginning of the month. Overall, in the first three months of the year, his armies had almost 236,000 casualties, or whom 39,000 had been killed and 187,000 wounded. In that time, his armies had advanced at a rate of less than half a kilometre a day. In mathematical terms, as the authors of Battle for Belorussia have pointed out, this had cost Sokolovsky's Western Front 'well over 3,500 casualties for every 500 metres of ground it advanced.' Such carnage for so little gain was too much for even Stalin to stomach. Authorizing the Stavka to concede General Ivan Bagramyan's case for suspending the 1st Baltic Front's assault, he ordered the Western Front commander to call off his offensive as well."

Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War by Jonathan Dimbleby

"Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War" - Not only was there a terrible war between German and Russia and their associated allies but between various resistance groups. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) took their fight not only against Russians and other Ukrainians but also Polish settlers:

"In one village, the UPA squads first used sickles to kill the farmers working in the surrounding fields. They then moved into the village, systematically bludgeoning its inhabitants to death with farm implements: 'Some were decapitated, some were hanged, some had their skin torn from their muscles, some had their hearts gouged from their bodies, some were set alight. In that village 185 people were massacred. By the spring of 1944, Bandera's followers had murdered between 40,000 and 60,000 Polish civilians in Volhynia alone."

Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War by Jonathan Dimbleby

'Aussie Rick' wrote: "" Such carnage for so little gain was too much for even Stalin to stomach. ..."

That was a high bar to get over! Excellent posts AR.

I am about 150 pages into Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin Timothy Snyder

I read something was unaware of. I had read pervisusly that Baedeker Guides had been used to bomb british landmarks of importance but it was produced also for tourists, I kid you not, to assist in visting the General Government areas of Poland.

I have done a bit of research as to the reputation of the guide after the war, and it survived, but it lost its aura. Sadly it archives were destroyed in an Allied raid on Leipzig and almost the entire archives from its inception in 1827 were lost.

zed wrote: "I am about 150 pages into Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin Timothy Snyder

I read something was unaware of. I had read pervisusly that Baedeker Guides had..."

That was a very interesting bit of information!

"Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War" - The requirements for Operation Bagration:

"It was to be a massive operation, the most ambitious of the entire Great Patriotic War. Initially scheduled to be launched on 10 June, less than a week after D-Day, Operation Bagration, as it was codenamed by Stalin, was a huge undertaking of a scale and complexity that had never before been attempted by the Red Army. The Four Front armies had a total manpower of a million men, but an even greater number would be required to guarantee the destruction of Army Group Centre's 3rd Panzer, 4th and 9th Armies, which had a combined strength of 850,000 men (although fewer than half that number were in any condition to enter combat operations). In the seven weeks leading up to the launch of Operation Bagration, therefore, the Stavka mobilized a further 700,000 troops assembled in five combined armies, two tank armies, one air army and the 1st Polish Army, all supported by two mechanized and four cavalry corps along with 3,000 tanks and 10,000 gun and mortars. This represented a 60 per cent increase in troop numbers, 300 per cent in tanks and self-propelled guns, 85 per cent in artillery and mortars and 62 per cent in air power. These reinforcements were drawn from the Crimea and from the Stavka reserves, their numbers boosted by local recruits from the reoccupied territories, a significant proportion of whom were under the age of eighteen (teenagers were to provide an abundant and increasing supply of young lives to replace those of their elders who had fallen).

Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War by Jonathan Dimbleby