Craig W H Luther

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the surprise invasion of the Soviet Union that opened the Eastern Front in World War II. With lightning speed and devastating success, the German army tore through Soviet territory and rolled over the Red Army, scoring some of the most dramatic victories in military history--until the blitzkrieg bogged down during the approach on Moscow. At the spearhead of the attack was General Heinz Guderian, one of the most celebrated and controversial commanders of the war, who commanded a tank group in the center of the German front that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea.Guderian's Panzers reconstructs Barbarossa from the perspective of Guderian and his 2nd Panzer Group. The initial phases witnessed the German war machine at the height of its battlefield prowess. Guderian's group of 250,000 men and 1,000 tanks broke through the Soviet frontier and scarcely let up in the weeks that followed as Guderian pushed his men to the limits of endurance and plunged hundreds of miles into the Soviet Union. By early July 1941, Guderian helped seal the Minsk pocket, inflicting more than 400,000 casualties. At Smolensk, Guderian's panzer group joined the German onslaught that destroyed three Soviet armies and killed, wounded, or captured 750,000 men. In September, they participated in the Battle of Kiev, the largest battle of encirclement in history and perhaps Germany's greatest victory of World War II.But the tide was already beginning to turn. The Germans were battered, exhausted, and stretched thin. The weather was shifting, first to rain and mud, then to snow and bitter cold. And the Red Army was rebounding and resisting more and more tenaciously as the Germans approached Moscow, locking Guderian and his panzers into a war of attrition for which they were not prepared. In early December, the Soviets broke the back of the supposedly invincible German Army and won the battle for Moscow. Guderian was relieved on Christmas Day, 1941.Military historian Craig Luther draws on new material, from letters to diaries, to tell the story of Guderian's armored force during Operation Barbarossa and fleshes out the story with vivid firsthand accounts from the soldiers who slugged it out with the Red Army on the Eastern Front. The book traces the ups and downs of Guderian and his panzer group during six pivotal months of World War II and explains why and how the Germans, especially its panzers, achieved such impressive successes, only to be defeated on Moscow's doorstep.

This is a special book. It is a special book because anyone who reads this anthology of soldiers stories across three generations of war will be profoundly moved by the courage, compassion, and selflessness of our men and women in uniform. As the title indicates, the stories in this volume span three generations of war of Kern County, California, veterans; yet their stories are universal, even timeless. They fought Hitler's Wehrmacht in France and Germany; shot down kamikazes off Okinawa in the Pacific theater; survived arctic cold and overwhelming odds at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea; served bravely in the the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam (and as nurses in military hospitals); and, in more recent years, fought bitterly against the barbarism of al Qaeda terrorists in an inhospitable and alien Iraq. Anyone interested in the human face of war-the suffering, the sacrifice, the unwavering sense of duty-will find this book a most rewarding read.""Passing on stories of military service is as old as the Bible and Homer. Craig Luther, an experienced and respected military historian, continues this tradition with this collection of two dozen stories told by Kern County, California veterans. All share a common thread of service that binds all veterans, yet each narrative is unique as the people telling them. The reader will be touched, saddened, and at times amused, but will put the volume down with a sense of profound respect, and gratitude. This book is a valuable addition to local history, as well as to military history in general. I highly recommend it." Jonathan P. Roth, Professor of History, San Jose State University.

Sunday, June 22, 1941: three million German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union as part of Hitler’s long-planned Operation Barbarossa, which aimed to destroy the Soviet Union, secure its land as lebensraum for the Third Reich, and enslave its Slavic population. From launching points in newly acquired Poland, in three prongs—North, Central, South—German forces stormed western Russia, virtually from the Baltic to the Black Sea. By late fall, the invasion had foundered against Russian weather, terrain, and resistance, and by December, it had failed at the gates of Moscow, but early on, as the Germans sliced through Russian territory and soldiers with impunity, capturing hundreds of thousands, it seemed as though Russia would fall. In the spirit of Martin Middlebrook’s classic First Day on the Somme, Craig Luther narrates the events of June 22, 1941, a day when German military might was at its peak and seemed as though it would easily conquer the Soviet Union, a day the common soldiers would remember for its tension and the frogs bellowing in the Polish marshlands. It was a day when the German blitzkrieg decimated Soviet command and control within hours and seemed like nothing would stop it from taking Moscow. Luther narrates June 22—one of the pivotal days of World War II—from high command down to the tanks and soldiers at the sharp end, covering strategy as well as tactics and the vivid personal stories of the men who crossed the border into the Soviet Union that fateful day, which is the Eastern Front in microcosm, representing the years of industrial-scale warfare that followed and the unremitting hostility of Germans and Soviets.

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.