In The Road to Stalingrad, Professor Erickson takes us in detail from the inept command structures and strategic delusions of the pre-invasion Soviet Union, through the humiliations as her armies fell back on all fronts before the Barbarossa onslaught, until the tide turned at last at Stalingrad. Unsparingly, he assesses the generals and political leaders and analyses the confusions and wranglings within both Allied and Axis commands. The climax, the grinding battle for Stalingrad...

Beginning with the destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, The Road to Berlin is the story of how the Red Army drove the Germans from its territory, and finally invaded the Reich.Using an enormous range of primary sources - Soviet, German and Eastern European - John Erickson describes fighting and hardship on a scale almost unimaginable in the West. He provides a detailed narrative of all the battles on all the fronts, and also of the Soviet system of war which...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.Lasting six years and a day, the Second World War saw the lives of millions – soldiers and civilians, young and old – changed forever. During the conflict, a thousand people died for each and every hour it lasted. With eighty-one of the world’s nations involved and affected in some way, this was war on a truly global scale.Offering a wide overview of the major figures, politics and action on all sides, World War Two: His...

The international million copy bestseller recounting the epic turning point of the WW2______________In October 1942, an officer wrote 'Stalingrad is no longer a town . . . Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure'.The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination and its citizens endured unimaginable hardship as a result. But the eventual victory of the...

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER ON THE LAST DAYS OF THE THIRD REICH'Recounts, in harrowing detail and with formidable skill, the brutal death-throes of Hitler's Reich at the hands of the rampaging Red Army' Boyd Tonkin, Independent'An irresistibly compelling narrative, of events so terrible that they still have the power to provoke wonder and awe' Adam Sisman, Observer________________...

This is the illustrated history of the Waffen SS on the Eastern Front. The life and death of the Waffen SS can be traced in the surviving photographs, and the brooding saga of the decline from triumph into disaster is told through these powerful images which clearly document the reality of combat on the Russian Front. From 1943 to 1945 the Waffen SS in the East were engaged in a long and bloody retreat against a numerically far superior enemy. As they fell back across the vast plains of th...

As Führer of the Third Reich, Hitler was responsible for deciding the German war aims in 1939. As head of the Armed Forces from 4 February 1938 he was also responsible for the overall Wehrmacht strategy intended to achieve these aims.Hitler: Military Commander examines Hitler's key military decisions during the Second World War, and assesses how far these decisions were militarily justified in light of the intelligence available at the time.Perhaps most importantly it tackl...

This titanic and thoroughly comprehensive study of the German experience in Russia is the definitive single volume study of Hitlers War In The East. It incorporates the entire text of The Wehrmacht In Russia written by Emmy Award winning author Bob Carruthers in conjunction with the late Professor John Erickson, author of The Road To Stalingrad and The Road to Berlin. Also featured are dozens of new interviews with the remaining survivors of the war in Russia, encompassing the last testimo...

A selection of the Military Book Club: An "informative and objective" biography of a genius commander and a study of his loyalty to the Nazi cause ( Library Journal).To many close students of World War II, Erich von Manstein is considered the greatest commander of the war, if not the entire twentieth century. He devised the plan that conquered France in 1940 and led an infantry corps in that campaign. At the head of a panzer corps, he reached the gates of ...

The conflict on the Eastern Front in World War II was colossal in both scale and intensity, as the two infamous dictators of the twentieth century Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin vied for supremacy in Eastern Europe. On 22 June 1941 it was Hitler's fateful decision to launch the largest invasion ever seen, Operation Barbarossa, when 138 German divisions attacked the Soviet Union. Four years later, some two million German and eleven million Russian soldiers had ben killed in the course of the...

Marshal Georgy Zhukov is one of military history's legendary names. He played a decisive role in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk that brought down the Nazi regime. He was the first of the Allied generals to enter Berlin and it was he who took the German surrender.He led the huge victory parade in Red Square, riding a white horse, and in doing so, dangerously provoking Stalin's envy. His post-war career was equally eventful – Zhukov found himself sacked and banished twice, and w...

The 5th SS Division Wiking was the first 'international' – i.e. largely non-German – Waffen-SS division and the only German panzer division comprised largely of foreign troops. Approximately 75 per cent of the division's strength were non-German nationals, all volunteers, and the majority from occupied countries like Belgium, Holland, France, Denmark, and Norway.The Wiking division operated exclusively on the Eastern Front during World War II, where the division quickly earned itsel...