Book suggestions

[ikalugin]

Are you more interested in the human tragedy side of that war or the military science/history side?

[Red October1984]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

Are you more interested in the human tragedy side of that war or the military science/history side?

As for me, I like both.

Open to suggestions.

[ikalugin]

I would look if I have any good books translated.

What I would suggest reading would be the -commission for studies of war experience- materials (or whatever it was called). That commission would collect and study the combat experience and then transmit it around the armed forces in form of special documents.

This was done quickly and hence (amongst other things) allowed the Soviet Armed Forces to grow from where they were in 1941 to where they were in 1945.

[Eichhörnchen]

Hi, gordonmull: I have the two books you've read. I also have "The Outermost Frontier: A German Soldier in the Russian Campaign" by Helmut Pabst (ISBN 0-7183-0600-7) which is a personal account type book;

also "War On The Eastern Front 1941-1945: The German Soldier in Russia" by James Lucas (no ISBN number in the book, but it was published by Cooper & Lucas Ltd) factual, with good long passages of personal account, which is the type of book I especially like.

[BossMark]

Originally Posted by Eichhornchen

also "War On The Eastern Front 1941-1945: The German Soldier in Russia" by James Lucas (no ISBN number in the book, but it was published by Cooper & Lucas Ltd) factual, with good long passages of personal account, which is the type of book I especially like.

I would recommend this as well Barbarossa by Alan Clark (A very good read even though it is wrote by a Tory)

[ikalugin]

Those would be secondary sources, no?

Why not recommend any of the works by David Glantz then? Or Armstrong?

[Eichhörnchen]

[STEED]

Originally Posted by BossMark

I would recommend this as well Barbarossa by Alan Clark (A very good read even though it is wrote by a Tory)

I second this one.

For the air war Christer Bergstrom series..
Barbarossa: The Air Battle July-December 1941
Stalingrad - The Air Battle: 1942 through January 1943
Kursk: The Air Battle July 1943
Bagration to Berlin: The Final Air Battles in the East 1944-1945

Osprey campaign series has a number of books, be careful they do cost money. Three of their titles have been grouped together in a book with a little bit more info. Operation Barbarossa by Robert Kirchubel.

Talking of Barbarossa here are some more..
Barbarossa by David Glantz (Well worth checking out his books)
Barbarossa by Bryan I. Fugate
War without Garlands by Robert Kershaw

David Stahel has written four books very detailed, I've read the first two just waiting for the next two to come out in paperback.
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East
Kiev 1941
Operation Typhoon: Hitler's March on Moscow, October 1941
The Battle for Moscow

Death on the Don: The Destruction of Germany's Allies on the Eastern Front 1941-44 by Jonathan trigg (He also wrote four books on volunteers from other countries served in the Waffen SS)

Red Storm on the Reich by Christopher Duffy
Hitler's Final Fortress Breslau 1945 by Richard Hargreaves
Berlin Soldiger by Helmut Altner

Three more on the last days..
Until the final hour by Traudl Junge
In the Bunker with Hitler by Berd Freytag Von Loinghoven
Hitler's last days by Gerhardt Boldt

And from the Russian point.
Ivan's War The Red Army 1939-45 by Catherine Merridale

Antony Beevor two on Stalingrad/Berlin

[Dan D]

Brilliant book this, it is a novel though:

"The Stalin Organ" by Gert Ledig, more here: http://dannyreviews.com/h/Stalin_Organ.html ,

"1942, at the Eastern Front. Soldiers crouch in horrible holes in the ground, mingling with corpses. Tunneled beneath a radio mast, German soldiers await the order to blow themselves up. Russian tanks, struggling to break through enemy lines, bog down in a swamp, while a German runner, bearing messages from headquarters to the front, scrambles desperately from shelter to shelter as he tries to avoid getting caught in the action. Through it all, Russian artillery—the crude but devastatingly effective multiple rocket launcher known to the Germans as the Stalin Organ and to the Russians as Katyusha—rains death upon the struggling troops.

Comparable to such masterpieces of war literature as Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel and Erich Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, The Stalin Front is a harrowing, almost photographic, description of violence and devastation, one that brings home the unforgiving reality of total war."
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...#other_reviews

Sample excerpt, the book starts with this:

"The Lance-Corporal couldn't turn in his grave, because he didn't have one. Some three versts from Podrova, forty versts south of Leningrad, he had been caught in a salvo of rockets, been thrown up in the air, and with severed hands and head dangling, been impaled on the skeletal branches of what once had been a tree.

The NCO, who was writhing on the ground with a piece of shrapnel in his belly, had no idea what was keeping his machine-gunner. It didn't occur to him to look up. He had his hands full with himself."

****
I agree that it is comparable to e.g. "All Quiet on the Western Front" as IMO it leaves a similar strong Impression on the Reader. Story is told from the perspective of both Germans and "Russians" (Soviet) alike. The author served in the Battle of Leningrad in 1942. This novel essentially reflects his experiences during that battle.