This book presents the remarkable personal journals of a German
soldier who participated in Operation Barbarossa and subsequent
battles on the Eastern Front, revealing the combat experience of
the German-Russian War as seldom seen before. Hans Roth was a
member of the anti-tank (Panzerjager) battalion, 299th Infantry
Division, attached to Sixth Army, as the invasion of Russia began.
Writing as events transpired, he recorded the mystery and tension
as the Germans deployed on the Soviet frontier in 1941. Then a
firestorm broke loose as the Wehrmacht broke across the front.
During the Kiev encirclement, Roth's unit was under constant attack
as the Soviets desperately tried to break through the German ring.
At one point, a friend serving with the SS led him to a site where
he witnessed civilians being massacred (which may well have been
Babi Yar). After suffering through a horrible winter against
apparently endless Russian reserves, his division went on the
offensive again, this time on the northern wing of 'Case Gelb', the
German drive toward Stalingrad. In these journals, attacks and
counterattacks are described in 'you are there' detail, as if to
keep himself sane, knowing that his honest accounts of the horrors
in the East could never pass through Wehrmacht censors. When the
Soviet counteroffensive of winter 1942 commences, his unit is
stationed alongside the Italian 8th Army, and his observations of
its collapse, as opposed to the reaction of the German troops sent
to stiffen its front, are particularly fascinating. These journals,
including original maps, some of which Roth himself helped compose,
were recently discovered by his descendants, who arranged for the
translation of their long-lost grandfather's journals. Roth was
able to bring three of them back to his wife during the war, but
never brought back a fourth journal, as his fate after the summer
of 1943 in Russia is still unknown. What he did leave behind, now
finally revealed, is an incredible first-hand account of the
horrific war the Germans waged in Russia.
General
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