Germany and the Second World War Volume VIII The Eastern Front 1943-1944: The War in the East and on the Neighbouring Fronts

The latest volume in the magisterial Germany and the Second World War series, volume VIII deals with one of the most eventful phases of the Second World War: the battles on the eastern front in 1943 and 1944. In no other period of the war, apart from its concluding phase in 1945, did the Wehrmacht suffer such enormous losses. The land battles of those years, first and foremost the battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943, were among the biggest in world history. In the winter of 1943/44 the Red Army showed itself for the first time capable of conducting large-scale offensives against all German army groups simultaneously. It was no longer a matter of isolated flare-ups: the whole eastern front was in flames. The dramatic climax was reached in the summer of 1944, when the collapse of Army Group Centre led to what was then the heaviest defeat in German military history. It was nevertheless overshadowed by events on the western front, with the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. And it is that which dominates perceptions in western societies to this day and has relegated the catastrophe in the east, despite its unprecedented proportions, to the rank of an almost 'forgotten war'.

1 - Basic Problems in German Conduct of the War after Stalingrad
2 - German Alliance Policy and the Question of a Separate Peace
3 - The Genesis of the Battle of Kursk
1 - The Hopeless German Starting Position
2 - The Failure of Operation Citadel
3 - Operation Citadel - A Turning Point?
4 - The Soviet Counter-Offensives
1 - The Soviet Theatre of War in German Policy and Strategy From the Summer of 1943
2 - From the Setbacks in the Summer of 1943 to a Permanent Crisis of Leadership
3 - The Abandonment of Foreign Policy and the Isolation of Germany
4 - Withdrawal from the East? 'Fortress Europe' and the Dilemma of Interconnected War
1 - The Withdrawal of Army Group North from Leningrad to the Baltic
2 - The Withdrawal of Army Group Centre to Belorussia up to the Spring of 1944
3 - Army Group South's Withdrawal Operations in the Ukraine
4 - The Withdrawal of Army Group A through the Crimea to Romania
1 - Errors and Illusions: The German Command's Miscalculations in the Early Summer of 1944
2 - The Collapse of Army Group Centre in the Summer of 1944
3 - The Defensive Successes of Army Group Centre in the Autumn of 1944
4 - Army Group North's Withdrawal Battles to Courland
5 - The Battles for Galicia and the Beskid Mountains
6 - The Withdrawal Battles in Romania and Transylvania in the Summer and Autumn of 1944
7 - The Hungarian Theatre of War
1 - The End of the War in Scandinavia
2 - The Yugoslavian Theatre of War (January 1943 to May 1945)
3 - The Withdrawal from Greece
4 - The End of the North African Campaign and the War in Italy 1943 to 1945
1 - Waging war 'as if ...': Germany's Strategic Position from the Spring of 1944 onwards
2 - Orchestrating the End

Karl-Heinz Frieser (b. 1949), was a Colonel in the Bundeswehr. He studied political science and mediaeval and modern history at Würzburg. From 1985 to 2009, he was a research associate at the MGFA, becoming head of research on the world war era. His publications include Krieg hinter Stacheldraht: Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in der Sowjetunion und das Nationalkomitee 'Freies Deutschland' (1981); Blitzkrieg-Legende: Der Westfeldzug 1940 (3rd ed., 2005); Ardennen - Sedan: Militärhistorischer Führer durch eine europäische Schicksalslandschaft (2nd ed., 2006). His main area of research is in the operational history of the Second World War.