Aus Meiner Sicht (From My View) - The Memoirs of Werner Mork - A Private's Life in the Wehrmacht during World War II

This is a very interesting memoir which I came across by chance. It covers Werner Mork's service during WWII in the German Wehrmacht and is available to download free of charge.

Mork served as a driver in North Africa in 1942, in the Tobruk area. Hospitalised for a period in Germany, he was then posted to Corsica and was involved in the battles in Italy - Ortona, Anzio and Monte Cassino. Transferred to the Eastern Front, he later experienced the Russian invasion of Silesia, and was ultimately captured in Czechoslovakia.

I haven't had chance to read the book in detail, but a quick glance through indicates it is worthy of attention. The chapters available are:

• Driving Supply Trucks in Africa - 1942
• Driving Supply Trucks in Africa - 1942- Part II
• Driving Supply Trucks in Africa - 1942- Part III
• Recuperation in Halberstadt - 1943
• Mork on Corsica - 1943
• The Battle of Ortona - 1943
• The American Landing at Anzio / Nettuno - 1944
• The Battle of Monte Cassino - 1944 - Part I
• The Battle of Monte Cassino - 1944 - Part II
• The War on the Eastern Front - 1945
• The War on the Eastern Front - 1945 - Part II
• The War on the Eastern Front - 1945 - Part III
• Aftermath: P.O.W.

Available from:
The book can be downloaded free of charge on Daniel Setzer's page (he translated the text).
Other selections from memoirs in the original German text can be found on the website of the German Historical Museum.

Sacrifice On The Steppe - The Italian Alpine Corps in the Stalingrad Campaign, 1942-1943

When Germany’s Sixth Army advanced to Stalingrad in 1942, its long-extended flanks were mainly held by its allied armies—the Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians. But as history tells us, these flanks quickly caved in before the massive Soviet counter-offensive which commenced that November, dooming the Germans to their first catastrophe of the war. However, the historical record also makes clear that one allied unit held out to the very end, fighting to stem the tide—the Italian Alpine Corps.

As a result of Mussolini’s disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany, by the fall of 1942, 227,000 soldiers of the Italian Eighth Army were deployed along a 270km front along the Don River to protect the left flank of German troops intent on capturing Stalingrad. Sixty thousands of these were elite mountain troops incongruously put into combat on the vast steppe. When the Don front collapsed under Soviet hammerblows, it was the Alpine Corps that continued to hold out until it was completely isolated, and which then tried to fight its way out through both Russian encirclement and “General Winter,” to rejoin the rest of the Axis front. One division was all but destroyed, but two others were able to emerge with survivors. In the all-sides battle across the snowy flatlands, thousands were killed and wounded, and even more were captured. By the summer of 1946, ten thousand survivors returned to Italy from Russian POW camps.

The consequences of Mussolini’s decision to send troops to Russia is complex and unsettling, but most of all it is a human story. Raw courage and endurance blend with human suffering, desperation and altruism in the epic saga of this withdrawal from the Don lines, including the demise of thousands and survival of the few.

Available from:
Casemate

The War Diaries of a Panzer Soldier: Erich Hager with the 17th Panzer Division on the Russian Front • 1941-1945

This book is a unique personal account of the war on the Russian Front, written using the diaries and photos of Erich Hager who served in the 39th Panzer Regiment, 17th Panzer Division throughout the war in Russia.

Hager rose to the rank of Unteroffizier and served as a company commander’s tank radio operator. During this time he kept diaries in which he recorded the events he went through every day at the front. His diaries have been translated and are presented with additional notes. Hager also took many personal photographs of comrades, and vehicles – many are included here. The book also includes a chapter on the 17th Panzer Division.

Despite taking part in many in many battles on the Russian Front, including the attempted relief effort at Stalingrad, little information on the 17th Panzer Division has been published. Hager’s material provides a tremendous insight into the war on the Russian Front from a front line soldier’s perspective.

Available from:
Schiffer Books

First to Fight: Poland's contribution to the Allied Victory in WWII

In recent years, Polish veterans in the UK were shocked to discover young people in Britain asking whether Poland fought with Germany. To ensure that the Polish contribution to Britain's war effort is never forgotten, First to Fight has been published.

First to Fight recounts Poland’s epic six-year struggle—with some historically significant texts being published for the first time, such as the English translation of Stalin’s signed order to execute 14,736 of the Polish officer corps at Katyn Forest in 1940.

The story is brought to life with moving personal stories from Poles who fought in the air, on land and at sea, on many fronts.

For example, the myth of Polish cavalry charging German Panzers is addressed: yes they did charge, but to good effect as recounted by Lieutenant Andrzej Zylinski. Leading the 4th Squadron of the Polish 11th Uhlan Regiment they charged with sabres drawn, breaching the German defences of Kaluszyn. After fierce fighting the town was captured with the almost complete destruction of the German 44th Regiment, whose commander committed suicide.

The book is available on Amazon but at a vastly inflated price - order it directly from the publishers.

Available from:
The Polish Armed Forces Memorial

Two Soldiers, Two Lost Fronts - German War Diaries of the Stalingrad and North Africa Campaigns

This book is built around two recently discovered war diaries—one by a member of the 23rd Panzer Division which served under Manstein in Russia, and the other by a member of Rommel’s AfrikaKorps. Together, along with detailed timelines and brief overviews, they comprise a fascinating “ground level” look at the German side of World War II.

The assignment of keeping the first diary was given to a soldier in the 2nd Battalion, 201st Panzer Regiment by a commanding officers and the author never saw fit to include his own name. This diary covers the period from April 1942 to March 1943, the momentous year when the tide of battle turned in the East. It first details the unit’s combat in the great German victory at Charkov, then the advance to the Caucasus, and finally the brutal winter of 1942–43.

The second diary’s author was a soldier named Rolf Krengel. It starts with the beginning of the war and ends shortly after the occupation. Serving primarily in North Africa, Krengel recounts with keen insight and flashes of humour the day-to-day challenges of the AfrikaKorps. During one of the swirling battles in the desert, Krengel found himself sharing a tent with Rommel at a forward outpost. The Field Marshal read parts of the diary with interest and signed it. Evacuated due to illness, Krengel then records service in Berlin beneath the relentless Allied bomber streams and other occurrences on the German homefront.

Neither of the diarists was famous, nor of especially high rank. However, these are the brutally honest accounts written at the time by men of the Wehrmacht who participated in two of history’s most crucial campaigns.

Available from:
Casemate

Few Returned: Diary of Twenty-eight Days on the Russian Front, Winter, 1942-43

After World War II more than one hundred books appeared that dealt with the experience of the Italian army in Russia, and particularly the terrible winter retreat of 1942-1943. Few Returned (I piu' non ritornano) is the only one of these that is still regularly reissued in Italy.

Eugenio Corti, who was a twenty-one-year-old second lieutenant at the time, found himself, together with 30,000 Italians and a smaller contingent of Germans, encircled on the banks of the River Don by enemy forces who far outnumbered them. To break out of this encirclement, these men undertook a desperate march across the snow, with constant engagements and in temperatures ranging from -20 to -30 degrees Fahrenheit. Whereas supplies were air-dropped to the Germans, the predicament of the Italians was far more difficult: lacking gasoline, they were compelled to abandon their vehicles and to proceed without heavy arms, equipment, ammunition, or provisions. Even the wounded had to be abandoned, though it was well known that the soldiers of the Red Army"enraged by the brutality of the German invasion"killed all the enemy wounded who fell into their hands. After twenty-eight days of encirclement, only 4,000 of the 30,000 Italians made it out of the pocket.

Eugenio Corti began writing his diary at a military hospital immediately after being repatriated from the Russian front. When in September 1943 Italy found itself cut in two by the Armistice, Corti, loyal to his officer's oath, joined up with what remained of the Italian army in the south and with those few troops participated in driving the Germans off Italian soil, fighting at the side of the British Eighth and the American Fifth Armies.

Published by the University of Missouri Press.

Available from:
Amazon

Your Loyal and Loving Son - The Letters of Tank Gunner Karl Fuchs, 1933–1941

These are the compelling letters of Karl Fuchs, an ordinary German soldier who was completely convinced of the righteousness of his cause and who wrote them free of the recriminations and hindsight arising from the bitterness of defeat. Combining enthusiastic expressions of loyalty to the Führer and the Fatherland with messages of love for his family and requests for necessities from home, they provide a personal look at a youth typical of his time, one whose fervent and naive nationalism was of the very sort that later fanned the flames of the Holocaust.

Throughout Your Loyal and Loving Son, young Fuchs remains an idealist, confident in his concept of duty. Yet his letters clearly support the general assertion that many Germans who backed the Third Reich did so neither out of opportunistic self-interest nor nihilistic delight in destruction, but instead in the hope for a better future. Killed on the Eastern Front, Fuchs did not live to see his son, the infant to whom he wrote and who as an adult compiled these letters for publication. With an introduction and annotations by eminent historian Dennis Showalter, this collection will help make those early war years more comprehensible to contemporary readers.

Available from:
Potomac Books

Memoirs of a Hungary Soldier

Memoirs of a Hungary Soldier provides an insight into an area little covered by English language books - the experiences of a soldier in the Hungarian Army in World War II.

Joseph Gyokeri was a sergeant (Szakaszvezeto) in the Royal Hungarian Army field artillery. Enlisting in 1940, he fought in the Yugoslavia campaign in April 1941, and he was wounded twice, shot through the right thumb, and through the top of his left foot. In 1941, he was transferred to Hajmasker where he served until 1943, then in September of that year he was transferred to the 68th Border Guard Group located in Szekelyudvarhely (Transylvania, currently Romania). He remained there with his family until September 1944 when the Russians invaded.

For the next 8 months he, with his wife and young son retreated across Hungary and into Austria, where all three were captured by Russian forces near the city of Linz. His wife and son were released, but Joseph remained a prisoner from April 1945 to August 1945.

Thanks to the author, Joseph's grandson Joe Gyokeri, for this information.

Available from:
Lulu

An Artilleryman in Stalingrad

In August 1942, Wigand Wüster was a veteran 22-year-old officer leading an artillery battery in Artillerie-Regiment 171 (71. Inf.-Div.) as it approached Stalingrad. The preceding months had been marked by heat, dust, endless marches, and brief skirmishes with the enemy - but mostly by an ongoing battle with his bullying battalion commander.

In this brutally honest account, Wüster provides a glimpse of the war on the Eastern Front rarely seen before. With frankness, humour and perception, Wüster takes us from the heady days of the German 1942 summer offensive to the icy hell of Stalingrad's final hours, and finally into captivity.

Available from:
Leaping Horseman Books

New & Notable - 15th April

Penalty Strike The Memoirs of a Red Army Penal Company Commander 1943-45
by Alexander Pyl'cyn (Stackpole Books)
The focus of this book are the author's vivid memories of service as a company commander in a Red Army officers' penal battalion on the Eastern Front 1944-45. During this time, he and his unit participated in the 1944 Soviet summer offensive Operation 'Bagration', the Vistula-Oder operation into eastern Germany, and the final assault on Berlin.

Alexander Pyl'cyn was a platoon commander and later a commander of an officers' penal company. He was a senior lieutenant having a degraded regiment commander as a second-in-command. He and his company had to carry out the most difficult and dangerous operations in order to break through the enemy defenses. With more than 80% of the men lost his company succeeded in completing their missions. The horrors of war, the hand-to-hand fights with a desperately struggling enemy are described in this book along with a story of a strong feeling between the young officer and a hospital nurse Rita. Thanks to Alexander Rita was appointed a nurse in the penal battalion. She saved dozens of soldiers, carrying them from the battlefield under enemy fire. It was Rita who saved Alexander Pyl'cyn from death, when he was badly wounded near Berlin. She became his wife in the last months of the war.
Available from:
Amazon.com

Hurricane Pilot: The Wartime Letters of W.O. Harry L. Gill, DFM
Edited by Brent Wilson with Barbara J. Gill (Goose Lane Editions)
Harry L. Gill was born in Devon and attended Fredericton High School. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in Moncton in 1940 at the age of 18 and was among the first to pass through the British Commonwealth Air Training Program. . After flying training he was posted to 607 Fighter Squadron of the Royal Air Force.
In February 1942, Mr. Gill’s squadron of Hurricane Fighters attacked the German warships Scharnhorst and Gniesenau during the infamous “Channel Dash”. Mr. Gill’s bravery and flying skill in that action won him a Distinguished Flying Medal. In June of 1942, he traveled with his squadron to India to shore up Commonwealth defences against the Japanese. On Jan. 17 1943, at age 20, Harry Gill was shot down and killed in action. He lies buried in Maynamati Commonwealth War Cemetery in Bangladesh.

Drawing extensively on Gill's correspondence with his parents and his siblings, this very personal account of war shows how Gill was transformed from a small-town boy to a mature fighter pilot serving in a global war on another continent. His letters depict the enthusiasm of youth, a strong sense of humour, his plans for the future, and this continuing attachment to home.
Available from:
Goose Lane Editions

New and Forthcoming - 25th March

The new and forthcoming titles this week include School of the Sea - the story of a Merchant Navy sailor, The Russian Patriot - a unique recollection of a Russian soldier who fought with Vlasov's Russian Army of Liberation alongside German forces, and Escape from St. Valery-en-Caux - the escapades of a British Army officer during the Battle of France in 1940 and his subsequent escapes from German and Vichy imprisonment.


School of the Sea
by Stephen Richardson (Whittles Publishing)

Based on his daily diary entries, Stephen Richardson recounts his development as a merchant mariner starting with his apprenticeship from 1937-41 on Elysia, a passenger ship on the India run. For the remainder of the Second World War, he served as an officer on cargo ships, where he experienced episodes such as seeing ships sunk in convoy, hearing bombs drop beside the ship when in port during heavy air raids and the horrific experience of being torpedoed. The extremes of nature - winter storms on the North Atlantic; navigating in convoy through floe ice and avoiding icebergs; fog and the ever-present danger of collision; the extreme heat experienced in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, without air conditioning are all accurately described. He also relates the problems encountered when sailing on worn-out ships that would normally have been scrapped had it not been for the war.

Available from:
Whittles Publishing


The Russian Patriot
-->A Red Army soldier’s service for his Motherland and against Bolshevism
by Sigismund Diczbalis (The History Press)

The only personal memoir of a rank and file Russian-born veteran of the Russian Army of Liberation to be published in English, this looks like an intriguing title.

Sigismund Diczbalis, a committed young communist, was originally a member of the Red Army. Captured and imprisoned by the Germans, he was offered a way out from almost certain death by being ordered to infiltrate an anti-partisan unit. Soon he became an anti-Bolshevik, joining General Vlasov’s Russian Army of Liberation that was devoted to toppling Stalin and restoring social democracy in Russia. The following year Sigismund was re-captured by Soviet spy-hunters, SMERSH, which meant an automatic death sentence but somehow managed to escape.

Sigismund Diczbalis was born in Saratov, Central Russia in 1922. He now lives in Australia.

Update February 2011:
Sadly Sigismund Diczbalis died this month in Brisbane, aged 89.
Source: Nick Holdsworth (Co-Author, The Russian Patriot)

Available from:
The History Press


Escape from St. Valery-en-Caux
The Adventures of Captain Bradford
by Andrew Bradford (The History Press)

The dramatic story of Captain Berenger Colborne Bradford, Adjutant of the 1st Battalion Black Watch, compiled by his son using diaries and letters, coded messages and correspondence between his family and the War Office in their desperate effort to hear news of his safety. This book tells of Captain Bradford's experiences between 1939 and 1941, during which time he was in the thick of the action in France, leading up to the surrender of the Highland Division at Saint Valery-en-Caux in June 1940. While being marched into captivity Capt. Bradford managed to escape once from the Germans and then seven further times from the Vichy French. This account details his journey to safety in Gibraltar, spanning France, Spain and North Africa, including a night crossing of the Pyrenees and an astonishing 700-mile voyage in a 17ft sailing boat.

Available from:
The History Press