Eastern Front
Battle for Tolvarjarvi
By David H. LippmanFrom Leningrad to Murmansk, columns of Soviet Red Army troops stormed down roads and trails into Finland’s dense forests, lakes, and swamps, seeking to cut Finland in half. Read more
Eastern Front
The Eastern Front during World War II includes the area of military confrontation involving the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The Soviet Red Army and the Nazi Wehrmacht clashed along the extended Eastern Front, which stretched thousands of miles from the Black Sea in the south to Finland and the approaches to the Arctic Circle in the north.
Eastern Front
The P-39 Airacobra
By Phil ZimmerThe P-39 Airacobra was a bit like Rodney Dangerfield—it “couldn’t get no respect,” especially from those who never piloted the “Flying Cannon” built by the Buffalo, New York-based Bell Aircraft Corp. Read more
Eastern Front
Zhukov Strikes Back
By Jeff ChrismanSmolensk Russia, Headquarters, German Army Group Center (AGC), December 3, 1941; Army Group commander, 61-year-old Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock is a troubled man. Read more
Eastern Front
From Battlefield to Football
By Richard Statetzny with Ward Carr and Detlef ZerBACKSTORY: Richard Statetzny was born on January 16, 1920, the youngest of five children, in Bieberswalde in the District of Osterode, East Prussia, Germany. Read more
Eastern Front
Turan’s Tank
By John E. SpindlerBy mid-January 1945 Germany was being pressured on all sides by Allied forces. Hitler’s much-vaunted Ardennes Offense had been thrown back with appalling losses, the Soviet Red Army had invaded German soil, and the Hungarian capital of Budapest had been besieged for weeks. Read more
Eastern Front
The Focke-Wulf FW-190: Best Fighter Aircraft of WWII
By William F. Floyd, Jr.On July 28, 1943, Luftwaffe Oberleutnant Erwin Clausen shot down another two B-17 Flying Fortresses to add to the two he had shot down the previous day. Read more
Eastern Front
The Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik: The Soviet’s Deadly Tank Killer
By Phil ZimmerVasily Emelianenko led an Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik, or “Storm Bird,” flight in late June 1942 against a German-held airfield near Artemovsk in eastern Ukraine, flying low up a deep ravine to avoid detection. Read more
Eastern Front
Book Reviews: Russia’s Last Gasp: The Eastern Front 1916-17
By Christopher MiskimonHeavy fighting raged between German and Russian forces in March 1916 near Lake Naroch in modern-day Belarus. A Russian offensive, which would last for 12 days, was underway to relieve pressure on French forces on the Western Front. Read more
Eastern Front
Operation Winter Storm: Manstein’s Attempted Relief of Stalingrad
By R. Jeff ChrismanIt was November 24, 1942. Speeding across the snow-covered landscape of eastern Ukraine, the personal command train of German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein was on its way to the southern Russian city of Novocherkassk, where he would take up his new assignment as commander of Army Group Don. Read more
Eastern Front
A Luftwaffe Ace’s Joy-Ride in a Spitfire
By Nicholas VarangisWhen Hugo Broch flew his fighter for the Luftwaffe, he probably didn’t imagine he would ever find himself in the cockpit of a Supermarine Spitfire. Read more
Eastern Front
Book Reviews: Heroism of the Nisei Soldiers
By Christopher Miskimon Honor Before Glory: The Epic World War II Story of the Japanese American GIs Who Rescued the Lost Battalion(Scott McGaugh, Da Capo Press, Boston, 2016, 257 pp., Read more
Eastern Front
Otto von Knobelsdorff: Panzer Commander
By Harry YeideWhile many in the English-speaking world have heard of Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian, few today know the name of Otto von Knobelsdorff, a German panzer general who commanded troops in battles every bit as pivotal as his contemporaries did, in quantity and quality, and who also fought against General George S. Read more
Eastern Front
Escape to Tashkent: Fleeing Operation Barbarossa
By Rebecca ManleyIn the fall of 1941, the Polish writer Aleksander Wat, recently released from confinement in a Soviet prison, made his way east across the vast expanses of the Soviet Union. Read more
Eastern Front
Storming the Reichstag in Russia’s ‘Military Disneyland’
By Nicholas VarangisExplosions send fire through the air, aircraft drone overhead, tanks rumble across the cratered ground, and machine guns chatter in murderous conversation on a chaotic battlefield. Read more
Eastern Front
Voices of the Axis: The Radio Personalities of Fascist Propaganda
By Chuck LyonsMildred “Midge” Gillars was born in Portland, Maine, took drama lessons in New York City, appeared in vaudeville, worked as an artist’s model in Paris and a dressmaker’s assistant in Algiers, and taught English at the Berlitz School in Berlin before—motivated by love and fear—she became the notorious “Axis Sally,” one of the Nazis’ leading radio propagandists. Read more
Eastern Front
Nazi War Machine: Why the WWII German Army Was So Strong
By Michael E. HaskewWith the end of World War I, the German Army had not been defeated in the field. Read more
Eastern Front
Saga of a Volksdeutscher: German Pole Goes to War
By Allyn VannoyAs Russian and German tanks exchanged fire, German Corporal Erwin Engler realized that if he was to get his wound treated, to even survive—if he was to ever see his family again back in what had been the Polish Corridor—he was going to have to make a dash across open ground to reach the safety of a wooded area. Read more
Eastern Front
The Volkssturm: Last-Ditch Militia of the Third Reich
By Blaine TaylorOn October 18, 1944—the 131st anniversary of the Battle of the Nations’ victory over Napoleon in 1813—Reichsführer-SS (National Leader) Heinrich Himmler stepped up to a microphone to make a national radio address announcing the formation of the Nazi Party-controlled Volkssturm, or People’s Militia. Read more
Eastern Front
The Demyansk Pocket: Disaster For Germany’s Scandinavian Volunteers
By Henrik LundeOn the surface it may seem odd that men of conquered nations would eagerly sign up to fight for their masters, but that is exactly what happened in Scandinavia in the 1940s. Read more
Eastern Front
Operation Bagration: Soviet Triumph in the East
By Henrik LundeOperation Bagration, the largest operation of World War II, has never been adequately acknowledged in the West to the same extent as a number of smaller campaigns. Read more
