Fighting in Hell

Book excerpt: Detailed reports by German commanders: “Powerful testimony to the Germans’ lack of preparation for the harsh climatic conditions of the Russian winter.” —Military Machines International When their troops invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the initial success convinced the German high command that the Red Army could be destroyed west of the Dnepr River and that there would be no need for conducting operations in cold, snow, and mud. They were wrong. In fact, the German war in Russia was so brutal in its extremes that all past experience paled beside it. Everything in Russia—the land, the climate, the distances, and above all the people—were harder, harsher, more unforgiving, and deadlier than anything the German soldier had ever faced before. One panzer-grenadier who fought in the West and in Russia summed it up: In the West war was the same honorable old game; nobody went out of his way to be vicious, and fighting stopped often by five in the afternoon. But in the East, the Russians were trying to kill you—all the time. The four detailed reports of campaigning in Russia included in this invaluable book (Russian Combat Methods in WWII, Effects of Climate on Combat in European Russia, Combat in Russian Forests and Swamps and Warfare in the Far North) were written in the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of the US Army program to record the German strategies and tactics of World War II directly from the commanders. The authors were all veterans of the fighting they described, and frankly admitted that the soldiers sent to Russia were neither trained nor equipped to withstand the full fury of the elements. Fighting in Hell shows what happened on the ground, through firsthand accounts of the commanders who were there.