The story of a soldier with Army Group North
This is the remarkable story of a German soldier who fought throughout
Second World War, rising from conscript private to captain of a heavy weapons
company on the Eastern Front.
William Lubbeck was 19 when he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August
1939. As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire
during the 1940 invasion of France. The
following spring his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in
Operation Barbarossa. After gruelling marches amidst countless Russian bodies,
burnt-out vehicles, and a great number of cheering Baltic civilians, Lubbeck’s
unit entered the outskirts of Leningrad, making the deepest penetration of
any German formation.
The Germans suffered brutal hardships the following winter as they fought
both Russian counterattacks and the brutal cold. The 58th Division was thrown
back and forth across the front of Army Group North, from Novgorod to Demyansk, at one point fighting back Russian
attacks on the ice of Lake Ilmen. Returning to the outskirts of
Leningrad, the
58th was placed in support of the Spanish Blue Division. Relations between the
allied formations soured at one point when the Spaniards used a Russian bath
house for target practice, not realising that Germans were relaxing
inside.
A soldier who preferred to be close to the action, Lubbeck served as
forward observer for his company, duelling with Russian snipers, partisans and
full-scale assaults alike. With the assistance of David B. Hurt, he has drawn on
his wartime notes and letters, Soldatbuch, regimental history and personal
memories to recount his four years of frontline experience. Containing rare
firsthand accounts of both triumph and disaster, At Leningrad’s Gates provides a
fascinating glimpse into the reality of combat on the Eastern Front.
"...a
well-wrought ground level view of daily life in hell." - WWII
Magazine
