The invasion of Russia in June
1941, Operation Barbarossa, was an enormous affair. It involved around three
million German soldiers divided into 105 infantry and 32 Panzer divisions.
Initially, the German assault knifed through Russian resistance, and huge
numbers of Red Army soldiers were surrounded. This latest volume from Concord
Publications examines part of that attack, specifically the battles of
Heeresgruppe Mitte. This central army, the largest of three participating in the
attack, was commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock.
This volume by Hans Seidler is brimming with black and white
photographs showing soldiers from Heeresgruppe Mitte. The focus is on the
Battles of Smolensk and Roslavl, conflicts that readers may not be terribly
familiar with. The city of Smolensk commanded the
route to the Russian capital of Moscow, and as German forces closed in on it,
Russian forces launched a counterattack. This resulted in a large clash in early
July 1941. However, the German juggernaut could not be halted, and Smolensk eventually fell on 16 July, with half a million
enemy soldiers caught in the Smolensk pocket. Soon after this, General
Guderian sought to defeat Soviet forces further east around the town of
Roslavl. He
launched a sudden and powerful attack on 1 August, and within two days the town
was taken. These twin battles were among the most decisive and swiftest of all
German successes on the Eastern Front.
The sharply reproduced photographs in the book show soldiers involved
in the aforementioned fighting. Each photo is well captioned with pertinent
details about uniform and equipment. The centrepiece of the book is four colour
plates by the illustrator Dmitriy Zgonnik. These pictures show infantrymen in
typical dress as they fight the Red Army, with detailed explanation given about
their equipment and dress. This is a most informative work on a location and
period that is not well covered in other volumes about the German Army, and it
will provide a useful reference for history buffs as well as military
modellers.
