The German war in Russia was so
brutal in all its extremes that all past experiences paled beside it. Everything
in Russia - the land, the climate, the
distances and above all the people - were harder, harsher, more unforgiving and
more deadly 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 honourable 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
programme 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
there.
The German high command had been under the impression that the Red
Army could be destroyed west of the Dnepr, and there would be no need for
conducting operations in cold, snow and mud. Fighting in Hell shows what really
happened, through first-hand accounts of the commanders who were
there.
