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 Leaping
Horseman Books
 Angriff:
The German Attack on Stalingrad in Photos
(Jason D. Mark)
Too
often the visual aspect of the Stalingrad battle is portrayed using the same
well-known images, and while most are no doubt stunning, their repeated use with
incorrect or misleading captions adds nothing new to the record. Angriff: The
German Attack on Stalingrad in Photos aims to rectify that. A rich cache of
spectacular images is spread throughout collections across the globe. The photos
used in this book have been gathered from a multitude of sources: military
archives, photo libraries, museums, but most of all from private collections.
The content of photos from these collections often portray the battle from the
perspective of an individual soldier. Some of these photos certainly depict the
stark reality of war but not every soldier saw action on the front-line. When
all these private photos are combined, however, they form a montage and provide
an insight into the lives of 6. Armee's soldiers. Furthermore, they often show
periods of the battle that never fell within the viewfinder of a professional
photographer. Every photo, including each famous image, has been painstakingly
researched so that it is paired with a meaningful and accurate caption. In most
cases, the location of the photo has been pinpointed, as has the date and unit
depicted. This has enabled it to be placed in its correct historical,
chronological and geographical context. While this process has cast a light on
previously vague aspects of the battle, it has also debunked captions to many
familiar images. If you want to see what Stalingrad was like from the German
perspective, this book is for you.
Hardcover, large format, 256
pages, over 600 photos, many maps and aerial photos, appendices Price:
$95
USD/$110 CDN for the regular edition
Signed Regular edition. Price: $105.00/$120.00
Deluxe edition bound in blue bonded leather, with silver stamping, numbered and
signed by the author (only 250 available). Each book will also come in a
presentation box. Price:
Approx. $130USD / $155 for the special edition.
 Turning
Point
(P.P.
Popov, A.V. Kozlov & B.G. Usik)
Rarely do Westerners
gain an understanding of the Russian perspective of the battle. While a flurry
of translated memoirs by senior commanders like Zhukov and Chuikov in the 1960s
and 1970s provided a higher level point-of-view, very little has been reported
in English about how the fighting affected ordinary Russian soldiers and
civilians. Retired Colonel Anatoli Venediktovich Kozlov, a participant in the
battle and section chairman of Volgograd city's veterans' council, realized it
was imperative to record the accounts of the few remaining veterans before time
inevitably claimed them all. Glasnost has enabled these veterans to provide a
more candid account of their experiences than if they had been interviewed
during the Communist era. Kozlov's wish was for this book to be available to
Westerners and now it is.
The book is divided into two distinct parts, each describing a different aspect
of the Stalingrad battle. In Part 1, titled "On the Southern Approaches to
Stalingrad", Popov writes about a sector often overshadowed by dramatic events
further north. Long before the Germans approached Stalingrad, tens of thousands
of its citizens were put to work erecting defences around the city and in doing
so endured unbelievable hardship. The southern district of Krasnoarmeysk was
soon struck by the full might of Hoth's panzer army in August 1942. Popov
explores the district's preparations, defence and retribution in detail.
In Part 2, "From
Beyond the Don to the Volga", Kozlov and Usik explore the better known aspects
of the battle by way of riveting first-hand accounts. It begins with the battle
in the great bend of the Don, an armoured clash in the hot dusty steppe which
resulted in Kozlov losing his entire tank unit. The fighting then moves into the
streets of Stalingrad and we discover how the brutal struggle was viewed by Red
Army soldiers and scores of civilians remaining in the city. The book concludes
with the victorious November counteroffensive and eventual destruction of
Paulus's 6. Armee in the Stalingrad pocket.
Russians are proud
of their victory at Stalingrad, and justifiably so, but only by reading the
veterans' own words can this source of pride even be begun to be comprehended.
Hardcover, small format (6"x9"),
264 pages, several photos, maps and aerial photos, index. Price: Approx. $45
USD / $55 CAD
In August 1942, Wigand Wüster was a veteran 22-year-old officer leading an
artillery battery in Artillerie-Regiment 171 (71. Inf.-Div.) as it approached
Stalingrad. The preceding months had been marked by heat, dust, endless marches,
and brief skirmishes with the enemy – but mostly by an ongoing battle with his
bullying battalion commander.
In this brutally honest account, Wüster provides a glimpse of the war on the
Eastern Front rarely seen before. With frankness, humor and perception, Wüster
takes us from the heady days of the German 1942 summer offensive to the icy hell
of Stalingrad’s final hours, and finally into captivity.
Hardcover, 264 pages, 160 photos, 3 maps, 3 aerial photos, 5
appendices, 6 supporting documents, index. Price: $65 USD / $65 CAD/INT.
Stalingrad symbolizes many things: the ideological
clash between Nazism and Communism, the battle of wills between Hitler and
Stalin, and the absolute fortitude of the Soviet people. In most people’s minds,
however, it represents the savagery, folly and utter waste of urban combat, a
city where dozens of lives were readily exchanged for a ruined building. And
nowhere did this senselessness manifest itself more than in the Barrikady Gun
Factory and its housing settlement. The men of the German 305. Infanterie-Division
had captured all of the factory’s massive work halls by the end of October 1942.
The only obstacles standing between them and the Volga were a few battered
houses and the remnants of the Soviet 138th Rifle Division. Five fresh pioneer
battalions were brought in to help the Germans and the ‘final’ attack in
Stalingrad (known erroneously as Operation ‘Hubertus’) was launched on 11
November, 1942. The push to the river cut off the Soviet troops and left a tiny
bridgehead. Grim fighting raged around this fiery perimeter for three months. To
the Soviet soldiers, this bridgehead was known as ‘Lyudnikov’s Island’, or
‘Ognenniy ostrov’ – ‘Island of Fire’. Painstakingly compiled from German and
Russian sources such as war diaries, combat reports, published works, eyewitness
accounts, letters and photos, this book presents an unbiased chronicle of the
pitiless struggle from both perspectives.
Softcover, 656 pages, over 250 photos, 110 maps & aerial photos, Large separate
A3 map showing the Barrikady area in minute detail, 8 appendices, Comprehensive
source notes, bibliography & index.
Price (softcover): $75 USD / $75 CAD/INT
 An Infantryman in Stalingrad
Adelbert Holl was a 23-year-old infantry Leutnant when
he rejoined his unit in Stalingrad after recovering from a severe wound he
suffered in April 1942. Upon returning to Infanterie-Regiment 276 of 94.
Infanterie-Division, he discovered that many of the officers and men who had
been with the unit barely 5 months earlier were now dead or wounded, and the
unit was embroiled in tough city-fighting in central Stalingrad.
Hardcover, 250 0pages, 25 photos,
24 maps, 19 aerial photos, 40 supporting documents, index. Price: $65 USD / $65 CAD/INT)
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