Deadlock Before Moscow: Army Group Center, 1942/1943

Schiffer Military History, 1992. Hardback. Collectible: Like New. 1st English Edition / 1st Printing (Schiffer - 1992) LIKE NEW in a like new mylar protected dust jacket. Gently read if at all. No marks and a tight and square binding. Originally published under the title, Die Heeresgruppe Mitte 1942/43. 375 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm. . . . . . . . .TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1.) The Velikie Luki ? Toropets Combat Area -- 2.) The Soviet Offensive -- 3.) Velizh Breakwater -- 4.) Defensive Battle Spring ? Summer 1942 -- 5.) The Situation on the Central Sector of the Eastern Front -- 6.) Summer Combat in the LIX Army Corps Area of Operations -- 7.) The 11th Army -- 8.) Combat in the Area of Velikie Luki -- 9.) Overview -- 10.) The Beginning of the End -- 11.) Soviet Plans -- 12.) Overview -- 13.) Operation Totila -- 14.) The Final Battle -- 15.) The Luftwaffe at Velikie Luki -- 16.) Commitment Reports -- 17.) Overview -- 18.) Individual Reports. . . . . . . . . FROM THE DIUST JACKET FRONT FLAP: Stalin had three armies of shock troops advance and directed them precisely into the backbone of Army Group Center, which appeared to have been driven out of it positions after a few days. This brilliant plan was opposed by a few fixed positions and resistance groups. One of them was Cholm (then still in Army Group North's position), which held out under Generalmajor Scherer for 104 days. Velish and Toropez, Demidov and Vitebsk, Novosokolniki and Vilikiye Luki also held out against a vastly superior war machine and brought the waves of Soviet tanks to a standstill. In Deadlock Before Moscow, renowned military historian Franz Kurowski uses eyewitness accounts and war diaries to explain for the first time these mighty, often unbelievable deeds. that unfold before the reader with all their gripping drama. In the bitter cold of winter, fighting took place at fixed positions that many who experienced the war in Russia will agree was the bitterest, hardest, most merciless of all. Without sufficient winter clothing, with truck and tank engines freezing again and again, with their bread glistening with frost, not knowing whether they would survive another night in the open, often surrounded by partisans, encircled, breaking loose again - this was the fate of the battle groups and units when the Red Army tried to destroy them.