Breakout At Stalingrad

Breakout At Stalingrad

Lieutenant Breuer is a German soldier in the Sixth Army, and they are the leaders in an attack on the Russian city of Stalingrad. All of their commanders have given them confidence that the war would end here and that they would be home early. However, the combat turns brutal for Lieutenant Breuer as the stiffening Soviet resistance turns the promised easy victory into a violent and bitter urban conflict of attrition, and in a Soviet attack, the entire Sixth Army is surrounded in the ruined city. To make matters worse the supplies being flown into the city are constantly getting shot down, and the terrible Russian winter is threatening to freeze all of the soldiers trapped in Stalingrad while the Red Army attacks.

The novel was written by Heinrich Gerlach, who was a German soldier during the Second World War and fought on the Eastern Front. His last battle for him was the Battle of Stalingrad. There he got captured by the Red Army and was sent to a Soviet prison camp. In captivity, he wrote the novel The Forsaken Army, which was the first version of Breakout at Stalingrad. Upon his release in 1949, the novel got taken off of him. 50 years later, Carsten Gansen found the original novel in Moscow Archives. It got published as Breakout at Stalingrad. In my opinion, the book is great, and perfectly shows the horrors of war. Heinrich Gerlach was a great author who wrote an amazing book.

Context:

The Battle of Stalingrad was the largest battle in history. It was fought from August 1942 till February 1943. It was the largest battle in world history, with over 1.8 million personnel killed in the conflict. It was the culmination of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet term for the eastern front. The Great Patriotic War was characterized by its unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction and giant loss of life. The Great Patriotic War began when Germany launched an invasion of the Soviet Union. The Red Army was unprepared, and at the end of 1941, German forces were at the gates of Moscow, but the terrible Russian winter and new Russian tactics and equipment, such as the T-34 Main Battle Tank and Bm-13 Katyusha halted the attack. The German forces were driven back by ferocious attacks by the Red Army. The following year, instead of attacking Moscow again, the German High Command decided to attack the Caucuses, because this area was less defended and full of oil. One of the locations to attack was the city of Stalingrad. The sixth army attacked Stalingrad and the bitter conflict lead to tens of thousands of dead. The Red Army surrounded the city, trapping the German Sixth Army inside. After experiencing another horrible Russian Winter, the Red Army took the offensive and the German Army surrendered. The Red Army fought the German Army again at Kursk, one of the largest tank battles. The Soviets won, and after this conflict, the Red Army had Victory After Victory until the Battle of Berlin, where Hitler committed suicide and the Germans surrendered ending the Great Patriotic War.