Customer Reviews

Ostfront 1944: The German Defensive Battles on the Russian Front 1944 (Schiffer military history)

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3 star:		(2)
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I was lucky enough to find this book at a local book store. If you can find it, buy it. It documents six eastern front battles in 1944 where large numbers of German troops were surrounded and eventually destroyed or captured. Battles include Cherkassy, Ternopol, the Crimea, Bagration, Brody, and destruction of the Sixth Army in Romania. The book puts the history in very personal terms. A few soldiers were lucky enough to escape the pockets, sometimes traveling up to six weeks behind Russian lines before being reunited with the German army. There are many personal accounts of the behind thelines adventures, and they are the most captivating reading.

The book is compelling for it's account of the horrors of war, and the massive destruction that the German Army suffered on the eastern front, in terms of men, machines, and horses. The book is written from a former german soldier turned historian, so there is an obvous pro-german army bias in recounting the suffering and difficulties, but I did not find that detracting from work. My only complaint is that there are few maps, and the ones provided are poor.

This is a very interesting book because if one thinks of it, the reverse of everything that is discussed in this book about the Germans in 1944, the encircliments, the retreats and above all the dispair of the poor soldiers could have been written about the RUSSIANs in 1941-42. This book though, touches on the German side of the coin and how desperate they were to just survive and not be capture.

The outline of this book is one that all books should fallow. It starts out with a Situational map of the battle. Than it tells you how the battle was fought, where the engagements took place, the penetrations and in the end gives you direct stories from the survivors. That is a great way to read a book as you get all information you could ever need. The first Chapter on the Cherkassy Pocket was great and is worth you just buying the book.

All people in wars suffer, wheather you are the defender or the aggressor, winning or losing. To every one, death comes to rob you of your future moments, so as only memories live of you. Wheather it was a worthy cause or not, all one can do is give his best and try to survive. For the Germans in 1944, it was a bitter year, fallowed by the end the next. How they might have felt or thought, is written in this book. Would you feel pity for them after all you know now? Read and find out, after all we are all just people of flesh and blood.

This book is a well-written account containing many first person accounts not translated into English anywhere else.

The prior reviewer from Greece needs to understand, 1) this book does not cover the Soviet side purposefully...hint, check the subtitle--this is a history of the German battles....it does not pretend to be anything else than a narrative of events from the GERMAN side, and, 2) Stemmerman was made commander of both 11th and 42nd Corps within the pocket...Lieb remained commander of 42nd, Stemmerman of 11th, but the pocket commander and Lieb's immediate superior was Stemmerman.


Perhaps the man from Greece should check out "Hell's Gate".

Mr Buchner, a German veteran and a popular author in Europe, has constructed, mostly from primary and some secondary German sources, the summary of six engagements of the German Army on the Eastern Front in 1944. The battles chosen are of different scale, locations and notoriety but they all have the same general outcome: a German loss. At Cherkassy, some say the partial escape of German troops could be considered a victory but the overall results make that stance debatable. The size of the summary is relegated to the scale of the battle.

The battles are:
Cherkassy Pocket..... January..... 56 pages
Ternopol Garrison..... March..... 24 pages
Crimea loss by 17th Army..... April..... 44 pages
Operation Bagration..... June..... 78 pages
Brody Pocket..... July..... 20 pages
Rumanian Defense..... August..... 66 pages

Though the battle coverage are summaries and the tactical descriptions are ample, its not to the same degree of a full length David Glantz book. In addition to the operational coverage of pocketing troops, crossing rivers, taking cities etc, the author includes personal experiences to enrich the reading experience and appreciation of what German troops endured during these dark days when they were highly outnumbered in all categories. The author also uses excerpts from divisional documents to back up his story.

The battles are spread out between Northern Russia, Southern Russia, the Crimea, Rumania and Poland.
Each battle is supplied with a hand drawn map that's effective and will help the reader follow the action. There is also an Order of Battle and Bibliography, Notes but no Index.

My favorite campaign in the book is Operation Bagration, the destruction of AGC in late June, 1944. The author provides first hand evidence that hasn't been read elsewhere which clearly shows the brutality of the campaign and the hopelessness of the German cause. By 1944, the Germans weren't capable of defending against the huge advantage the Russians had and the author shows the despair and hopelessness by weaving many diary entries and after action reports into his story.
The author provides hard to find info on these engagements and any serious student should consider reading this book but there is one criticism. While the German side is clearly identified, the Russian forces are often ambiguous. Its a little maddening when your trying to recreate the exact engagement for your records. I would rate this book 4.5 stars because of it.

The author has chosen his battles well and has done a good job of covering each battle. If your interest lies on the Eastern Front and don't mind the German bias, this book will be interesting and will probably add to your knowledge base and is recommended.

The author tried to cover some battles on Eastern front in the crucial year 1944(Cherkassy, Tarnopol, Crimeea, Brody, Iasi-Chisinau offensive) with too much subiectivity. The book is clearly intended for a german audience being inspired ONLY from german sources (including here the "Belgian" Leon Degrelle). Each battle is depicted in a separate chapter, being, on short, the stories about the fate of german personnel encircled in above-mentioned battles. They are, somewhat, the stories behind the great stories about these battles.
For some battles involving Romanian forces (Crimeea, Iasi-Chisinau offensive) and Hungarian troops, the author seemed to forget that is necessary to research also books from Romania and Hungary. He could find some different perspectives...
From german point of view everything is not so nice when dealing with Axis allies (very harsh critique!), and the author, as german, forgets about own misconduct and mistakes of coalition warfare.(arrogance, behaviour, stealing from allies, promises, etc)
Maps are not so good, being handmade in a very approximative manner; on the other hand, the photos are nice.
Being so german centric is hard to use most of the book content for other studies.
From this point of view I rated with 3*.

I really had great expectations from this book because it is one of the few titles available on the Eastern Front battles of 1944. Although Buchner is an expert on World War II German campaigns and has written many fine books on the subject, this one is not his best. Except for the poor maps and the almost absolute focus on the German suffering ignoring the role of the Soviet side, the problem is that there are some serious points of doubt regarding the accuarcy of the text. Buchner's book for example is the only one which states that General Stemmerman was commander of the XLII Corps, since every other source I have checked supports that he commanded initially the XI Corps, before taking over the command of the whole trapped force at Cherkassy. Otherwise the story of the catastrophic German defeats in the East in 1944 is very well told, with many first person accounts. The German Army was really "demodernized" by that period and it suffered defeats that would have been simply impossible a few years earlier.