Slaughterhouse: The Handbook of the Eastern Front

In terms of sheer numbers of soldiers, armored vehicles, guns, and the scale of destruction and casualties, the Eastern Front was the most active and decisive theater of war during the 20th century. For four years, the armies and air forces of the world’s two most powerful and brutal dictators savaged each other over terrain that stretched from the Arctic to the Middle East. The map of Europe was changed forever by the fighting on this front, and even today, the world reverberates with the echoes of that fighting, in places like Chechenya and the Balkans. Despite the enormous importance of the fighting that occurred between Nazi Germany and her allies and the Soviet Empire, we are still uncovering vastly important and long concealed facts about the war. For almost 50 years, the world had to depend largely on captured German records for its understanding of the Eastern Front, since almost all information made available by the Soviets was propaganda or even disinformation. Over the last decade, following the fall of the Communism in Europe in general, and Russia in particular, long-sealed archives have begun to open, and the truth about the Soviet side of the war is finally being discovered. In this concise, yet highly comprehensive, volume, readers can begin to gain access to the more accurate and complete information that is now becoming available. Through the diligence and expertise of a team of highly capable and experienced military researchers and historians, including David Glantz, the widely-acknowledged foremost Soviet military historian in America, new information has been synthesized with the best of long-available data. The result is Slaughterhouse , the single most comprehensive and up to date work of its kind. Slaughterhouse includes the following —Two chapters by famed Sovietologist David “Chronology of the War on the Eastern Front” (with nine detailed maps) and “Forgotten Battles” of the Eastern Front. —The German armed forces and their Thumbnail histories of 487 army groups, armies, corps, and divisions that saw combat on the Eastern Front. —The Soviet armed Thumbnail histories of 881 directions, fronts, armies, corps, and divisions. —Biographical sketches of 57 key Axis and Soviet wartime personalities. —Highly-detailed organizational diagrams of 55 types of Axis and Red Army divisions that served on the Eastern Front. —Comprehensive, meticulously researched performance data comparisons of hundreds of Axis and Red Army weapons, including small arms, mortars, artillery, tanks, assault guns, combat aircraft, and more. 520 pages, supported by 88 photos; 9 maps; notes; and extensive 16 page bibliography.