Prelude to Berlin: The Red Army's Offensive Operations in 1945 torrent

Prelude to Berlin: The Red Army's Offensive Operations in Poland and Eastern Germany, 1945 - Soviet General Staff [epub]

Prelude to Berlin: The Red Army’s Offensive Operations in Poland and Eastern Germany, 1945, offers a panoramic view of the Soviet strategic offensives north of the Carpathians in the winter of 1945.

The book is divided into several parts, corresponding to the operations conducted. These include the Vistula–Oder operation by the First Belorussian and First Ukrainian Fronts out of their respective Vistula bridgeheads. This gigantic operation, involving over a million men and several thousand tanks, artillery and other weapons sliced through the German defenses and, in a single leap, advanced the front to the Oder River, less than 100 kilometres from Berlin, from which they launched their final assault on the Reich in April.

Equally impressive was the Second and Third Belorussian Fronts’ offensive into Germany’s East Prussian citadel. This operation helped to clear the flank further to the south and exacted a long-awaited revenge for the Russian Army’s defeat here in 1914. This effort cut off the German forces in East Prussia and concluded with an effort to clear the flanks in Pomerania and the storming of the East Prussian capital of Konigsberg in April.

The study also examines in considerable detail the First Ukrainian Front’s Upper and Lower Silesian operations of February–March 1945. These operations cleared the army’s flanks in the south and deprived Germany of one of its last major industrial and agricultural areas.

Hardcover: 636 pages
Publisher: Helion and Company (February 19, 2016)