03:15, 22nd June 1941 - Barbarossa is unleashed and Kampfgruppe von Schroif are right there at the cutting edge of the battle for Russia. Thrown into action against the fortress of Brest-Litovsk, von Schroif and his crew drive a new weapon into battle - the legendary Sturmgeschtz. However, even with this latest armoured marvel there is hard fighting as the Reds dig in and doggedly defend the island fortress to the last man.rnrnPenetrating , authentic and stunning in its detail, the long awaited prequel to the highly acclaimed 'Tiger Command!' is a powerful addition to the series. Based on a true story of combat on the Eastern Front, this atmospheric new novel puts the reader right into the action and unveils the story of how a legend was forged in the heat of the first great battle of the campaign.rnrnWritten by Emmy AwardTM winning writer Bob Carruthers and newcomer Sinclair McLay and edited by Mark Farr, this much anticipated Eastern Front novel also explores the dark underside of war as von Schroif is faced with the malevolent presence of Oskar Dirlewanger.

This work is a study on the development and organization of Wehrmacht assault cannon units since its creation, in 1940, until the end of World War II. The uniforms and characteristics of the main models of cannon and assault shells are also studied, as well as some of the support vehicles that were part of the material that was delivered to these units. The book contains illustrations and photographs, many of which they had not published so far.

Originally published as Deathride, this is the true story of the Eastern Front in World War II, emphasizing how close Germany came to winning and the USSR to losing; the severity of the Soviet losses, which have been minimized due to Soviet propaganda; and the importance of the Allied invasions of North Africa and Sicily, among other factors, in forcing Hitler to re-deploy troops, saving the Soviets from disaster. The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, began a war that lasted nearly four years and created by far the bloodiest theater in World War II. In the conventional narrative of this war, Hitler was defeated by Stalin because, like Napoleon, he underestimated the size and resources of his enemy. In fact, says historian John Mosier, Hitler came very close to winning and lost only because of the intervention of the western Allies. Stalin’s great triumph was not winning the war, but establishing the prevailing interpretation of the war. The Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia, would eventually prove fatal, setting in motion events that would culminate in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mosier argues that the Soviet losses in World War II were unsustainable and would eventually have led to defeat. The Soviet Union had only twice the population of Germany at the time, but it was suffering a casualty rate more than two and a half times the German rate. Because Stalin had a notorious habit of imprisoning or killing anyone who brought him bad news (and often their families as well), Soviet battlefield reports were fantasies, and the battle plans Soviet generals developed seldom responded to actual circumstances. In this respect the Soviets waged war as they did everything else: through propaganda rather than actual achievement. What saved Stalin was the Allied decision to open the Mediterranean theater. Once the Allies threatened Italy, Hitler was forced to withdraw his best troops from the eastern front and redeploy them. In addition, the Allies provided heavy vehicles that the Soviets desperately needed and were unable to manufacture themselves. It was not the resources of the Soviet Union that defeated Hitler but the resources of the West. In this provocative revisionist analysis of the war between Hitler and Stalin, Mosier provides a dramatic, vigorous narrative of events as he shows how most previous histories accepted Stalin’s lies and distortions to produce a false sense of Soviet triumph. This is the real story of the Eastern Front, fresh and different from what we thought we knew.

Helmut Lemke was born in 1926 in East Prussia. He recounts, often humorously, his life at the boarding school in Marienburg, in the Hitler-youth, the workforce and the military. In the last year of the war he was stationed at the eastern front and was wounded in East Prussia. In a suspenseful way he takes the reader along on his adventurous, dangerous journey from the military hospital in Schwerin back into his home village in East Prussia, where he hoped to find his mother again. He gives an insight into the life conditions and circumstances in his home village, now under Russian occupation, shortly after the end of the war as he observed and experienced them. Expelled from his home by Polish authorities, he lives for a short time as refugee in communist East Germany and flees to West Germany. There he studies at the Technical University of Braunschweig and at the university of Bluffton USA. He describes interesting happenings on his trip hitch- hiking through the United States. After he finished his studies with a degree in Architecture, he emigrates to Canada. In Canada he worked as an architect and art instructor. He married Hildegard and they have three children. He described his life as an immigrant in his second book 'A Life Fully Lived (Loving Hildegard)' He lives now in Vancouver at the west coast of Canada. =========================== In German: Helmut Lemke wurde 1926 in Ostpreußen geboren. Er erzählt, oft humorvoll, über seine Zeit im Internat in Marienburg, in der HJ, im Arbeitsdienst und Militär. Im letzten Kriegsjahr wurde er an der Ostfront eingesetzt und später in Ostpreußen verwundet. In spannender Weise nimmt er den Leser mit auf seine abenteuerliche, gefahrenvolle Reise vom Lazarett in Schwerin zurück in sein Heimatdorf in Westpreußen, wo er hoffte, seine Mutter zu finden. Er gibt einen Einblick in die Lebensbedingungen und Zustände, wie er sie kurz nach dem Krieg in seinem Heimatdorf vorfand und miterlebte. Er schildert schreckliche Erlebnisse unter russischer Militärbesatzung und polnischer Verwaltung. Von den Polen ausgewiesen, lebt er kurze Zeit als Flüchtling in Ostdeutschland, flieht nach Westdeutschland und studiert an der Technischen Universität Braunschweig und der Bluffton Universität in den USA. Er schildert interessante Erfahrungen von seiner Fahrt per Anhalter quer durch die Vereinigten Staaten. Nach abgeschlossenem Architekturstudium, wandert er 1955 nach Kanada aus. In Kanada arbeitete er als Architekt und Kunsterzieher. Er heiratet Hildegard und sie haben drei Kinder. Er beschreibt sein Leben als Immigrant in seinem zweiten Buch, A Life Fully Lived. (Loving Hildegard) Er lebt jetzt in Vancouver, an der Westküste Kanadas.