Participating in every key campaign on the Eastern Front, a young
German soldier keeps a private uncensored diary as he battles the Red
Army to conquer Russia.
This book presents the remarkable personal journals of a German soldier
who participated in Operation Barbarossa and subsequent battles on the
Eastern Front, revealing the combat experience of the German-Russian War
as seldom seen before.
Hans Roth was a member of the anti-tank (Panzerjager) battalion, 299th
Infantry Division, attached to Sixth Army, as the invasion of Russia
began. Writing as events transpired, he recorded the mystery and tension
as the Germans deployed on the Soviet frontier in June 1941. Then a
firestorm broke loose as the Wehrmacht tore across the front, forging
into the primitive vastness of the East.
During the Kiev encirclement, Roth's unit was under constant attack as
the Soviets desperately tried to break through the German ring. At one
point, after the enemy had finally been beaten, a friend serving with
the SS led him to a site where he witnessed civilians being massacred en
masse (which may well have been Babi Yar). After suffering through a
horrible winter against apparently endless Russian reserves, his
division went on the offensive again, this time on the northern wing of
"Case Gelb," the German drive toward Stalingrad.
In these journals, attacks and counterattacks are described in "you are
there" detail, as Roth wrote privately, as if to keep himself sane,
knowing that his honest accounts of the horrors in the East could never
pass through Wehrmacht censors. When the Soviet counteroffensive of
winter 1942 begins, his unit is stationed alongside the Italian 8th
Army, and his observations of its collapse, as opposed to the reaction
of the German troops sent to stiffen its front, are of special
fascination.
Roth's three journals were discovered many years after his
disappearance, tucked away in the home of his brother, with whom he was
known to have had a deep bond. After his brother's death, his family
discovered them and quickly sent them to Rosel, Roth's wife. In time,
Rosel handed down the journals to Erika, Roth's only daughter, who had
meantime immigrated to America.
Hans Roth was doubtlessly working on a fourth journal before he was
reported missing in action in July 1944 during the battle known as the
Destruction of Army Group Center. Although Roth's ultimate fate remains
unknown, what he did leave behind, now finally revealed, is an
incredible firsthand account of the horrific war the Germans waged in
Russia.
