At Leningrad's Gates: The Combat Memoirs of a Soldier with Army Group North

At Leningrad's Gates: The Combat Memoirs of a Soldier with Army Group North

by William Lubbeck
At Leningrad's Gates: The Combat Memoirs of a Soldier with Army Group North

At Leningrad's Gates: The Combat Memoirs of a Soldier with Army Group North

by William Lubbeck

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Overview

“A first-rate memoir” from a German soldier who rose from conscript private to captain of a heavy weapons company on the Eastern Front of World War II (City Book Review).
 
William Lubbeck, age nineteen, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August 1939. As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire during the 1940 invasion of France. The following spring, his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in Operation Barbarossa. After grueling marches amid countless Russian bodies, burnt-out vehicles, and a great number of cheering Baltic civilians, Lubbeck’s unit entered the outskirts of Leningrad, making the deepest penetration of any German formation.
 
In September 1943, Lubbeck earned the Iron Cross First Class and was assigned to officers’ training school in Dresden. By the time he returned to Russia, Army Group North was in full-scale retreat. In the last chaotic scramble from East Prussia, Lubbeck was able to evacuate on a newly minted German destroyer. He recounts how the ship arrived in the British zone off Denmark with all guns blazing against pursuing Russians. The following morning, May 8, 1945, he learned that the war was over.
 
After his release from British captivity, Lubbeck married his sweetheart, Anneliese, and in 1949, immigrated to the United States where he raised a successful family. With the assistance of David B. Hurt, he has drawn on his wartime notes and letters, Soldatbuch, regimental history, and personal memories to recount his four years of frontline experience. Containing rare firsthand accounts of both triumph and disaster, At Leningrad’s Gates provides a fascinating glimpse into the reality of combat on the Eastern Front.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781935149798
Publisher: Casemate Publishers (Ignition)
Publication date: 01/10/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 742,312
File size: 5 MB

About the Author

William Lubbeck rose to the rank of Captain in the German Army, fighting primarily in Russia. He went on to earn a degree in electrical engineering and arrived in the U.S. in 1956. Now retired, he lives in Asheville, NC. He has three children, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren.David B. Hurt received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Florida and a M.A. in International Affairs from Florida State University. He worked with William Lubbeck as the co-author of At Leningrad's Gates: The Story of a Soldier with Army Group North (Casemate, 2006). He currently serves as an academic advisor at a college in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction ix

Prologue 1

1 A Village Upbringing 15

2 Under The Nazi Dictatorship 29

3 Prelude To War 39

4 Training For Combat 53

5 War in the West 67

6 Blitzkrieg into Russia 81

7 To The Gates of Leningrad 93

8 Winter at Uritsk 103

9 Counterattack at the Volkhov 121

10 The Demyansk Corridor 133

11 Holding The Line at Ladoga 143

12 Officer Candidate 153

13 Kriegschule 161

14 Return to The Front 169

15 Retreat into The Reich 183

16 Catastrophe 195

17 The Price of Defeat 205

18 Post-War Germany 217

19 A New Life Abroad 229

Epilogue 245

Acknowledgments 251

Appendices 253

Endnote 258

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