Bliztkrieg 1939-1944

For all military historians, the new 'Blitzkrieg' series will be an essential addition to their library, explaining as it does how the various stages by which the strategy evolved during the war.

1 - Poland and Scandinavia 1939-1940 - ISBN: 0711029431 - 98 pages
This is the first volume in a new series concentrating on Germany's Blitzkrieg tactics during the course of the Second World War. It describes in detail how the strategy evolved and how it was first deployed against the ill-prepared and poorly-armed Poles, using contemporary photographs, allied with line drawings and detailed analysis.

2 - France, Holland and Belgium 1940-1941 - ISBN: 071102944X -98 pages
This is the second volume in this series which examines in depth the German Blitzkrieg tactic during World War 2. Using contemporary photographs, allied with line drawings and detailed analysis, the author explores how the strategy evolved during the course of the campaign.

3 - Russia 1941-1942 - ISBN: 0711029458 -98 pages
In the third of the series the author examines Operation Barbarossa - the German invasion of Russia in 1942 and the campaign during the following year when the Axis forces renewed their offensive after the winter.
The invasion of June 1941 was the largest operation undertaken by German forces during the war, comprising more than 100 army divisions and some 17 Panzer divisions along with 3,000 aircraft. Facing these forces were more than 150 Russian divisions along with 54 tank brigades. Despite the size of the Russian forces, which were expanded within six months by a further 300 divisions, the German and Axis forces swept eastwards at an unprecedented rate, capturing more than 3.3 million prisoners by December 1941.

4 - Balkans and North Africa 1941-1942 - ISBN: 0711029466 -98 pages
In the spring of 1941, shortly before his forces launched their invasion of Russia, Hitler was forced to undertake an assault upon the Balkans. The Yugoslavs, nominally allied to the Axis powers, had been encouraged to revolt by the British and, in April 1941, Hitler launched a preemptive strike through Yugoslavia and, thence, to Greece, sweeping both British and local forces in front of them.
The second part of this book deals with North Africa, where the Deutches Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel was formed to support an increasingly beleaguered Italian force. The initial success of the DAK was great, but the Desert campaign was characterized by success and failure, with the British putting up strong resistance as Allied forces defended Egypt and the Suez Canal. Using contemporary photographs, allied with line drawings and detailed analysis, the author explores how the strategy evolved during these two campaigns.

5 - Russia 1942-1943 - ISBN: 0711029474 -98 pages
After the harsh Russian winter of 1941/42 had effectively ended offensive military action on the Eastern Front, the spring thaw and the buildup of forces allowed the Germans once again to launch a major onslaught on their Soviet opponents. On 8 May 1942, Operation Blue commenced and, over the next few months, the German forces, again adopting the tactics so successful the previous year, swept the Russian forces further eastwards as cities such as Sevastapol and Rostov and German troops entered the iconic city of Stalingrad. Now considered to be one of the pivotal points of World War 2, the campaign to capture the city and then relieve the surrounded forces under von Paulus was one of the epic struggles of the war. Despite the ultimate German defeat at Stalingrad, the Axis forces were still highly potent and continued to mount stern resistance in the face of the Russian advance. Moreover, the Germans retained enough military capacity to launch a further assault the following year - the ill-fated attempt to destroy the Russian salient at Kursk

6 - North Africa and Italy 1942-1944 - ISBN: 0711029482 -98 pages
If World War 1 was characterized, certainly on the Western Front, by the endless miles of trenches and the remarkable lack of mobility in the front line during more than four years of war, those military strategists who expected a similar war of attrition in any second conflict were to be confounded. World War 2 was to witness the triumph of offense over defense, with the awesome power of tank armies and air forces deployed to devastating effect. Whilst the French may have perceived their Maginot Line as impregnable; its rapid breaching in the spring of 1940 emphasized how far German military thinking had developed as opposed to that amongst its potential opponents. The theory of Blitzkrieg - lightning war - had developed during the interwar years, but its true potential was only to be revealed in the autumn of 1939 when the German forces swept into Poland. For the next three years, in all theaters of the war, the German forces proved supreme, as their superiority of equipment, training and strategy resulted in a rapid series of victories that culminated in them reaching to the very gates of both Moscow and Cairo; victory in either of these theaters would, probably, have resulted in the ultimate German triumph. Hindsight, however, now enables us to see that, at the moment of these triumphs, the might of the German military machine was so overstretched that the final victory eluded them.

Although, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the British victory at El-Alamein was one of the turning points of the war, just as Stalingrad was on the Eastern Front, war in the desert was by no means concluded. The rapid German advance in the period before El-Alamein was seriously to threaten the Allied position in Egypt and the all-important Suez Canal; little seemed capable of holding the German assault and, if the Axis forces had not been regarded by their command as representing a sideshow and therefore denied the necessary reinforcements, the history of the Desert War could have been very different. Under Rommel, the Germans had proved themselves capable of decisive military strikes that all but eradicated Allied power in North Africa. Ultimately, however, the lack of reinforcements and the long logistical routes of resupply fundamentally undermined Rommel's position and, when faced by war on two fronts after Operation Torch, the German and Italian position proved hopeless, with some 150,000 men surrendering the mid-1943.

Links

1. http://rapidshare.com/files/57815026...g-01-39-40.rar
2. http://rapidshare.com/files/57815652...g-02-40-41.rar
3. http://rapidshare.com/files/57816168...g-03-41-42.rar
4. http://rapidshare.com/files/57816735...g-04-41-42.rar
5. http://rapidshare.com/files/57817343...g-05-42-43.rar
6. http://rapidshare.com/files/57818074...g-06-42-44.rar