Soldiers to the Last Day
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Regular price
€39.99
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Soldiers to the Last Day: Rhineland- Westphalian 6th Infantry Division, 1935-1945 recounts the history of the German 6th Infantry Division from its formation in 1935 to its destruction at Babruysk in July 1944; then its resurrection and continued fighting until the end of the war. Among the first divisions established by the Wehrmacht, the 6th Infantry Division had one of the longest and bloodiest records of continuous combat of any division—Allied or Axis. Engaging in combat within weeks of the outbreak of WWII, the division fought to the last hour of the war. Based primarily on German sources, in particular the rare divisional and regimental histories and war diaries, and on personal accounts and letters of its soldiers, Soldiers to the Last Day presents the German view of the war from inside divisional headquarters and down to the individual Landser as the division marches across France in 1940, advances to the Volga during Operation Barbarossa, fights the brutal battles of Rzhev, Kursk, Babruysk; and makes last desperate attempts to defend the homeland in 1945. It is a tale of courage, determination, suffering, and in the end—betrayal.
Author of Feldpost: the War Letters of Friedrich Reiner Niemann, Denis Havel graduated from Eastern Illinois University with a degree in Psychology. He has worked in a wide range of occupations, from gravedigger to teacher to Wall Street investor. An authority of Prussian-German military, his other fields of study include early Germanic languages, literature, and culture. He is active in various German-American organizations that preserve the German language, culture, and traditions.