In the spring of 1941, having abandoned his plans to invade Great Britain, Hitler turned the might of his military forces on to Stalin's Soviet Russia. The German army quickly advanced far into Russian territory as the Soviet forces suffered defeat after defeat. With brutality and savagery displayed on both sides, the Eastern front was a campaign in which no quarter was given. Although Hitler's decision to launch 'Barbarossa' was one of the crucial turning points of the war, at first the early successes of the German army pointed to the continuing triumph of the Nazi state. As time wore on, however, the Eastern front became a byword for death for the Germans.

In War Without Garlands, Robert Kershaw examines the campaign largely through the eyes of the German forces who were sent to fight and die for Hitler's grandiose plans. He draws on German war diaries, post-combat reports and secret SS files. This original material, much of which has never before been published in English, sheds new light on operation 'Barbarossa', including the extent to which the German soldiers were genuinely surprised at the decision to attack Russia, given the well-publicised non-aggression pact. ‘Barbarossa’ was a brutal, ideologically driven campaign which decided the outcome of World War II. This seminal account will be required reading for all historians of World War II and all those interested in the course of the war.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Glossary, Abbreviations and Rank Comparisons
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: ‘The world will hold its breath’
  • Saturday, 21 June 1941
  • ‘Forget the concept of comradeship’
  • ‘The Führer has got it all in hand’
  • Tomorrow ‘we are to fight against World Bolshevism’
• Chapter 2: ‘Ordinary men’ – the German soldier on the eve of ‘Barbarossa’
  • ‘Endless pressure to participate’
  • ‘Order and Duty’ and the Führer
  • ‘Prepared to face what is coming!’ The German Army, June 1941
• Chapter 3: The Soviet frontier
  • ‘There was no information…’
  • ‘We’ve never had such a situation… Will there be any instructions?’
• Chapter 4: H-hour 03.15
  • The River Bug… Brest-Litovsk
  • Air strike… First light
  • The shortest night of the year… H-hour
  • Daybreak… Berlin
• Chapter 5: The longest day of the year
  • The first Soviet pocket is formed – Brest-Litovsk
  • ‘Only 1,000km as the crow flies to Moscow’
  • Where was the Red Air Force?
  • Dusk… 22 June 1941
• Chapter 6: Waiting for news
  • The home fronts… Victory will be ours! Germany
  • Victory will be ours! Russia
  • ‘Don’t die without leaving a dead German behind you’… Brest-Litovsk
  • Across the Dvina… Army Group North
  • No news
  • Brest-Litovsk… ‘I wonder how it is I am still alive!’
• Chapter 7: Blitzkrieg
  • The ‘smooth’ period… The Panzers
  • Frontier tank battles
  • Panzer vanguard
  • On to Smolensk
  • Finale: Brest-Litovsk
• Chapter 8: Smolensk
  • The infantry
  • The Smolensk pocket
  • ‘Do not cry’… Soviet defeat in the West
• Chapter 9: Refocusing victory conditions
  • The longest campaign
  • Conditions for victory
  • A city ‘pulsing with life’… Leningrad
• Chapter 10: A war without garlands
  • ‘Better three French campaigns than one Russian’
  • The pressures on the German soldier
  • ‘Kein Kindergarten Krieg’. Prisoners and partisans
• Chapter 11: ‘Kesselschlacht’ – victory without results
  • Cannae at Kiev
  • The reduction of the Kiev pocket
• Chapter 12: ‘Victored’ to death
  • Objective Moscow
  • A logistic ‘trip-wire’
• ‘Totsiegen’… victored to death A dying army
  • Chapter 13: The last victory
  • Double encirclement… Vyazma and Bryansk
  • The great illusion
• Chapter 14: ‘The eleventh hour’
  • Moscow… A defence crust forms
  • Dilemma at Orscha
  • ‘The eleventh hour’
• Chapter 15: The spires of Moscow
  • ‘Flucht nach Vorn’
  • The frozen offensive
  • ‘The spires of the city’… Moscow
• Chapter 16: The devil loose before Moscow
  • The Soviet counter-offensive
  • The German soldier does not go ‘Kaputt!…! The crisis of confidence
  • The German Army in retreat
• Chapter 17: The order of the frozen flesh
  • ‘Not one single step back’ – the Hold Order
  • Frozen flesh
• Postscript – ‘Barbarossa’
• Notes to the text
• Appendices
  • 1. German casualties Operation ‘Barbarossa’ 1941–42
  • 2. German casualties reflected in division manning equivalents
  • 3. The fighting elements within a German division
  • 4. A snapshot of Soviet battle casualties
• Sources
• Plate section