Kharkov 1942: Anatomy of a Military Disaster Through Soviet Eyes Book

In May 1942 the powerful German Wehrmacht and the massive Soviet Red Army were engaged in a bitter struggle. The initially rapid advance of the Wehrmacht deep into the Soviet Union against the Red Army which had been decimated by Stalin's purges in the 1930s had been halted during the winter of 1941.Red Army counter-offensives had stopped the German advance at Moscow and by the spring of 1942 the Soviet leadership was convinced that the Wehrmacht was fatally stretched. A counter-thrust by the Red Army at the southern end of the front, near to the town of Kharkov, would, they imagined, be a vital step in pushing the German Army back. The reality was very different. Soviet over confidence meant that hundreds of thousands of their soldiers were to lose their lives in one of the most catastrophic offensives in Russian military history. For over 50 years the Soviets kept the scale of their defeat secret. Only senior Soviet officials were aware of the extent of the catastrophe.Read More