Stein, Christian Armee des Rückzugs

Die Wehrmacht an der Ostfront 1941-1945

For more than thirty months, the German Wehrmacht was in retreat on the Eastern Front. During this period, it suffered the vast majority of its losses and left behind immense territories devastated and depopulated. The German war against the Soviet Union lasted forty-seven months. For more than thirty of those months, the Wehrmacht was in retreat. And yet, both in collective memory and in historical scholarshipparticularly in Germanyit is primarily the Wehrmachts victories that take center stage. Conversely, the years following Stalingrad receive scant attention. In this book, the history of the retreat movements on the Eastern Front is examined for the first time in a comprehensive context and based on a broad range of sourcesyielding striking results: Among high-ranking German military officers, retreats were reviled as signs of defeat and were inextricably linked to the fear that their own troops would disintegrate. Consequently, they strove all the more to demonstrate their own agencyruthlessly and without restraint: The Wehrmacht suffered more than two-thirds of its losses on the Eastern Front during these months of retreat. Millions of people were abducted by the Germans. During their retreats, the Wehrmacht destroyed tens of thousands of villages and towns; above all in Ukraine and present-day Belarus, the Germans left behind desolate "desert zones" devoid of human life.