Radio Operator on the Eastern Front

An Illustrated Memoir, 1940–1949

Erhard Steiniger

• Publisher: Greenhill Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781784386184
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784386191
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

The true and dramatic testimony of a German grenadier during World War II.
Erhard Steiniger joined his Wehrmacht unit on 12 October 1940 as a radio operator, a role which required his constant presence with troops at the Front, right during combat. On 22 June 1941, he accompanied his division to Lithuania where he experienced the catastrophic first day of Operation Barbarossa.
He later witnessed intense clashes during the conquest of the Baltic islands and the battles leading up to Leningrad on the Volkhov and Lake Ladoga. He describes the retreat from battles in Estonia, Kurland and East Prussia and his eventual surrender and captivity in Siberia. He finally returned to Germany in October 1949, a broken man.
From the first page to the last, this is a captivating eyewitness account of the horrors of war.
Praise for Radio Operator on the Eastern Front
"This often subdued, but continuously hypnotic, memoir is rare since it offers so much information, knowledge, and insight about the enemy from the beginning of the war on the Eastern Front right up to Steiniger's release from a prison camp in Russia and return to Germany in 1949." —ARGunners.com
"Witting testimony of a German radio operator—a extraordinary account from a German perspective. Fascinating." —Books Monthly

Table of contents

• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Anthony Tucker-Jones
• Preface
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 From Conscription to the Memel Front
• CHAPTER 2 Barbarossa – Lithuania
• CHAPTER 3 Barbarossa – Latvia and Estonia
• CHAPTER 4 Operation Beowulf
• CHAPTER 5 The Battle of Tikhvin
• CHAPTER 6 On the Volkhov Front
• CHAPTER 7 Spring and Summer 1942: On the Volkhov
• CHAPTER 8 ‘P 5’ and Height 43.3 – Sinyavino
• CHAPTER 9 The Kirishi Bridgehead
• CHAPTER 10 Pogarelushka
• CHAPTER 11 The Last Battle For Leningrad
• CHAPTER 12 On the Narva Front
• CHAPTER 13 Back into Latvia
• CHAPTER 14 I Become a Medical Orderly
• CHAPTER 15 Prisoner of the Soviets
• Epilogue
• Illustration Acknowledgements