The Dying Days of the Third Reich

German Accounts from World War II

Christian Huber, Geoffrey Brooks

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2016
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780750978675
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

The defeat of the Third Reich is best told through the authentic voices of those who fought on the front line. This collection includes the stories of German soldiers fighting the Red Army on the Eastern Front. It includes those of Horst Messer, who served on the last East Prussian panzer tank but was captured and spent four years in Russian captivity at Riga; Hans Obermeier, who recounts service with Eastern Front training units, capture on the Czech front, and escape from Siberia; and an anonymous Wehrmacht soldier in Slovakia given orders to execute Russian prisoners.

Table of contents

• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Prologue
• 1 Summer Night: Peter Stuffer, Obergefreiter, from Ruhpolding, Eastern Front, Army Group South
• 2 Hunted Down: Hans Klinger, Waffen-SS NCO, Eastern Front, Army Group South (Wasserburg)
• 3 Why We Were Fighting: Anonymous Paratrooper NCO Eastern Front, Army Group North
• 4 From the Ski Slopes to Siberia: Hans Obermeier, NCO, Eastern Front, Army Group Centre, Born Rosenheim 1925
• 5 Home and Yet Betrayed: Helmut Haubner, Sergeant, from Schnaitsee Bavaria, 1945
• 6 The Last Panzers at Libau: Horst Messer, Corporal, Eastern Front, Army Group North, from Bad Feilnbach
• 7 War Voyages on the Rhine: Joseph Rass, Senior NCO, Western Front, from Kolbermoor
• 8 Forester in Hell: Karl Hubner, Hermann Göring Regiment Driver/Flak-Gunner, Eastern Front, Army Group Centre, From Amberg
• 9 The Old Man of Gömörnanas: Memories of an Unknown Soldier, Eastern Front, Army Group South
• 10 Cemeteries: Gerd Rube, Second Lieutenant from Rimsting, Final Battle for Berlin