Operation Blue and Combat in the Caucuses: How Germany Lost on the Eastern Front

Nazi Germany's role in the Second World War has generated interest since the war's end, and for good reason. At any given time between 1939 and 1945 as much as half the planet's population was trying to kill each other (or producing the means to do so). Over 60 million people died. More than half these deaths occurred in Eastern Europe - including an estimated 27 million in the Soviet Union alone. This is also where over 18 million Germans and several million more Finnish, Hungarian, Romanian, and other Axis soldiers faced off against nearly 35 million Soviet men and women in history's greatest land war. The centre of gravity in this immense struggle occurred within the Ukraine and Southern Russia during the summer of 1942. That fighting still draws attention from military history enthusiasts, as well as historians and defence practitioners alike. The 2022 Russian invasion of the Ukraine renewed combat in locations familiar to those fascinated by the Second World War. Today's battles further fuels debate as to how it was so many years ago that the Red Army prevailed over Nazi Germany's armed forces (Wehrmacht). It thus befits us to understand exactly how that prior war unfolded as it did. That's because in spite of the Nazi-Soviet war's massive numbers, more often than not the outcome hung on a thread. This second volume of How Germany Lost offers the reader a unique approach to understanding how and why the Second World War ended as it did, doing so by applying long-standing rules of successfully waging war to the specific facts and circumstances of Germany's 1942 campaign in the Ukraine and Southern Russia (Operation Blue). Although taking a fresh perspective on the War, this book is not a counterfactual exercise, nor is it an alternative history of WWII. Volume II…