Which books will help me?

[Richard Hargreaves]

My current book project covers the summer and autumn campaigns of 1942 on the Eastern Front and Mediterranean.

Typically, I've revolved around ground warfare, but I wanted to add the aerial dimension to this next book... but am rather a fish out of water, so to speak.

Anyone who's read either Germans in Normandy or Blitzkrieg Unleashed will know that my emphasis is on narrative history rather than the minutiae of battle (which corps was where at minute x and the like), so with that in mind I'm looking for Erlebnisberichte, personal Tagebücher, memories and the like.

I have both volumes of Taghon and also vol.2 of Prien's JG77 (all of which are excellent), the notes of Kriegsberichter Hans Gross, and the Shores/Ring volume, but if any Experten can suggest other titles, all help will be gratefully received.

Many thanks for your time.

[Dénes Bernád]

Originally Posted by Richard Hargreaves

My current book project covers the summer and autumn campaigns of 1942 on the Eastern Front...

This is a huge topic, the air campaigns which lead to (and peaked with) the epic Battle of Stalingrad.
One book of many (published in English) that pops in my mind is Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943, by Joel S. A. Hayward. See, for example, here: http://www.amazon.com/Stopped-Stalin.../dp/0700608761
And so on...

[Richard Hargreaves]

Hello Dénes. It is indeed a huge topic. Nil satis nisi optimum.

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I have Stopped at Stalingrad (excellent book); and Black Cross/Red Star vol.3 is on my wish list. I also have most of von Richthofen's diary from BA-MA (now that was a lot of typing... and a lot of it still needs translating).

I felt I should include some aerial aspects because a few readers of Blitzkrieg Unleashed felt the Luftwaffe wasn't given enough coverage and also because some of the troops (especially those in the Caucasus) complain about lack of air cover from mid-late August 1942 onwards.

[thenelm]

Walter Waiss' "Boelcke-Archiv, Vol. IV" covers KG 27s activities in and around Stalingrad in some detail, though only available in German. Christer Bergström's "Graf & Grislawski: A Pair of Aces", both from JG 52, from Eagle Editions may be useful since Mr. Grislawski was extensively interviewed for the book. Ehrhard JÄHNERT's book "Mal Oben-Mal Unten", soon to be re-published in two volumes would have some St.G. 3 information, Rall's "Mein Flugbuch" (JG 52) and there is (was) a book by Richard Smith (?) about St.G. 77 which may be useful, as well as the various other books about JG 3 and the appropriate volume(s) from "Jagdfligerverbande" series (Vol. 9 I think) by Jochen Prien and his co-authors. For the Med add volumes from the same authors for JG 27, JG 53 & Jagdfligerverbande. The JG 27 & JG 53 (I./JG 53 was also involved, and very successful, during the push to Stalingrad) have more narrative since they are more unit history's than the Jagdflierverbande books. Also Chris Shores '1942:Malta, the Spitfire Year". Schiffer did both the JG 53 history and two of the JG 3 volumes in English. "III. and IV./JG 27" covers their operations in the Eastern Med, the Greek Islands, etc. I'm sure I've left some German stuff out.

[Richard Hargreaves]

So there's not a great deal then?

Many thanks - that should keep me busy... and hammer the bank balance for a while. Time to scour Bookfinder and eBay.

I don't at this stage know how much aerial warfare will feature in the finished work; but when writing begins next year (quite a bit of translation to do before then...) snippets will be appearing over at Feldgrau as tasters... where Luftwaffe Experten are always welcome to pick my brains on the Wehrmacht (unit histories and the Endkampf being my specialist fields).

[Graham Boak]

One problem you will find is that most books concentrate on the glorious victories of the knights of the air - finding what was happening in relation to events on the ground will be more difficult. The operation of the close-support units is nowhere near so well covered.

Peter Smith has written a number of books on Stuka operations, so it may be worth your while contacting him via his publisher (currently Crecy) - he sometimes appears on the Steel Navy site, so he may be contactable via there too.

[FalkeEins]

Hi Richard,

a few more German texts/memoirs that haven't been overly exploited in English...

Meine Flugberichte - Johannes Kaufmann (ZG 1 pilot up to Jan 43)

Oberst Hermann Graf: 200 Luftsiege in 13 Monaten - B.K Jochim (Graf's diary)

Gegen vielfache Übermacht: Mit dem Jagdflieger und Ritterkreuzträger Hans Waldmann an der Ostfront, an der Invasionsfront und in der Reichsverteidigung - Gerhard Bracke

and do check out Bergstrom's Barbarossa series (first two vols, Ian Allan) which are basically a 're-write' of BC/RS given a more 'strategic' slant

BTW "Mal oben mal unten" gets a pretty poor review here

http://www.amazon.de/Als-Sturzkampfp...7002304&sr=8-1

[Richard Hargreaves]

Hello Neil and Graham,

Thanks for the suggestions; I read the Jähnert review only an hour or so ago and decided to scrub that off my list.

I can't help thinking publishers are simply producing "granddad's memoirs" simply because granddad's written them and there's a desire for wartime memoirs (German and UK publishers are equally guilty...).

Flechsig Verlag's output is rather hit and miss; apart from pushing out quite a bit of Kurowski (grrrr), the memoirs they're publishing varies tremendously. I enjoyed Otto Henning's (DAK/Pz Lehr Div) as a quite lively read (and a pretty simple translate...), but Willi Kubik's diary's pretty dull (although you do learn what he had to eat, and a what time, every day. And I mean every day...)

I'm sure I said over at Feldgrau, or maybe it was AHF, that as a rule I find aerial memoirs much more repetitive than those by Landsers (yes, I know that's sacrilege here no doubt!) or maybe I've just been reading the wrong ones...

Really impressed with the Lehrgeschwader 1 history - just how I like a unit history to be; packed with info and first person accounts (take note Podzun Pallas and all those dreary divisional histories; 13 Pz is particularly bad...)

Bit perturbed by the prices of all these histories and memoirs - they're even more expensive than Heer material.

Still I picked up Graf for under 4€ with postage, so not all bad.

[thenelm]

The KG 27 history is similar to the LG 1 history in the personal diary entries. I would have to agree with Graham's comment about a lot of the Lw memoirs being chronicles "on the glorious victories of the knights of the air" - very disassociated with what was actually happening on the ground below them.

One other item that may be of interest though, and available on the net (or it was) is the KTB (diary of) Nr. 1 der KG.z.b.V. 5 which was one of the air units flying air supply sorties to Stalingrad. Does anyone remember the url of this - it was transcribed by Pawel Burchard.

[Richard Hargreaves]

Many thanks; the KG Boelcke history is now inbound. I did pick up Stahl's memoirs over the summer, but he arrives in North Africa just at the end of the period covered by my project

From 20 years of working with Landser memoirs and the like, it's amazing how often they refer to actions in the air, compared with fliers and their references to ground combat.