Operation Silver Fox: The History of Nazi Germany's Arctic Invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II
ISBN: 9781537791616
$9.99
*Includes pictures
*Includes soldiers' accounts of the fighting
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
*Includes a table of contents
In the warm predawn darkness of June 22, 1941, 3 million men waited along a front hundreds of miles long, stretching from the Baltic coast of Poland to the Balkans. Ahead of them in the darkness lay the Soviet Union, its border guarded by millions of Red Army troops echeloned deep throughout the huge spaces of Russia. This massive gathering of Wehrmacht soldiers from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and his allied states – notably Hungary and Romania – stood poised to carry out Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's surprise attack against the country of his putative ally, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Today, everyone remembers the most famous consequences of Hitler’s choice, particularly the fighting at Leningrad and Stalingrad, but the invasion was so comprehensive that it also involved fighting in the barren lands near the Arctic Circle, bringing fierce combat to the taiga and tundra. In fact, Arctic combat occurred in both the Pacific and European theaters of the war, and in both cases the operations were related in some measure to external lines of supply to the USSR.
In the Pacific Theater, the Americans and Japanese met in the little-known but savagely contested Aleutian Islands Campaign. During this campaign IJA troops invaded North American territory for the only time in the war, setting off a months-long struggle on the remote island chain and in the frigid seas around it, culminating in a desperate tundra banzai charge in the harsh subarctic landscape of the distant north.
*Includes soldiers' accounts of the fighting
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
*Includes a table of contents
In the warm predawn darkness of June 22, 1941, 3 million men waited along a front hundreds of miles long, stretching from the Baltic coast of Poland to the Balkans. Ahead of them in the darkness lay the Soviet Union, its border guarded by millions of Red Army troops echeloned deep throughout the huge spaces of Russia. This massive gathering of Wehrmacht soldiers from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and his allied states – notably Hungary and Romania – stood poised to carry out Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's surprise attack against the country of his putative ally, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Today, everyone remembers the most famous consequences of Hitler’s choice, particularly the fighting at Leningrad and Stalingrad, but the invasion was so comprehensive that it also involved fighting in the barren lands near the Arctic Circle, bringing fierce combat to the taiga and tundra. In fact, Arctic combat occurred in both the Pacific and European theaters of the war, and in both cases the operations were related in some measure to external lines of supply to the USSR.
In the Pacific Theater, the Americans and Japanese met in the little-known but savagely contested Aleutian Islands Campaign. During this campaign IJA troops invaded North American territory for the only time in the war, setting off a months-long struggle on the remote island chain and in the frigid seas around it, culminating in a desperate tundra banzai charge in the harsh subarctic landscape of the distant north.