EASTERN INFERNO: The Journals of a German Panzerjager on the Eastern Front, 1941-43

2-194370

This book presents the personal journals of a German soldier who participated in Operation Barbarossa and subsequent battles on the Eastern Front. Hans Roth was a member of the anti-tank (Panzerjager) battalion, 299th Infantry Division, attached to Sixth Army, as the invasion of Russia began. Writing as events transpired, he recorded the mystery and tension as the Germans deployed on the Soviet frontier in June 1941. Then a firestorm broke loose as the Wehrmacht tore across the front, forging into the primitive vastness of the East.

Roth's three journals were discovered many years after his disappearance, tucked away in the home of his brother. Hans Roth was doubtlessly working on a fourth journal before he was reported missing in action in July 1944 during the battle known as the Destruction of Army Group Center. Although Roth's ultimate fate remains unknown, what he did leave behind, now finally revealed, is an incredible first-hand account of the horrific war the Germans waged in Russia

In these journals, attacks and counterattacks are described in detail, as Roth wrote privately, as if to keep himself sane, knowing that his honest accounts of the horrors in the East could never pass through Wehrmacht censors. When the Soviet counteroffensive of winter 1942 begins, his unit is stationed alongside the Italian 8th Army, and his observations of its collapse, as opposed to the reaction of the German troops sent to stiffen its front, are of special fascination.