Quotes From Military Related Books and Publications

GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STABILIZED FRONT
PREPARED BY MILITARY INTELLIGENCE DIVISION
WAR DEPARTMENT WASHINGTON 25, 15 AUGUST 1943

" The ideal solution of the problem in a modern defensive system, the Germans conclude, is to lay out both permanent and field fortifications so that they complement each other and take full advantage of the terrain. "

from Stalingrad : the city that defeated the Third Reich by Jochen Hellbeck

" When I found out that they were fighting at the L-shaped building, I told Panikhin that
the building must be cleared out by any means, no matter the cost. Panikhin mobilized his
men, organized them. Kutsarenko was his operations deputy. He was told to eliminate the
enemy in the basement. There were a lot of them down there. In one basement we broke
through the ceiling with crowbars and had at them with three flamethrowers. There were
twenty of them there, all of them got burned up. In another cellar they put 250 kilograms
of TNT on the floor above and detonated it, and that was the end of them. Then our guys
could jump down and take care of the rest. A few of the Germans ran away. "

In another cellar they put 250 kilograms
of TNT on the floor above and detonated it, and that was the end of them.

I think 25 Kilograms is more likely. I'm inclined to believe 250 Kilograms would blow up the whole building.

Affr, I recommend a copy of "Death of a Leaping Horseman: 24.Pz in Stalingrad". That book is incredible and very educational in terms of combat details & learning how attack ops work.

Also "To the Gates of Stalingrad" is probably the best text in english about urban warfare in WW2- it is 730 pages of extreme urban combat supported by aerial bombing. Both books require a lot of effort but are totally worth it. The other tomes in the Stalingrad trilogy- I, III, IV are also incredible.

from The Fall Of Berlin 1945 By Antony Beevor


"He obsessively rejected any parallels with 1918. For him, 1918 symbolized
only the revolutionary ‘stab in the back’ which brought down the Kaiser and reduced
Germany to a humiliating defeat. Yet Hitler had moments of clarity during those days. ‘I
know the war is lost,’ he said late one evening to Colonel Nicolaus von Below, his
Luftwaffe aide. ‘The enemy’s superiority is too great.’ But he continued to lay all the
blame on others for the sequence of disasters. They were all ‘traitors’, especially army
officers. He suspected that many more had sympathized with the failed assassins, yet
they had been pleased enough to accept medals and decorations from him. ‘We will
never surrender,’ he said. ‘We may go down, but we will take a world with us.’"

from With Our Backs to Berlin by Tony Le Tessier

"To my
surprise there were a pair of highly polished officer’s jackboots and some passable breeches to go
with them. I had not seen such beautiful boots for years, since my father, a master shoemaker, had
made me such a pair. In one of them was a holster for a small pistol, a 6.35 Walther, and in the other
was a sheath for a stiletto with a needle point and razor-sharp blade. I tried them on and they fitted
perfectly. Then I tried walking a few steps in them, which took me out into the cellar passageway. A
young woman came toward me with an Alsatian puppy. The puppy leant against one of the shining
boots and pissed inside. I kicked him away, which did not please the young woman.
She scolded me and got a sharp response back. Then I noticed that my old company comrade Heinz
Jurkewitz, who was now with the Führer bodyguard, was standing behind her, making violent hand
signals to me that I could not understand.
I shouted at her: ‘Get your dog out of here and leave us alone!’ Whereupon she put the puppy on the
lead and went off with him without a word.
‘For goodness sake, Willi,’ Heinz said to me, ‘what have you done? Do you know who that was?’
‘No, I didn’t know.’
‘That was Fräulein Braun!’
‘It could have been Fräulein Schwarz as far as I am concerned,’ I said. ‘What about it?’
Then he had to tell me confidentially who Fräulein Braun was, and that he had been assigned to her
as her bodyguard.
With this explanation I should make it clear that even I who had been on duty in the Reichs
Chancellery knew nothing of the existence of this woman. It was a taboo subject and no one talked
about it. We were trained to be discreet. Nevertheless, she had been here in the Führerbunker at the
Reichs Chancellery since 15 April and had come, against the Führer’s will, to share his fate. She
usually lived at the Führer’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. The puppy came from Blondi, the
Führer’s Alsatian, and he had given it to Fräulein Braun so that she had something to remind her of
him, since he could not come because of the war. When it was time to die, the pup would die too."

NAPOLEON: ON WAR by Bruno Colson

page 64

"From the 1812 campaign onwards, Napoleon felt the fatigue of war much
more. He confided to Caulaincourt in the sledge that brought him back
from Russia:
I am becoming heavy and too fat not to love rest, not to need it, not to regard
the movement and activity required by war as a great burden. Like other men,
my physique necessarily has an influence on my morale."

NAPOLEON: ON WAR by Bruno Colson

page 84

"It would be
better to say: strategy is the art of plans of campaign and tactics the art of
battles.
This can serve to open people’s minds and give them a few ideas, but it
cannot teach war. There is too much intellect: there shouldn’t be so much in
war. Perhaps these principles are today’s. War is an affair of the moment: what
was good at midday is no longer so at two o’clock. What can books teach
about that?"