"Discover the history of Warsaw’s six-year struggle through the devastation of war and the city’s enduring spirit.
In Warsaw: A City at War 1939–45, historians Prit Buttar and Lottie Taylor bring to light the unparalleled experience of a city caught between two invading powers, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and the resilience of its citizens.
This fascinating history illuminates how Warsaw’s centuries-old fight for identity shaped the course of its wartime experience. For a mere 21 years, Warsaw thrived as the proud capital of an independent Poland, only to be betrayed when Nazi Germany invaded in 1939. Yet the heart of the city – its people – refused to surrender. From the tragic Ghetto Uprising to the heroic city-wide revolt, Warsaw's resistance was fierce as it faced the systematic attempt to erase it from the map. The story does not end with the conclusion of the war, as Warsaw found itself trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
This compelling narrative is not just about battles – it’s about a city and its inhabitants, whose unwavering spirit defined them in the darkest of times. Drawing from rare archival material including countless first-hand accounts, Warsaw’s wartime years are majestically brought to life. P 2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC C 2026 Prit Buttar"
"Bloomsbury presents Berlin: Endgame 1945 by Prit Buttar, read by John Telfer.
Written by one of the world's leading experts on the Eastern Front, this captivating history explores the final battle for Berlin and the heart of Germany.
This sweeping saga takes us from the banks of the River Oder as the Red Army begins it relentless drive towards the still beating heart of the Third Reich: Berlin. Only the Seelow Heights stood between the Soviet forces and the capital. Over the course of three days in May 1945 almost one million Soviet troops would attack these final entrenched positions. Once these defences were breached it was guaranteed that a bitter street-by-street battle would take place in the city itself between a vengeful Red Army and desperate, fanatical Nazis until final capitulation. Using vivid first-hand accounts, Prit Buttar reveals the brutal combat that defined the final death throes of the Third Reich.
Not only was the outcome of the war at stake. As the Red Army rolled into Berlin this was already a foregone conclusion even if it would take its toll in blood. Already battle lines for the forthcoming Cold War were being drawn. Stalin, fearful that the Western Powers would not honour their agreements, was determined to have boots on the ground to ensure his control of what would become the Soviet occupation zone.
Berlin: Endgame 1945 is the brilliant account of the ferocious climax to World War II and a chilling prologue to the Cold War. P 2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC C 2026 Prit Buttar"
"Bloomsbury presents Into the Reich: The Red Army's advance to the Oder in 1945 by Prit Buttar, read by Leighton Pugh.
Enriched by extraordinary first-hand accounts, this is a fascinating history of the dying days of the Third Reich as Stalin sought to consolidate his own empire.
In January 1945, the Red Army launched a powerful offensive across the Vistula River to drive the Wehrmacht out of Poland, with the intention of securing a start line for an operation that would ultimately result in the capture of Berlin and the end of the war. But, as Prit Buttar expertly reveals, there were other issues at play. Stalin was determined to push the boundaries of the Soviet Union further west, restoring land lost by the tsars and securing vast industrial and mineral wealth. While negotiations took place between the Allied powers regarding the fate of Poland, the Red Army burst through the German lines, liberating Auschwitz even as the SS drove concentration camp inmates onto frozen roads in a series of death marches.
The Wehrmacht staged a desperate fight back with their last major armoured offensive on the Eastern Front. Launched in February 1945 from the German-Polish border, it forced a halt to the Soviet forces on the banks of the Oder before the rush to Berlin. Written by an acknowledged expert on the Eastern Front and packed with first-hand accounts, this is the definitive account of the strategic goals, both military and political, of Stalin, his generals, and their armies as they raced into the Reich, and of the German forces who stood in the way. P 2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC C 2025 Prit Buttar"
"Bloomsbury presents Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive by Prit Buttar, read by Leighton Pugh.
A fascinating history of the great summer offensive launched by the Red Army in 1944 which turned the tide of the war.
Throughout the war on the Eastern Front, there were two consistent trends. The Red Army battled to learn how to fight and win, while involved in a struggle for its very survival. But by 1944 it had a leadership that was able to wield it with lethal effect and with far more effective equipment than before. By contrast, the Wehrmacht had commenced a slow process of decline after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler became increasingly unwilling to delegate decision-making to commanders in the field, which had been crucial to earlier success. The long years of fighting had also taken a heavy toll. Thousands of irreplaceable junior officers and NCOs were dead, wounded or prisoners.
Renowned Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar expertly brings these contrasting fortunes to life, trends which culminated in the huge battles of Bagration. As this masterful study conclusively shows, in 1944 the Red Army finally put together a campaign that utterly destroyed the German Army Group Centre. The Wehrmacht suffered the loss of over 300,000 men killed, wounded or taken prisoner and the Red Army rolled forward across Belarus to the outskirts of Warsaw. The end of the war was still many months away, and the Germans managed to reconstruct their line on the Eastern Front, but final victory for the Soviet Union was now only a matter of time as a direct consequence of Bagration. P 2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC C 2025 Prit Buttar"
"Bloomsbury presents Hero City: Leningrad 1943–44 by Prit Buttar, read by Gordon Griffin
One of the greatest ever sieges is masterfully brought to life by a leading expert on the Eastern Front.
At the height of World War II the people of Leningrad endured a bitter 900-day siege, struggling against bombing, shelling, and starvation. Prit Buttar tells the story of how the siege was finally broken. The Red Army had suffered multiple setbacks in the preceding two years but achieved a partial success by breaking the blockage in early 1943. However, this was followed by further failed attempts to lift the siege completely.
But by simply enduring the siege in the face of impossible odds, Russian soldiers and civilians beat the Germans. By the end of 1943 the German forces, themselves broken by deprivations and extreme weather, began to pull back. Here was the opportunity the Soviet forces had been waiting for. The Red Army launched a decisive attack that broke through and ended the siege. Their determination to hold out has become a hugely significant part of Russian history, the echoes of the battle helping to define both a country and its politics.
This compelling history uses original Russian source material to vividly describe the deprivations visited upon those trapped. But it also details the tactical successes and strategic failures of both sides as well as the appalling war crimes that have forever stained the ground in and around this historic city. C 2024 Prit Buttar P 2024 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC"
"Bloomsbury presents To Besiege a City by Prit Buttar, read by Leighton Pugh.
'[An] excellent account.' - Richard Overy, The Telegraph
Shortlisted for the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award 2024
A ground-breaking history of the siege of Leningrad, masterfully brought to life by a leading expert using original Russian and German source material.
Starting in September 1941, the Red Army and the civilian population of Leningrad endured a bitter 900-day siege, struggling against constant bombing, shelling, and starvation inflicted by the encircling Axis forces. The Soviets made repeated, but unsuccessful, bids to break German lines and reach the city, failing to end the siege but nevertheless defying the odds to construct and defend the ‘Road to Life’ over the frozen Lake Ladoga, across which meager supplies were transported to the embattled garrison. Although they defeated Russia’s Second Shock Army twice over, the German infantry divisions were also steadily eroded, their resources and morale depleted under the pressure of near-constant assaults and battles.
With To Besiege a City, Eastern Front historian Prit Buttar interweaves first-hand accounts with revelatory research to deliver the first major history of the siege of Leningrad in over a decade, expertly analyzing strategic failings on both sides while simultaneously detailing the horrific realities of daily life during a merciless war."
"Centuries Will Not Suffice explores how different people responded to the Lithuanian Holocaust and the roles that they played. It considers the past history of the perpetrators and those who took great risks to save Jews, as well as describing the experiences of many who were caught up in the maelstrom.
Unlike the figures at the top of the Nazi hierarchy, the men who were responsible for these killings have been largely forgotten. Karl Jäger was a senior SS figure who was in charge of the units that carried out most of them. He complained that his experiences caused him to suffer nightmares but continued to order his units to carry on and regarded it as his duty to remain in his post. He took refuge in compiling detailed reports of the killings, listing the numbers executed and breaking them down into men, women and children. The roles played by other figures are all described.
Before the German invasion of Lithuania, two diplomats recognized the danger that lay ahead for the Jews of the Baltic region and did what they could to help them escape. Karl Plagge, a major in the army, did all he could to save Jews. What perhaps make the terrible story of the Baltic genocide unique is that the Nazi regime was able to rely upon collaboration by convincing the populace that the Soviet invasion of the area was the responsibility of the Jews."
"Bloomsbury presents Meat Grinder by Prit Buttar, read by Nathan Osgood.
An engrossing history of the desperate battles for the Rzhev Salient, a forgotten story brought to life by the harrowing memoirs of German and Russian soldiers.
The fighting between the German and Russian armies in the Rzhev Salient during World War II was so grisly, so murderous, and saw such vast losses that the troops called the campaign 'The Meat Grinder'. Though millions of men would fight and die there, the Rzhev Salient does not have the name recognition of Leningrad or Moscow. It has been largely ignored by Western historians – until now.
In this book, Prit Buttar, a leading expert on the Eastern Front, reveals the depth and depravity of the bitter fighting. He details how the region held the promise of a renewed drive on Moscow for the German Army – a chance to turn the tide of war. Using German and Russian first-hand accounts, Buttar examines the major offensives launched by the Red Army against the salient, all of which were defeated with losses exceeding two million killed, wounded or missing, until eventually, the Germans were forced to evacuate the salient in March 1943.
Drawing on the latest research, Meat Grinder provides a study of these horrific battles but also examines how the Red Army did learn from its colossal failures and how its timely analysis of these failures helped pave the way for the eventual Soviet victory against Army Group Centre in the summer of 1944, leaving the road to Berlin clear. C 2023 Prit Buttar P 2023 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC"
"Bloomsbury presents The Reckoning by Prit Buttar, read by Richard Trinder.
'The Reckoning is vivid history, the tragic Eastern Front brought to life through the widest range of Russian and German sources I've ever read. Bravo.' – Peter Caddick-Adams, author and broadcaster
From critically acclaimed Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar, The Reckoning is a masterful re-evaluation of the fateful year of 1944, and how the Red Army irrevocably turned the tide of war until the final defeat within the heart of Germany itself was guaranteed.
The fighting throughout the Ukraine and Romania was brutal, with the German defence dogged and desperate. But for too long the Wehrmacht had relied on the superior combat prowess of its fighting men. What had not been taken into account, however, was that the Red Army would not only rely on its sheer size, but would fine-tune its fighting performance from its senior commanders right down to the individual soldier battling both fear and the elements to take each line, each trench, each inch of land.
Ultimately it is a story not of how the Germans lost, as is all too often told, but of how the Russians increasingly learned how to win. C 2020 Prit Buttar P 2020 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC"
"From critically acclaimed Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar comes this detailed and engrossing account of the war on the Eastern Front as the German forces were driven back following the Battle of Kursk.
Making use of the extensive memoirs of German and Russian soldiers to bring their story to life, the narrative follows on from On A Knife's Edge, which described the encirclement and destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad and the offensives and counter-offensives that followed throughout the winter of 1942–43. Beginning towards the end of the Battle of Kursk, Retribution explores the massive Soviet offensive that followed the end of Operation Zitadelle, which saw depleted and desperate German troops forced out of Western Ukraine. In this title, Buttar describes in detail the little-known series of near-constant battles that saw a weakened German army confronted by a tactically sophisticated force of over six million Soviet troops. As a result, the Wehrmacht was driven back to the Dnepr and German forces remaining in the Kuban Peninsula south of Rostov were forced back into the Crimea, a retreat which would become one of many in the months that followed."
"The battle of Stalingrad was the turning point of World War II. The German capture of the city, their encirclement by Soviet forces shortly afterwards, and the hard-fought but futile attempts to relieve them, saw bitter attritional fighting and extremes of human misery inflicted on both sides.
The surrender of General Friedrich von Paulus's army left Germany's eastern armies severely weakened, but the Red Army had suffered enormous losses as it overreached itself in trying to exploit its great victory. The war was not over. Germany would continue the fight, and the battles that took place in the winter of 1942/43 would show the tactical and operational skill of Erich von Manstein and the Wehrmacht as they attempted to avert total disaster.
In this title, a renowned expert on warfare on the Eastern Front reveals the often-overlooked German counteroffensive post-Stalingrad, and how it prevented the whole Axis front line from collapsing.
Drawing on firsthand accounts, On a Knife's Edge is a story of brilliant generalship, lost opportunities, and survival in the harshest theater of war."
"During World War II, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia found themselves trapped between the giants of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Over the course of the war these states were repeatedly occupied by different forces, and local government organizations and individuals were forced to choose between supporting the occupying forces or forming partisan units to resist their occupation. Devastated during the German invasion, these states then became the site of some of the most vicious fighting during the Soviet counterattack and push towards Berlin. Many would be caught up in the bitter fighting in the region and, in particular, in the huge battles for the Courland Bridgehead during Operation Bagration, when hundreds of thousands of soldiers would fight and die in the last year of the war. By the end of the war, death and deportation had cost the Baltic States over twenty percent of their total population and Soviet occupation was to see the iron curtain descend on the region for four decades. Using numerous firsthand accounts and detailed archival research, Prit Buttar weaves a magisterial account of the bitter fighting on the Eastern Front and the three small states whose fates were determined by the fortunes and misfortunes of war."
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