“Death Ride of the Wehrmacht:” Russia 1941

Sunday, 22 June 1941, was arguably the most significant day of the 20th century. For on that day Adolf Hitler’s armies stormed into the Soviet Union, launching a surprise attack which, despite ending in Germany’s defeat and the eradication of the Hitler’s Third Reich, changed our world forever. By virtue of any yardstick, the war between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia was the largest, and most costly, the world has ever seen, and its catastrophic effects still linger with us to this day – from the intractable conflicts in the Middle East to the more recent upheavals in Ukraine. Dr Luther’s lecture, based on his exhaustive new study, Barbarossa Unleashed, recreates the advance of the German Army Group Center along the bloody road to Moscow in the summer/fall of 1941 – an advance that pushed 1000 kilometers from eastern Poland to the very gates of Moscow, only to falter in the mud and snow outside the Soviet capital. His lecture provides a graphic and insightful account of this remarkable military campaign through the eyes of the German soldiers who experienced it.(Barbarossa Unleashed publisher’s webpage)
(interview by Claremont-McKenna college alumni magazine)

Dr Craig Luther is a retired U.S. Air Force Historian and former Fulbright Scholar (Bonn, West Germany, 1979-80). He completed his B.A. in Modern European History and Music at Claremont McKenna College (1973); his M.A. in Modern European History at SJSU (1976), and his Ph.D. at UCSB in 1987 (Modern European History). He has written several books and articles on German military operations in the Second World War. His latest book (2014) – “Barbarossa Unleashed. The German Blitzkrieg through Central Russia to the Gates of Moscow. June-December 1941” – has been well-received by reviewers and nominated by his publisher for the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History.

hm 1/29/15