Evolution of WW2 Eastern Front historiography

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panzermahn
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Evolution of WW2 Eastern Front historiography

Post by panzermahn »

Hi all,

There seems to be an evolution of the historiography of WW2 Eastern Front military history studies. Starting from the mid-2000s there seem to be several new independent historians who had published several really good studies on the military history of the Eastern Front in WW2.

1950s to 1970s
- memoirs and diaries of German veterans are the earliest genesis to the study of Eastern Front in WW2
- US Army Center for Military History organized the Foreign Military Studies series which were authored by captured German generals and officers
- books by Paul Carell, Erich Kern, Jurgen Thorwald, Franz Kurowski, Wilhelm Tieke, Werner Haupt
- divisional histories by respective German veterans association


1970s to 1980s
- the first generation of Anglo-American historians who started to study and published works on Eastern Front, Earl F. Ziemke, John Erickson, John Keegan
- German academics such as Joachim Hoffmann, Andreas Hillgruber also started to publish works on Eastern Front but mostly in German language,


1980s to 1990s
- books on Eastern Front published by David Glantz, Tony Le Tissier, RHS Stolfi, Christopher Duffy, Antony Beevor, Max Hastings, James S. Lucas, George M. Nipe Jr.,
- new generation Russian researchers who specialized in Eastern Front, Viktor Suvorov, Mark Solonin, Mikhail Meltyukhov. Most of their works are yet to be translated to English till today
- German military historians such as Rolf Hinze, Rolf-Dieter Muller continued to published works on Eastern Front


2000 to now
- new generation of independent researchers who published works on Eastern Front such as David Stahel, Richard Hargreaves, Robert Forczyk, Perry Biddiscombe, Robert M. Citino, Ben Shepherd, Robert Kirchubel,Christer Bergstrom, Jason D. Mark, Frank Ellis, Stephan Hamilton, Norbert Szamveber,Richard W. Harrison
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krichter33
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Re: Evolution of WW2 Eastern Front historiography

Post by krichter33 »

Excellent overview!!!
Klaus Richter
panzermahn
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Re: Evolution of WW2 Eastern Front historiography

Post by panzermahn »

I forgot to mentioned that there are also several outstanding European researchers that focus on the Eastern Front but most of their books had yet to be translated into English notably Bogdan Musial, Kristian Ungvary

Eastern Front studies used to be the domain of German military historians and a select few Anglo-American historians but certainly we had seen some progress on the historiography of Eastern Front since 1990 (where the fall of Soviet Union had resulted the opening of Soviet archives).

The proliferation of historical books on Eastern Front actually gained more traction after the year 2000 and several really outstanding studies on Eastern Front were published, namely;

Hell's Gate: The Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket January-February 1944 (2002) by Doug Nash
Stalin's Secret War: Soviet Counterintelligence against the Nazis, 1941-1945 (2003) by Robert W. Stephan
Bloody Streets: The Soviet Assault on Berlin, April 1945 (2008) by Stephan Hamilton
Besieged: The Epic Battle For Cholm (2011) by Jason D. Mark
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (2011) by David Stahel
Blood, Steel and Myth; The II.SS-Panzer-Korps and the Road to Prochorowka (2013) by George M. Nipe
The Stalingrad Cauldron: Inside the Encirclement and Destruction of the 6th Army (2013) by Frank Ellis
The Battle for Moscow (2015) by David Stahel
Barbarossa 1941: Reframing Hitler's Invasion of Stalin's Soviet Empire (2015) by Frank Ellis
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