Post
by Dutto1 » Thu Mar 04, 2010 8:30 am
Hi Stephan,
Thanks for the reply.You are right about the civilian accounts,in the back of The Last Battle Ryan lists all of the German civilians interviewed and he uses very few of them in the book.I contacted Doug McCabe just before Christmas to confirm the procedure on ordering items i shall be placing an order soon.I look forward to your two smaller books do you have a publishing date for them yet ?
I do plan to write a book,i have four projects in mind,the question being which one do i start first ? I have decided whichever project i can get the most research material for first will be the one i start.I have a fascination with the Gotterdammerung
period of the Third Reich,the total collapse of the German War machine, the desperation of the German troops and civilians the fear of the so called "Russian hordes" from the East and their attempts to flee no matter what to reach the Allied lines.One of the projects would be a book about the total collapse of Germany January to May 1945in the East and the West also encompassing the first week of peace.
Anything i write i want it to structured in a way that has a good overview of the general situation at a tactical level but also loaded with eyewitness accounts.
The second project would be about Kursk,yes lots of books have been written about this subject,i would try something different,using many new and previously unused eyewitness accounts of the fighting along with a good tactical overview.The new first hand accounts,i stumbled across last year,they were donated to a archive by the BBC in 1993 after they used part of them for a documentary on the battle.
The third project came to me by chance,early last year i obtained a Third Reich Court file from Leitmeritz in the Sudetenland.The file contained about 98 pages of documents dating from 1938-March 1945 of various requests by Officals and Judges between various other towns in the area and the Justice Ministry in Berlin.Towards the end of the file 1944-45 the file refers to "Untermehmen Richard", which after a little research i discovered was a program run by Hans Kammler who is also mention numerous times in the file.The SS were building tank engines using slave labour there from KZ Leitmeritz.Just after the war a greater much hushed up event would take place in the Sudetenland would take place during the explusion of ethnic Germans.
I will certainly have a look at Erickson s research at the Library of Scotland it could provide lots of good material thanks for the tip Stephan.
Regards
Ron