|
Utilizing the personal war diary of the Panzer officer Joachim Senholdt who managed to get out of the Halbe-Pocket, but starts long before that part of the war and then tells the story until he escapes to Lübeck. At the end of the book (and the war) Axel shows a lot of photos from the crossing of the Elbe at Tangermünde.
At last I can report again on the state of affairs with the new publications: When I received the escape diary of the chief of the assault gun company in the Panther division "Brandenburg", which describes the last days on the Oder front in 1945 and the dramatic escape from the Halbe cauldron, I actually only intended to write a supplementary volume to the already published "Brandenburg" book. The focus was to be on the escape story. After I had started to work, however, the son of the officer gradually provided me with more and more material, so that suddenly a completely new picture of the tank officer Joachim Senholdt emerged for me. I had to realize that I had documents in front of me that described the deployment of a tank man from the invasion of the Sudentenland to the occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia, the invasion of Poland, the Western campaign and the battles in Russia. That there were only very few tank men who survived this long period of service on all fronts, I probably do not have to emphasize. So I had no choice not to be dissatisfied afterwards with the processing of a partial section of this soldier's life. I had to edit the entire deployment time in the book. No sooner said than done. So 170 became almost 350 pages and a book that really provides a rare insight into different periods and front lines of the war. In this respect, it is a special book, during the processing of which I also learned many new things.
The book covers a wide range of events, including the invasion of the Sudetenland, the heavy fighting at the Meuse crossing in France, the storming of the Parpach trench on the Kerch peninsula in Russia, and in 1945, being chased by Russian search parties through the forests of Brandenburg. As far as the period with the Panther Division Brandenburg is concerned, it has been completely rewritten. All new information and reports and photos were included, which were not yet available in the first book. In this respect, the book also provides a lot of new information and the latest state of research. Thus, an exciting book has been created in many respects.
|
