Radio Operator on the Eastern Front: An Illustrated Memoir, 1940-1949
Hardcover – Illustrated, April 5, 2021
Description
"Most World War II books related to radio communications are written by professional historians, journalists or scholars, but this book is written by a German-speaking citizen of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia." The Spectrum Monitor "This often subdued, but continuously hypnotic, memoir is rare since it offers so much information, knowledge, and insight about the enemy from the beginning of the war on the Eastern Front right up to Steiniger’s release from a prison camp in Russia and return to Germany in 1949." ARGunners.com Erhard Steiniger was born on 8 April 1920 in the Sudetenland. He joined his Wehrmacht unit on 12 October 1940 as a radio operator and saw action across the Eastern Front, ending the war as an Obergefreiter (lance-corporal). During the war, he was awarded the Iron Cross II Class, Wound Badge in Black, Infantry Assault Badge and Ostmedaille. In May 1945, he fell into Russian hands and spent four-and-a-half years as a prisoner in Siberia.Anthony Tucker-Jones is a former defense intelligence officer and a widely published expert on regional conflicts, counter-terrorism and armored and aerial warfare. He is the author of over thirty books, is security and terrorism correspondent for intersec – The Journal of International Security, and has freelanced for Channel 4 News.
Features & Highlights
- Covers fighting in Russia, the Baltics and East Prussia, as well as the author’s ordeal as a Prisoner of War in Siberia, accompanied by more than one hundred previously unpublished photographs.
- This is the true and dramatic testimony of a German grenadier during World War II.Erhard Steiniger joined his Wehrmacht unit on 12 October 1940 as a radio operator, a role which required his constant presence with troops at the Front, right in the midst of combat. On 22 June 1941, he accompanied his division to Lithuania where he experienced the catastrophic first day of Operation Barbarossa.He later witnessed intense clashes during the conquest of the Baltic islands and the battles leading up to Leningrad on the Volkhov and Lake Ladoga. He describes the retreat from battles in Estonia, Kurland and East Prussia and his eventual surrender and captivity in Siberia. He finally returned to Germany in October 1949, a broken man.From the first page to the last, this is a captivating eyewitness account of the horrors of war.
