From Desert Sands to Golden Oranges: The History of the German Templer Settlement of Sarona in Palestine 1871-1947 - Taschenbuch

Destination Stalingrad is a war novel that is entirely concerned with non-English speaking people. Due primarily to this fact, detailed literary coverage in English is rather limited and for certain significant events, nonexistent. From the middle of the last century these events still loom menacingly and will not be ignored. The largest armies ever assembled on earth were involved in an unparalleled level of ferocity. As we now are well aware, it was total war! This story deals with the most dramatic five months of that epic four-year struggle. This was the period from mid-July through mid-December in the fateful year of 1942, which was known by the Nazi invaders as "Case Blau" (Code Blue). The result of this directive was a climatic battle at the river Volga in the industrial city named by and for Joseph Stalin. I probe some of the decisions made by Adolf Hitler while at his headquarters in Vinnitsa, Ukraine. Specifically, the plot analyzes the actions of a young German battalion commander who halted his successful assault while directly above the underground command post of the defending Russian General, Vassili Ivanovich Chuikov. No military historian has been able to identify the German officer that led the assault team at the Russian general's headquarters located behind the huge Red October Factory on the western slopes of the Volga River. General Chuikov has written that just such an event did take place in his The Battle for Stalingrad. With literary license I now identify the German officer as Major Walter Brennan, commander of the 2nd Infantry Battalion, 191st Infantry Regiment, 71st Infantry Division. His story is told to us primarily through his surviving battalion sergeant major, Detrich Krieger, along with the liberal use of third person omniscient narrative. Shortly after his arrival in Poltava, Ukraine, in July 1942, Walter met and became enchanted by a beautiful Eurasian woman named Sonya Morozov who was living with her grandfather in Poltava.