Having just read and reviewed an excellent account of the operation that finally put paid to Hitler’s ambition on the eastern front - Operation Bagration - this account of the opening of Hitler’s plans for securing Lebensraum in the east is particularly timely. The symmetry of the horrors visited upon the invaded in Operation Barbarossa and, later in Operation Bagration, on the invaders is brought into stark relief. Given the current situation in Eastern Europe (2025) the two operations do much to explain the deep and irreconcilable feelings held by the inhabitants of these lands that have been fought over so many times.

The author tends to focus upon the narrative accounts that have survived, so that small scale operations feature - possibly at the expense of a more strategic overview. However, there is no shortage of broad brush strategic accounts that highlight the encirclements of vast numbers of Soviet troops and thrusts into the Russian interior by this or that Panzer army. This account fills the gaps that can only come from examining just what these advances and battles meant to soldiers and airmen on both sides and, most especially, on the inhabitants of these conquered lands.

The author spares no details of what Hitler’s orders meant for Soviet citizens, particularly the Commissars charged with maintaining the adherence to Soviet political priorities, who were killed in large numbers. But what may come as a surprise to many is the fate of many Jews once Soviet troops had left or been defeated. Many Jews were killed in these hours and days following the departure of the Soviet forces, not by German soldiers but by fellow citizens in the countries concerned. The book makes clear that the German forces soon set up their own systems to oppress and to round up the Jews with fatal consequences for many but some of the more horrific actions were taken by fellow citizens in the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine and Byelorussia.

This book is not an easy read, but it provides an account that needs to be part of our collective conscience, for the penalty of failing to heed the lessons of history is to repeat the failures, as we see playing out today in Ukraine.

5! ⭐️

Publication Date: June 03, 2025 (I will be purchasing a hard copy).

This is a powerful and unflinching account of the Soviet liberation of Nazi concentration camps during the final stages of World War II. Richard Hargreaves skillfully combines numerous survivor testimonies throughout the book, Soviet military records, and postwar reflections to illuminate a chapter of history that is often overshadowed. What struck me most was the raw, often chaotic nature of these encounters, liberation specifically wasn’t always clean or triumphant (as I am well aware of from studying the Holocaust and other genocides), and Hargreaves doesn’t shy away from that complexity of what liberation entails. Deeply thought provoking and inspiring.

It’s a difficult but necessary read, especially for anyone interested in Holocaust history, military history, or the moral and ethical challenges of witnessing and responding to atrocity worldwide.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for providing an advance reader copy.

In hardcover, <A HREF="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DKSFGCY8/?tag=annals">Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941<p> is aa exhausting 496 pages but covers only a very few weeks. Starting at the "Curzon Line" in eastern Poland, where Hitle and Stalin began dividing Europe between them in September 1939, three million <I>Landser</I> of the German Army marched twenty miles a day through what is now western Ukraine and Belarus. (The panzers and motorized troops could double that distance, but in the long run had to match the pace of the poor suffering infantry.) Their feet blistered and bled and their faces and bodies turned gray with dust. Death marched with them: even when they were spared outright battles, there were always pockets of left-behind Red Army troops to snipe at them. The Citadel of Brest -- from a Lithuanian castle, it became a Russian fortress under Tsar Nikolas I in the 1830s, site of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty when the Bolsheviks surrendered to Germany in 1918, part of the Polish Republic in 1920, captured by the Germans in 1939 but transferred to the Soviet Union by the terms of the Hitle-Stalin agreement -- wasn't completely pacified until July 23, by which time the front had moved hundreds of miles to the east. But not to Russia! The book ends with the <I>Landser</I> still slogging through Belarus and Ukraine.

<p>"Nothing could have prepared us for the mental depressions brought on by the realizaton of the utter physical vastness of Russia," wrote Siefried Knappe of the 87th Infantry Division. "As we marched, low hills would emerge from the horizon ahead of us and then slowly sink back into the horizon behind us." In fact, the young lieutenant would have to tramp another 200 miles before reaching the Russian border.

<p>Mr Hargreaves doesn't spare us the atrocities, either. "In the summer of 1941, few fighting units could compete with the <I>Wiking</I> Division when it came to arbitrary brutality. The SS troops [included] - ethnic Germans, Finns, Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, Dutch and Belgians.... 'Woe betide the Russian who fell into our hands,' one Dutchman wrote.... 'From the beginning we knew almost no compassion for prisoners....'" (Strictly speaking, the SS weren't part of the German army, but had their own chain of command leading back to Heinrich Himmler.) And then there were the Jews -- everyone's favorite victim. Lvov, as Mr Hargreaves calls the city that the Austrians knew as Lemberg, the Poles as Lwow, and today's Ukrainians as Lviv, was captured by the 1st Gebirgs (Mountain) Division on June 30. They found a massacre already in place: before fleeing, the "bluecaps" of the NKVD had murdered the population of the city's prisons. Local Jews got the job of retrieving the bloated bodies and burying them. Then the pogrom began, perpetrated mostly by the residents who by this time were mostly Ukrainians. "Somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 Jews died in the streets and prison courtyards of Lvov this day," writes Mr Hargreaves, and the murders continued over several deays and spread as well to nearby towns.

Here's my video review of this book, and YouTube transcript

https://youtu.be/Smb-rNDNLGk


welcome to this review of a new book on
0:03
pre-order opening the gates of hell
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Operation Barbarossa June July 1941 by
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Richard Hargreaves it aims to take you
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through the rapid military victories
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well/defeats obviously it also aims to
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take you into some of the early
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atrocities both officially sanctioned by
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the Nazi regime in you know everything
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that you'd expect from Nazis but also
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the spontaneous ones that just bubbled
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up it focuses on just the opening
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fortnite which I think it's genius uh
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and it wants to take you into this sense
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of unparalleled bloodletting now Harg
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Greavves is a journalist by trade not an
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academic so he's not aiming to prove
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some sort of palemic point instead he
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wants to take you on a journey and he's
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pretty wellqualified he's written a
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couple of other books and he's a former
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war correspondent himself so he does
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know this ground pretty well and he kind
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of transports himself back into the
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summer of 1941
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it's about the length and breadth of
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Barbarasa you know from the Baltic to
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the Black Sea kind of thing and from the
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front line to the rear line on both
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sides it really takes that moment
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between the Germans invading and Stalin
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responding because for the first 13 days
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Stalin didn't say anything he went
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silent he went paralyzed and what
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happened in that profoundly
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shocking
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Fortnite is pretty much the motif of
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everything that happened over the
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thousands and thousands of miles of
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frontline north and south and indeed you
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know all the way from the caucuses to
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Berlin over years and years and years so
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you can't possibly cover all of the
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enormity of the east front or the west
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front if you're you know Soviet but you
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can just capture that couple of weeks so
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he aims to give us like a strategic
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picture absolutely we zoom up into the
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German and Soviet high command but also
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bring us back down what was it like to
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try and take the fortress of Breast what
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was it like to surge through Lithuania
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or to do some hard fighting in the
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Ukraine he takes us around the plans and
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the schemes and the various plotting
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that occurred and he's very particular
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to give us both an axis and a Soviet
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point of view he's clearly a man who
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speaks multiple languages and he uses
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that greatly to his advantage so it's
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both a military account primarily a
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military account I guess but also the
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civilians aren't just bystanders they're
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not just you know not mentioned at all
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what happened to them is absolutely part
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of the picture i uh I think he takes
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this quote from Robert E lee to heart so
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he's taking us into the very gates of
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hell as his title uh implies i think
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that's a great thing you know for many
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of us military history buffs this is
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ground that we've crisscrossed many
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times before and you know these grainy
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old black and white pictures literally
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lack color so these poor hapless unarmed
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innocent women outside the ninth fort in
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in countness i think Har Greaves works
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hard to bring back the color and the
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humanity into these kinds of terrible
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events he's done his research he knows
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his onions 22 pages of bibliography i
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always think it's important to check out
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the bibliography cuz I want to know how
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he knows what he's telling me and you
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can see here there are lots of pretty
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contemporary scholarship lots of
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accounts of classic military accounts so
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you know here's good old John Ericson
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from the mid80s to inevitably of course
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David Glance doing his stuff but
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accounts of civilian atrocities all the
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way through i think it's a really
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impressive marshalling of personal
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papers and diaries and he's you know
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combed through the archives and unit
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histories he's gone to the contemporary
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newspapers of the time i uh I salute the
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depth and breadth and the multi-
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languageness of the work he's put into
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doing this i like to think about not so
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much strengths and weaknesses but what
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he's focused on and what he hasn't
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focused on because you can't do
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everything in a book so yeah he's
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focused on 13 days just 13 days and it's
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still quite long that's a lot of focus
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but it's all the better for that the
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broad scope of the front line but also
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what was happening behind the front line
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this does give you what's known in
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literature as point of view zooming so
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one moment you're with Marshall Zukov
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back in Moscow the next you're with uh
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the general officer commanding the 11th
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arm the German 11th army in Romania and
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then you're with this poor corporal who
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on day one earns an iron cross for his
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uh bravery in crossing the river Boog
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and on day two didn't go so well for him
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um as it didn't go so well for thousands
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and thousands and thousands of people so
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he puts you in the action as it unfolds
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uh this does give you or gave me a kind
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of like a river like a flow of events
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steaming through as they unfolded which
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could be a bit ungrounded uh if uh if
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you didn't have a bigger picture uh of
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what's going on but almost like the
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divide between a novel and a history not
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that he's made any of this stuff up um I
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particularly enjoyed the stories of
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people that I'd never really thought of
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before
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um so it's not a kind of arrows on map
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kind of book i mean heaven knows I love
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a few arrows on maps and I have plenty
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of them but I don't have books with this
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kind of storytelling going on it also
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gave I think a really clear idea of why
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these men would fight why for the
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fatherland or for mother Russia what was
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going on psychologically that you know
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made picking up your rifle into a good
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idea and because of that the soldiers
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became real men in their letters and
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their diaries it's very much focused on
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an uninterrupted storytelling for me I
7:00
found the chapters really long but I
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mean that's just me perhaps you are fine
7:04
with that favorite bits well the sense
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of German
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overconfidence comes through so strongly
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and how that hits the fan of Soviet
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resistance so quickly within the first
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fortnight on the Soviet side the sense
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of shock and confusion the the startle
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reaction stalin silence is a kind of
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reflection of that startle not knowing
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what to do the joy of people liberated
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you have to remember Lithuanians Poles
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and Bear Russians Ukrainians Romanians
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they'd all very very recently come under
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Soviet occupation and here they were
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being
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liberated obviously the goodwill that
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came with that was squandered super
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quickly by the Germans being you know
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the master race and you get real close
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to the tragic events happening to real
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people uh as I say it's not just arrows
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on
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maps for me what I wanted was and always
8:13
want is a blend of viewpoints not just
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the Germans it's not that it's the
8:16
German's fault that Russian
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historioggraphy is so poor and Har
8:21
Greaves definitely delivered on that i
8:23
wanted new research and again big big
8:26
tick and new ways of seeing a campaign
8:29
that's very familiar to me so yes and an
8:32
unexpected bonus I think it was how
8:34
dramatic but also how straightforward
8:36
the storytelling was so for me this is a
8:39
big big yes you know if you are a World
8:41
War II particularly if you're an Eastern
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Front kind of a person if you like your
8:45
military history to come with color uh
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and stories and humanity then this this
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is a great addition to your library
8:56
thanks for watching and I'll see you
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next

"Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June-July, 1941," by Richard Hargreaves, to be published by Osprey Publishing, is the latest edition in the ever expanding body of new scholarship on Operation Barbarossa and the Eastern Front during World War II. It does not add a great deal of either significant analysis or new information on this phase of the war for those already familiar with the formidable scholarship available, but it does a very good job of examining the primary sources and building a narrative around them designed to encapsulate the whole body of information about the crucial events surrounding the opening of the Eastern Front. This work, built around a six chapter structure focusing on the initial attack and the circumstances, military, political and economic surrounding it, sets the scene for the colossal battles and the general Soviet rout in the early months of the war. At the same time, events occurring in those early days, especially the German (Nazi) failure to capitalize on the disenchantment felt by many of the Soviet citizens who had been languishing under Soviet rule would have a dramatic effect that can hardly be underestimated in the eventual defeat of the Wehrmacht. The Germans and the Soviets were both committed to making this into an ideological fight to the death although the Soviets were far more pragmatic than the Nazis. The narrative encompassing all of this can be challenging to those who are new to the subject, but it is precisely they who will be most rewarded by taking this journey. The book includes notes, a bibliography and a very useful Epilogue tying the early features of the struggle to its eventual outcome, and its core shows the context of German war planning by focusing on the German objectives (Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev) of the early German attacks. I was working from an ARC provided by the publisher for my perusal ,and I am most grateful for the opportunity. The book is suitable for both scholarly collections and for individuals interested in the topic and trying to understand the world around us that was made on those distant battlefields.

This book is a raw account of the opening months of Operation Barbarossa full of the most horrific eye-witness accounts of the savagery of man not only on man but on women and children. This is not only about Russia but the Soviet states such as Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Bylorussia etc where hundreds of thousands of non-combatants (particularly Jews) were first slain by the Soviets themselves and then upon their withdrawal, by the invading Germans. The extremely graphic horrors make this a far from easy read but it is a MUST read to remind us that we should never forget.
The depth and breadth of research by the author is in itself breathtaking and is much to be admired.
Highly recommended.
My thanks to NetGalley, the author and publishers for this arc in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

Publication date: June 3, 2025

OPENING THE GATES OF HELL: OPERATION BARBAROSSA, JUNE-JULY 1941 by Richard Hargreaves is a riveting account of the first days of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The significance of the invasion can't be overestimated: the minute the Wehrmacht stepped over the new Soviet border, it sealed its doom. For ordinary Russians, the beginning of the Great Patriotic War came as a surprise. Firstly, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact provided fragile hope of peace - and trains with raw materials headed west till the last minute. Secondly, the Soviet propaganda machine convinced the population as well as Soviet leaders, including Stalin, that the Red Army was invincible, its armor the best in the world, its Red Air Force equipped with the latest planes. The Red Army trained its soldiers for offensive rather than defensive war. Despite the reports about the mounting number of German divisions on the western border, few leaders of border districts alerted their subordinates. Decisions to put men on alert came from local garrison commanders who sensed war in the air.

OPENING THE GATES OF HELL tells history through the eyes of its witnesses on the ground. Not much is said about Hitler and Stalin, though some inside accounts tell us about their actions in the first weeks. Hitler tired his subordinates out with long speeches about Jews, the origins of mankind, and the Soviet Union; Stalin waited to be dismissed by his closest entourage. It was Molotov who told the Soviet citizens about the start of the war.

Ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers fuelled by Nazi propaganda viewed the invasion as a holy war and restoration of the just order, distorted for a while by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Junior officer Walter Melchinger writes to his wife (quote may be subject to changes upon the release): "Don't believe that war makes someone brutal and insensitive. There will always be good and evil. We are grateful that we are fighting for good to eliminate the bad. The new era marches with us." The overall topic of this letter was atrocities committed by Ukrainians toward Jews.

Even if one struggles to embrace the invasion's whole picture out of hundreds of individual accounts, the depiction of atrocities in Ukraine makes OPERATION BARBAROSSA worth reading. The retreating NKVD executed prisoners, 'counter-revolutionary elements,' many of whom were women and children, in an inhumane manner. Richard Hargreaves describes awful scenes in re-conquered towns in precise detail. One has to have stamina - and some lack of imagination - to read about tortures inflicted on prisoners. There was indeed an order to get rid of suspicious elements, yet, nobody forced the NKVD personnel to rape, mutilate, immure in cells, or crucify. They did it on their own volition, and the book offers no examples of remonstrations amidst the ranks. After the Soviet police and army left, the locals started to look for their loved ones - and also found scapegoats. Jews were the ever-present target. In their turn, they were humiliated, put to work long hours, mutilated, tortured, raped, and beaten to death with clubs and iron bars. Germans didn't stop the locals until they thought the order should have been restored. Germans killed Jews in an organized manner in the nearby forests.

Hate and death were two deities who wanted the blood to flow day in and day out.

OPENING THE GATES OF HELL is a meticulous, rich-in-detail description. It's not a popular history but comprehensive scholarly research, so the general audience may find it a tad difficult to get through. Still, history buffs will be delighted (if that word could be used about such horrendous events) to read it.

I received an advance review copy through Netgalley, and I'm leaving this review voluntarily.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for this review.

When it comes to colossal military campaigns, none in history can compare to the size of Operation Barbarossa, the German (and its Axis partners) invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II. Nearly 10 million combatants participated in this massive undertaking as both sides slugged it out across a battlefront nearly 1800 miles (2900 KM) long. It's a campaign which is known for more than just its size: bravery, sacrifice, terror, murder and horrible savagery were common threads in all areas and on all sides.

Author Hargreaves has written an excellent book on the opening month of the campaign with extensive amounts of recollections by those involved: soldiers, airmen, tankers, politicians and civilians all have their voices heard in this book. What started as a very promising campaign for the Germans ended up turning into a horrible nightmare, signs of which were evident during this opening month. Many German soldiers went into the campaign with lofty expectations of being in Moscow in just a few months, especially after scoring huge advances in the early part of the fighting. However, determined resistance by Soviet forces soon caused many to reassess their earlier feelings of optimism.

For the residents of the countries bordering on Axis territory, life was about to take a very savage turn. While some residents of the Ukraine, Byelorussia (Belarus) and the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were happy to see German soldiers force out the Soviets, there were many who would have their lives destroyed. These areas were home to many of the Jewish faith and when the Germans moved in they quickly became hunted enemies, and not just of the Germans. Civilians in some areas quickly turned on their Jewish neighbors and helped to unleash a gruesome campaign of murder and butchery across all the territories now under German control.

Since this book contains so much personal narrative, it contains quite a bit of VERY graphic depictions of combat, murder, torture and savagery as both sides engaged in a campaign of brutality which would continue for several more years...with millions of civilians caught in between.

I highly recommend this book if you're interested in the opening month of Operation Barbarossa and how it was viewed by many of those who were there.

Richard Hargreaves is not new to the Second World War or the Eastern Front as this is his fourth monograph on this period of history. As someone with an intimate understanding of this particular period of the Second World War and the Easter Front - specifically, Operation Barbarossa and the war's initial period - I did not think there would be much value to another text covering territory that numerous other historians, journalists, and hobbyists have already published many volumes on. Yet, I stand corrected.

The biggest value to 'Opening the Gates of Hell' is the vast amount of eye-witness accounts the author has unearthed. From German, Soviet, and Romanian soldiers, officers, and commanding generals to Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian men, women, and children, the reader is offered a montage of experiences from the unfolding invasion. An essential aspect that often gets lost in operational histories or those devoted to the Holocaust by Bullets or the Holocaust in general is the significant level of interconnectedness between the unfolding massacres of civilians and the German advance during the first few days and weeks of Operation Barbarossa, which often military personnel either witnessed, encouraged, or directly participated in themselves.

Readers should be warned that this is not an easy read. It is easily one of the most difficult, raw, and emotionally draining texts written about Operation Barbarossa and the title of this book accurately reflects the events that readers will be exposed to. Hargreaves follows all three army groups and traces their advances, clashes with Red Army forces, and their experiences in unearthing atrocities perpetrated by the NKVD as they massacred prisoners who either could not be evacuated or were simply slated for execution, and the ensuing retribution by locals against Jews as the face of the 'Judeo-Bolshevik' regime.

German and Red Army actions are described in minute detail at times and frontline accounts help give color to the chaotic conditions Red Army forces experiences on the ground and in the air as the Germans enjoyed initial surprise and numerical advantage against peacetime forces who were more often than not scrambling to figure out what they needed to do and then further scrambled to gather up the forces to make a worthwhile stand or counteroffensive on the ground while in the air desperate attacks by bombers without fighter escort resulted in ever-increasing German kill counts.

The one weakness that I would point out is some additional information could have been provided about the operational experiences of these three army groups as often the attention is more so on the tactical and immediate actions on the ground taking place in a wide variety of places along a rather long frontline. But there are other volumes that could provide that information; the value of this volume rests in its readability and the wealth of primary source eye-witness accounts the author was able to unearth and bring together into a coherent narrative. This is a highly recommended work for those interested in the Second World War and, more specifically, Operation Barbarossa.

Almost a minute by minute account of the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia - Hargreaves vividly evokes the confusion, mismanagement and speed of events as the bewilded Soviet forces are over run, while Stalin refuses to accept the reports from his frontline commanders.
Covering an enormous geographical distance, the depth of research is astounding.
This should become a required text for those interested both in the past and the future of conflicts between east and west.
Highly recommended.