The Defence of Sevastopol, 1941–1942

Book excerpt: This vividly detailed WWII history chronicles one of the hardest-fought battles of the Crimea Campaign. In December 1941, while America was reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor and the offensives of the German Army Groups North and Center were stalled in the brutal Russian winter, the German Eleventh Army encircled the vast fortress of Sevastopol in the Crimea. The Red Army faced massive air, artillery and land attacks against their heavily defended positions in one of the most remarkable campaigns in the history of modern warfare: The Siege of Sevastopol. Drawing on his expert knowledge of the history of modern fortifications, Donnell describes the design and development of the Red Army’s formidable base at Sevastopol. He then chronicles the sequence of attacks mounted by the Wehrmacht against the city’s strongpoints. The forts and bunkers had to be taken one by one in a bitter six-month struggle with sever casualties on both sides. Using documentary records and a range of personal accounts, Clayton Donnell reconstructs the events and experience of the campaign in vivid detail.