War Department General Staff

German Winter Warfare (Special Series, No. 18) War Department General Staff

Issued by the Military Intelligence Division, United States War Department. From the introduction: "This work is substantially a translation of an enemy document which has been edited in the style and format of War Department publications and rearranged in order to present the material in a more logical order than in the original text. All of the illustrations, which were rough sketches in the original, have been redrawn, and have been improved as much as possible. The handbook was based on the experiences of the German Army during the first two winters of the war in Russia. Essentially it tells a story of efforts to solve two vital problems of winter warfare: mobility and shelter. The handbook was published by the German High Command on 5 August 1942, apparently in a great hurry, in order to help the German forces to prepare for a third rigorous winter on the invaded territory of a formidable foe. The material, evidently collected from the various branches of the German Armed Forces, was put together badly and in some places was almost unintelligible. A considerable portion of the material was in the form of appendices under headings that duplicated section captions in the main text. These appendices have been merged into their logical places. Some material which had no special application to winter warfare was eliminated." Includes 92 illustrations. Please note these are copies of important historical documents that have been extensively cleaned up by the publisher. While every effort has been made to make these books accessible they sometimes reflect the nature of the age of the originals including the typefaces, print quality and occassional marginalia. These are not poor quality OCR documents with missing pages or tracts illegible text.