For the present book, the extensive original material of the tank soldier Joachim Senholdt, who was a private at the beginning of the war and experienced the end of the Third Reich as a first lieutenant in 1945, was evaluated. The authentic material was provided by the son and has rarity value due to its completeness. For that reason it is possible to draw a line from the invasion of the Sudetenland at the end of 1938 to the end of the war in the Halbe cauldron in April 1945 and the subsequent flight to the west. It becomes unmistakably clear how the war became more and more brutalized as the duration progressed, costing more and more victims and becoming more and more hopeless.
As a reader, one follows Joachim Senholdt as he invades the Sudetenland, takes part in the attack on Poland, rolls across the Belgian border in the Ardennes on 10 May 1940 and fights against the Soviets with Senholdt's tank regiment in the desolate, flat steppe landscape of the Kerch peninsula.
One experiences the summer offensive of 1942 in the southern section of the Eastern Front, the breakthrough of the Soviet front in December 1942, which leads to the encirclement of Stalingrad, and the destruction of Senholdt's division in the winter of 1942/43.
In the end, Senholdt fought as head of the Sturmgeschütz Company of the I./Panzer-Regiment "Brandenburg" in April 1945 on the Oder front and in the cauldron of Halbe. His weeks-long escape from the cauldron to the West, continuously persecuted by the Soviets and constantly in mortal danger, represents the last part of the book. 280 photos, many of them unknown, as well as 35 colored cards support the text.

Author(s): Axel Urbanke/Joachim Senholdt
Publisher: Luftfahrtverlag Start
Pages: ca 344
Language: ENGLISH/GERMAN
Edition: 1
Year of publication: 2022
Dimensions:24 x 28,5 cm
Binding: Hardcover
Weight: 2.10 kg