A sudden curtain of silence fell over the burning city. All that could be heard was the steady crackling of flames...
Hitler's penal regiments advance on Poland. Himmler has given the order: Warsaw must be razed to the ground.
Having survived the horrors of the Eastern Front, the 27th Penal Regiment are posted to Italy. Hitler has ordered that every position must be held to the last, and every lost position recaptured by counter-attack.
I had a grenade in my hand. So, no doubt, did the English private. I tore out the pin with my teeth. Lay there and counted. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four...
They beat me,' whispers the artillery officer, 'Smashed my teeth in, sent an electric current through me. They want me to confess to something I never did.'
Danger was forgotten, death was forgotten, the war was forgotten. They only knew they had to kill... The figures in khaki were no longer soldiers, no longer men.
Blitzfreeze is a shocking insight into the realities of war, the conditions endured by ordinary soldiers, and their unwavering solidarity. It was supposed to be Hitler's glorious conquest of Russia. . . The 27th Penal Regiment has been ordered to invade the Soviet Union. They are half-starved and ill-equipped. To reach Moscow they must defeat the fearsome Red Army. But instead, they find themselves at the mercy of an even deadlier enemy: the killer cold of the Russian winter. As they advance across the icy wastes, they think only of survival.
It stood at the top of the hill, dominating the Russian landscape, menacing and impenetrable: the O.G.P.U Prison. Although they had no tanks to protect them, Porta and his fellow fighters were told to take it in any way they could—with machine guns, flamethrowers, entrenching tools, their bare hands if need be. But although they were used to war with its death and vile savagery, O.G.P.U. Prison was something different. This place was a hell they hadn’t encountered before, a bastion, an inferno that rained blood and butchery on Porta, the Legionnaire, Tiny, Barcelona and the men of the Panzer battalion.
Monte Cassino, het heilige klooster ten noordoosten van Napels. De Duitsers hebben er massieve defensiestellingen opgezet. De slag bij Monte Cassino in de winter en het voorjaar van 1944 is een onbeschrijfelijke hel, zowel voor de verdedigers als voor de aanvallers. De geallieerden zetten vliegtuigen, artillerie, pantservoertuigen en infanterie van vele naties in. De Duitse strijdmachten worden aangevoerd door de beste elitetroep. Waaronder het Pantserregiment nr. 27 – het strafregiment. Niemand verwacht overlevenden, al zouden er wel enkelen zijn.
Convicted of deserting the German army, Sven Hassel is sent to a penal regiment on the Russian Front. He and his comrades are regarded as expendable, cannon fodder in the battle against the implacable Red Army. Outnumbered and outgunned, they fight their way across the frozen steppe...
