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INCREDIBLE HEERESGRUPPE B NAZI STAFF PHOTO BOOK
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STAFF OFFICER’S
SPECIAL REMEMBRANCE
PHOTO BOOK
WEHRMACHT
HEERESGRUPPE B
22 AUGUST 1939
THROUGH JULY 1941
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| This privately published book (not a commercial book) is one of a very small quantity printed and bound for “Current and Former Staff Officers of Wehrmacht Army Group B” during the early days of World War II. The book has no title page, no page numbers, no publication data and no publication date. It consists only of photos, photo captions, maps and a dedication by Heeresgruppe B’s famous second Commander, Generalfeldmarschall Günther Hans von Kluge. |
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The big 8-1/2 x 12-3/4 inch, 290 page, very, very heavily illustrated hardcover book is bound in brown linen with a Heeresgruppe B commander’s flag embossed on the front cover. The pages are heavy cream colored art paper and all the photographs are printed as sepia duotones. The photos as full-page, half-page, and in some cases four or five to a page. |
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Von Kluge’s dedication on the front page of the book translates as follows:
“This album is a memorial of the great and difficult times of battle and victory for all current and former staff members of the Army Group - and at the same time it must serve as an inspiration for further successful work on behalf of our brave troops.” |
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This book is easily the finest photographic record of the Von Bock / Von Kluge Heeresgruppe. From the start of their campaign in Berlin on 22 August 1939, the photos follow Army Group B via Danzig and Allenstein to Warsaw in the battle for Poland. In October 1939 the unit redeployed to Bad Godesburg on the Rhein in preparation for the assault through Belgium into France in May 1940.
After a month’s rest at Versailles, the Army group spent two months in Angers, France before transferring via Berlin and Warsaw to the eastern front, arriving at Borissow in July 1941.
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| The red arrow in this picture points to the owner of this rare book, Hauptmann Friedrich Brecht. |
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| Among the notables photographed visiting the Heeresgruppe are, Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Von Brauchitsch, Speidel, Keitel, Munos-Grande, Japanese General Oshima, Josef Stalin’s son (a POW), etc., etc. |
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| The unit’s protestant and Catholic priests are shown as well as the man who owned this book, Hauptmann Friedrich Brecht, on the staff of Engineer General-Leutnant Sachs. Most of the photos in this book have never been reprinted elsewhere. |
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The Staff Officers of Heeresgruppe B are seen at work and at leisure as they campaigned all across Europe in 1939, 1940 and 1941. Hunting, fishing, riding, dining and fighting were some of the things they did nearly every day, and they are all superbly depicted photographically in this very rare remembrance album.
It is doubtful that more than a few hundred examples were ever published. It is made far rarer by the fact that many of the recipients, and many of those pictured in this book never left the Soviet Union alive. It is a simple, unavoidable fact of life that books of this class are virtually unobtainable anymore, anywhere, at any price. |
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This incredibly rare Nazi book is **SOLD**.
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This USM Books web page is Copyright © 2005 by USM, Inc., and the text and images on it are fully protected by international copyright law. It is therefore, illegal for anyone to take any of the material found here and use it for their own purposes without our written permission, irrespective of any excuse they may feel they have for doing so. We will expose and prosecute those guilty of theft of our copyrighted material.
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