Escape from the Halbe Pocket!
The Story of Tank Officer Joachim Senholdt
Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 8 – Panzer Regiment 204 – I./Pz.Rgt. “Brandenburg”
Authors: Axel Urbanke/Joachim Senholdt
Pages: 334
Photos: 280 photos, (36 in colour)
35 coloured maps
Format: 24 x 28,5 cm - large format
ISBN:978-3-941437-44-9
Price: 72€
In preparing this book, the team at Luftfahrtverlag-Start carefully evaluated the extensive original sources left by the tank soldier Joachim Senholdt, who was a Gefreiter (private) at the beginning of the war and experienced the end of the Third Reich as an Oberleutnant (first lieutenant) in 1945.
This authentic material was made available by Senholdt's son and is rare on account of its completeness. Within the framework of the documentation, it is possible to follow events from the invasion of the Sudetenland at the end of 1938 to the end of the war in the Halbe Pocket in April 1945 and Senholdt’s subsequent escape to the west.
It is unmistakably clear how the war became more and more brutal as it progressed, claiming more and more victims and becoming increasingly hopeless. As a reader, you will follow Joachim Senholdt as he marches into the Sudetenland, takes part in the attack on Poland, rolls across the Belgian border in the Ardennes on 10 May 1940, and as a member of a panzer regiment fights the Soviets in the desolate, flat steppe landscape of the Kerch Peninsula.
You will experience the German summer offensive in the southern sector of the Eastern Front in 1942, the Soviet breakthrough in December 1942 which led to the encirclement of Stalingrad, and the destruction of Senholdt’s division in the winter of 1942-43.
In the end, Senholdt commanded the assault gun company of I./Panzer-Regiment “Brandenburg" on the Oder Front and in the Halbe Pocket in April 1945. The story of his long escape from the pocket to the west, constantly fleeing the Soviets, his life in danger, form the last part of the book.
This book is a unique document that allows the reader to feel the events of that time first-hand in a way that only the team at Luftfahrtverlag-Start knows how to do.
This book is available from December 17th 2021 from the Product link on the Luftfahrtverlag-Start webpage