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Editorial Review Product Description
This is the remarkable story of a German soldier who fought throughout World War II, rising from conscript private to captain of a heavy weapons company on the Eastern Front.William Lubbeck, age 19, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August 1939. As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire during the 1940 invasion of France. The following spring his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in Operation Barbarossa. After grueling marches admidst countless Russian bodies, burnt-out vehicles, and a great number of cheering Baltic civilians, Lubbeck's unit entered the outskirts of Leningrad, making the deepest penetration of any German formation. The Germans suffered brutal hardships the following winter as they fought both Russian counterattacks and the brutal cold. The 58th Division was thrown back and forth across the front of Army Group North, from Novgorod to Demyansk, at one point fighting back Russian attacks on the ice of Lake Ilmen. Returning to the outskirts of Leningrad, the 58th was placed in support of the Spanish "Blue" Division. Relations between the allied formations soured at one point when the Spaniards used a Russian bath house for target practice, not realizing that Germans were relaxing inside. A soldier who preferred to be close to the action, Lubbeck served as forward observer for his company, dueling with Russian snipers, partisans and full-scale assaults alike. His worries were not confined to his own safety, however, as news arrived of disasters in Germany, including the destruction of Hamburg where his girlfriend served as an Army nurse. In September 1943, Lubbeck earned the Iron Cross First Class and was assigned to officers' training school in Dresden. By the time he returned to Russia, Army Group North was in full-scale retreat. Now commanding his former heavy weapons company, Lubbeck alternated sharp counterattacks with inexorable withdrawal, from Riga to Memel on the Baltic. In April 1945 Lubbeck's company became stalled in a traffic jam and was nearly obliterated by a Russian barrage followed by air attacks. In the last chaotic scramble from East Prussia, Lubbeck was able to evacuate on a newly minted German destroyer. He recounts how the ship arrived in the British zone off Denmark with all guns blazing against pursuing Russians. The following morning, May 8, 1945, he learned that the war was over.After his release from British captivity, Lubbeck married his sweetheart, Anneliese, and in 1949 immigrated to the United States where he raised a successful family. With the assistance of David B. Hurt, he has drawn on his wartime notes and letters, Soldatbuch, regimental history and personal memories to recount his four years of frontline experience. Containing rare firsthand accounts of both triumph and disaster, At Leningrad's Gates provides a fascinating glimpse into the reality of combat on the Eastern Front. REVIEWS "...a well-wrought ground level view of daily life in hell."WWII Magazine No 3, 06/2007"... compiled with attention to details. The reader will feel as though he is alongside Lubbeck as he calls fire missions on the enemy during his three years of service."Military Trader 11/2007 ... Read more Customer Reviews (26) 
All is well that ends well but maybe pretty hard to go through
At Lenningrad's Gates by William Lubbeck and David Hurt is a 2006 addition to the large number of books available on World War II . Copyright some 60 years after the events William has had time to reflect on what was important along the way.The book is an account of this man's life other than just about the exploits of a German soldier on the Eastern Front.It really is a love story against the tumultuous backdrop of living in Germany from the 1920s on; the depression , political turmoil, war, defeat and the aftermath.William spends quite a bit of time, about the first20% of the book, telling of his upbringing on a farm in Germany. As a somewhat idealistic bullet proof young lad he actually volunteers for service in the Army but on reflection in writing the book much later says, "If we had been older and wiser, our fears about the future would have been far greater".
His time in the Army sees him in the invasion of France and then off to Army Group North in the 58th Infantry Division making its way to Lenningrad, ending up in a siege that doesn't quite work out due to political interference.He has several very narrow escapes and states that God obviously had other plans for him other than ending up dead in Russia. The account of his time on the Russian Front is very interesting and very well written. He ends up as a commissioned officer (Leutnant) in the same unit he was in as a Corporal (Unteroffizier).The whole reading is dramatic and the account of the collapse in 1944 is quite thrilling.
The book spends probably some 15% on the aftermath, internment, the difficulties of living in Germany after the war, his eventual move to Canada and then to the USA. Interesting to me because my father born in 1930 on a farm in Germany, some ten years after William, did not end up in the Army, being too young but as a young man living through the devastation in Germany after the war, took a boat to Australia in 1952, probably for very similar reasons that William went to America.
William gives an account of his family's integration into the United States of America and his acceptance by the people there. In later years his wife becomes seriously ill and although he had attended a Lutheran church on a regular basis throughout his life, having been bought up that way, he actually finds God at this time. So all those narrow escapes in his earlier life as a young man do seem to be God's providence for him and, it would seem, for a more glorious future than William the young German soldier/officer could have ever dreamed.
Unique insights on the Leningrad Front
From the German perspective, Leningrad has been the least covered sector of the Russian Front. Of course for the Russians, it is quite the opposite --- the defense of Leningrad ranks in first order of the epic battles that won them the war.
AT LENINGRAD'S GATES is only the second first-hand account I have read from a German soldier who spent most of the war on this front. William Lubbeck manages to add some insights into this front, and into the minds of the German people before, during, and after the war, that I did know of before.
First, Lubbeck adds some color to the background of the war. We have learned from history that the Germans were angered by the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. Lubbeck explains from a personal point of view the humiliation and shame that the Germans felt in the interwar years. He describes how their anger made them receptive to Adolph Hitler's ambition to restore German prestige, even though many, including Lubeeck and his family, absolutely detested Hitler on a personal level.
Then there is the campaign of Germany's Army Group North that, with Lubbeck's division in the spearhead, fought its way to "within 7 or 8 miles of Leningrad's city center." Lubbeck explains the exhilaration of the drive as his unit was on the verge of overrunning the city only to be ordered to retreat into siege lines by Hitler's personal command. (Hitler pulled troops out of Leningrad to bolster the flagging attack on Moscow several hundred miles to the south). Lubbeck wonders if the war might have had an entirely different outcome if the drive into Leningrad had been allowed to continue for a few more days. As it turned out the units withdrawn from Leningrad were thrown into the catastrophic defeat at Moscow, so neither city was ever taken. One can feel Lubbeck's frustration, standing in the hills of Leningrad's suburbs and seeing the city that the Germans would never take.
Lubbeck also explains that the fighting in and around Leningrad was orderly. Except for the encirclement of an army corps at Demyansk, the Germans did not experience the catastrophic events on this front that destroyed their armies fighting at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Byelorussia. Even the Demyansk encirclement was successfully lifted, causing a sense of false optimism that was to doom the much larger encirclement of an entire army at Stalingrad the following year. Lubbeck says that except for the shortages of the first winter the German army around Leningrad was well equipped with food and equipment. Its fighting retreat back to Germany remained orderly until the last month of the war when in East Prussia it was finally swept up by the disintegration that had overtaken the rest of the German army. Even then Lubbeck's unit managed a cohesive evacuation to western Germany and was able to escape capture by the Russians.
Finally, the book explains the dreadful aftermath of the war in Germany. Germany did not really begin to get back on its feet economically until 1949. Until then the country was threatened with actual starvation, even in the western zone occupied by the Americans, British, and French. Lubbeck had to make the dreadful decision to return to his family's farm in the Soviet Zone in order to smuggle food back to his family in the Western Zone. He was captured by the Soviets who had turned their zone into a police state, but was very fortunate to escape. Lubbeck says that the Germans had no love lost for the Western Allies until conditions begin to improve in the late 1940s. It would seem that the Marshall Plan by which America rebuilt Germany came none too soon.
I also enjoyed reading Lubbeck's experience after the war when he emigrated to Canada and then the United States. He became a world authority on electric furnaces for the steel industry and enjoyed a very colorful career. The story of how he matured after the war was almost as interesting as his experiences during it.
The only possible negative I would see in the book is that it is event-driven and therefore lacks the "novelesque" quality that one finds in Guy Sajer's classic FORGOTTEN SOLDIER. For example, Lubbeck tells us that he rode a train home on furlough and leaves it at that; Sajer tells us what the train smelled like, what his passengers looked like, and what he saw out the windows. However, Lubbeck's work, being briefer, is also more coherent. Bottom line is that it provides some insights into Germany before the war, during the war, and after the war that I had not encountered in other writings. For that reason it is worth the read.
Good read. No closure...
Review by a reader from former Leningrad. Although I was not even born when Germany Army invade the Soviet Union, I was raised in Leningrad and acutely aware of the much suffering and 20 million lives lost by the Soviet Union, some are my relatives. The author deserves a credit for his account of battlefield experiences that was put in the historic context. It is interesting to follow the author's life path with his eventual arrival to United States to fulfill an "American dream". However, even though the book is structured in a way to present the authors' life and views as the story unfolds, I was shocked that there was virtually NO remorse that he was part of the war machine bringing death to another country in the name of patriotism, destruction of Communism, as well as simply following orders. A few words of regret in the Epilogue that Hitler's crimes caused much suffering on all sides seemed too little, too late, and too vague. The author's notion of similar suffering endured by the civilians at the Leningrad's siege and allies' bombing of Hamburg is unfortunate. Any loss of life is incomparable. As far as the personal account presented in this book, there is a lack of closure and feeling of injustice (I much agree with the prior review by R.A Forczyk). The book left me with mixed feelings. An incredible insight into the history. I was also astonished the pride of serving in the Wermacht Army is still there.
Where's the combat? Not here.
If you are looking for a detailed account of frontline conditions and actual combat actions on the Eastern Front in WWII, this is NOT the book for you. The very few actual descriptions of combat are terse and laconic, widely spaced out between boring accounts of strategic army movements and the author's attempts to maintain his love life away from the front. There are some interesting tidbits about home life in Germany during the war and attitudes towards the Nazis, but most of the focus seems to be on Lubbeck's interest in various women. Details of daily living conditions, comrades, tactics, or enemy encounters are largely absent. I have no doubt that the author saw combat, but he seems unable or unwilling to describe any of the real thoughts, feelings, and emotions that his combat experiences provided. Sometimes the book seems like it was largely written as a doctoral dissertation by the co-author with just a sprinkling of personal information about Lubbeck added here and there for flavor. Overall, I was sadly dissappointed.
If you are looking for a gritty and gripping tale of the Eastern Front, I would highly recommend The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer.
Bland and uninteresting
David Hurt and William Luebbeck have given us a poorly researched and rather prosaic personal history of the latter's narcissitic recollections of his experience as soldier-officer in the Wehrmacht Infanterie Division 51.Reads more like a text book than autobiography.If you are an avid student of the purported subject, and understand the difference between an infantry gun and a howitzer, you will find annoying and transparent disingenuities throughout. Can't help feeling Hurt missed a golden opportunity to have Luebbeck refer to/ comment on Kurt von Zydowitz's authoritative history DIE GESCHICHTE DER 58. INFANTERIE DIVISION 1939-1945.
An OK read for curious readers with a passing interest in German soldier memoires - but check it out from your local public library.
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