BORODINO FIELD 1812 & 1941

Sub-titled 'How Napoleon and Hitler Met Their Matches Outside Moscow', here is a marvellous historical analysis comparing Napoleon's 1812 and Hitler's 1941 battles at Borodino Field, revealing remarkable parallels in their failed attempts to conquer Moscow. Napoleon's Grande Armée's approach route to Moscow was seemingly replicated by Hitler's Wehrmacht. His was an undeclared war, breaking the former Russo-German Non-Aggression Pact, signed barely two years before. When alerted for action in late September 1941, the 32nd Division was already fully mobilised with its 14,500 men, 872 vehicles, 444 machine guns and 286 artillery and heavy mortar pieces. Trainloads of Moscow militia, factory workers and residents came out to Borodino, mostly women like seamstress Antonia Savina who was conscripted several times to dig anti-tank ditches, sustained by a sausage and one small bread roll each day. 'Borodino is the place where Napoleon was defeated, this suddenly released feelings appearing from nowhere that helped to unite people.' In 1812 about 130,000 Frenchmen and their Allies with 587 artillery pieces faced perhaps 150,000 Russians with 624 guns along a 2½ to 5-mile front in a climactic 'Battle of the Giants'. See the similarities when Hitler's SS and Panzers came up against elite Siberian troops defending Stalin's Moscow. Remarkably both conflicts took place in the same woods and gullies that follow the sinuous line of the Coloch River. The book relates the gruelling experience of the French Army in Russia, juxtaposed with the personal accounts of German soldiers during WW2. Using previously untapped archives about the 1,000km route and the two battles. 334pp, illustrations and colour plates and five maps.