WWII Eastern Front.
‘SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division-4, Luga 1941-2’
An interesting collection of monochrome photographs compiled by a German soldier on the Eastern Front in 1941-1942, mounted in a quarto album interspersed with hand-drawn and coloured maps of the Luga area. The compiler is believed to be Hauptsturmfuhrer Rieskogel, who appears in SS dress uniform with Iron Cross and General Assault Badge, etc. as the first photograph in the album. Also present is a small photograph, taken in Heidelberg, of the same person as a youth.
Approximately ten maps and 116 photographs, various sizes including 60mm x 90mm, 100mm x 77mm, 84mm x 114mm, 118mm x 170mm, 175mm x 128mm, etc., Subjects include scenes of the army in convoy and in camp, tanks, military burials and graves, derelict and bomb-torn buildings and towns (including Lubeck and Hamburg), battle scenes, soldiers receiving medical attention, etc. Manuscript note to pastedown: ’F. Tunnicliffe, photographs picked up on advance from over the Rhine to the Elba’.
[Heavy fighting at Luga delayed the German advance on Leningrad, German occupation lasted from August 1941 to February 1944].