Timescale

Title and Notes

mid-1941

The Commissar - pg38 they are pushing deep into the

Ukraine, pg40 Sven mentions Nikolayev (just N of the
Crimea if I remember right), and numerous references to
large numbers of Soviet prisoners has to be summer of '41.

October 1941 to January 1942

Blitzfreeze - Attack on Moscow (Operation Taifun).

Winter 1942-43 (?)

Court Martial - Set in Finland but the story doesn`t fit in

with anything the Germans did in the North.

Probably winter 1942-43

O.G.P.U Prison - Have no idea WHERE in the Eastern

Front. This is a tough one; pg24 the Jaeger says he is
headed to the Caucasus front so seems like '42 or '43, but
the prison holds prisoners from the Kiev & Kharkov
military districts (pg77). If the Soviets own the prison I
would place this during summer '41. So this one is a toss
up. (n.b. In OGPU Prison the Old Man refers back to
Rasputin the Bear who appears in The Bloody Road To
Death - so really this should be after BRTD??)

Late 1942-April 1943?

S S General - Stalingrad - the seige ended with the

German surrender 31 Jan 1943 but our heroes manage to
break out. Survivors were spotted crossing the Steppe as
late as April 1943. In reality no known survivors made it
back to the German lines.

Late 1942-April 1943?

March Battalion - On page 10 the Old Man says they are

supposed to link up with the Rumanian 4th Army SW of
the Volga if they can't make it back to their original lines,
this means this takes place at the same time as SS General.

Winter 1943 - March 1944

Wheels Of Terror - Early in the book the characters talk

about when they were in the Caucasus, so we must be at
least into 1943. Also it is winter, (as usual for a Hassel
novel) so we are probably looking at 1943/44. The
clincher is the fighting around Cherkassy in the later
chapters of the book. Cherkassy is to the south of Kiev,
and fighting took place here in early 1944. A pocket of
German troops were almost encircled, but managed to
escape, as described in the book. Winter 1943/44 Start of
Wheels of Terror. Feb/March 1944 End of Wheels of
Terror.

April-August 1944

Comrades Of War - Seems to follow on from Wheels of

Terror. Sven is badly wounded in WoT, and starts CoW on
a hospital train back to Germany. It is still winter at the
start of the book. WoT ends with the section climbing a
cliff and in CoW, (Chapter 3), Sven describes how he was
wounded scaling a cliff. In the hospital in Hamburg we

learn how Dr Mahler was almost implicated in the plot to

assassinate Hitler (July 1944), so this gives us a date
reference. We also learn that Sven and the rest spend four
months recuperating in Hamburg, on top of time in the
hospital in Cracow, and the two weeks on the hospital
train.
1943-1944

Assignment Gestapo - More Hamburg and prison guard

duty. Timescale guessed at - the heavy Allied bombings
are a good indication. The city was bombed for an entire
week around July 25, 1943. Also at the end of the book
they are heading for Cassino.

Jan 1944 to May 1944

Monte Cassino - Anzio Landings and later Battles of

Monte Cassino.

mid-1944

The Bloody Road To Death - Obviously in the Balkans,

pg59 - "this is between the Greeks and the Bulgars"; pg70SS Moslem Division soldier; escort duty goes through
Corinth & Athens-Greece, Belgrade-Jugoslavia, and
Budapest-Hungary; and pg221 - fighting the Russians
around Jassy, Romania puts this around 6/44-8/44 or so.

June 1944 to February 1945

Liquidate Paris - Normandy landings through to German

retreat across the Rhine.

August to October 1944

Reign Of Hell - Warsaw uprising - plus a bit extra either

side.