https://www.amazon.com/Volga-Rises-Europe-Curzio-Malaparte/dp/1841580961

The perspective of an Italian army officer who was assigned to accompany and observe German Army Group South's invasion of Ukraine in 1941 at the start of Operation Barbarossa. But he was recalled after just a couple of months because the Nazis found his dispatches home too complimentary of the Russians.

Later, he managed to get reassigned to German Army Group North's siege of Leningrad in 1943 where he observed both the German and Finnish forces operating in the area. He spends a great deal of time discussing the geography and history of the region, which I found very informative.

The author was a really interesting guy. He was obviously very well read / educated and well-traveled before the war and although an officer in the fascist Italian forces, he wasn't either a warrior or a political animal at heart. He was genuinely interested in meeting different people and studying their cultures. He spent much of his time with the Germans mingling with civilians and low ranking individual soldiers. Some of his observations about why the Russians essentially "won" the Siege of Leningrad by stubbornly suffering and dying are pretty profound.