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Author: Mungo Melvin
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429967498
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 751
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Book Description
From the preeminent British military strategist comes this riveting biography of Manstein, Hitler's most controversial general. Among students of military history, the genius of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) is respected perhaps more than that of any other World War II soldier. He displayed his strategic brilliance in such campaigns as the invasion of Poland, the Blitzkrieg of France, the sieges of Sevastopol, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, and the battles of Kharkov and Kursk. Manstein also stands as one of the war's most enigmatic and controversial figures. To some, he was a leading proponent of the Nazi regime and a symbol of the moral corruption of the Wehrmacht. Yet he also disobeyed Hitler, who dismissed his leading Field Marshal over this incident, and has been suspected by some of conspiring against the Führer. Sentenced to eighteen years by a British war tribunal at Hamburg in 1949, Manstein was released in 1953 and went on to advise the West German government in founding its new army within NATO. Military historian and strategist Mungo Melvin combines his research in German military archives and battlefield records with unprecedented access to family archives to get to the truth of Manstein's life and deliver this definitive biography of the man and his career.
Author: Mungo Melvin
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429967498
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 751
Get Book Here
Book Description
From the preeminent British military strategist comes this riveting biography of Manstein, Hitler's most controversial general. Among students of military history, the genius of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) is respected perhaps more than that of any other World War II soldier. He displayed his strategic brilliance in such campaigns as the invasion of Poland, the Blitzkrieg of France, the sieges of Sevastopol, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, and the battles of Kharkov and Kursk. Manstein also stands as one of the war's most enigmatic and controversial figures. To some, he was a leading proponent of the Nazi regime and a symbol of the moral corruption of the Wehrmacht. Yet he also disobeyed Hitler, who dismissed his leading Field Marshal over this incident, and has been suspected by some of conspiring against the Führer. Sentenced to eighteen years by a British war tribunal at Hamburg in 1949, Manstein was released in 1953 and went on to advise the West German government in founding its new army within NATO. Military historian and strategist Mungo Melvin combines his research in German military archives and battlefield records with unprecedented access to family archives to get to the truth of Manstein's life and deliver this definitive biography of the man and his career.
Author: Charles River Editors
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781979827881
Category : Nazis
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the fighting in the war *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading One of his biographers called him "a complex man: a born leader, a brilliant soldier, a devoted husband, a proud father; intelligent, instinctive, brave, compassionate, vain, egotistical, and arrogant." As that description suggests, every account of Erwin Rommel's life must address what appears to be its inherent contradictions. Fittingly, and in the same vein, he remains one of the best remembered generals of World War II and history at large, despite the fact he was on the losing side, and he was defeated at the most famous battle of his career, the decisive Battle of El Alamein. While there is a great division when it comes to historical opinion with respect to Rommel's merits as a general as well as the moral choices he made, both historians and the public continue to be intrigued by this man who has been dead for over 70 years. People at large continue to consider Rommel one of the greatest generals of the 20th century, an opinion shared by many of his contemporaries on both sides of World War II. For example, British General Harold Alexander hinted at both his strengths and weaknesses, commenting, "He was a tactician of the greatest ability, with a firm grasp of every detail of the employment of armour in action, and very quick to seize the fleeting opportunity and the critical turning point of a mobile battle. I felt certain doubts, however, about his strategic ability, in particular as to whether he fully understood the importance of a sound administrative plan. Happiest while controlling a mobile force directly under his own eyes he was liable to overexploit immediate success without sufficient thought for the future." Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was one of the most respected commanders and theoreticians of World War II. An innovative tank commander, he was a pioneer of German Blitzkrieg tactics and therefore, a hugely influential figure in the way the war was fought. Guderian's profile was not always what might have been expected for a man of his abilities and influence warrant due to the shape of his career. The reasons for Guderian's time out of command are tied to the reason for his lower profile; he was a traditional German career officer rather than an ideologically driven Nazi, willing to challenge Adolf Hitler's opinions on military matters. This, together with his outspoken attitude, led to his loss of favor and dismissal from command. At the same time, being a career military man rather than a Nazi officer also meant Guderian was not as directly involved in the atrocities of the war, and he did not gained the infamy of his SS contemporaries, which ensured the ongoing fame of men far less deserving of recognition. Albert Kesselring holds a strange place in the history of World War II. A commander in the Luftwaffe, he is remembered as much for the skill with which he oversaw the German armies as for his mastery of the air fleets. Called "Uncle Albert" by many of his men and "Smiling Albert" by the Allies, he was widely respected by men on both sides of the war and loved by many of his troops, yet he was responsible for massacres in occupied Italy for which he was condemned to death during the post-war trials. Ultimately, his sentence was commuted to one of life imprisonment, making him one of the few top Nazi leaders to pen memoirs after the war, but it goes without saying that Kesselring's time was marked by controversy. Kesselring had the skills of a politician and a diplomat, as well as those of a soldier, which carried his career through both World War I and World War II, and during the Second World War, he served in almost every theater of the fighting in Europe. He was undoubtedly a gifted commander, but one who served at a time when the German military was tainted with the evils of Nazism.
Author: Sönke Neitzel
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1783830557
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 863
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Book Description
These transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Nazi officers reveal “a fascinating—and chilling—insight into the German view of the war” (Financial Times). Between 1939 and 1942, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence created a number of POW interrogation camps in and around London where they secretly recorded private conversations between senior German staff officers. In this extraordinary work, historian Sonke Neitzel examines these transcripts in depth and presents the private thoughts, opinions, and secrets of Nazi officers during the Second World War. These transcripts address important questions regarding the officers’ attitudes towards the German leadership and Nazi policies: How did the German generals judge the overall war situation? From what date did they consider it lost? How did they react to the attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944? What knowledge did they have of the atrocities? By turns insightful and horrifying, this unprecedented research is a must for any serious scholar of the period. “A goldmine of information about what the German High Command privately thought of the war, Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and each other.” —Daily Mail
Author: Basil H. Hart
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0688060129
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
The German Generals who survived Hitler's Reich talk over World War II with Capt. Liddell Hart, noted British miltary strategist and writer. They speak as professional soldiers to a man they know and respect. For the first time, answers are revealed to many questions raised during the war. Was Hitler the genius of strategy he seemed to be at first? Why did his Generals never overthrow him? Why did Hitler allow the Dunkirk evacuation? Current interest, of course, focuses on the German Generals' opinion of the Red Army as a fighting force. What did the Russians look like from the German side? How did we look? And what are the advantages and disadvantages under which dictator-controlled armies fight? In vivid, non-technical language, Capt. Liddell Hart reports these interviews and evaluates the vital military lessons of World War II.
Author: Correlli Barnett
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802139948
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 524
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Book Description
With essays from Carlo D'Este, Martin Blumenson, Walter Goerlitz, Gen. John Hackett, and Martin Middlebrook, Hitler's Generals probes the central mystery of why a generation of the world's most able commanders and staff officers came to be seduced by Hitler, and why they failed to deflect him from his disastrous decisions. From Kenneth Macksey's essay on Heinz Guderian, who created the Panzier divisions and innovated the use of dive bombers, to Earl Ziemke's portrait of Karl Gerd von Runstedt, whose stalling of the German blitzkrieg allowed 338,000 Allied troops enough time to fall back on Dunkirk and escape to fight again, these are bold and incisive assessments of the twentieth century's greatest strategists and villains. Book jacket.
Author: Derek R. Mallett
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813142520
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
The WWII historian offers “provocative analysis” of the US military’s evolving relationship with German officers held on American soil (Robert D. Billinger Jr., author of Nazi POWs in the Tar Heel State). In Hitler’s Generals in America, Derek R. Mallett examines the relationship between American officials and the Wehrmacht general officers they held as prisoners of war in the United States between 1943 and 1946. While the British pampered the German officers in their custody in order to obtain intelligence, Americans did not share the same sense of class privilege, and refused any special treatment to German prisoners of any rank. By the end of the war, however, the United States had begun to envision itself as a world power rather than one of several allies providing aid during wartime. Mallett demonstrates how a growing admiration for the German officers’ prowess and military traditions, coupled with postwar anxiety about Soviet intentions, drove Washington to collaborate with many Wehrmacht general officers. Drawing on newly available sources, this intriguing book shows how Americans undertook the complex process of reconceptualizing Germans—even Nazi generals—as allies against what they perceived as their new enemy, the Soviet Union.
Author: Bryan Mark Rigg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536
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Book Description
On the murderous road to "racial purity" Hitler encountered unexpected detours, largely due to his own crazed views and inconsistent policies regarding Jewish identity. After centuries of Jewish assimilation and intermarriage in German society, he discovered that eliminating Jews from the rest of the population was more difficult than he'd anticipated. As Bryan Rigg shows in this provocative new study, nowhere was that heinous process more fraught with contradiction and confusion than in the German military. Contrary to conventional views, Rigg reveals that a startlingly large number of German military men were classified by the Nazis as Jews or "partial-Jews" (Mischlinge), in the wake of racial laws first enacted in the mid-1930s. Rigg demonstrates that the actual number was much higher than previously thought-perhaps as many as 150,000 men, including decorated veterans and high-ranking officers, even generals and admirals. As Rigg fully documents for the first time, a great many of these men did not even consider themselves Jewish and had embraced the military as a way of life and as devoted patriots eager to serve a revived German nation. In turn, they had been embraced by the Wehrmacht, which prior to Hitler had given little thought to the "race" of these men but which was now forced to look deeply into the ancestry of its soldiers. The process of investigation and removal, however, was marred by a highly inconsistent application of Nazi law. Numerous "exemptions" were made in order to allow a soldier to stay within the ranks or to spare a soldier's parent, spouse, or other relative from incarceration or far worse. (Hitler's own signature can be found on many of these "exemption" orders.) But as the war dragged on, Nazi politics came to trump military logic, even in the face of the Wehrmacht's growing manpower needs, closing legal loopholes and making it virtually impossible for these soldiers to escape the fate of millions of other victims of the Third Reich. Based on a deep and wide-ranging research in archival and secondary sources, as well as extensive interviews with more than four hundred Mischlinge and their relatives, Rigg's study breaks truly new ground in a crowded field and shows from yet another angle the extremely flawed, dishonest, demeaning, and tragic essence of Hitler's rule.
Author: Valerie Geneviève Hébert
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700632670
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
By prosecuting war crimes, the Nuremberg trials sought to educate West Germans about their criminal past, provoke their total rejection of Nazism, and convert them to democracy. More than all of the other Nuremberg proceedings, the High Command Case against fourteen of Hitler's generals embraced these goals, since the charges-the murder of POWs, the terrorizing of civilians, the extermination of Jews-also implicated the 20 million ordinary Germans who had served in the military. This trial was the true test of Nuremberg's potential to inspire national reflection on Nazi crime. Its importance notwithstanding, the High Command Case has been largely neglected by historians. Valerie Hébert's study—the only book in English on the subject—draws extensively on the voluminous trial records to reconstruct these proceedings in full: prosecution and defense strategies; evidence for and against the defendants and the military in general; the intricacies of the judgment; and the complex legal issues raised, such as the defense of superior orders, military necessity, and command responsibility. Crucially, she also examines the West German reaction to the trial and the intense debate over its fairness and legitimacy, ignited by the sentencing of soldiers who were seen by the public as having honorably defended their country. Hébert argues that the High Command Trial was itself a success, producing eleven guilty verdicts along with an incontrovertible record of the German military's crimes. But, viewing the trial from beyond the courtroom, she also contends that it made no lasting imprint on the German public's consciousness. And because the United States was eager to secure West Germany as an ally in the Cold War, American officials eventually consented to parole and clemency programs for all of the convicted officers, so that by the late 1950s not one remained imprisoned. Superbly researched and impeccably told, Hitler's Generals on Trial addresses fundamental questions concerning the meaning of justice after atrocity and genocide, the moral imperative of punishment for these crimes, the link between justice and memory, and the relevance of the Nuremberg trials for transitional justice processes today. Inasmuch as these trials coined the vocabulary of modern international criminal law and set an agenda for transitional justice that remains in place today, Hébert's book marks a major contribution to military and legal history.
Author: Reinhold Billstein
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845450137
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
General Motors, the largest corporation on earth today, has been the owner since 1929 of Adam Opel AG, Russelsheim, the maker of Opel cars. Ford Motor Company in 1931 built the Ford Werke factory in Cologne, now the headquarters of European Ford. In this book, historians tell the astonishing story of what happened at Opel and Ford Werke under the Third Reich, and of the aftermath today. Long before the Second World War, key American executives at Ford and General Motors were eager to do business with Nazi Germany. Ford Werke and Opel became indispensable suppliers to the German armed forces, together providing most of the trucks that later motorized the Nazi attempt to conquer Europe. After the outbreak of war in 1939, Opel converted its largest factory to warplane parts production, and both companies set up extensive maintenance and repair networks to help keep the war machine on wheels. During the war, the Nazi Reich used millions of POWs, civilians from German-occupied countries, and concentration camp prisoners as forced laborers in the German homefront economy. Starting in 1940, Ford Werke and Opel also made use of thousands of forced laborers. POWs and civilian detainees, deported to Germany by the Nazi authorities, were kept at private camps owned and managed by the companies. In the longest section of the book, ten people who were forced to work at Ford Werke recall their experiences in oral testimonies. For more than fifty years, legal and political obstacles frustrated efforts to gain compensation for Nazi-era forced labor; in the most recent case, a $12 billion lawsuit was filed against the computer giant I.B.M. by a group of Gypsy organizations. In 1998, former forced laborers filed dozens of class action lawsuits against German corporations in U.S. courts. The concluding chapter reviews the subsequent, immensely complex negotiations towards a settlement - which involved Germany, the United States, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Czech Republic, Israel and several other countries, as well as dozens of well-known German corporations.
Author: Johanne Hurter
Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
ISBN: 9781399082815
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
The Eastern Front, 1941. Operation Barbarossa. HitlerÃ-s armies advance into the Soviet Union to conquer Lebensraum in the East. Among the corps commanders is General Gotthard Heinrici, a career soldier, a highly decorated First World War veteran, who observed and recorded in his diary and letters the unprecedented harshness of the German conduct of the campaign. With remarkable candour he described his experiences at the front and the everyday lives of the troops under his command - and the appalling conditions in which the war was fought. In his writings he revealed his growing doubts about Hitler's strategy and his mounting concern as the Wehrmacht was implicated in war crimes and the first actions of the Holocaust. This selection from Heinrici's diaries and letters, edited and with a perceptive introduction by Johannes HÂrter, gives a fascinating inside view of the fighting on the Eastern Front from a commander's perspective. It is also provides an unusual insight into the feelings, attitudes and acute anxieties of one of the Wehrmacht's most able generals in the midst of a brutal campaign.
