The German War

Author : Nicholas Stargardt
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465073972
Total Pages : 760 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The German War written by Nicholas Stargardt and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking history of what drove the Germans to fight -- and keep fighting -- for a lost cause in World War II In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of firsthand testimony -- personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence -- to explore how the German people experienced the Second World War. When war broke out in September 1939, it was deeply unpopular in Germany. Yet without the active participation and commitment of the German people, it could not have continued for almost six years. What, then, was the war the Germans thought they were fighting? How did the changing course of the conflict -- the victories of the Blitzkrieg, the first defeats in the east, the bombing of German cities -- alter their views and expectations? And when did Germans first realize they were fighting a genocidal war? Told from the perspective of those who lived through it -- soldiers, schoolteachers, and housewives; Nazis, Christians, and Jews -- this masterful historical narrative sheds fresh and disturbing light on the beliefs and fears of a people who embarked on and fought to the end a brutal war of conquest and genocide.

Author : Nicholas Stargardt
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 009953987X
Total Pages : 738 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The German War written by Nicholas Stargardt and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2016 PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE The Second World War was a German war like no other. The Nazi regime, having started the conflict, turned it into the most horrific war in European history, resorting to genocidal methods well before building the first gas chambers. Over its course, the Third Reich expended and exhausted all its moral and physical reserves, leading to total defeat in 1945. Yet 70 years on - despite whole libraries of books about the war's origins, course and atrocities - we still do not know what Germans thought they were fighting for and how they experienced and sustained the war until the bitter end. When war broke out in September 1939, it was deeply unpopular in Germany. Yet without the active participation and commitment of the German people, it could not have continued for almost six years. What, then, was the war Germans thought they were fighting? How did the changing course of the conflict - the victories of the Blitzkrieg, the first defeats in the east, the bombing of Germany's cities - change their views and expectations? And when did Germans first realise that they were fighting a genocidal war? Drawing on a wealth of first-hand testimony, The German War is the first foray for many decades into how the German people experienced the Second World War. Told from the perspective of those who lived through it - soldiers, schoolteachers and housewives; Nazis, Christians and Jews - its masterful historical narrative sheds fresh and disturbing light on the beliefs, hopes and fears of a people who embarked on, continued and fought to the end a brutal war of conquest and genocide.

Author : Alfred C. Mierzejewski
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 146963970X
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-1945 written by Alfred C. Mierzejewski and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Alfred Mierzejewski describes how the German economy collapsed under Allied bombing in the last year of World War II. He presents a broad-based, original study of German wartime industry and transportation, and of Allied air force planning and intelligence, including the first complete analysis in English of the German National Railway. The German industrial economy was extraordinarily dependent on the timely, adequate distribution of coal by railroad and inland waterway. The German National Railway in particular was the pivot of the finely balanced armaments production and distribution system created by Albert Speer. But Allied strategists did not immediately recognize this. Only in late 1944, when Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Sir Arthur Tedder built a new strategic consensus, was this vital coal/transport nexus severed. The result was the rapid paralysis of the Nazi war economy. Mierzejewski measures the economic consequences of the bombing by considering broad indices such as armaments and coal production, railway performance, and weapons deliveries to the armed forces. In addition, he shows how individual companies in each of Germany's major economic regions fared. By drawing on previously unexamined files of private German manufacturing companies, the Reich Transportation Ministry, and Allied air intelligence agencies, Mierzejewski creates a rare combination of economic analysis and military history that provides new perspectives on the German war economy and Allied air intelligence.

Author : Omer Bartov
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801468825
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Germany's War and the Holocaust written by Omer Bartov and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Omer Bartov, a leading scholar of the Wehrmacht and the Holocaust, provides a critical analysis of various recent ways to understand the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime and the reconstruction of German and Jewish identities in the wake of World War II. Germany's War and the Holocaust both deepens our understanding of a crucial period in history and serves as an invaluable introduction to the vast body of literature in the field of Holocaust studies. Drawing on his background as a military historian to probe the nature of German warfare, Bartov considers the postwar myth of army resistance to Hitler and investigates the image of Blitzkrieg as a means to glorify war, debilitate the enemy, and hide the realities of mass destruction. The author also addresses several new analyses of the roots and nature of Nazi extermination policies, including revisionist views of the concentration camps. Finally, Bartov examines some paradigmatic interpretations of the Nazi period and its aftermath: the changing American, European, and Israeli discourses on the Holocaust; Victor Klemperer's view of Nazi Germany from within; and Germany's perception of its own victimhood.

Author : Hannes Heer
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1571814930
Total Pages : 504 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book War of Extermination written by Hannes Heer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2004-11 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains the most important contributions by distinguished historians who have thoroughly demolished this Wehrmacht myth. The picture that emerges from this collection is a depressing one and raises many questions about why "ordinary men" got involved as perpetrators and bystanders in an unprecedented program of extermination of "racially inferior" men, women, and children in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the Second World War."--Pub. desc.

Author : Philipp Witkop
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812208781
Total Pages : 405 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book German Students' War Letters written by Philipp Witkop and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-03-16 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally appearing at the same time as the pacifist novel All Quiet on the Western Front, this powerful collection provides a glimpse into the hearts and minds of an enemy that had been thoroughly demonized by the Allied press. Composed by German students who had left their university studies in order to participate in World War I, these letters reveal the struggles and hardships that all soldiers face. The stark brutality and surrealism of war are revealed as young men from Germany describe their bitter combat and occasional camaraderie with soldiers from many nations, including France, Great Britain, and Russia. Like its companion volume, War Letters of Fallen Englishmen, these letters were carefully selected for their depth of perception, the intensity of their descriptions, and their messages to future generations. "Should these letters help towards the establishment of justice and better understanding between nations," the editor reflects in his introduction, "their deaths will not have been in vain." This edition contains a new foreword by the distinguished World War I historian Jay Winter.

Author : Jaap Jan Brouwer
Publisher : Pen and Sword Military
ISBN 13 : 1526790386
Total Pages : 319 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The German Way of War written by Jaap Jan Brouwer and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the German Army combined opposing characteristics, such as drill and creativity, authority and independent thinking, into a potent mix of fighting power. The German Army lost two consecutive wars and the conclusion is often drawn that it simply wasn’t able to cope with its opponents. This image is constantly reinforced in literature and in the media, where seemingly brainless operating German units led by fanatical officers predominate. Nothing was as far from the truth. The records show that the Germans consistently outfought the far more numerous Allied armies that eventually defeated them: their relative battlefield performance was at least 1.5 and in most cases 3 times as high as that of its opponents. The central question in this book is why the German Army had a so much higher relative battlefield performance than the opposition. A central element within the Prussian/German Army is Auftragstaktik, a tactical management concept that dates from the middle of the nineteenth century and is still very advanced in terms of management and organization. Using more than fifty examples to illustrate the realities of the battlefield, from North Africa to Arnhem and the Hürtgen Forest, the author explains why the Prussian/German Army was such an unprecedented powerful fighting force. And why Auftragstaktik—under other guises—is still the basic form of operation for many European armies, with even the US Army introducing certain elements of Auftragstaktik into its organization, more than 150 years after its conception. “A fascinating book looking at the way the German Army went about training its units and men.” —UK Historian

Author : Richard Bessel
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198219385
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Germany After the First World War written by Richard Bessel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A social history of Germany in the years following the First World War, this book explores Germany's defeat and the subsequent demobilization of its armies, events which had devastating social and psychological consequences for the nation. Bessel examines the changes brought by the War to Germany, including those resulting from the return of soldiers to civilian life and the effects of demobilization on the economy. He demonstrates that the postwar transition was viewed as a moral crusade by Germans desperately concerned about challenges to traditional authority; and he assesses the ways in which the experience of the War, and memories of it, affected the politics of the Weimar Republic. This is an original and scholarly book, which offers important insights into the sense of dislocation, both personal and national, experienced by Germany and Germans in the 1920s, and its damaging legacy for German democracy.

Author : Tim Ripley
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135970343
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Wehrmacht written by Tim Ripley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-27 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To see the foreword, the introduction, a generous selection of sample pages, and more, visit the website The Wehrmacht website. In this unique volume, expert Tim Ripley introduces the reader to the world of the German army, covering in detail concepts such as mobile defense and the formidable Blitzkrieg, and explains why the Wehrmacht was able to fight so long, with such fearsome effectiveness. Also includes 180 color and black and white maps and illustrations.

Author : William T. McCroden
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1611211018
Total Pages : 1257 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book German Ground Forces of World War II written by William T. McCroden and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 1257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking and comprehensive order of battle for German ground troops in WWII, from the invasion of Poland to the final defeat in Berlin. An indispensable reference work for Second World War scholars and enthusiasts, German Ground Forces of World War II captures the continuously changing character of Nazi ground forces throughout the conflict. For the first time, readers can follow the career of every German division, corps, army, and army group as the German armed forces shifted units to and from theaters of war. Organized by sections including Theater Commands, Army Groups, Armies, and Corps Commands, it presents a detailed analysis of each corresponding order of battle for every German field formation above division. This innovative resource also describes the orders of battle of the myriad German and Axis satellite formations assigned to security commands throughout occupied Europe and the combat zones, as well as those attached to fortress commands and to the commanders of German occupation forces across Europe. An accompanying narrative describes the career of each field formation and includes the background and experience of many of their most famous commanding officers.