Author : William Breuer
Publisher : Scarborough House
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 40,49 MB
Release : 1997
Category : History
ISBN : 9780812862850
For seven weeks after D-Day, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were bottled up along the landing beaches. Finally, 3,000 American and British planes bombarded a narrow path into enemy territory, and the Allies surrounded 100,000 die-hard Germans at Falaise. Breuer's stirring reconstruction of the battle as seen from both sides makes this one of the best WWII books of recent years.--JOHN BARKHAM REVIEWS. 34 photos.
Author : Robert M. Citino
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 38,84 MB
Release : 2007-10-22
Category : History
ISBN : 0700617914
For Hitler and the German military, 1942 was a key turning point of World War II, as an overstretched but still lethal Wehrmacht replaced brilliant victories and huge territorial gains with stalemates and strategic retreats. In this major reevaluation of that crucial year, Robert Citino shows that the German army's emerging woes were rooted as much in its addiction to the "war of movement"-attempts to smash the enemy in "short and lively" campaigns-as they were in Hitler's deeply flawed management of the war. From the overwhelming operational victories at Kerch and Kharkov in May to the catastrophic defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Death of the Wehrmacht offers an eye-opening new view of that decisive year. Building upon his widely respected critique in The German Way of War, Citino shows how the campaigns of 1942 fit within the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions. He examines every major campaign and battle in the Russian and North African theaters throughout the year to assess how a military geared to quick and decisive victories coped when the tide turned against it. Citino also reconstructs the German generals' view of the war and illuminates the multiple contingencies that might have produced more favorable results. In addition, he cites the fatal extreme aggressiveness of German commanders like Erwin Rommel and assesses how the German system of command and its commitment to the "independence of subordinate commanders" suffered under the thumb of Hitler and chief of staff General Franz Halder. More than the turning point of a war, 1942 marked the death of a very old and traditional pattern of warmaking, with the classic "German way of war" unable to meet the challenges of the twentieth century. Blending masterly research with a gripping narrative, Citino's remarkable work provides a fresh and revealing look at how one of history's most powerful armies began to founder in its quest for world domination.
Author : Samuel W. Mitcham
Publisher : Regnery History
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 35,56 MB
Release : 2021-02-02
Category : History
ISBN : 1684511380
It was the endgame for Hitler's Reich. In the winter of 1944–45, Germany staked everything on its surprise campaign in the Ardennes, the “Battle of the Bulge.” But when American and Allied forces recovered from their initial shock, the German forces were left fighting for their very survival—especially on the Eastern Front, where the Soviet army was intent on matching, or even surpassing, Nazi atrocities. At the mercy of the Fuehrer, who refused to acknowledge reality and forbade German retreats, the Wehrmacht was slowly annihilated in horrific battles that have rarely been adequately covered in histories of the Second World War—especially the brutal Soviet siege of Budapest, which became known as the “Stalingrad of the Waffen-SS.” Capping a career that has produced more than forty books, Dr. Samuel W. Mitcham now tells the extraordinary tale of how Hitler’s once-dreaded war machine came to a cataclysmic end, from the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 to the German surrender in May 1945. Making use of German wartime papers and memoirs—some rarely seen in English-language sources—Mitcham’s sweeping narrative deserves a place on the shelf of every student of World War II.
Author : Thomas Goodrich
Publisher :
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 31,85 MB
Release : 2020-07-26
Category :
ISBN : 9781948323116
Millions murdered . . . Millions raped . . . Millions tortured . . . Millions enslaved . . . Millions of men, women and children cast to the winds.No matter what you have read about the Second World War, no matter what you have been told about it, no matter what you believe happened during the so-called "Good War" . . . forget it!Now, for the first time in over 70 years, learn what the war and "peace" looked like to those who lost.Discover what was done to Germany and her people in the name of "freedom, democracy, and liberation."In their own words, in graphic detail, this is their story . . .
Author : Stephen G. Fritz
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 601 pages
File Size : 15,15 MB
Release : 2004-10-08
Category : History
ISBN : 081313837X
“This thoroughly researched and superbly written study” examines the final days of WWII combat within Germany during the occupation of Franconia (WWII History). At the end of World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower turned US forces toward the Franconian region of Germany, ordering them to cut off and destroy German units before they could escape into the Alps. Opposing this advance were German forces headed by SS-Gruppenführer Max Simon, a committed National Socialist who advocated merciless resistance. Caught in the middle were the people of Franconia. Historians have largely overlooked this period of violence and terror, but it provides insight into the chaotic nature of life while the Nazi regime was crumbling. Neither German civilians nor foreign refugees acted simply as passive victims caught between two fronts. Throughout the region people pressured local authorities to end the senseless resistance. Others sought revenge for their tribulations in the “liberation” that followed. Stephen G. Fritz examines the predicament and perspective of American GI's, German soldiers and officials, and the civilian population. Endkampf is a gripping portrait of the collapse of a society and how it affected those involved, whether they were soldiers or civilians, victors or vanquished, perpetrators or victims.
Author : Joachim C. Fest
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 12,98 MB
Release : 1997-09-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780805056488
The author documents more than a dozen plots to assassinate Hitler, surprisingly, from conservative and military circles within Germany.
Author : Richard Rhodes
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 12,4 MB
Release : 2007-12-18
Category : History
ISBN : 0307426807
In Masters of Death, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppen’s role in the Holocaust. These “special task forces,” organized by Heinrich Himmler to follow the German army as it advanced into eastern Poland and Russia, were the agents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than 1.5 million men, women, and children between 1941 and 1943, often by shooting them into killing pits, as at Babi Yar. These massive crimes have been generally overlooked or underestimated by Holocaust historians, who have focused on the gas chambers. In this painstaking account, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes profiles the eastern campaign’s architects as well as its “ordinary” soldiers and policemen, and helps us understand how such men were conditioned to carry out mass murder. Marshaling a vast array of documents and the testimony of perpetrators and survivors, this book is an essential contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust and World War II.
Author : Alexander Starritt
Publisher : Little, Brown
Page : 157 pages
File Size : 36,74 MB
Release : 2020-09-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0316429791
WINNER OF THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE A letter from a German soldier to his grandson recounts the terrors of war on the Eastern Front, and a postwar ordinary life in search of atonement, in this “raw, visceral, and propulsive” novel (New York Times Book Review). A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice In the throes of the Second World War, young Meissner, a college student with dreams of becoming a scientist, is drafted into the German army and sent to the Eastern Front. But soon his regiment collapses in the face of the onslaught of the Red Army, hell-bent on revenge in its race to Berlin. Many decades later, now an old man reckoning with his past, Meissner pens a letter to his grandson explaining his actions, his guilt as a Nazi participator, and the difficulty of life after war. Found among his effects after his death, the letter is at once a thrilling story of adventure and a questing rumination on the moral ambiguity of war. In his years spent fighting the Russians and attempting afterward to survive the Gulag, Meissner recounts a life lived in perseverance and atonement. Wracked with shame—both for himself and for Germany—the grandfather explains his dark rationale, exults in the courage of others, and blurs the boundaries of right and wrong. We Germans complicates our most steadfast beliefs and seeks to account for the complicity of an entire country in the perpetration of heinous acts. In this breathless and page-turning story, Alexander Starritt also presents us with a deft exploration of the moral contradictions inherent in saving one's own life at the cost of the lives of others and asks whether we can ever truly atone.
Author : Daniel Blatman
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 584 pages
File Size : 27,3 MB
Release : 2011-05-03
Category : History
ISBN : 0674059190
Co-winner of the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research From January 1945, in the last months of the Third Reich, about 250,000 inmates of concentration camps perished on death marches and in countless incidents of mass slaughter. They were murdered with merciless brutality by their SS guards, by army and police units, and often by gangs of civilians as they passed through German and Austrian towns and villages. Even in the bloody annals of the Nazi regime, this final death blow was unique in character and scope. In this first comprehensive attempt to answer the questions raised by this final murderous rampage, the author draws on the testimonies of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Hunting through archives throughout the world, Daniel Blatman sets out to explain—to the extent that is possible—the effort invested by mankind’s most lethal regime in liquidating the remnants of the enemies of the “Aryan race” before it abandoned the stage of history. What were the characteristics of this last Nazi genocide? How was it linked to the earlier stages, the slaughter of millions in concentration camps? How did the prevailing chaos help to create the conditions that made the final murderous rampage possible? In its exploration of a topic nearly neglected in the current history of the Shoah, this book offers unusual insight into the workings, and the unraveling, of the Nazi regime. It combines micro-historical accounts of representative massacres with an overall analysis of the collapse of the Third Reich, helping us to understand a seemingly inexplicable chapter in history.
Author : Rupert Butler
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 525 pages
File Size : 11,84 MB
Release : 2014-02-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1844150429
The author reveals, in chilling detail, the plans for the wholesale killings and subjection of Eastern Europe, including the 'Final Solution' of the gas chambers. He also reveals Hitler's ruthless programme for France, the Low Countries and Scandinavia.This is a story not only of subjugation but also of heroism.This edition is a re-issue in one volume of Rupert Butler's
