Author : David Stahel
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 457 pages
File Size : 20,21 MB
Release : 2018
Category : History
ISBN : 1316510344
A ground-breaking study that looks at why European nations sent troops to take part in Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.
Author : David Stahel
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 501 pages
File Size : 23,12 MB
Release : 2009-09-10
Category : History
ISBN : 0521768470
This book is an important reassessment of the failure of Germany's 1941 campaign against the Soviet Union.
Author : Philip W. Blood
Publisher : Potomac Books, Inc.
Page : 761 pages
File Size : 23,29 MB
Release : 2011-03
Category : History
ISBN : 1597974455
In August 1942, Hitler directed all German state institutions to assist Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS and the German police, in eradicating armed resistance in the newly occupied territories of Eastern Europe and Russia. The directive for "combating banditry" (Bandenbekämpfung), became the third component of the Nazi regime's three-part strategy for German national security, with genocide (Endlösung der Judenfrage, or "the Final Solution of the Jewish Question") and slave labor (Erfassung, or "Registration of Persons to Hard Labor") being the better-known others. An original and thought-provoking work grounded in extensive research in German archives, Hitler's Bandit Hunters focuses on this counterinsurgency campaign, the anvil of Hitler's crusade for empire. Bandenbekämpfung portrayed insurgents as political and racial bandits, criminalized to a greater degree than enemies of the state; moreover, violence against them was not constrained by the prevailing laws of warfare. Philip Blood explains how German forces embraced the Bandenbekämpfung doctrine, demonstrating the equal culpability of both the SS police forces and the "heroic" Waffen-SS combat arm and shattering the contrived postwar distinctions between them. He challenges the traditional view of Himmler as an armchair general and bureaucrat, exposing him as the driving force behind one of the most successful security campaigns in history, and delves into the contentious issue of the complicity of ordinary German police, soldiers, and citizens, as well as the citizens of occupied territories, in these state-sponsored manhunts. This book provokes new debates on the Nazi terrorization of Europe, the blind acquiescence of many, and the courageous resistance of the few.
Author : George E. Blau
Publisher :
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 10,17 MB
Release : 1955
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN :
Author : Lorna Waddington
Publisher : I.B. Tauris
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 50,65 MB
Release : 2012-10-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781780763750
In the early hours of 22 June 1941 units of the Wehrmacht began to pour into the Soviet Union - an undertaking long planned by Adolf Hitler. Since the 1920s, National Socialist doctrine had largely been determined by an intense hatred and hostility towards not only the Jews but also towards Bolshevism. This ideology, Lorna Waddington argues, had been identified by Hitler and his acolytes as the political poison concocted by the Jews in an attempt to impose, as he saw it, their own tyrannical domination across the globe. Hitler's Crusade explores this crucial dimension to Hitler's Weltanschauung, delving into the little-known activities of the Antikomintern, as well as offering fresh insights on well-documented events. This is the definitive analysis of Hitler's attitude towards Bolshevism, the destruction of which he was still describing in early 1945 as the raison d'etre of the Nazi movement.
Author : Evertjan van Roekel
Publisher : Vernon Press
Page : 396 pages
File Size : 15,88 MB
Release : 2022-01-04
Category : History
ISBN : 1648893341
During the Second World War, approximately 25,000 Dutchmen served within the ranks of the military branch of the German SS: the Waffen-SS. They volunteered to fight to secure the victory of Nazi Germany. These Dutch volunteers fought mainly on the Eastern Front, and to a lesser extent, within their own national borders. After the war, the Allied victors regarded them as part of a criminal organization and jointly responsible for the atrocious transgressions of the Nazi regime. In the Netherlands, these men were reviled, branded as traitors and became pariahs in their own country. Those who had devoted themselves to the Nazi regime caused so much grief to the Netherlands that they had to be held accountable. Despite their military achievements, their reputation was damaged forever. The Netherlands supplied the largest contingent of SS soldiers from the occupied North-western European territories. Who were these people? What led them to enlist, and what were the consequences of their choice? An important part of this study involves the autobiographical texts of nineteen Dutch volunteers in the Waffen-SS. These ego-documents recount their own immediate experiences and are mainly fragments from diaries, but there are also letters, individual notes, and memoirs. The ego-documents are placed within the larger historical context to provide an answer to the question of whether these men were only ideologically motivated and unconditional Nazi sympathizers, and for this, their criminal records are also researched. Among other topics, the book discusses their choice to enlist, their experiences at the front, and their involvement in genocide, providing a new perspective on the Eastern Front.
Author : Lorna Louise Waddington
Publisher :
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 11,22 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Communism
ISBN :
Author : Oleg Beyda
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 17,82 MB
Release : 2024-08-30
Category : History
ISBN : 1487556519
The Bolshevik takeover of Russia created an alternative Russia in exile that never laid down its arms. For two decades, expelled White Russians sought ways to retaliate against the Soviet Union and return home. Their irreconcilability was galvanized by a superstructure, the dominant military organization, the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS). Eventually, militant anti-Bolshevism led the exiled Russians into alliance with Nazi Germany, despite the latter’s anti-Slavic stance. For Russia with Hitler tells the story of how thousands of White Russian émigrés joined the German invasion of the Soviet Union as soldiers, translators, and civilian workers. Oleg Beyda investigates and contextualizes émigré collaboration with National Socialist Germany, explaining how it was possible for Russians to fight against the Russians. The book reveals that the exiles, although united ideologically by Russian nationalism in a general sense, did not establish one single, clear-cut political solution for a future “liberated Russia.” Drawing on wide archival material, For Russia with Hitler details the background and ideological framework of the émigrés, how they rationalized their support for Nazism, and what they did on the Eastern Front, including their reactions to life in occupation, war crimes, and the Holocaust.
Author : Craig W. H. Luther
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 504 pages
File Size : 17,73 MB
Release : 2018-11-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0811767655
Sunday, June 22, 1941: three million German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union as part of Hitler’s long-planned Operation Barbarossa, which aimed to destroy the Soviet Union, secure its land as lebensraum for the Third Reich, and enslave its Slavic population. From launching points in newly acquired Poland, in three prongs—North, Central, South—German forces stormed western Russia, virtually from the Baltic to the Black Sea. By late fall, the invasion had foundered against Russian weather, terrain, and resistance, and by December, it had failed at the gates of Moscow, but early on, as the Germans sliced through Russian territory and soldiers with impunity, capturing hundreds of thousands, it seemed as though Russia would fall. In the spirit of Martin Middlebrook’s classic First Day on the Somme, Craig Luther narrates the events of June 22, 1941, a day when German military might was at its peak and seemed as though it would easily conquer the Soviet Union, a day the common soldiers would remember for its tension and the frogs bellowing in the Polish marshlands. It was a day when the German blitzkrieg decimated Soviet command and control within hours and seemed like nothing would stop it from taking Moscow. Luther narrates June 22—one of the pivotal days of World War II—from high command down to the tanks and soldiers at the sharp end, covering strategy as well as tactics and the vivid personal stories of the men who crossed the border into the Soviet Union that fateful day, which is the Eastern Front in microcosm, representing the years of industrial-scale warfare that followed and the unremitting hostility of Germans and Soviets.
Author : Craig W.H. Luther
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 441 pages
File Size : 13,36 MB
Release : 2020-11-15
Category : History
ISBN : 0811768821
The scope and scale of Operation Barbarossa—the German invasion of the Soviet Union—make it one of the pivotal events of the Second World War. Yet our understanding of both the military campaign as well as the “war of annihilation” conducted throughout the occupied territories depends overwhelmingly on “top-down” studies. The three million German soldiers who crossed the Soviet border and experienced this war are seldom the focus and are often entirely ignored. Who were these men and how did they see these events? Luther and Stahel, two of the leading experts on Operation Barbarossa, have reconstructed the 1941 campaign entirely through the letters (as well as a few diaries) of more than 200 German soldiers across all areas of the Eastern Front. It is an original perspective on the campaign, one of constant combat, desperate fear, bitter loss, and endless exertions. One learns the importance of comradeship and military training, but also reads the frightening racial and ideological justifications for the war and its violence, which at times lead to unrelenting cruelty and even mass murder. Soldiers of Barbarossa is a unique and sobering account of 1941, which includes hundreds of endnotes by Luther and Stahel providing critical context, corrections, and commentary.
