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Book Waffen SS

    Book Details:
  • Author : Adrian Gilbert
  • Publisher : Da Capo Press
  • Release : 2019-06-25
  • ISBN : 0306824663
  • Pages : 512 pages

Download or read book Waffen SS written by Adrian Gilbert and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an award-winning and bestselling historian, the first comprehensive military history in over fifty years of Hitler's famous and infamous personal army: the Waffen-SS The Waffen-SS was one of the most feared combat organizations of the twentieth century. Originally formed as a protection squad for Adolf Hitler it became the military wing of Heinrich Himmler's SS and a key part of the Nazi state, with nearly 900,000 men passing through its ranks. The Waffen-SS played a crucial role in furthering the aims of the Third Reich which made its soldiers Hitler's political operatives. During its short history, the elite military divisions of the Waffen-SS acquired a reputation for excellence, but their famous battlefield record of success was matched by their repeated and infamous atrocities against both soldiers and civilians. Waffen-SS is the first definitive single-volume military history of the Waffen-SS in more than 50 years. In considering the actions of its leading personalities, including Himmler, Sepp Dietrich, and Otto Skorzeny, and analyzing its specialist training and ideological outlook, eminent historian Adrian Gilbert chronicles the battles and campaigns that brought the Waffen-SS both fame and infamy.

Book Waffen SS

Download or read book Waffen SS written by Christopher Ailsby and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Waffen SS

    Book Details:
  • Author : George H. Stein
  • Publisher : Cornell University Press
  • Release : 1966
  • ISBN : 9780801492754
  • Pages : 388 pages

Download or read book The Waffen SS written by George H. Stein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1966 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark study, first published by Cornell University Press in 1966, shows how Hitler's elite army grew from a praetorian guard of barely 28,000 men at the beginning of the Second World War to a combat-hardened army of more than 500,000 in 1945. George H. Stein examines in detail the structure and organization of the Waffen SS and describes the rigid personnel selection and intensive physical, military, and ideological training that helped to create the tough and dedicated cadre around which the larger force of the later war years was built.

Book Hitler s Soldiers

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ben H. Shepherd
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2016-06-28
  • ISBN : 0300219520
  • Pages : 304 pages

Download or read book Hitler s Soldiers written by Ben H. Shepherd and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades after 1945, it was generally believed that the German army, professional and morally decent, had largely stood apart from the SS, Gestapo, and other corps of the Nazi machine. Ben Shepherd draws on a wealth of primary sources and recent scholarship to convey a much darker, more complex picture. For the first time, the German army is examined throughout the Second World War, across all combat theaters and occupied regions, and from multiple perspectives: its battle performance, social composition, relationship with the Nazi state, and involvement in war crimes and military occupation. This was a true people’s army, drawn from across German society and reflecting that society as it existed under the Nazis. Without the army and its conquests abroad, Shepherd explains, the Nazi regime could not have perpetrated its crimes against Jews, prisoners of war, and civilians in occupied countries. The author examines how the army was complicit in these crimes and why some soldiers, units, and higher commands were more complicit than others. Shepherd also reveals the reasons for the army’s early battlefield successes and its mounting defeats up to 1945, the latter due not only to Allied superiority and Hitler’s mismanagement as commander-in-chief, but also to the failings—moral, political, economic, strategic, and operational—of the army’s own leadership.

Book The SS

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robert Lewis Koehl
  • Publisher : The History Press
  • Release : 2012-05-30
  • ISBN : 0752486896
  • Pages : 377 pages

Download or read book The SS written by Robert Lewis Koehl and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The SS grew out of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler's obsession to prevent the treachery they believed to have caused the German defeat in the First World War. The SS was to be an elite corps of politically aware soldiers whose primary aim was to prevent the undermining of the Nazi Party by rendering its potential enemies harmless. This disturbing story reveals not only the inner workings of the SS, but its paramount role in the mass murder of Europe's Jews, homosexuals and gypsies, its organisation of the death squads and the military campaigns undertaken by the Waffen SS.

Book Hitler s Commanders

    Book Details:
  • Author : Samuel W. Mitcham (Jr.)
  • Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
  • Release : 2012
  • ISBN : 1442211520
  • Pages : 381 pages

Download or read book Hitler s Commanders written by Samuel W. Mitcham (Jr.) and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in an expanded edition that includes biographies of the generals of Stalingrad and a new chapter on the panzer commanders, this book offers rare insight into the men who ran Nazi Germany's war machine. Going beyond common stereotypes, Samuel W. Mitcham and Gene Mueller recount the compelling lives of a varied group of army, navy, Luftwaffe, and SS men. Weaving in dramatic stories of tank commanders, fighter pilots in aerial combat, and U-Boat aces, the authors bring the battlefields of World War II to life.

Book Hitler s Army

    Book Details:
  • Author : Omer Bartov
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 1992-11-26
  • ISBN : 0199879613
  • Pages : 256 pages

Download or read book Hitler s Army written by Omer Bartov and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992-11-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Cold War followed on the heels of the Second World War, as the Nuremburg Trials faded in the shadow of the Iron Curtain, both the Germans and the West were quick to accept the idea that Hitler's army had been no SS, no Gestapo, that it was a professional force little touched by Nazi politics. But in this compelling account Omer Bartov reveals a very different history, as he probes the experience of the average soldier to show just how thoroughly Nazi ideology permeated the army. In Hitler's Army, Bartov focuses on the titanic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union--where the vast majority of German troops fought--to show how the savagery of war reshaped the army in Hitler's image. Both brutalized and brutalizing, these soldiers needed to see their bitter sacrifices as noble patriotism and to justify their own atrocities by seeing their victims as subhuman. In the unprecedented ferocity and catastrophic losses of the Eastrn front, he writes, soldiers embraced the idea that the war was a defense of civilization against Jewish/Bolshevik barbarism, a war of racial survival to be waged at all costs. Bartov describes the incredible scale and destruction of the invasion of Russia in horrific detail. Even in the first months--often depicted as a time of easy victories--undermanned and ill-equipped German units were stretched to the breaking point by vast distances and bitter Soviet resistance. Facing scarce supplies and enormous casualties, the average soldier sank to ta a primitive level of existence, re-experiencing the trench warfare of World War I under the most extreme weather conditions imaginable; the fighting itself was savage, and massacres of prisoners were common. Troops looted food and supplies from civilians with wild abandon; they mercilessly wiped out villages suspected of aiding partisans. Incredible losses led to recruits being thrown together in units that once had been filled with men from the same communities, making Nazi ideology even more important as a binding force. And they were further brutalized by a military justice system that executed almost 15,000 German soldiers during the war. Bartov goes on to explore letters, diaries, military reports, and other sources, showing how widespread Hitler's views became among common fighting men--men who grew up, he reminds us, under the Nazi regime. In the end, they truly became Hitler's army. In six years of warfare, the vast majority of German men passed through the Wehrmacht and almost every family had a relative who fought in the East. Bartov's powerful new account of how deeply Nazi ideology penetrated the army sheds new light on how deeply it penetrated the nation. Hitler's Army makes an important correction not merely to the historical record but to how we see the world today.

Book Waffen SS Handbook  1933 1945

Download or read book Waffen SS Handbook 1933 1945 written by Gordon Williamson and published by Sutton Pub Limited. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originating in Hitler's personal bodyguard, the Waffen-SS (armed SS) was expanded as a fourth branch of the Wehrmacht and became regarded as the tough elite of the German armed forces. Known as Hitler's 'Asphalt Soldiers' they fought on all the main battle-fronts, but most notably in the East against the Soviet Union and in Normandy following 'Overlord'. By the war's end the Waffen-SS could boast almost forty field divisions manned by nearly one million troops. Gordon Williamson describes the organisation, equipment, tactics and personalities of the Waffen-SS in the Second World War. A chronology outlines the major events in the history of the Waffen-SS from the founding of its forerunner, the SS-Verfugungstruppe, until May 1945. The author has travelled to Germany to interview numerous surviving former Waffen-SS soldiers and corresponded with many others, obtaining first-hand accounts of their wartime experiences. The handbook is illustrated with a rich selection of previously unpublished photographs, predominantly from private collections, ranging from studio posed shots to previously unpublished candid snaps and from battlefield pictures to war correspondent action shots.

Book The Waffen SS at War

    Book Details:
  • Author : Tim Ripley
  • Publisher : Zenith Imprint
  • Release : 2004
  • ISBN : 9780760320686
  • Pages : 352 pages

Download or read book The Waffen SS at War written by Tim Ripley and published by Zenith Imprint. This book was released on 2004 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Schutzstaffel-SS-(Protection Squad) were the black uniformed elite corps of the Nazi Party. Founded by Adolf Hitler in April 1925 as a small personal bodyguard, the SS grew with the success of the Nazi movement and, gathering immense police and military powers, became virtually a state within a state. The Waffen-SS (Armed-SS) branch was made up of three subgroups: the Leibstandarte, Hitler's personal bodyguard; the Totenkopfverbande (Death's Head Battalions), which administered the concentration camps; and the Verfugungstruppen (Disposition Troops), which swelled to 39 divisions in World War II and which, serving as elite combat troops alongside the regular army, gained a reputation for both professionalism and brutality. Hitler's Praetorians is the complete history of the Third Reich's fighting elite from its humble beginnings to the end in Berlin in May 1945.Hitler's Praetorians begins with a detailed examination of Waffen-SS ideology, selection and training. Their chief "virtue" was their absolute obedience and loyalty to the Fuhrer. On the battlefield the Waffen SS had few peers, especially its elite panzer divisions. Hitler's Praetorians analyzes the many battles and campaigns of the Waffen-SS divisions, such as at Kharkov and Kursk in 1943, and on the Western Front in Normandy in 1944. As well as color maps and black-and-white photographs, Hitler's Praetorianss contains biographical boxes on the commanders who turned the Waffen-SS into a fearsome military machine. There are also boxes on the weapons and equipment used by the Waffen-SS throughout the war, with each item of hardware being illustrated by a line diagram and accompanied by a specifications table.- Detailed single-volume study of Hitler's Black Guard- Analysis of Waffen-SS battle tactics- Contains feature boxes on Waffen-SS commanders and hardware- Full-color mapsAbout the AuthorTim Ripley is a freelance writer and an acknowledged expert on the tactics of modern warfare. He is also the author of SS: Steel Storm and SS: Steel Rain.

Book Hitler s Soldiers

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ben H. Shepherd
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2016-01-01
  • ISBN : 0300179030
  • Pages : 681 pages

Download or read book Hitler s Soldiers written by Ben H. Shepherd and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 681 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A penetrating study of the German army's military campaigns, relations with the Nazi regime, and complicity in Nazi crimes across occupied Europe For decades after 1945, it was generally believed that the German army, professional and morally decent, had largely stood apart from the SS, Gestapo, and other corps of the Nazi machine. Ben Shepherd draws on a wealth of primary sources and recent scholarship to convey a much darker, more complex picture. For the first time, the German army is examined throughout the Second World War, across all combat theaters and occupied regions, and from multiple perspectives: its battle performance, social composition, relationship with the Nazi state, and involvement in war crimes and military occupation. This was a true people's army, drawn from across German society and reflecting that society as it existed under the Nazis. Without the army and its conquests abroad, Shepherd explains, the Nazi regime could not have perpetrated its crimes against Jews, prisoners of war, and civilians in occupied countries. The author examines how the army was complicit in these crimes and why some soldiers, units, and higher commands were more complicit than others. Shepherd also reveals the reasons for the army's early battlefield successes and its mounting defeats up to 1945, the latter due not only to Allied superiority and Hitler's mismanagement as commander-in-chief, but also to the failings--moral, political, economic, strategic, and operational--of the army's own leadership.

Book Hitler s Armed SS

    Book Details:
  • Author : Anthony Tucker-Jones
  • Publisher : Pen and Sword Military
  • Release : 2022-09-15
  • ISBN : 1399006940
  • Pages : 264 pages

Download or read book Hitler s Armed SS written by Anthony Tucker-Jones and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Waffen-SS was one of the most formidable German military formations of the Second World War – feared for its tenacity and ruthlessness in battle, notorious for the atrocities it committed. As a distinct fighting force derived from the Nazi Party’s SS organization, it stood apart from the other units of the German army. Its origins, structure and operational role during the war are often misunderstood and the controversy still surrounding its conduct make it difficult today to get an accurate picture of its actions and its impact on the fighting. Anthony Tucker-Jones, in this concise and fluently written account, provides an absorbing and clear sighted introduction to it. He traces its development under Himmler from modest beginnings in the early 1930s as Hitler’s personal protection squad of elite soldiers to a force which eventually amounted to thirty-eight divisions. Towards the end of the war many Waffen-SS units were formed from foreign volunteers and proved to be of poor quality, but its premier panzer divisions thoroughly deserved their reputation as tough fighters. Through accounts of the Waffen-SS’s major battles on the Eastern Front, in Normandy and finally in defence of Germany, a detailed picture emerges of the contribution it made to the German war effort, especially when Hitler’s armies were in retreat. The parts played by the most famous Waffen-SS formations – Das Reich, Totenkopf, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler among them – and their commanders – men like Dietrich and Hausser – can be seen in the wider context of the war and Germany’s defeat.

Book Hitler   s Elite

    Book Details:
  • Author : Chris McNab
  • Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
  • Release : 2013-10-20
  • ISBN : 147280645X
  • Pages : 415 pages

Download or read book Hitler s Elite written by Chris McNab and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-10-20 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hitler's Elite: The SS 1939–45 tells the complete story of the SS at individual, unit and organizational levels. Following an explanation of the SS' complex political and social origins, and its growth within the Nazi empire, it goes on to look at both its war record and its wider role in Heinrich Himmler's implementation of Hitler's vision for the Third Reich. As well as providing a combat history of the Waffen-SS from 1939 to 1945, it also explores themes such as ideology, recruitment, foreign SS personnel, training and equipment. The book's textual history is brought to life with more than 200 photographs and colour artworks from Osprey's series titles. As a companion volume to Hitler's Armies and Hitler's Eagles, this book gives a detailed and highly visual insight into one of Hitler's most powerful instruments of policy.

Book Hitler s Gauls

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jonathan Trigg
  • Publisher : The History Press
  • Release : 2009-11-20
  • ISBN : 0750967110
  • Pages : 253 pages

Download or read book Hitler s Gauls written by Jonathan Trigg and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2009-11-20 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The divisions of the Waffen-SS were among the elite of Hitler's armies in the Second World War. But alongside the Germans in the Waffen-SS fought an astonishingly high number of volunteers from other countries. By the end of the Second World War these foreign volunteers comprised half of all Hitler's Waffen-SS, and filled the ranks of over twenty-four of the nominal thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions. So during the most brutal war that mankind has ever known, hundreds of thousands of men flocked to fight for a country that was not theirs, and for a cause that was one of the most monstrous and barbaric in history. Who were these men, and why did they fight? Hitler's Gauls is an in-depth examination of one of these legions of foreign volunteers, the Charlemagne division, who were recruited entirely from conquered France. The men in Charlemagne, often motivated by an extreme anti-communist zeal, fought hard on the Eastern Front including battles of near annihilation in the snows of Pomerania and the final stand in the ruins of Berlin. This definitive history, illustrated with rare photographs, explores the background, training, key figures and full combat record of one of Hitler's lesser known foreign units of the Second World War.

Book Weapons of the Waffen SS

Download or read book Weapons of the Waffen SS written by David Fleming and published by Zenith Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Waffen (or armed) SS was initially raised solely for the protection of Adolf Hitler, but during the course of World War II it developed into one of the most effective armored spearheads available to the Wehrmacht, gaining a spectacular series of victories in France, the Balkans, and the Soviet Union. This book examines the weapons, uniforms, and equipment of the Waffen SS and describes how they contributed to success on the battlefield. Complementing an authoritative narrative text will be full details and specifications of the weapons and equipment used by this elite organization, ranging from the 98k rifle to the awesome power of the 70-ton Tiger II tank. About the Author:David Fleming is a military author who has written extensively on World War II. He has previously published works on the Waffen SS, Nazi Germany's Blitzkrieg operations, and the desert campaign in North Africa. Features: , Full-color photography of guns and artifacts actually used by Waffen SS soldiers during World War II, with full technical descriptions and specifications. , Rare black-and-white wartime photography illustrating the SS in action on all fronts. , Authoritative text exploring key aspects of the military hard wear used by the infamous force.

Book F  r Volk and F  hrer

Download or read book F r Volk and F hrer written by Erwin Bartmann and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2013-10-19 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One German soldier’s experience in the deadly crucible of World War II combat. Like many Germans, Berlin schoolboy Erwin Bartmann fell under the spell of the Zeitgeist cultivated by the Nazis. Convinced he was growing up in the best country in the world, he dreamt of joining the Leibstandarte, Hitler’s elite Waffen SS unit. Erwin fulfilled his dream on May Day 1941, when he walked into the Lichterfelde barracks in Berlin as a raw recruit. On arrival at the Eastern Front in late summer 1941, Erwin was assigned to a frontline communications squad. When the end of the Reich became inevitable, Erwin was forced to choose between a struggle for personal survival and the fulfillment of his SS oath of “loyalty unto death.” From the war on the southern sector of the Eastern Front to a bomb-shattered Berlin populated largely by old men and demoralized women, this candid eyewitness account offers a unique and sometimes surprising perspective on the life of a young Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler volunteer. “A valuable memoir, providing both a good account of the changing attitudes of the author, both towards the Nazi regime and the chances of final victory.” —History of War

Book Hitler s Second Army

    Book Details:
  • Author : Edmund L. Blandford
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 1995
  • ISBN : 9780760300213
  • Pages : 216 pages

Download or read book Hitler s Second Army written by Edmund L. Blandford and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the history of the Waffen-SS, and describes the training and combat experiences of its soldiers

Book The Waffen SS 1939 1945

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gustavo Uruena A
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2017-07-03
  • ISBN : 9781548792749
  • Pages : 672 pages

Download or read book The Waffen SS 1939 1945 written by Gustavo Uruena A and published by . This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Waffen-SS grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions during World War II, and served alongside the Heer (regular army) but was never formally part of it. Adolf Hitler resisted integrating the Waffen-SS into the army, as it was to remain the armed wing of the Party and to become an elite police force once the war was won. Prior to the war it was under the control of the SS F�hrungshauptamt (SS operational command office) beneath Reichsf�hrer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Upon mobilization its tactical control was given to the High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht).Initially membership was only open to people of Germanic "Aryan" origin, who were said to be the Herrenvolk (master race), according to Nazi racial ideology. The rules were partially relaxed in 1940, although Jews remained banned. Hitler authorized the formation of units composed largely or solely of foreign volunteers and conscripts. By the end of the war, non-Germans made up approximately 60 percent of the Waffen-SS.At the post-war Nuremberg Trials the Waffen-SS was condemned as a criminal organization due to its essential connection to the Nazi Party and involvement in numerous war crimes. Waffen-SS veterans were denied many of the rights afforded to veterans who had served in the Heer (army), Luftwaffe (air force), or Kriegsmarine (navy). An exception was made for Waffen-SS conscripts sworn in after 1943, who were exempted because of their involuntary servitude.