Download or read book Inside Hitler s High Command written by Geoffrey P. Megargee and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging previous accounts, Megargee shatters the myth that German generals would have prevailed in World War II if only Hitler had not meddled in their affairs. Instead, he observes that the military's strategic ideas were no better than Hitler's and often were worse. 20 photos.
Download or read book Inside Hitler s High Command written by Geoffrey P. Megargee and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2000-06-08 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging previous accounts, Geoffrey Megargee shatters the myth that German generals would have prevailed in World War II if only Hitler had not meddled in their affairs. Indeed, Megargee argues, the German high command was much more flawed than many have suspected or acknowledged. Inside Hitler's High Command reveals that while Hitler was the central figure in many military decisions, his generals were equal partners in Germany's catastrophic defeat. Megargee exposes the structure, processes, and personalities that governed the Third Reich's military decision making and shows how Germany's presumed battlefield superiority was undermined by poor strategic and operational planning at the highest levels. His study tracks the evolution of German military leadership under the Nazis from 1933 to 1945 and expands our understanding of the balance of power within the high command, the role of personalities in its organizational development, and the influence of German military intellectuals on its structure and function. He also shows how the organization of the high command was plagued by ambition, stubbornness, political intrigue, and overworked staff officers. And his "a week in the life" chapter puts the high command under a magnifying glass to reveal its inner workings during the fierce fighting on the Russian Front in December 1941. Megargee also offers new insights into the high command crises of 1938 and shows how German general staff made fatal mistakes in their planning for Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Their arrogant dismissal of the Soviet military's ability to defend its homeland and virtual disregard for the extensive intelligence and sound logistics that undergird successful large-scale military campaigns ultimately came back to haunt them. In the final assessment, observes Megargee, the generals' strategic ideas were no better than Hitler's and often worse. Heinz Guderian, Franz Halder, and the rest were as guilty of self-deception as their Fuhrer, believing that innate German superiority and strength of will were enough to overcome nearly any obstacle. Inside Hitler's High Command exposes these surprising flaws and illuminates the process of strategy and decision making in the Third Reich.
Download or read book Hermann Goring written by Fred Ramen and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2000-12-15 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the life of the powerful member of the Nazi party who was second in command to Adolf Hitler and leader of the German Air Force during World War II.
Download or read book Hitler s Monsters written by Eric Kurlander and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A dense and scholarly book about . . . the relationship between the Nazi party and the occult . . . reveals stranger-than-fiction truths on every page.”—Daily Telegraph The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire. “[Kurlander] shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media.”—The Washington Post “Deeply researched, convincingly authenticated, this extraordinary study of the magical and supernatural at the highest levels of Nazi Germany will astonish.”—The Spectator “A trustworthy [book] on an extraordinary subject.”—The Times “A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism.”—Kirkus Reviews “Kurlander provides a careful, clear-headed, and exhaustive examination of a subject so lurid that it has probably scared away some of the serious research it merits.”—National Review
Download or read book Hitler s Generals on Trial written by Valerie Geneviève Hébert and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2021-02-12 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Hitler as Military Commander written by John Strawson and published by Leo Cooper Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Hitler 'the greatest strategic genius of all time' as Nazi propaganda would have us believe, or a facile amateur in military affairs? Why was the startling success of his campaigns in Poland and France followed by the blundering mistakes in Russia, Tunis and Normandy? Might the German General Staff have won the war without Hitler's continual disastrous interference? John Strawson answers these and other questions by showing how Hitler's insatiable preoccupation with war and conquest was translated into reality. While the willpower behind the revitalized German army was Hitler's the author examines the Fuhrer's eccentric use of the most formidable war machine the world had ever seen. This lucid assessment is brought alive by the accounts of those who served Hitler both on his staff and as field commanders. The Western Front
Download or read book Hitler s Command written by Rex Bashford and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third in a three-part in depth study and deals with Hitlers influence on the Wehrmacht and how his decisions influenced the advancement of weapons technology in this pivotal era of the Second World War. Hitler arrogated to himself the power to make all critical decisions relating to the strategic and operational deployment of the entire Wehrmacht, and this volume analyzes the effect of his decisions on the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. How did his decisions affect the development of German Jet aircraft? And the types of U-Boats used? How did he decide what priority to assign to key weapons in the overall German war effort? What determined how programs such as the V1, V2 and the potential German Atomic bomb were integrated into the German war effort? All these matters were critical to the actual operational power of the Wehrmacht as opposed to its theoretical potential. Similarly, what was the effect of the allied strategic bombing campaign on Germanys war potential and how effective were the steps Hitler ordered against it? Finally, what did the leading military figures of the Third Reich such as Field Marshals von Rundstedt, Rommel, Kluge, Bock, Model and Kleist think of Hitlers command? Did the Chiefs of the General Staff during the war Halder, Zeitzler and Guderian state their views? And what was the effect of the attempt on Hitlers life through Operation Valkyrie on military operations? Hitler's Command is the third in a three part in depth study and deals with Hitlers influence on the Wehrmacht and how his decisions influenced the advancement of weapons technology in this pivotal era of the Second World War.
Download or read book Hitler s Collaborators written by Philip Morgan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hitler's Collaborators focuses the spotlight on one of the most controversial and uncomfortable aspects of the Nazi wartime occupation of Europe: the citizens of those countries who helped Hitler. Although a widespread phenomenon, this was long ignored in the years after the war, when peoples and governments understandably emphasized popular resistance to Nazi occupation as they sought to reconstruct their devastated economies and societies along anti-fascist and democratic lines. Philip Morgan moves away from the usual suspects, the Quislings who backed Nazi occupation because they were fascists, and focuses instead on the businessmen and civil servants who felt obliged to cooperate with the Nazis. These were the people who faced the most difficult choices and dilemmas by dealing with the various Nazi uthorities and agencies, and who were ultimately responsible for gearing the economies of the occupied territories to the Nazi war effort. It was their choices which had the greatest impact on the lives and livelihoods of their fellow countrymen in the occupied territories, including the deportation of slave-workers to the Reich and hundreds of thousands of European Jews to the death camps in the East. In time, as the fortunes of war shifted so decisively against Germany between 1941 and 1944, these collaborators found themselves trapped by the logic of their initial cooperation with their Nazi overlords — caught up between the demands of an increasingly desperate and extremist occupying power, growing internal resistance to Nazi rule, and the relentlessly advancing Allied armies.
Download or read book Hitler Military Commander written by Rupert Matthews and published by Arcturus Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Führer of the Third Reich, Hitler was responsible for deciding the German war aims in 1939. As head of the Armed Forces from 4 February 1938 he was also responsible for the overall Wehrmacht strategy intended to achieve these aims. Hitler: Military Commander examines Hitler's key military decisions during the Second World War, and assesses how far these decisions were militarily justified in light of the intelligence available at the time. Perhaps most importantly it tackles the larger questions of how a non-German former corporal, albeit the holder of the Iron Cross 1st Class, managed to take personal control of an army with the Prussian traditions of the German Army, appoint, sack and sentence to death its generals at will, to lead it into a World War it was not prepared for, and, ultimately, to destroy it.
Download or read book Hitler as Military Commander written by John Strawson and published by Canelo. This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Hitler 'the greatest strategic genius of all time' as Nazi propaganda had it, or just an amateur? Why was the startling success of his campaigns in Poland and France followed by the blundering mistakes in Russia, North Africa and France? Might Germany even have won the war without Hitler's continual and disastrous interference? In this extraordinary history, John Strawson answers these and other questions by showing how Hitler's insatiable preoccupation with war and conquest was translated into reality. While the power of a revitalized German army came from Hitler, Strawson examines the Fuhrer's eccentric use of the most formidable war machine the world had ever seen. This lucid story of fire and incompetence is brought alive by the accounts of those who served Hitler both on his staff and as field commanders. Perfect for readers of Ian Kershaw and Anthony Beevor.
Download or read book Hitler written by Rupert Matthews and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive examination of Hitler’s military strategies. As Führer of the Third Reich, Hitler was responsible for deciding the German war aims in 1939. As head of the Armed Forces from February 4th, 1938, he was also responsible for the overall Wehrmacht strategy intended to achieve these aims. Hitler: Military Commander examines with impeccable detail Hitler's key military decisions during the Second World War, and assesses how far these decisions were militarily justified in the light of the intelligence available at the time. Perhaps most importantly, it tackles the larger questions of how a non-German former corporal, albeit the holder of the Iron Cross First Class, managed to take personal control of an army with the Prussian traditions of the German army; to appoint, sack, and sentence to death its generals at will, to lead it into a World War it was not prepared for; and to ultimately destroy it. Featuring black-and-white photographs, maps, biographical context, tactical analysis, and more, this new edition of Hitler: Military Commander will give readers the comprehensive overview of Hitler's military decisions and downfall.
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 681 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.
Download or read book The End written by Ian Kershaw and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-08-28 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of To Hell and Back, a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany lost the Second World War, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital questions of how and why the Third Reich did not surrender until Germany had been left in ruins and almost completely occupied. Drawing on prodigious new research, Ian Kershaw, an award-winning historian and the author of Fateful Choices, explores these fascinating questions in a gripping and focused narrative that begins with the failed bomb plot in July 1944 and ends with the death of Adolf Hitler and the German capitulation in 1945. The End paints a harrowing yet enthralling portrait of the Third Reich in its last desperate gasps.
Download or read book Hitler s Wartime Orders written by Bob Carruthers and published by Grub Street Publishers. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Emmy Award–winning author presents the history of WWII through the military strategies, tactics, and decisions of the infamous Nazi dictator. Edited by Bob Carruthers, Hitler’s Wartime Orders is an important historical record of Adolf Hitler’s war directives for the armies of Nazi Germany. From preparations for the invasion of Poland to his last desperate order to his troops on the Eastern Front, this volume provides fascinating insight into the proceedings of the Second World War and the mind of the man who launched the world into chaos. As readers will observe in this fascinating volume, the initial optimism of 1939 devolved into the disarray of later orders. How those orders were received, processed, and carried out by the upper echelons of the Third Reich would come to shape the future of military policy. This unvarnished publication reveals the true nature of Adolf Hitler as a military commander and sheds light on the events of one of the world’s greatest tragedies. All the wartime orders have been typeset in a clear format and presented chronologically.
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.
Download or read book Hitler s Jewish Soldiers written by Bryan Mark Rigg and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Adolf Hitler and Joint Warfare written by Joel Hayward and published by . This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2nd Edition.First published in 2000 by the Military Studies InstituteJoint operations involve the closely synchronised employment of two or more service branches under a unified command. Military theorists and commentators now believe that they prove more effective in most circumstances of modern warfare than operations involving only one service or involving two or more services but without systematic integration or unified command. Many consider the Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany's armed forces, pioneers of "jointness". They point out that Blitzkrieg, the war-fighting style that brought the Wehrmacht stunning victories between 1939 and 1941, depended upon the close integration of ground and air (and sometimes naval) forces and that, even after the Blitzkrieg campaigns gave way to a drawn-out war of attrition, the Wehrmacht routinely conducted operations in a fashion that would today be called "joint". That is, elements of two or more services participated in close cooperation with mutually agreed goals, relatively little inter-service rivalry, and a command structure that, at least at the "sharp end" of operations, promoted, rather than inhibited, a spirit of jointness. As a result, the scholars claim, the Wehrmacht enhanced its capabilities and improved its combat effectiveness.This view of the Wehrmacht goes back a long way; back, in fact, to the war itself. For example, in 1941 the United States War Department, which, closely monitored events in Europe and North Africa, claimed in its Handbook of German Military Forces: "The outstanding characteristic of German military operations in the present war has been the remarkable coordination of the three sister services, Army, Navy and Air Force, into a unified command for definite tasks. These services do not [merely] cooperate in a campaign; rather their operations are coordinated by the High Command of the Armed Forces."Without becoming anachronistic -- after all, jointness as a defined concept is very recent ― this monograph attempts something long overdue: an analysis of Adolf Hitler's influence on the Wehrmacht's efforts to integrate the employment of its forces and thereby increase its effectiveness. The article demonstrates two main points: first, that Hitler certainly understood the value of integrating his land, sea and air forces and placing them under a unified command (first Field Marshal Blomberg's; later his own); and second, that he also saw the benefit of placing them under operational commanders who possessed at least a rudimentary understanding of the tactics, techniques, needs, capabilities and limitations of each of the services functioning in their combat zone. Hitler was thus innovative and several years ahead of his peers in the democracies, Italy and the Soviet Union. Yet this monograph concludes that, largely because of Hitler's unusual command style and difficulties with delegation, the Wehrmacht lacked elements that today's theorists consider essential to the attainment of truly productive jointness (a single joint commander or Joint Chief of Staff, a proper joint staff, a joint planning process, and an absence of inter-service rivalry) and that, as a result, it often suffered needless difficulties in combat.
