Download or read book The Myth and Reality of German Warfare written by Gerhard P. Gross and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surrounded by potential adversaries, nineteenth-century Prussia and twentieth-century Germany faced the formidable prospect of multifront wars and wars of attrition. To counteract these threats, generations of general staff officers were educated in operational thinking, the main tenets of which were extremely influential on military planning across the globe and were adopted by American and Soviet armies. In the twentieth century, Germany's art of warfare dominated military theory and practice, creating a myth of German operational brilliance that lingers today, despite the nation's crushing defeats in two world wars. In this seminal study, Gerhard P. Gross provides a comprehensive examination of the development and failure of German operational thinking over a period of more than a century. He analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of five different armies, from the mid--nineteenth century through the early days of NATO. He also offers fresh interpretations of towering figures of German military history, including Moltke the Elder, Alfred von Schlieffen, and Erich Ludendorff. Essential reading for military historians and strategists, this innovative work dismantles cherished myths and offers new insights into Germany's failed attempts to become a global power through military means.
Download or read book The Myth and Reality of German Warfare written by Gerhard Paul Gross and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this seminal study, Gerhard P. Gross provides a comprehensive examination of the development and failure of German operational thinking over a period of more than a century. He analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of five different armies, from the mid-nineteenth century through the early days of NATO. He also offers fresh interpretations of towering figures of German military history.
Download or read book The Wehrmacht written by Wolfram Wette and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-30 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a profound reexamination of the role of the German army, the Wehrmacht, in World War II. Until very recently, the standard story avowed that the ordinary German soldier in World War II was a good soldier, distinct from Hitler's rapacious SS troops, and not an accomplice to the massacres of civilians. Wolfram Wette, a preeminent German military historian, explodes the myth of a "clean" Wehrmacht with devastating clarity. This book reveals the Wehrmacht's long-standing prejudices against Jews, Slavs, and Bolsheviks, beliefs that predated the prophecies of Mein Kampf and the paranoia of National Socialism. Though the sixteen-million-member German army is often portrayed as a victim of Nazi mania, we come to see that from 1941 to 1944 these soldiers were thoroughly involved in the horrific cleansing of Russia and Eastern Europe. Wette compellingly documents Germany's long-term preparation of its army for a race war deemed necessary to safeguard the country's future; World War II was merely the fulfillment of these plans, on a previously unimaginable scale. This sober indictment of millions of German soldiers reaches beyond the Wehrmacht's complicity to examine how German academics and ordinary citizens avoided confronting this difficult truth at war's end. Wette shows how atrocities against Jews and others were concealed and sanitized, and history rewritten. Only recently has the German public undertaken a reevaluation of this respected national institution--a painful but necessary process if we are to truly comprehend how the Holocaust was carried out and how we have come to understand it.
Download or read book Blitzkrieg written by Lloyd Clark and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “masterly account” of the juggernaut offensive that conquered France—but also marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany in World War II (Kirkus Reviews). In the spring of 1940, the German forces launched an attack on France that combined superb intelligence, cutting edge strategy, and new technology—the blitzkrieg, or “lightning war.” In just six weeks, it would achieve what their fathers had failed to do in all four years of the First World War. It was a stunning victory. But here, leading British military historian and academic Lloyd Clark argues that much of our understanding of this victory is based on myth. Far from being a foregone conclusion, Hitler’s plan could easily have failed had the Allies been even slightly less inept or the Germans less fortunate. The Germans recognized that success depended not only on surprise, but also avoiding a protracted struggle for which they were not prepared—making defeat a very real possibility. Their surprise victory proved the apex of their achievement; far from being undefeatable, Clark argues, the Battle of France revealed Germany and its armed forces to be highly vulnerable. And Hitler dismissed this fact as he planned his next move—and greatest blunder: the invasion of the Soviet Union. In this eye-opening reassessment, complete with maps and illustrations, Clark “presents a well-balanced narrative that highlights the knife-edge victory of the German forces” and reveals how very close the Nazi war machine came to catastrophe in the early days of World War II (New York Journal of Books).
Download or read book Myth and Reality in German War time Broadcasting written by Ernst Hans Gombrich and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Blitzkrieg written by Lloyd Clark and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The German campaign in France and the Low Countries during the summer of 1940 was pivotal to Hitler's ambitions and fundamentally affected the course of the Second World War. In achieving in just six weeks what their fathers' had failed to achieve in four years of the First World War, Germany altered the balance of power in Europe at a stroke. Having honed the Blitzkrieg technique in preceding engagements, the German forces provided Hitler with a swift, efficient and decisive military victory over the Allied forces in France. Yet, as Lloyd Clark shows in this enthralling new book, it was far from being a foregone conclusion - Hitler's plan could easily have failed had the enemy been slightly less inept and the Germans been slightly less fortunate. Blitzkrieg will tell the story of the campaign, while highlighting the key technologies, decisions and events that led to German success, and will detail the mistakes, good fortune and chronic weaknesses in their planning process and approach to war fighting. There are also compelling portraits of the officers who played key roles, including Heinz Guderian, Ewin Rommel, Kurt Student, Charles de Gaulle and Bernard Montgomery. Lloyd Clark reveals that far from the being undefeatable, the France 1940 campaign revealed Germany and its armed forces to be highly vulnerable - a fact dismissed by Hitler as he began to plan for his invasion of the Soviet Union - and offers a gripping reassessment of the myths that have built up around one of the Second World War's greatest military victories.
Download or read book R ckzug written by Joachim Ludewig and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A German historian’s account of the Nazi retreat from France in the summer of 1944: “An important book [about] a surprisingly under-examined phase of WWII” (Anthony Beevor, Wall Street Journal). The Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, marked a critical turning point in the European theater of World War II. The massive landing on France's coast had been meticulously planned for three years, and the Allies anticipated a quick and decisive defeat of the German forces. Many of the planners were surprised, however, by the length of time it ultimately took to defeat the Germans. While much has been written about D-Day, very little has been written about the crucial period from August to September, immediately after the invasion. In Rückzug, Joachim Ludewig draws on military records from both sides to show that a quick defeat of the Germans was hindered by excessive caution and a lack of strategic boldness on the part of the Allies, as well as by the Germans' tactical skill and energy. This intriguing study, translated from German, not only examines a significant and often overlooked phase of the war, but also offers a valuable account of the conflict from the perspective of the German forces.
Download or read book Myth and Reality in German War time Broadcasts written by Ernst Hans Gombrich and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1970 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm written by Robert M. Citino and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2022-05-25 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Germany launched its blitzkrieg invasion of France in 1940, it forever changed the way the world waged war. Although the Wehrmacht ultimately succumbed to superior Allied firepower in a two-front war, its stunning operational achievement left a lasting impression on military commanders throughout the world, even if their own operations were rarely executed as effectively. Robert Citino analyzes military campaigns from the second half of the twentieth century to further demonstrate the difficulty of achieving decisive results at the operational level. Offering detailed operational analyses of actual campaigns, Citino describes how UN forces in Korea enjoyed technological and air superiority but found the enemy unbeatable; provides analyses of Israeli operational victories in successive wars until the Arab states finally grasped the realities of operational-level warfare in 1973; and tells how the Vietnam debacle continued to shape U.S. doctrine in surprising ways. Looking beyond major-power conflicts, he also reveals the lessons of India’s blitzkrieg-like drive into Pakistan in 1971 and of the senseless bloodletting of the Iran-Iraq War. Citino especially considers the evolution of U.S. doctrine and assesses the success of Desert Storm in dismantling an entrenched defending force with virtually no friendly casualties. He also provides one of the first scholarly analyses of Operation Iraqi Freedom, showing that its plan was curiously divorced from the realities of military history, grounded instead on nebulous theories about expected enemy behavior. Throughout Citino points to the importance of mobility--especially mobilized armor--in modern operational warfare and assesses the respective roles of firepower, training, doctrine, and command and control mechanisms. Brimming with new insights, Citino’s study shows why technical superiority is no guarantee of victory and why a thorough grounding in the history of past campaigns is essential to anyone who wishes to understand modern warfare. Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm provides that grounding as it addresses the future of operational-level warfare in the post–9/11 era.
Download or read book The Schlieffen Plan written by Hans Ehlert and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the creation of the Franco-Russian Alliance and the failure of the Reinsurance Treaty in the late nineteenth century, Germany needed a strategy for fighting a two-front war. In response, Field Marshal Count Alfred von Schlieffen produced a study that represented the apex of modern military planning. His Memorandum for a War against France, which incorporated a mechanized cavalry as well as new technologies in weaponry, advocated that Germany concentrate its field army to the west and annihilate the French army within a few weeks. For generations, historians have considered Schlieffen's writings to be the foundation of Germany's military strategy in World War I and have hotly debated the reasons why the plan, as executed, failed. In this important volume, international scholars reassess Schlieffen's work for the first time in decades, offering new insights into the renowned general's impact not only on World War I but also on nearly a century of military historiography. The contributors draw on newly available source materials from European and Russian archives to demonstrate both the significance of the Schlieffen Plan and its deficiencies. They examine the operational planning of relevant European states and provide a broad, comparative historical context that other studies lack. Featuring fold-out maps and abstracts of the original German deployment plans as they evolved from 1893 to 1914, this rigorous reassessment vividly illustrates how failures in statecraft as well as military planning led to the tragedy of the First World War.
Download or read book The Wehrmacht written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Myths Amnesia and Reality in Military Conflicts 1935 1945 written by Pier Paolo Battistelli and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-06 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stalin fabricated the myth that the Germans carried out the Katyń massacre and the West accepted it while always suspecting the reality. In the same way, each country tried to forget the more painful memories of its past and construct its own mythology. The Germans were never taken to task at Nuremberg for bombing because the Anglo-Americans virtually carried out a war of annihilation. The French Gaullist myth was that it was decadent politicians who caused the defeat, and that fighting France freed itself. In a similar vein, the Italian resistance was fostered as a myth and used postwar to cover the fascist period of their history. British and American popular history tends to portray their countries as the main victors often ignoring the massive Russian contribution, and generally concentrates on the barbarity of the Eastern war. Much is forgotten and much enhanced; both incidents and leaders. The Italian military historian of this book writes in depth about the Italian war so often ignored in western history, and tackles the myth of Italian cowardice, while the British author takes a cold, calculated look at Anglo-American leaders such as Montgomery, Mountbatten, Clark, Patton, and questions the myth of the special relationship between Great Britain and the USA, as well as the official and unofficial amnesia relating to self-inflicted gas wounds in Italy.
Download or read book The Blitzkrieg Myth written by John Mosier and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many military tactics during World War II were based on the assumption that new technologies would lead to decisive battlefield victories, demoralization of the enemy by intensive bombing, or even a quick surrender. Political and military leaders, Allies and Axis alike, believed that “blitzkrieg” was the best way to victory. But in The Blitzkrieg Myth, John Mosier argues that this was not the case. Mosier examines the major European campaigns, including Germany’s invasion of Poland in the fall of 1939 and the fall of France in 1940, and demonstrates that they were, in fact, not blitzkrieg victories. Mosier asserts that new technologies clashed with the realities of conventional military tactics, and battle outcomes often depended on traditional warfare, in this bold reassessment of the military history of World War II. John Mosier is the author of The Myth of the Great War. He is a professor of English at Loyola University in New Orleans. His background as a military historian dates from his role in developing an interdisciplinary curriculum for the study of the two World Wars, a program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. From 1989 to 1992, he edited the New Orleans Review. “Should be valued as essential reading on the great conflict.” — Washington Times
Download or read book Ostkrieg written by Stephen G. Fritz and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On June 22, 1941, Germany launched the greatest land assault in history on the Soviet Union, an attack that Adolf Hitler deemed crucial to ensure German economic and political survival. As the key theater of the war for the Germans, the eastern front consumed enormous levels of resources and accounted for 75 percent of all German casualties. Despite the significance of this campaign to Germany and to the war as a whole, few English-language publications of the last thirty-five years have addressed these pivotal events. In Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East, Stephen G. Fritz bridges the gap in scholarship by incorporating historical research from the last several decades into an accessible, comprehensive, and coherent narrative. His analysis of the Russo-German War from a German perspective covers all aspects of the eastern front, demonstrating the interrelation of military events, economic policy, resource exploitation, and racial policy that first motivated the invasion. This in-depth account challenges accepted notions about World War II and promotes greater understanding of a topic that has been neglected by historians.
Download or read book Truth for Germany written by Udo Walendy and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For his historical publications challenging the official 'truth' about the Holocaust, Udo Walendy was sentenced to 29 months imprisonment in Germany. His 'illegal' research was confiscated and burned. What happened in Germany after the war that its society today eagerly persecutes everybody who dares to defend the German nation? In this booklet, Udo Walendy gives a brief overview of measures of censorship and atrocity propaganda designed to destroy German self-confidence."--Goodreads.com.
Download or read book The Hitler Myth written by Ian Kershaw and published by Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1987-06-04 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The personality of Hitler himself can hardly explain his immense hold over the German people. This study, a revised version of a book previously published in Germany under the title Der Hitler-Mythos: Volksmeinung und Propaganda im Dritten Reich, examines how the Nazis, experts in propaganda, accomplished the virtual deification of the Führer. Based largely on the reports of government officials, party agencies, and political opponents, Dr Kershaw charts the creation,growth, and decline of the 'Hitler Myth'.
Download or read book East German Foreign Intelligence written by Kristie Macrakis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited book examines the East German foreign intelligence service (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, or HVA) as a historical problem, covering politics, scientific-technical and military intelligence and counterintelligence. The contributors broaden the conventional view of East German foreign intelligence as driven by the inter-German conflict to include its targeting of the United States, northern European and Scandinavian countries, highlighting areas that have previously received scant attention, like scientific-technical and military intelligence. The CIA’s underestimation of the HVA was a major intelligence failure. As a result, East German intelligence served as a stealth weapon against the US, West German and NATO targets, acquiring the lion’s share of critical Warsaw Pact intelligence gathered during the Cold War. This book explores how though all of the CIA’s East German sources were double agents controlled by the Ministry of State Security, the CIA was still able to declare victory in the Cold War. Themes and topics that run through the volume include the espionage wars; the HVA's relationship with the Russian KGB; successes and failures of the BND (West German Federal Intelligence Service) in East Germany; the CIA and the HVA; the HVA in countries outside of West Germany; disinformation and the role and importance of intelligence gathering in East Germany. This book will be of much interest to students of East Germany, Intelligence Studies, Cold War History and German politics in general. Kristie Macrakis is Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Thomas Wegener Friis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern Denmark’s Centre for Cold War Studies. Helmut Müller-Enbergs is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern Denmark and holds a tenured senior staff position at the German Federal Commission for the STASI Archives in Berlin.
