Download or read book War in the Wild East written by Ben Shepherd and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Nazi eyes, the Soviet Union was the "wild east," a savage region ripe for exploitation, its subhuman inhabitants destined for extermination or helotry. An especially brutal dimension of the German army's eastern war was its anti-partisan campaign. This conflict brought death and destruction to thousands of Soviet civilians, and has been held as a prime example of ordinary German soldiers participating in the Nazi regime's annihilation policies. Ben Shepherd enters the heated debate over the wartime behavior of the Wehrmacht in a detailed study of the motivation and conduct of its anti-partisan campaign in the Soviet Union. He investigates how anti-partisan warfare was conducted, not by the generals, but by the far more numerous, average Germans serving as officers in the field. What shaped their behavior was more complex than Nazi ideology alone. The influence of German society, as well as of party and army, together with officers' grueling yet diverse experience of their environment and enemy, made them perceive the anti-partisan war in varied ways. Reactions ranged from extreme brutality to relative restraint; some sought less to terrorize the native population than to try to win it over. The emerging picture does not dilute the suffering the Wehrmacht's eastern war inflicted. It shows, however, that properly judging ordinary Germans' role in that war is more complicated than is indicated by either wholesale condemnation or wholesale exoneration. This valuable study offers a nuanced discussion of the diversity of behaviors within the German army, as well as providing a compelling exploration of the war and counterinsurgency operations on the eastern front.
Download or read book Cuba s Wild East written by Peter Hulme and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a whole, Cuban history, culture, and art are often misconstrued with a heritage specific to Havana. In Cuba's Wild East, Peter Hulme attempts to right this wrong, focusing on the eastern region of the island and the specific fictions, poetries, locations, and histories that constitute a specific eastern culture. Examining a region with a rich insurgent and revolutionary history, Peter Hulme examines the stories of rebellion, heroism, and sacrifice that are so intimately tied to the places and sites that have now become part of a national pantheon, at the same time showing the international influence of US journalists and novelists whose presence in Cuban literature alongside native Cuban writers further defines the region as a place of encounter.
Download or read book Dirty Wars written by Dr Simon Robbins and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Who is the enemy?' This is the question most asked in modern warfare; gone are the set-piece conventional battles of the past. Once seen as secondary to more traditional conflicts, irregular warfare (as modified and refashioned since the 1990s) now presents a major challenge to the state and the bureaucratic institutions which have dominated the twentieth century, and to the politicians and civil servants who formulate policy. Twenty-first-century conflict is dominated by counterinsurgency operations, where the enemy is almost indistinguishable from innocent civilians. Battles are gunfights in jungles, deserts and streets; winning 'hearts and minds' is as important as holding territory. From struggles in South Africa, the Philippines and Ireland to operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya, this book covers the strategy and doctrine of counterinsurgency, and the factors which ensure whether such operations are successful or not. Recent ignorance of central principles and the emergence of social media, which has shifted the odds in favour of the insurgent, have too often resulted in failure, leaving governments and their security forces embedded in a hostile population, immersed in costly and dangerous nation-building.
Download or read book Germany s Wild East written by Kristin Kopp and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This examination of the elements of colonial relationships is new in paperback
Download or read book 1941 The Year Germany Lost the War written by Andrew Nagorski and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling historian Andrew Nagorski takes a fresh look at the decisive year 1941, when Hitler’s miscalculations and policy of terror propelled Churchill, FDR, and Stalin into a powerful new alliance that defeated Nazi Germany. In early 1941, Hitler’s armies ruled most of Europe. Churchill’s Britain was an isolated holdout against the Nazi tide, but German bombers were attacking its cities and German U-boats were attacking its ships. Stalin was observing the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and Roosevelt was vowing to keep the United States out of the war. Hitler was confident that his aim of total victory was within reach. \By the end of 1941, all that changed. Hitler had repeatedly gambled on escalation and lost: by invading the Soviet Union and committing a series of disastrous military blunders; by making mass murder and terror his weapons of choice, and by rushing to declare war on the United States after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Britain emerged with two powerful new allies—Russia and the United States. By then, Germany was doomed to defeat. Nagorski illuminates the actions of the major characters of this pivotal year as never before. 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War is a stunning examination of unbridled megalomania versus determined leadership. It also reveals how 1941 set the Holocaust in motion, and presaged the postwar division of Europe, triggering the Cold War. 1941 was a year that forever defined our world.
Download or read book The American West and the Nazi East written by C. Kakel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By employing new 'optics' and a comparative approach, this book helps us recognize the unexpected and unsettling connections between America's 'western' empire and Nazi Germany's 'eastern' empire, linking histories previously thought of as totally unrelated and leading readers towards a deep revisioning of the 'American West' and the 'Nazi East'.
Download or read book Holocaust Perpetrators of the German Police Battalions written by Ian Rich and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Holocaust Perpetrators of the German Police Battalions is the first comprehensive English-language study of the structures and actions of German Police battalions in Poland and Ukraine between 1940 and 1942. Using these case studies, Ian Rich draws attention to the actions and motivations of individual lower-ranking policemen who participated in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. He illuminates their pivotal roles as organizers, educators and role models, and the ways they were able to influence their subordinates to carry out these atrocities. This book transcends anonymous group portraits and provides a micro-historical portrait of individual killers that offers broader insights into the overall actions of the SS and police under Heinrich Himmler. Rich's comprehensive analysis of SS and police personnel records and post-war trial investigations reveals the method by which police battalions were transformed into instruments of mass murder in the occupied east during the Second World War. This book is essential to all students and scholars of Holocaust studies, Jewish studies and the Second World War.
Download or read book The Wild East written by Margaret Lynn Brown and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the social, political and environmental changes in the Great Smoky Mountains during the 19th and 20th centuries. Although this national park is often portrayed as a triumph of wilderness preservation, Margaret Lynn Brown concludes that it is actually a recreated wilderness.
Download or read book The Peoples War written by Alexander Wilson and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some 60 million people died during the Second World War; millions more were displaced in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The war resulted in the creation of new states, the acceleration of imperial decline, and a shift in the distribution of global power. Despite its unprecedented impact, a comprehensive account of the complex international experiences of this war remains elusive. The Peoples’ War? offers fresh approaches to the challenge of writing a new history of the Second World War. Exploring aspects of the war that have been marginalized in military and political studies, the volume foregrounds less familiar narratives, subjects, and places. Chapters recover the wartime experiences of individuals – including women, children, members of minority ethnic groups, and colonial subjects – whose stories do not fit easily into conventional national war narratives. The contributors show how terms used to delineate the conflict such as home front and battle front, occupier and occupied, captor and prisoner, and friend and foe became increasingly blurred as the war wore on. Above all, the volume encourages reflection on whether this conflict really was a “Peoples’ War.” Challenging the homogenizing narratives of the war as a nationally unifying experience, The Peoples’ War? seeks to enrich our understanding of the Second World War as a global event.
Download or read book The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941 45 written by Alexander Hill and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book consists of extracts from key documents, along with commentary and further reading, on the ‘Great Patriotic War’ of the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, 1941-45. Despite the historical significance of the war, few Soviet documents have been published in English. This work provides translations of a range of extracts from Soviet documents relating to the titanic struggle on the Eastern Front during World War II, with commentary. This is the only single-volume work in English to use documentary evidence to look at the Soviet war effort from military, political, economic and diplomatic perspectives. The book should not only facilitate a deeper study of the Soviet war effort, but also allow more balanced study of what is widely known in the West as the ‘Eastern Front’. This book will be of much interest to students and scholars of military history, Soviet history, and World War II history.
Download or read book The Wild Wild East written by Thomas E. Meurer and published by . This book was released on 2022-11-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Wild, Wild East recounts the adventures of late-onset Texan and international businessman Tom Meurer over a span of 55 years, from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. As a freshly commissioned Air Force lieutenant, Tom experienced a build-up to war. But it was only after billionaire H. Ross Perot wooed him into the seemingly starchy world of software engineering that Meurer traveled to wartime Vietnam and Laos, searching for evidence of 1,600 missing U.S. prisoners of war. He found himself negotiating with drug-runners, brothel owners, gold smugglers, and dangerously high-ranking diplomats. What started as a privately funded international spy-ring, ended with a privately funded tickertape parade and star-studded weekend reception in San Francisco. Years later, he returned to Vietnam, looking for oil instead of prisoners. Between trips to Southeast Asia, Meurer began working with the Nixon White House as a presidential advance man. Beyond the obvious challenges of anti-war and civil rights protests, Meurer recounts the perils of camera angles, college football fans, bathroom visits, exotic helicopter rides, and the devastating 1970 Peruvian earthquake, which killed more than 80,000 people. Meurer tells of his longtime friendship and business career with Ray Hunt, of Hunt Oil Company, and the game-changing discovery of oil in Yemen - a country "storming out of the 14th century." Ever the fish-out-of-water, he describes his travels, negotiations, and business developments in "Red China" as it began to turn capitalist in 1979. Through his role in Chinese oil exploration, private equity, personal friendships, and the nascent beef industry, Meurer witnessed the People's Republic of China's meteoric rise over the following 35 years. Along the way, we find him pranking communist border guards, breaking out of curfew-imposed war zone hotels and into U.S. embassies, nearly crash landing in Siberia, arrested for jogging in Albania, vacationing with the family in Karl-Marx-Stadt, and ingesting unspeakably exotic foods. He watched leaders, luminaries, lending practices, and landscapes change and change again (and then again), while collecting hotel soap, memberships to airline VIP lounges, and frequent flyer miles. He often found himself in rooms with presidents, prime ministers, sheikhs, and village chiefs as history was happening. In true Forest Gumpian fashion, The Wild, Wild East is a study in best-case scenario of wit + energized wonder + proximity to wealth. Through the opportunities presented by Perot and Hunt, Dallas billionaires who were employers but became dear family friends, Meurer found himself living his best life, one of worldwide adventure while simply having fun, making an honest living, and helping the truest of people and best of friends. These are stories of one man's life - the career, adventures, and impressive people, friends, axioms, discoveries, events, cultures, and institutions he encountered along the way.
Download or read book War in a Twilight World written by B. Shepherd and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-10-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cutting-edge case studies examine the partisan and anti-partisan warfare which broke out across German-occupied eastern Europe during World War Two, showing how it was shaped in varied ways by factors including fighting power, political and economic structures, ideological and psychological influences, and the attitude of the wider population.
Download or read book Terror in the Balkans written by Ben H. Shepherd and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-25 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germany’s 1941 seizure of Yugoslavia led to an insurgency as bloody as any in World War II. The Wehrmacht waged a brutal counter-insurgency campaign in response, and by 1943 German troops in Yugoslavia were engaged in operations that ranked among the largest of the entire European war. Their actions encompassed massive reprisal shootings, the destruction of entire villages, and huge mobile operations unleashed not just against insurgents but also against the civilian population believed to be aiding them. Terror in the Balkans explores the reasons behind the Wehrmacht’s extreme security measures in southern and eastern Europe. Ben Shepherd focuses his study not on the high-ranking generals who oversaw the campaign but on lower-level units and their officers, a disproportionate number of whom were of Austrian origin. He uses Austro-Hungarian army records to consider how the personal experiences of many Austrian officers during the Great War played a role in brutalizing their behavior in Yugoslavia. A comparison of Wehrmacht counter-insurgency divisions allows Shepherd to analyze how a range of midlevel commanders and their units conducted themselves in different parts of Yugoslavia, and why. Shepherd concludes that the Wehrmacht campaign’s violence was driven not just by National Socialist ideology but also by experience of the fratricidal infighting of Yugoslavia’s ethnic groups, by conditions on the ground, and by doctrines that had shaped the military mindsets of both Germany and Austria since the late nineteenth century. He also considers why different Wehrmacht units exhibited different degrees of ruthlessness and restraint during the campaign.
Download or read book Russia at War 2 volumes written by Timothy C. Dowling and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 1166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This easy-to-use reference explores the people and events that shaped Russian military history—and impacted Europe, Asia, and the world—over the past eight centuries. Russian military history is an often-overlooked field. Yet Russia is and has long been an important player in global politics, and its military exploits have been central to its role on the world stage. This study of Russia's military past provides insights into European and U.S. history, including the conduct of the two World Wars and the Cold War, and will help readers better appreciate the current geopolitical situation. This work covers major events and figures in Russian military history from the end of Mongol domination in the 14th century to the present day. More than 650 entries by scores of expert contributors detail events, individuals, organizations, and ideas that have influenced Russian warfare over 800 years. Two alphabetically arranged volumes explore such conflicts as the Russo-Polish Wars, the Great Northern War, the Russo-Turkish Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Cross references and further readings in each entry serve as jumping-off points for further exploration.
Download or read book Civil War in Europe 1905 1949 written by Stanley G. Payne and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-19 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first account in any language of the civil wars in Europe during the era of the world wars, from 1905 to 1949. It treats the initial confrontations in the decade before World War I, the confusing concept of 'European civil war,' the impact of the world wars, the relation between revolution and civil war and all the individual cases of civil war, with special attention to Russia and Spain. The civil wars of this era are compared and contrasted with earlier internal conflicts, with particular attention to the factors that made this era a time of unusually violent domestic contests, as well as those that brought it to an end. The major political, ideological and social influences are all treated, with a special focus on violence against civilians.
Download or read book The Problems of Genocide written by A. Dirk Moses and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 611 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Genocide is not only a problem of mass death, but also of how, as a relatively new idea and law, it organizes and distorts thinking about civilian destruction. Taking the normative perspective of civilian immunity from military attack, A. Dirk Moses argues that the implicit hierarchy of international criminal law, atop which sits genocide as the 'crime of crimes', blinds us to other types of humanly caused civilian death, like bombing cities, and the 'collateral damage' of missile and drone strikes. Talk of genocide, then, can function ideologically to detract from systematic violence against civilians perpetrated by governments of all types. The Problems of Genocide contends that this violence is the consequence of 'permanent security' imperatives: the striving of states, and armed groups seeking to found states, to make themselves invulnerable to threats.
Download or read book Violence in Defeat written by Bastiaan Willems and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the final year of the Second World War, as bitter defensive fighting moved to German soil, a wave of intra-ethnic violence engulfed the country. Bastiaan Willems offers the first study into the impact and behaviour of the Wehrmacht on its own territory, focusing on the German units fighting in East Prussia and its capital Königsberg. He shows that the Wehrmacht's retreat into Germany, after three years of brutal fighting on the Eastern Front, contributed significantly to the spike of violence which occurred throughout the country immediately prior to defeat. Soldiers arriving with an ingrained barbarised mindset, developed on the Eastern Front, shaped the immediate environment of the area of operations, and of Nazi Germany as a whole. Willems establishes how the norms of the Wehrmacht as a retreating army impacted behavioural patterns on the home front, arguing that its presence increased the propensity to carry out violence in Germany.
