Death Of A Nazi Army

For seven weeks after D-Day, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were bottled up along the landing beaches. Finally, 3,000 American and British planes bombarded a narrow path into enemy territory, and the Allies surrounded 100,000 die-hard Germans at Falaise. Breuer's stirring reconstruction of the battle as seen from both sides makes this one of the best WWII books of recent years.--JOHN BARKHAM REVIEWS. 34 photos.

A deft, lively, and highly readable history of the demise of the German way of war. As the allies found an antidote to the "shock and awe" approach of the Wehrmacht, the once mighty German army underwent an epic fall from remarkable operational victories to crushing operational defeats, forced to take on a defensive stance in a war it could never win.

For Hitler and the German military, 1942 was a key turning point of World War II, as an overstretched but still lethal Wehrmacht replaced brilliant victories and huge territorial gains with stalemates and strategic retreats. In this major reevaluation of that crucial year, Robert Citino shows that the German army's emerging woes were rooted as much in its addiction to the "war of movement"-attempts to smash the enemy in "short and lively" campaigns-as they were in Hitler's deeply flawed management of the war. From the overwhelming operational victories at Kerch and Kharkov in May to the catastrophic defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Death of the Wehrmacht offers an eye-opening new view of that decisive year. Building upon his widely respected critique in The German Way of War, Citino shows how the campaigns of 1942 fit within the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions. He examines every major campaign and battle in the Russian and North African theaters throughout the year to assess how a military geared to quick and decisive victories coped when the tide turned against it. Citino also reconstructs the German generals' view of the war and illuminates the multiple contingencies that might have produced more favorable results. In addition, he cites the fatal extreme aggressiveness of German commanders like Erwin Rommel and assesses how the German system of command and its commitment to the "independence of subordinate commanders" suffered under the thumb of Hitler and chief of staff General Franz Halder. More than the turning point of a war, 1942 marked the death of a very old and traditional pattern of warmaking, with the classic "German way of war" unable to meet the challenges of the twentieth century. Blending masterly research with a gripping narrative, Citino's remarkable work provides a fresh and revealing look at how one of history's most powerful armies began to founder in its quest for world domination.

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It was the endgame for Hitler's Reich. In the winter of 1944–45, Germany staked everything on its surprise campaign in the Ardennes, the “Battle of the Bulge.” But when American and Allied forces recovered from their initial shock, the German forces were left fighting for their very survival—especially on the Eastern Front, where the Soviet army was intent on matching, or even surpassing, Nazi atrocities. At the mercy of the Fuehrer, who refused to acknowledge reality and forbade German retreats, the Wehrmacht was slowly annihilated in horrific battles that have rarely been adequately covered in histories of the Second World War—especially the brutal Soviet siege of Budapest, which became known as the “Stalingrad of the Waffen-SS.” Capping a career that has produced more than forty books, Dr. Samuel W. Mitcham now tells the extraordinary tale of how Hitler’s once-dreaded war machine came to a cataclysmic end, from the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 to the German surrender in May 1945. Making use of German wartime papers and memoirs—some rarely seen in English-language sources—Mitcham’s sweeping narrative deserves a place on the shelf of every student of World War II.

Describes the battle between the Allied and German forces in Falaise, France, and examines the reasons for the defeat of the Germans

Fritzsche deciphers the puzzle of Nazism's ideological grip. Its basic appeal lay in the Volksgemeinschaft - a "people’s community" that appealed to Germans to be part of a great project to redress the wrongs of the Versailles treaty, make the country strong and vital, and rid the body politic of unhealthy elements. Diaries and letters reveal Germans' fears, desires, and reservations, while showing how Nazi concepts saturated everyday life.