Dennis ShowalterCritiques

The Encyclopedia of Warfare is an excellent resource for anyone from a casual history buff to a professional historian. It is meant to answer basic questions and point one in the right direction for further research or reading. And to that purpose it is a wonderful success. Admittedly, for the 2023 edition, I found the same strengths with the main difference being that conflicts since 2013 have been included. So this is mostly a repeat of my review of the 2013 edition.

First of all, just like any encyclopedia, this is not designed to be read from cover to cover, at least not as a single work. Like my old Encyclopedia Britannica, one will likely skip around and end up reading most of it. But also like the EB, each entry aims to offer a very basic who, what, why, when, where with a little more elaboration when the event (battle, skirmish, etc) is more important. Anyone coming to this work expecting it to be something other than a single volume encyclopedia is either unaware of what an encyclopedia is or just likes to hear themselves be negative.

In deciding for myself how much I liked the volume I mostly read the entries for wars and conflicts with which I have more than a passing familiarity. In order to keep this book manageable some things were glossed over or omitted while others were given more space. A reader may well think one battle, for example, is more important than the space it is given. That does not mean either the editors nor the reader are wrong, they probably came at it from different perspectives. My study and research on wars were primarily cultural and intellectual history with enough military history thrown in so I could try to understand when something might have been done for military reasons and when something may have been done for political or appearance reasons. As such, I would probably highlight something that rightfully doesn't warrant it in a volume like this. So keep in mind the title of the book before criticizing it for being what it is not trying to be.

As a big aside, I can picture this being in a fiction writer's office, especially a writer of historical fiction, as a quick easy first step toward including any conflicts that might have been going on and impacted their characters, even if just to make the story more immersive. I personally hope to jump around in the book, mostly in the time periods in which I have the least knowledge, and use it as a springboard for more detailed reading.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

Firstly, the title of the book is slightly misleading without further exploration of its contents a potential reader may believe this novel to be in tune with other popular historical fiction books. 'If the Allies Had Fallen' was a slow-paced, but informative collection of essays on potential minor tweaks to specific scenarios during the war. The book is great for what it is, just as long as its what you were expecting.

This book is among a range of recent studies utilizing primary source records documenting the German Army of World War I. Tiring of the usual recounting of German action during the war (von Schlieffen plan, Race to the Sea, Verdun, the Somme, Ypres, Operation Michael, Amiens), authors like Nick Lloyd and Dennis Showalter did the difficult research work to present a different narrative, one that puts the German war effort in a much different light.

Encompassing a total of 320 pages, "Instrument of War" was published by Osprey in 2016. The book is divided into an introduction and acknowledgements, six numbered chapters, a coda (I had to look that one up; it means conclusion), a selection of photographs, endnotes, and an index. Logically arranged in chronological order, Chapter I, Portents and Preliminaries, sets the stage for the war to follow and covers its early weeks. Chapter II, Autumn of Decision, delves into the fall of 1914 and the end of mobile warfare on the Western Front. Chapter III, Reevaluating, explores the changes that the German Army leadership and the General Staff initiated in the wake of the failure of the war of maneuver and the subsequent shift to the strategic defensive in the West. Chapter IV, Verdun and the Somme: End of an Army, recounts the crippling of the German Army even as it inflicted incredible damage on its foes during the battles of Verdun and the Somme. Chapter V, Reconfigurations, eamines how the German General Staff and senior military leaders changed the formations, tactics, organization, and equipment of the Army to face the new realities of 1917. Chapter VI, Climax and Denouement, closes out the story with the Spring Offensive and the ultimate defeat of the German Army.

The story of Germany's First World War army is a difficult one to portray accurately as so much was written about it in the years immediately after the war, giving the German Army a mythical reputation that fostered the rise of fascism in the 1920's and 30's. Unfortunately, this optimistic portrayal of that army lingered long after the trauma of the Second World War. Potential modern authors of German Army histories have to hack away at the layers of distortions and exaggerations to get at a story that resembles the truth. Dennis Showalter has done this to my satisfaction. His focus on contemporary primary sources undermines the revisionist historians of the twenties and thirties--those who provided a false narrative that gave rise to the "stab in the back" myth that had such an impact on German politics and culture.

Although Showalter covers other combat theaters in this book, they are mentioned only as they impact the primary theater of the war--the Western Front. Although this gives short shrift to those who fought in the other theaters, the author rightly concentrates on the action that truely determined the war's outcome. I do have some issues with Showalter's writing style at different points in the book, but I had no problem understanding the author's presentation of his case and the proofs he provides.

Dennis Showalter fills a noteworthy gap in military histories with this book. Anyone interested in First World War history should pick up "Instrument of War ".½

This is a very large and ambitious book with nearly 30 individual contributors covering a huge timeline. At the front are an index of wars and campaigns, an index of maps and charts and a nice timeline of civilization as a whole. After that, the various conflicts are basically organized by date and groups into broad categories (with only a limit description of the division criteria):

Ancient Wars 2500 BCE to 500 CE
Medieval Wars 500 CE to 1500 CE
Early Modern Wars 1500 CE to 1775 CE
Revolutionary Wars 1775 CE to 1815 CE
Wars of Empire and Revolt 1825 CE to 1914 CE
World Wars 1914 CE to 1945 CE
Modern Wars 1945

Almost all of the information provided is under specific headers for a given battle within a conflict or campaign. The information is typically very basic, frequently lacking summary on what the objective of the battle was (focused more on a description of the forces and outcome, with some having maneuvers as well). In addition, the war/conflict headings were empty of any summary on the ‘casus belli’ and ultimate outcome. This gives the impression of a simple list of battles. Reinforcing this impression is how each section was actually organized … just by date, so it was not uncommon to jump across continents making it difficult to keep track of such conflicts … this would have been a lot better if there were geographic subdivisions (and a map). . Minor conflict with only one or two battles should have always been groups together. This was not consistent, and I assume a result of the many contributors (which I acknowledge can be difficult to manage). Examples:

Post Roman Britain (500 - 1500)
Franks (500 - 1000)
Byzantium (500 - 1000)
Turkist Empire (600 - 1299)
Muslim Expansion (624 - 1100)
China Tang Dynasty (581 - 950)
Korea (600 - 1100)
Norse Expansion (800 - 1066)
Norman England (1066 - 1200)
Holy Roman Empire (900 - 1259)
China Song/Ming (960 - 1644)
Scandinavian Kingdoms (1157 - 1471)

This makes the encyclopedia good, but short of its potential.

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
#TheEncyclopediaofWarfare #NetGalley

So I think this book will become a project. I'll explain.

The book is detailed, organized and well researched. It offers maod to show progress. Use them.

The effort to enter France via Belgium in 1914 was marred by all manor of chaos, mistakes, and infighting. The same effort in 1939 was stunningly effective.

In turung this book into an exploratory war game, and playing the 1939 parralel after it I feel a real understanding can be gained.

Anyway, read this book. It deepens a real understanding of the war. And is very good.

The Encyclopedia of Warfare is an excellent resource for anyone from a casual history buff to a professional historian. It is meant to answer basic questions and point one in the right direction for further research or reading. And to that purpose it is a wonderful success.

First of all, just like any encyclopedia, this is not designed to be read from cover to cover, at least not as a single work. Like my old Encyclopedia Britannica, one will likely skip around and end up reading most of it. But also like the EB, each entry aims to offer a very basic who, what, why, when, where with a little more elaboration when the event (battle, skirmish, etc) is more important. Anyone coming to this work expecting it to be something other than a single volume encyclopedia is either unaware of what an encyclopedia is or just likes to hear themselves be negative.

In deciding for myself how much I liked the volume I mostly read the entries for wars and conflicts with which I have more than a passing familiarity. In order to keep this book manageable some things were glossed over or omitted while others were given more space. A reader may well think one battle, for example, is more important than the space it is given. That does not mean either the editors nor the reader are wrong, they probably came at it from different perspectives. My study and research on wars were primarily cultural and intellectual history with enough military history thrown in so I could try to understand when something might have been done for military reasons and when something may have been done for political or appearance reasons. As such, I would probably highlight something that rightfully doesn't warrant it in a volume like this. So keep in mind the title of the book before criticizing it for being what it is not trying to be.

As a big aside, I can picture this being in a fiction writer's office, especially a writer of historical fiction, as a quick easy first step toward including any conflicts that might have been going on and impacted their characters, even if just to make the story more immersive. I personally hope to jump around in the book, mostly in the time periods in which I have the least knowledge, and use it as a springboard for more detailed reading.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

A bit on the dry side, but wonderfully comprehensive. David Glantz's chapters on the Soviet Union are particularly fascinating and actually remove some sense of contingency from the eastern front - one way or another, as soon as Hitler crossed the border, the Red Army would eventually find its way to Berlin.

Instrument of War: The German Army 1914–18 by Dennis Showalter is a history of World War I based on the German participation. Showalter is a retired Professor of History, past President of the Society for Military History and Joint Editor of War in History specializing in comparative military history. He has written or edited two dozen books and a hundred fifty articles.

World War I was the war that could have been prevented, it, however, set the stage for the 20th century. It was the stubbornness of Austria-Hungary and their demands that brought on the violence. From all accounts, the Kaiser thought Serbia had met Austria-Hungary's demands and planned on vacation. Franz Josef took the assassination of his despised nephew as the will of God and saw it as a way of accomplishing what he couldn’t. Unfortunately, his ministers saw things differently and moved to war. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Germany joined its ally. Russia came to the aid of its Slav allies. Germany moved against France, who was bound to aid Russia by treaty. Germany’s move through Belgium brought England to war. Much has been blamed on the entangling alliances as the cause for the war but one must remember too that the NATO alliance (and the Warsaw Pact for that matter) helped keep the peace in the Cold War. WWI was more the fault of faulty leaders than alliances meant to balance power.

World War I was history caught between pages. The advances in technology changed the world. The expansion of railroads meant that mobilization and transportation of troops and equipment could move at previously unattainable speeds. The machine gun was capable of killing on a scale never seen before. The internal combustion engine started to play a role in the military but was still too undependable to be counted on. Horses still played a major role in transportation at this time. That meant pulling animals from the farms which still used and needed them. It also meant feeding the animals. 84,000 horses used by the German’s required almost two million tons of feed a day; this came out of food that would be used by soldiers and civilians. Armies did not adapt to new technologies on the offensive. Killing charging masses of enemy troops is where the machine gun excelled. Advancing armies refused to learn their lesson.

The German army, like most powers, relied on reserve units. It differed in that their reserve units were trained and expected to hold their own in combat. Most nations reserves went to the rear and were used as fillers. The Russian army was in the worst position of the major powers. It’s rail system needed developing and the rally points for mobilization were spread across the vast country. Germany, on the other hand, exercised a near flawless mobilization and continued to be a successful force until it was not only beaten but out-soldiered at Vimy. No one expected a long war and no one was prepared to fight a drawn out war. The German army was statistically successful in creating three casualties for every two it suffered, but allied army size stood against the Germans in a war of attrition. A well-written history of Germany in World War I.

Very interesting book. Looks at the German Army from the perspective of performance and efficiency. Seems to be well researched. When reviewing the bibliography, I recognized many of the sources as books I have already read. Recommend.

The problem with the German Army in World War One, argues Dennis Showalter, is that it was an instrument of war and not for war.

It started with the insouciance of Prussian War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn. On July 5, 1914, he told Moltke the Younger (known as “Gloomy Julius” to the higher ranking members of the German General Staff) – after, of course assuring the Kaiser that the German Army would support the Austro-Hungary Empire’s ultimatum to Serbia -- that nothing would come of this war talk. The man who planned the railroad timetables clocking how the German Army would go to war, Wilhelm Gröner, took a July holiday.

It ended with Ludendorff’s spring 1918 offensives which had little more by way of specific objectives than punch a hole in Allied lines and see what happened.

Germany pursued war with a too casual appraisal of strategic ends. It concerned itself with the operational scale of war, not the strategic. Battles were to be won. And the next battle would be won and …

But this was the German Army, regarded as the best in the world. It was Germany’s pre-eminently competent institute. After all, it had wrapped up the 1866 war against Austria and the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 quickly and with few casualties. There was no “mythology of sacrifice and victimization” as came out of the Crimean War or the American Civil War.

Sure, there was an 1895 staff report stating an offensive against France would result in a limited advance and eventual tactical stalemate.

But duty called. There had to be a “next war”. Russia was getting stronger. France was an enemy. It was not pure paranoia that they thought themselves surrounded by enemies. German honor was at stake.

In the second through sixth chapters of the book, Showalter shows how that war played out, how the German Army evolved and failed, changed the Second Reich and planted seeds for later German policies in World War Two. Each of those chapters covers roughly a year of the war.

Two important areas covered.

First, the book counterpoints the impression of Allied futility and slaughter on the battlefield after the trenches were dug. Massive Allied casualties in stalled offensives on the Western Front seemed, to the German Army, a slowing raising sea lapping at the shore and forever taking ground. To them, the Somme looked like a near run thing and not futility. The opening artillery barrage of the offensive seemed, to German soldiers, like the end of the world. German lines almost ruptured. By September 1916, two months into the battle, the Germans were at the limits of endurance. “A necrology of the irreplaceable” dead began to fill German accounts. In November 1916, Allied officers noted the Germans now were not the Germans at the beginning of the battle.

They begin to question the competence of their nation and army.

The war dragged on for two more years, of course, because the Germans became masters of defense and innovated in other ways. In particular, they developed the portable MG 08/15 machine, a complicated defense system, stormtrooper tactics, and better airplanes. They did not, even though they got their hands on an Allied tank very quickly after its deployment, develop effective tanks. Why bother? It was an offensive weapon and, by 1917, Germany was planning defense.

In fact, argues Showalter, the German Army got in the habit of defense and was ultimately too used to it when it launched the Michael Offensive on March 21, 1918. It was not, argues Showalter, disrupted by starving German troops looting overrun Allied supplies. It was doomed by troops often years out of practice in offensive operations, a supply system that pushed supplies to the moving front on a pre-planned schedule and not on real-time demand, continued offensive operations killing experienced assault troops and requiring more men to hold area behind the line, and so many men down from the “Flanders flu” that Ludendorff complained it was his subordinates’ excuse for failure. The offensive even failed due to a lack of fresh horses because this was the one time on the Western Front horse cavalry might have been able to operate in the open and make a difference.

Tactically Michael was a stunning success. The line advanced 14 miles in a day – more than any other day in the war. Planning had started on it exactly one year before the war ended, November 11, 1917. The tactics were partially based on the stunning – perhaps the most perfectly realized German offense of the war – German victory at Riga September 1917. General Bruchmuller’s planning showed the way to new combined arms tactics.

But, arguably, the Germans should have stopped when they were ahead, consolidated their advances, went back on defense. Douglas Haig even entertained notions briefly of peace negotiations. But Showalter says Ludendorff’s offensives were not impressive in success but in “the limited nature of that success”. Allied counterattacks began on July 18th, and one German general marked the date as the turning point of the war.

The book’s second strength is showing the life and psychology of the German soldier. A member of a citizen army and serving in units from the same area, they bonded like families. The captain of the company was father and the first sergeant mother, and a joke went that a recruit’s expected reply out of what he wanted from the army was to be an orphan. It was less ideology or country that motivated them that living up to German idea of masculinity and gaining the respect of one’s peers.

Serving successfully as a soldier, enduring what had to be endured, accomplishing a mission, was a rite of passage for a German man.

They were not robots. Quite the opposite. Individual initiative was expected out of soldiers even at the beginning of the war and particularly after 1915 under the new German defensive doctrine of “resist, bend, and snap back”. German workers in factories carried out complicated tasks together with minimal supervision. They carried that teamwork and initiative and intelligence into battle. Showalter says that the war on the Western Front in 1917 has been called a factory of death,L but the German Army developed a “artisanal approach to modern war”.

Institutions of knowledge-sharing, practical experience gained in battle, were created. The German Army expected a lot of its men. Even during wartime, its number of commissioned officers was not increased.

Officers didn’t hand out the harsh punishments of armies from more democratic countries. Less than a 100 German soldiers were executed in the war. A certain amount of high spirit was expected in the troops. In fact, a soldier who hadn't spent a few days in the guard house or on punishment detail almost couldn’t call himself a real soldier.

Officers regarded it as their duty to look after their men even if the officers were aristocrats. They also thought never giving an order you knew would be disobeyed a good rule. The combination may have led to looting by German soldiers in the hot, humid, thirsty days of August 1914 when supply trains could not keep up with the rapid movement.

Showalter doesn’t ignore the bodies of the German soldier. He mentions how, in those hot days, the Germans marched to the Marne with their pants down – from dysentery. German soldiers suffering from diarrhea at Verdun had the same problem and had to venture out to the hellish zone of war to relieve themselves during breaks in the hellish shelling. The young German soldier, we are told, often away from home for the first time and with his peers, exhibited a peculiar Teutonic fixation on bodily functions. He was in a peculiar zone outside of the hierarchies of civilian life where he could prove himself.

In the later days of the war, tensions crept in. Old, experienced soldiers didn’t appreciate young officers. The 1916 census of Jews in the German Army, never officially released, created resentment by Jews – disproportionately represented in the Army – and non-Jews alike who regarded them as fellow participants in battle.

There was also the always present resentment, in war, of front line troops for those in the rear. And, since the German Army was, for the duration of the war, on occupied ground, a large number of troops were thus engaged. Almost a million troops were on the Eastern Front after Russia left the war.

Being on occupied ground also psychologically ground the troops down and made them paranoid. They also decorated the tombs of their fallen comrades – when they had them – more than the French or English troops did.

Showalter doesn’t talk much about the Eastern Front, though he wrote the acclaimed Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914, but he talks about the impression Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, made on the Germans. It wasn’t a favorable one. They regarded the conquered members of the East as dirty – they were by German standards – and ignorant. One Jewish soldier even remarked that if these Jews of Russia were his co-religionists, he thanked God he was German.

The German Army instituted delousing plans for the conquered East. Ludendorff, Hindenburg, and the Kaiser dreamed of colonizing its new lands. All these and the use of forced labor by civilians and POWs to build, in 1916 and 1917, the Siegfried Line, Showalter acknowledges, planted seeds for the Third Reich’s behavior.

There is much more including the effects of what was, basically, a Ludendorff and Hindenburg dictatorship which included mandatory work for all able-bodied German men. Militarism and the erosion of democracy may have been the result, notes Showalter, but no other leaders were available to lead the war and its required industrial production.

Not a book for the World War One newbie. Reading a good general history of the Great War is needed to put things in context though Showalter approaches things chronologically. Surprisingly, for an Osprey Publishing book, there are no maps. A few events post-armistice are very briefly covered.

There is an index and 23 pages of photos.

Definitely recommended for those with an interest in the Great War and a valuable redress to the Allied-centric histories in English.

Book received from NetGalley.

I really loved this book. While I have read some books on World War I and have studied it a little in college classes I really don't know much about the soldiers and their training of the era. I learned quite a bit from this book and will definitely be buying a copy for my own shelves

It's a well researched book and is good at fleshing out different out comes to scenarios during WWII but, it can be boring and drag in spots. If you are a follower of WWII then you should read this book, if you only have a passing interest in WWII then flip a coin. Enjoy.

Armor and Blood: The Battle of Kursk. The Turning Point of World War II by

Dennis E. Showalter

Random House

August 27, 2013

316 Pages

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8129-9465-0

ISBN-13: 978-1-4000-6677-3

542 Nonfiction History Military History & Affairs World War II

Publisher Contact: Steven Boriack, sboriack@randomhouse.com

Reviewer: Thomas E. Nutter

Dennis E. Showalter is a scholar and educator who has practiced his craft at Colorado College since 1969. He also has taught at both the United States Air Force Academy and the United States Military Academy, and has served as President of the Society for Military History. He has written the award-winning Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, as well as many other books and professional articles in the field of military history.

Showalter’s most recent work is Armor and Blood, a detailed narrative of the planning, preparation, execution and ultimate failure of Operation Citadel, arguably Adolf Hitler’s greatest military gamble. And gamble it was, as Showalter constantly reminds the reader by liberally sowing his text with references to games of chance and the points in them at which an individual player must make a decision upon which the game’s outcome will be determined.

Citadel was rife with vital points of decision for both sides. The first of these, and the one that set the dominoes in motion, concerned whether the Wehrmacht should undertake offensive operations in the East in 1943. That such an issue should present itself in the first instance, and in less than six months following the greatest debacle in German military history, was due to the uncanny ability of the Wehrmacht to resurrect itself in the face of disaster.

To the casual eye, the successful offensives of the Wehrmacht in Russia during the summer and autumn of 1942 suggested that the German armed forces had recovered from their first defeat and returned to their former selves, masters of the cut and slash of Blitzkrieg. In truth, however, the Red Army had gutted its German counterpart during the summer and autumn of 1941, beginning a decline in the substance and capabilities of Germany’s armed forces that inexorably accelerated during the next four years.

Manpower levels in German units declined by at least a third, causing the Germans to “recruit” men from the occupied territories, many of whom were not at all motivated to fight for the Third Reich. Allied bombing reduced German production of weapons and ammunition, often forcing the German Army to rely upon captured French and Russian equipment, with a resulting decline in German fighting power. The result had been the disastrous defeats at Stalingrad and Alamein.

Nevertheless, the German Army and Air Force were resilient enough to at least partially recover from even these events, and German industry remained sufficiently productive to arm some powerful elite formations. The question on the table in the early spring of 1943 was whether these units should be shepherded and used defensively to take advantage of the large areas of Russia still under German control, or offensively in one more effort to crush the Red Army and bring the country to its knees.

Adolf Hitler, whose opinion carried the greatest weight, believed that an opportunity to achieve the more aggressive purpose lay with the huge salient in southern Russia left by the Red Army’s post-Stalingrad offensive. At the center of that salient lay the city of Kursk, and the Fuehrer became enamored with the idea that German forces on either side of the salient would pierce it, meet at or near Kursk, and destroy enough Soviet forces to cause Russia to leave the war, or at the very least reduce its fighting power sufficiently to allow Germany to defeat the anticipated Allied invasion of western Europe.

Showalter describes the decision-making process that consumed Hitler and the Generals who would have responsibility for conducting the Citadel operation, illustrating the ambivalence among these men that caused a plague of vacillation among them with regard to whether, if undertaken, the offensive would stand a chance of success. There were important German officers, among them Heinz Guderian, who remained opposed to the plan from start to finish. But the Fuehrer, whatever misgivings he may have had, was persuaded to forge ahead, in part because Field Marshal Erich von Manstein threw his considerable professional weight behind the idea.

Professor Showalter contrasts the success of the Soviet intelligence system in divining both the timing and overall German plan for Citadel, with the chronic failure of German military intelligence, in this case its inability to obtain useful information about either Soviet plans for dealing with the operation or the forces that would be available for the purpose. Indeed, understanding that the Russians knew much of the German plans, and were preparing to thwart them, came primarily through photographs taken during Luftwaffe reconnaissance flights.

What those photographs depicted likely would have persuaded any reasonable person to abandon the enterprise with dispatch and preserve the precious German panzer divisions to fight another day. For the Red Army had begun constructing mile upon mile of interlocking defensive belts, each of which included elaborate systems of trenches, gun positions, wire entanglements, bunkers, anti-tank ditches, and forts whose purpose was to funnel both man and machine into extensive minefields and killing grounds where the enemy’s soldiers and armored vehicles would be destroyed wholesale.

Showalter is truly in his element in describing the reality of the fighting in the Kursk salient, which began on July 5, 1943 and lasted roughly two weeks. But the battle was fought literally around the clock, exhausting men and vehicles alike. The final numbers imply a clear German victory; the most reasonable accounting indicates that the Soviets lost eight times the number of German combat vehicles destroyed in Citadel, and six times the men killed and wounded. Yet the German armed forces clearly failed to meet their objectives, and whereas the Russians could replace the men and vehicles destroyed in the battle, the Germans could not. For the remainder of the war, German ground forces would be incapable of meaningful offensive operations. Likewise the Luftwaffe, whose ground support operations dropped quickly to nearly zero, in parallel with its ultimate failure to defend the Reich from the Allied bombing offensive.

With due regard to the several excellent scholars and writers who have written so well on the same subject, it must be said that Showalter’s narrative of the battle is without peer. Professor Showalter did what any good historian would have done----read the secondary sources, met and spoke with survivors, mastered the pertinent original documents, and cogitated upon the whole----and produced a work that is accessible to both the professional and the casual reader alike.

Conceptual framework of examining the primary German tool for war making has an created an interesting perspective for examining the WW2 land war in Europe. Does an excellent job of critiquing the weapons, men, leaders, strategies and tactics that allowed Hitler and his generals to conquer almost all of the contiguous landmass that constituted Europe.

A very interesting read in overall armored warfare development from WW1 through the final days of WW2.

4385. Voices From the Third Reich An Oral History, by Johannes Steinhoff; Peter Pechel; Dennis Showalter (read 21 Nov 2007) I finished reading this on 21 Nov 2007. It is a compilation of oral statements by over 150 Germans about their experience in Hitler's Germany and in World War II. There are various viewpoints but it is disheartening to realize that opposiiton to Hitler and his evil was so limited and that many Germans even years later did not wholeheartedly condemn Nazidom. Let's face it--when a country is at war it takes a special kind of heroism to be against one's country no matter how evil the course that country is pursuing. Stephen Decatur is viewed as a great patriot because he siad "My country, in its intercourse with foreign countries may she always be right, but my country, right or wrong." I dare say that there are Americans who subscribe to that sentiment but who at the same time excoriate Germans for not rising up against Hitler.