Books like The Wehrmacht by Wolfram Wette

Browning’s book reveals how ordinary middle‑aged Germans of Reserve Police Battalion 101 became silent mass murderers during the Holocaust.

A gripping and intimate account of the Second World War, from its start to its conclusion and beyond, capturing the complex and tragic events of one of the most pivotal eras in world history.

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.

"For the better part of fifty years, the powerful German army of World War II has been seen as an organization of consummate skill and honor, one that had little in common with the criminal policies and ideology of the Nazi regime. The German Army and Genocide explodes that myth." "Through newly discovered documents and hundreds of astonishing photographs culled from archives all across Europe. The German Army and Genocide reveals that many of the nearly eighteen million soldiers who passed through the feared Wehrmacht were involved in crimes against civilians and prisoners of war, acting both on orders by their superiors and - in many instances - on their own initiative." "Based on the original German exhibit, The German Army and Genocide features harrowing photographs taken by the soldiers themselves of massacres, hangings, and torture; official army documents directing military units to murder Jewish communities; private letters written home, such as one from a young soldier who boasts that his unit had killed 1,000 Jews, adding, "and that was not enough"; and military directives that definitively prove close collaboration between the SS and the regular army throughout the war."--BOOK JACKET.