An examination of the final period of Nazi rule in Germany's eastern provinces at the end of the Second World War. It outlines the wartime role of this region and assesses the impact of Nazi 'popular mobilisation' initiatives during the closing months of the conflict.
An engrossing history of the last year of the Second World War, charting the battles fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazis across German soil. The terrible months between the arrival of the Red Army on German soil and the final collapse of Hitler's regime were like no other in the Second World War. The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished. From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this book recounts in chilling detail the desperate struggle of soldiers and civilians alike. These brutal campaigns are brought vividly to life by a combination of previously untold testimony and astute strategic analysis recognising a conflict of unprecedented horror and suffering.
The enormous loss of life and physical destruction caused by the First World War led people to hope that there would never be another such catastrophe. How then did it come about that there was a Second World War causing twice the 30 million deaths and many times more destruction as had been caused in the previous conflict? In this Very Short Introduction, Gerhard L. Weinberg provides an introduction to the origins, course, and impact of the war on those who fought and the ordinary citizens who lived through it. Starting by looking at the inter-war years and the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, he examines how the war progressed by examining a number of key events, including the war in the West in 1940, Barbarossa, The German Invasion of the Soviet Union, the expansion of Japan's war with China, developments on the home front, and the Allied victory from 1944-45. Exploring the costs and effects of the war, Weinberg concludes by considering the long-lasting mark World War II has left on society today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Drawing on innovative scholarship on Finland in World War II, this volume offers a comprehensive narrative of politics and combat, well-argued analyses of the ideological, social and cultural aspects of a society at war, and novel interpretations of the memory of war.
This is the first detailed study of Britain's open source intelligence (OSINT) operations during the Second World War, showing how accurate and influential OSINT could be and ultimately how those who analysed this intelligence would shape British post-war policy towards the Soviet Union. Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the enemy and neutral press covering the German occupation of the Baltic states offered the British government a vital stream of OSINT covering the entire German East. OSINT was the only form of intelligence available to the British from the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union, due to the Foreign Office suspension of all covert intelligence gathering inside the Soviet Union. The risk of jeopardising the fragile Anglo-Soviet alliance was considered too great to continue covert intelligence operations. In this book, Wheatley primarily examines OSINT acquired by the Stockholm Press Reading Bureau (SPRB) in Sweden and analysed and despatched to the British government by the Foreign Research and Press Service (FRPS) Baltic States Section and its successor, the Foreign Office Research Department (FORD). Shedding light on a neglected area of Second World War intelligence and employing useful case studies of the FRPS/FORD Baltic States Section's Intelligence, British Intelligence and Hitler's Empire in the Soviet Union, 1941-1945 makes a new and important argument which will be of great value to students and scholars of British intelligence history and the Second World War.
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.