This third volume of a mini-series covering the German forces in World War I examines the troops that fought during the climax of the war on all fronts: the last great battles of attrition in the West (Arras, Messines, 3rd Ypres Passchendaele/Langemarck and Cambrai, 1917) and the collapse of Russia in the East. The 'Kaiserschlacht' campaign is covered, as are the German operations in Italy, the Balkans, and in support of Turkey in the Middle East. Uniform changes during this period reflected the introduction of new tactics and weapons and new types of troops, such as tanks and assault battalions.
In August 1914 the mobilization of Imperial Germany's 800,000-strong army ushered in the first great war of the modern age a war which still stands as the greatest slaughter of soldiers in history. That German Army is also the best example of a particular period of military thought, when virtually the whole manpower of the European nations was integrated into mass conscript armies, supported by several age categories of reservists and by dedicated industrial and transport systems. In this first of three volumes the author offers an extraordinary mass of information, in text and tables, illustrated by photographs and colour plates.
This work is a detailed account of the composition, structure and organization of the World War I German army. It contains over 150 pages of detailed orders-of-battle and extensive lists of regiments and brigades, and all arms-of-service from infantry to sanitary troops.
Kraus Jürgen, Verlag Militaria , Austria , 2004 (English) Massive and wonderful, this 640 page tome in English is not just a helmet book. Everything from uniforms, hats, ammo pouches to mess tins are covered. The photographs are simply outstanding and the text goes where no text has gone before. The sheer breadth of topics is overwhelming. The approach is museum like and the proof is there. The English language version is just fine. The translation works it is not like babelfish. Much of the photo lexicon is based around "Probe" tagged items. These were examples placed in the Army museum at Rastatt. By having the example a standard could be made for that specific producer of that item. The pictures in the book mainly come from Rastatt and the Bavarian Army Museum. This is a look at the field uniform and equipment. The author envisions several volumes to deal with other parts of the Imperial German army. There are tons of period photos backing up the artifacts. This is 1914-1918 so wartime. Ersatz and wartime helmets are shown in a detail offered no where else. There are 4 main sections to the book 1. Development of the field gray uniform 2. The basic items of uniform 3. Uniforms and insignia of branches of service. Biggest part not based on regiment but branch. 4. Equipment. There is never enough in the write ups but the author admits there is too much subject. I will continue to read but this is amazing. There is a qualitative difference between the books published by Verlag Militaria and other publishers. Verlag Militaria books are so much higher quality. The books by Schiffers are attractive but do not contain the quality in the narration, pictures, or research provided by Verlag Militaria. This is wartime unlike some of the other books from by Verlag Militaria which cover the prewar only.
The German Army of World War II is considered one of the best-organized and most formidable military formations in history. Through more than 200 photos and an exploration of key figures, Wehrmacht captures every major campaign, including the early Blitzkrieg ("Lightning War"); the swift conquest of the Balkans; the long war on the Eastern Front; the fight for North Africa and the Mediterranean; and the final defense of the Reich.
This book is a profound reexamination of the role of the German army, the Wehrmacht, in World War II. Until very recently, the standard story avowed that the ordinary German soldier in World War II was a good soldier, distinct from Hitler's rapacious SS troops, and not an accomplice to the massacres of civilians. Wolfram Wette, a preeminent German military historian, explodes the myth of a "clean" Wehrmacht with devastating clarity. This book reveals the Wehrmacht's long-standing prejudices against Jews, Slavs, and Bolsheviks, beliefs that predated the prophecies of Mein Kampf and the paranoia of National Socialism. Though the sixteen-million-member German army is often portrayed as a victim of Nazi mania, we come to see that from 1941 to 1944 these soldiers were thoroughly involved in the horrific cleansing of Russia and Eastern Europe. Wette compellingly documents Germany's long-term preparation of its army for a race war deemed necessary to safeguard the country's future; World War II was merely the fulfillment of these plans, on a previously unimaginable scale. This sober indictment of millions of German soldiers reaches beyond the Wehrmacht's complicity to examine how German academics and ordinary citizens avoided confronting this difficult truth at war's end. Wette shows how atrocities against Jews and others were concealed and sanitized, and history rewritten. Only recently has the German public undertaken a reevaluation of this respected national institution--a painful but necessary process if we are to truly comprehend how the Holocaust was carried out and how we have come to understand it.
As the Cold War followed on the heels of the Second World War, as the Nuremburg Trials faded in the shadow of the Iron Curtain, both the Germans and the West were quick to accept the idea that Hitler's army had been no SS, no Gestapo, that it was a professional force little touched by Nazi politics. But in this compelling account Omer Bartov reveals a very different history, as he probes the experience of the average soldier to show just how thoroughly Nazi ideology permeated the army. In Hitler's Army, Bartov focuses on the titanic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union--where the vast majority of German troops fought--to show how the savagery of war reshaped the army in Hitler's image. Both brutalized and brutalizing, these soldiers needed to see their bitter sacrifices as noble patriotism and to justify their own atrocities by seeing their victims as subhuman. In the unprecedented ferocity and catastrophic losses of the Eastrn front, he writes, soldiers embraced the idea that the war was a defense of civilization against Jewish/Bolshevik barbarism, a war of racial survival to be waged at all costs. Bartov describes the incredible scale and destruction of the invasion of Russia in horrific detail. Even in the first months--often depicted as a time of easy victories--undermanned and ill-equipped German units were stretched to the breaking point by vast distances and bitter Soviet resistance. Facing scarce supplies and enormous casualties, the average soldier sank to ta a primitive level of existence, re-experiencing the trench warfare of World War I under the most extreme weather conditions imaginable; the fighting itself was savage, and massacres of prisoners were common. Troops looted food and supplies from civilians with wild abandon; they mercilessly wiped out villages suspected of aiding partisans. Incredible losses led to recruits being thrown together in units that once had been filled with men from the same communities, making Nazi ideology even more important as a binding force. And they were further brutalized by a military justice system that executed almost 15,000 German soldiers during the war. Bartov goes on to explore letters, diaries, military reports, and other sources, showing how widespread Hitler's views became among common fighting men--men who grew up, he reminds us, under the Nazi regime. In the end, they truly became Hitler's army. In six years of warfare, the vast majority of German men passed through the Wehrmacht and almost every family had a relative who fought in the East. Bartov's powerful new account of how deeply Nazi ideology penetrated the army sheds new light on how deeply it penetrated the nation. Hitler's Army makes an important correction not merely to the historical record but to how we see the world today.
To see the foreword, the introduction, a generous selection of sample pages, and more, visit the website The Wehrmacht website. In this unique volume, expert Tim Ripley introduces the reader to the world of the German army, covering in detail concepts such as mobile defense and the formidable Blitzkrieg, and explains why the Wehrmacht was able to fight so long, with such fearsome effectiveness. Also includes 180 color and black and white maps and illustrations.
English translation of the military manual that guided the German Army in World War II This book was carried into battle by officers and NCOs and had been classified by the U.S. Army until the year 2000 Topics include command, attack, defense, tanks, chemical warfare, logistics, and more Truppenführung ("unit command") served as the basic manual for the German Army from 1934 until the end of World War II and laid the doctrinal groundwork for blitzkrieg and the early victories of Hitler's armies. Reading it is as close to getting inside the minds behind the Third Reich's war machine as you are likely to get.
