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Author: Eric C. Rust
Publisher: Studies in Naval History and S
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781682475140
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis study, the first scholarly work on Oskar Kusch in English, traces his career and ordeal from his upbringing in Berlin to his tragic death and beyond, including the fifty-year struggle to rehabilitate his name and restore his honor in a postwar Germany long loath to confront the darker dimensions of its past.
Author: Peter C. Hansen
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2006-03-19
Total Pages: 330
ISBN-13: 1781596212
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA true story of betrayal and murder withing the German navy and Nazi military court is revealed in this WWII biography of a U boat Captain. In 1937, Oskar Heinz Kusch joined the German Navy. By the time he finished naval college, the Second World War had begun. Kusch volunteered to serve on U boats and, with his distinguished record, he soon gained his own command in the 2nd U boat Flotilla. Before his second operational voyage as Captain of U 154, three new junior officers joined the submarine. Confirmed Nazi patriots who constantly praised their heroes of the Reich, they were not popular aboard—especially with Kusch, who was ideologically opposed to the Nazi regime despite his military service. During that voyage, the three hatched a plan to dishonor their Captain and accuse him of treason. The trial was corrupt and rigged. No latitude was given from higher authorities and no account of his distinguished career was taken into consideration. To the amazement of the court, orders were given that Kusch was to be shot.
Author: Eric C Rust
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2020-06-15
Total Pages: 323
ISBN-13: 1682475158
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTo his enlisted men on U-154, Lieutenant Oskar Kusch was the ideal skipper--bright, experienced, successful, caring, tolerably eccentric--and a popular captain who always brought his boat home safely when so many others vanished without a trace. To most of his officers Kusch came across as someone very different--a Nazi-hating intellectual with an artistic bent given to lengthy criticisms of the regime, its leaders and its propaganda, a suspected coward and potential traitor unfit for command. Early in 1944, after his second patrol under Kusch, his executive officer, a reservist with a doctorate in law and member of the Nazi party, denounced him on charges of sedition and cowardice. A hastily arranged court-martial cleared Kusch of the cowardice accusation but sentenced him to death on purely ideological grounds for "undermining the fighting spirit" of his boat, even though the prosecutor had only recommended a ten-year jail sentence. Abandoned by all but his closest friends and relatives, coldly sacrificed by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, unwilling to plead for mercy, and to the end tormented by a naval legal bureaucracy acting in collusion with the brown regime, Oskar Kusch was executed in May 1944. This study, the first scholarly work on Kusch in English, traces his career and ordeal from his upbringing in Berlin to his tragic death and beyond, including the fifty-year struggle to rehabilitate his name and restore his honor in a postwar Germany long loath to confront the darker dimensions of its past. The passing of the wartime generation and the emergence of a new school of historians dedicated to critical research and inspired historiography have finally combined to rectify our picture of the Kriegsmarine and to appreciate the sacrifice of men like Oskar Kusch.
Author: Melanie Wiggins
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 300
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMelanie Wiggins interviewed seventeen men of the enlisted ranks, along with five commanders, to take readers into the terrifying world of underwater warfare, where every single crewman made a crucial difference in the fate of his boat."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Francis R. Nicosia
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2015-08-01
Total Pages: 468
ISBN-13: 1782388168
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRather than being accepted by all of German society, the Nazi regime was resisted in both passive and active forms. This re-issued volume examines opposition to National Socialism by Germans during the Third Reich in its broadest sense. It considers individual and organized nonconformity, opposition, and resistance ranging from symbolic acts of disobedience to organized assassination attempts, and looks at how disparate groups such as the Jewish community, churches, conservatives, communists, socialists, and the military all defied the regime in their own ways.
Author: Walter Rinderle
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2014-07-11
Total Pages: 296
ISBN-13: 081314888X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMany scholars have tried to assess Adolf Hitler's influence on the German people, usually focusing on university towns and industrial communities, most of them predominately Protestant or religiously mixed. This work by Walter Rinderle and Bernard Norling, however, deals with the impact of the Nazis on Oberschopfheim, a small, rural, overwhelmingly Catholic village in Baden-Wuerttemberg in southwestern Germany. This incisively written book raises fundamental questions about the nature of the Third Reich. The authors portray the Nazi regime as considerably less "totalitarian" than is commonly assumed, hardly an exemplar of the efficiency for which Germany is known, and neither revered nor condemned by most of its inhabitants. The authors suggest that Oberschopfheim merely accepted Nazi rule with the same resignation with which so many ordinary people have regarded their governments throughout history. Based on village and county records and on the direct testimony of Oberschopfheimers, this book will interest anyone concerned with contemporary Germany as a growing economic power and will appeal to the descendants of German immigrants to the United States because of its depiction of several generations of life in a German village.
Author: Theodore P. Savas
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Published: 2004-06-19
Total Pages: 345
ISBN-13: 1611210011
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOne of WWII's pivotal events was the capture of U-505 on June 4, 1944. The top secret seizure of this massive Type IX submarine provided the Allies with priceless information on German technology and innovation. After the war U-505 was transported to Chicago, where today 1,000,000 visitors a year pass through her at the Museum of Science and Industry. Hunt and Kill offers the first definitive study of U-505. The chapters cover her construction, crew and commanders, combat history, general Type IX operations, naval intelligence, the eight fatal German mistakes that doomed the boat, and her capture, transportation, and restoration for posterity. The contributors to this fascinating volume--a Who's Who of U-boat historians--include: Erich Topp (U-Boat Ace, commander of U-552); Eric Rust (Naval Officers Under Hitler); Timothy Mulligan (Neither Sharks Nor Wolves); Jak Mallman Showell (Hitler's U-boat Bases); Jordan Vause (Wolf); Lawrence Patterson (First U-boat Flotilla); Mark Wise (Enigma and the Battle of the Atlantic); Keith Gill (Curator, Museum of Science and Industry), and Theodore Savas (Silent Hunters; Nazi Millionaries).
Author: Gunther Prien
Publisher:
Published: 2005-07
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781841450537
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Royal Oak was one of the mightiest battleships of the British Navy although, prior to the start of the Second World War, it had been scheduled for retirement. Nonetheless, when it was sent to the bottom of the sea on 14 October 1939 the shock was felt thoughout Britain. How could it be vulnerable to attack when it lay inside the great naval base of Skapa Flow, ringed by defences that were believed, by the Royal navy, to be impregnable? U-47, commanded by Gunther Prien, had found a way though the maze to the heart of the anchorage where the Royal Oak lay. Suddenly two torpedoes blew the mighty battleship apart and it capsized with the loss of over 800 men. In the mayhem that followed, Prien and his crew escaped unnoticed. Gunther Prien went on to become, until his death in May 1941, the leading U-boat commander and was awarded Germany's highest decoration, the Knight's Cross - with the Oakleaves being awarded posthumously. U-Boat Commander is Prien's own account of his early life, his training for U-boat command in the early years of Hitler's Third Reich up to the sinking of the Royal Oak.
Author: Graham Clews
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2019-11-15
Total Pages: 374
ISBN-13: 1682472809
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGiven the dearth of scholarship on the Phoney War, this book examines the early months of World War II when Winston Churchill’s ability to lead Britain in the fight against the Nazis was being tested. Graham T. Clews explores how Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed to fight this new world war, with particular attention given to his attempts to impel the Royal Navy, the British War Cabinet, and the French, toward a more aggressive prosecution of the conflict. This is no mere retelling of events but a deep analysis of the decision-making process and Churchill’s unique involvement in it. This book shares extensive new insights into well-trodden territory and original analysis of the unexplored, with each chapter offering material which challenges conventional wisdom. Clews reassesses several important issues of the Phoney War period including: Churchill’s involvement in the anti-U-boat campaign; his responsibility for the failures of the Norwegian Campaign; his attitude to Britain’s aerial bombing campaign and the notion of his unfettered “bulldog” spirit; his relationship with Neville Chamberlain; and his succession to the premiership. A man of considerable strengths and many shortcomings, the Churchill that emerges in Clews’ portrayal is dynamic and complicated. Churchill’s Phoney War adds a well-balanced and much-needed history of the Phoney War while scrupulously examining Churchill’s successes and failures.
Author: Walter S. Zapotoczny Jr.
Publisher: Fonthill Media
Published: 2017-12-17
Total Pages: 386
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe German Army’s Strafbattalions were infantry units made up largely of convicts, felons, malingerers, thugs and the criminally insanePreviously unpublished story of the unitsThe accounts of the most famous Strafbattalion units in combatA story of little-known Nazi units: Hitler’s ‘Dirty Dozens’ When war broke out in 1939, Hitler created Strafbattalion (Penal Battalion) units to deal with incarcerated members of the Wehrmacht as well as ‘subversives’. His order stated that any first-time convicted soldier could return to his unit after he had served a portion of his sentence in ‘…a special probation corps before the enemy’. Beginning in April 1941, convicted soldiers, even those sentenced to death, who had shown exceptional bravery or meritorious service could rejoin their original units; however, those in probation units were expected to undertake dangerous operations at the front. Refusal entailed enforcement of the original sentence. The soldiers who ‘won back an honourable place in the national community’ had done everything that was asked of them from suicidal advance teams, shock troops, and laying mines under fire. By 1945, over 50,000 Wehrmacht troops had served in punishment regiments. Strafbatallion: Hitler’s Penal Battalions examines the penal units, their combat history and order of battle.
