It was one of the most ruthlessly conceived and executed invasions in the annals of warfare. Hitler's Polish campaign unleashed a blitzkrieg in which SS troops, police squads, and the army itself waged an ethnic war of unprecedented brutality. Tens of thousands of Poles--roughly 80 percent of whom were Christian--were summarily executed in acts of collective punishment. After six weeks, a country was crushed and the world was at war. Usually given short shrift in most histories of World War II, the invasion of Poland was more than a series of opening salvos; it was a testing ground for German brutalities to come. In this first intensive study of the invasion, Alexander Rossino provides a comprehensive study of the Polish campaign, including disturbing new insights into its racist and ideological underpinnings. Rossino tells how this invasion melded the ideology of the Nazi party with Germany's military yearning for empire in the East. The Polish campaign was important as the first step in Hitler's drive for "living space" for Germans in Eastern Europe, and as the blitzkrieg decimated urban residential areas, civilians soon became indistinguishable from combatants. In addition to describing military operations, Rossino also provides a close analysis of SS plans to murder Polish leaders, German army reprisal policies, and the close collaboration of Wehrmacht and SS forces in the subjugation and execution of Polish citizens. Rossino considers both top-level decision making and the experiences of German soldiers as he explores the mentality of those who perpetrated crimes against civilians. He particularly investigates the links between Nazi racial-political policies and military action to show that Poland was merely the German army's dress rehearsal for the later slaughter of other Slavs and Jews during the Russian campaign. By providing a detailed examination of atrocities committed by both military and SS personnel, he shows that the Wehrmacht's criminality was clearly evident at the beginning of the war. Hitler Strikes Poland is a startling reconstruction of history that clearly reveals the extent to which Nazi philosophy drove the German war machine. By placing German expansionism in its ideological context, it can help us better understand the brutality of the years that followed and better appreciate the suffering of the Polish people.

A penetrating study of the German army's military campaigns, relations with the Nazi regime, and complicity in Nazi crimes across occupied Europe For decades after 1945, it was generally believed that the German army, professional and morally decent, had largely stood apart from the SS, Gestapo, and other corps of the Nazi machine. Ben Shepherd draws on a wealth of primary sources and recent scholarship to convey a much darker, more complex picture. For the first time, the German army is examined throughout the Second World War, across all combat theaters and occupied regions, and from multiple perspectives: its battle performance, social composition, relationship with the Nazi state, and involvement in war crimes and military occupation. This was a true people's army, drawn from across German society and reflecting that society as it existed under the Nazis. Without the army and its conquests abroad, Shepherd explains, the Nazi regime could not have perpetrated its crimes against Jews, prisoners of war, and civilians in occupied countries. The author examines how the army was complicit in these crimes and why some soldiers, units, and higher commands were more complicit than others. Shepherd also reveals the reasons for the army's early battlefield successes and its mounting defeats up to 1945, the latter due not only to Allied superiority and Hitler's mismanagement as commander-in-chief, but also to the failings--moral, political, economic, strategic, and operational--of the army's own leadership.

Fritzsche deciphers the puzzle of Nazism's ideological grip. Its basic appeal lay in the Volksgemeinschaft - a "people's community" that appealed to Germans to be part of a great project to redress the wrongs of the Versailles treaty, make the country strong and vital, and rid the body politic of unhealthy elements. Diaries and letters reveal Germans' fears, desires, and reservations, while showing how Nazi concepts saturated everyday life.

The German Empire, its structure, its dynamic development between 1871 and 1918, and its legacy, have been the focus of lively international debate that is showing signs of further intensification as we approach the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. Based on recent work and scholarly arguments about continuities and discontinuities in modern German history from Bismarck to Hitler, well-known experts broadly explore four themes: the positioning of the Bismarckian Empire in the course of German history; the relationships between society, politics and culture in a period of momentous transformations; the escalation of military violence in Germany's colonies before 1914 and later in two world wars; and finally the situation of Germany within the international system as a major political and economic player. The perspectives presented in this volume have already stimulated further argument and will be of interest to anyone looking for orientation in this field of research.

Jadwiga Lenartowicz Rylko, known as Jadzia (Yah′-jah), was a young Polish Catholic physician in Łódź at the start of World War II. Suspected of resistance activities, she was arrested in January 1944. For the next fifteen months, she endured three Nazi concentration camps and a forty-two-day death march, spending part of this time working as a prisoner-doctor to Jewish slave laborers. A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps follows Jadzia from her childhood and medical training, through her wartime experiences, to her struggles to create a new life in the postwar world. Jadzia’s daughter, anthropologist Barbara Rylko-Bauer, constructs an intimate ethnography that weaves a personal family narrative against a twentieth-century historical backdrop. As Rylko-Bauer travels back in time with her mother, we learn of the particular hardships that female concentration camp prisoners faced. The struggle continued after the war as Jadzia attempted to rebuild her life, first as a refugee doctor in Germany and later as an immigrant to the United States. Like many postwar immigrants, Jadzia had high hopes of making new connections and continuing her career. Unable to surmount personal, economic, and social obstacles to medical licensure, however, she had to settle for work as a nurse’s aide. As a contribution to accounts of wartime experiences, Jadzia’s story stands out for its sensitivity to the complexities of the Polish memory of war. Built upon both historical research and conversations between mother and daughter, the story combines Jadzia’s voice and Rylko-Bauer’s own journey of rediscovering her family’s past. The result is a powerful narrative about struggle, survival, displacement, and memory, augmenting our understanding of a horrific period in human history and the struggle of Polish immigrants in its aftermath.

After the German and Soviet attack on Poland in 1939, vast swathes of Polish territory, including Warsaw and Kraków, fell under Nazi occupation in an administration which became known as the 'General Government'. The region was not directly incorporated into the Reich but was ruled by a German regime, headed by the brutal and corrupt Governor General Hans Frank. This was indeed the dark heart of Hitler's empire. As the principal 'racial laboratory' of the Third Reich, it was the site of Aktion Reinhard, the largest killing operation of the Holocaust, and of a campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing against Poles which was intended to be a template for the rest of eastern Europe. This book provides a thorough history of the General Government and the experiences of the Poles, Jews and others trapped in its clutches. Employing previously underused sources, Martin Winstone provides a unique insight into the occupation regime which dominated much of Poland during World War II.

The SS Cavalry Brigade was a unit of the Waffen-SS that differed from other German military formations as it developed a 'dual role': SS cavalrymen both helped to initiate the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and experienced combat at the front.

History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could be considered "decisive." Cannae, Konigsberg, Austerlitz, Midway, Agincourt-all resonate in the literature of war and in our imaginations as tide-turning. But these legendary battles may or may not have determined the final outcome of the wars in which they were fought. Nor has the "genius" of the so-called Great Captains - from Alexander the Great to Frederick the Great and Napoleon - play a major role. Wars are decided in other ways. Cathal J. Nolan's The Allure of Battle systematically and engrossingly examines the great battles, tracing what he calls "short-war thinking," the hope that victory might be swift and wars brief. As he proves persuasively, however, such has almost never been the case. Even the major engagements have mainly contributed to victory or defeat by accelerating the erosion of the other side's defences. Massive conflicts, the so-called "people's wars," beginning with Napoleon and continuing until 1945, have consisted of and been determined by prolonged stalemate and attrition, industrial wars in which the determining factor has been not military but matériel. Nolan's masterful book places battles squarely and mercilessly within the context of the wider conflict in which they took place. In the process it help corrects a distorted view of battle's role in war, replacing popular images of the "battles of annihilation" with somber appreciation of the commitments and human sacrifices made throughout centuries of war particularly among the Great Powers. Accessible, provocative, exhaustive, and illuminating, The Allure of Battle will spark fresh debate about the history and conduct of warfare.

An absorbing, revelatory, and definitive account of one of the greatest tragedies in human history, by the author of The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and Hitler's People “This is history in the grand style, the kind of large-scale narrative that few historians dare to write these days. It is difficult to imagine how it could be improved upon, let alone surpassed." —The Washington Post "This superb book is not simply a military history; it is a comprehensive portrait of a society at war...A masterpiece of historical research and analysis...Likely to remain the best study of the Third Reich at war for many years to come." —The Christian Science Monitor Adroitly blending narrative, description, and analysis, Richard J. Evans portrays a society rushing headlong to self-destruction and taking much of Europe with it. Interweaving a broad narrative of the war's progress from a wide range of people, Evans reveals the dynamics of a society plunged into war at every level. The great battles and events of the conflict are here, but just as telling is Evans's re- creation of the daily experience of ordinary Germans in wartime. At the center of the book is the Nazi extermi­nation of the Jews. The Third Reich at War lays bare the most momentous and tragic years of the Nazi regime.

German Catholicism at War explores the role Roman Catholicism played in shaping the moral economy of German society during the Second World War. Drawing on previously unused source materials, German Catholicism at War examines the complex relationship between Catholics and Nazi authorities and religious responses to the war.