Surrounded by potential adversaries, nineteenth-century Prussia and twentieth-century Germany faced the formidable prospect of multifront wars and wars of attrition. To counteract these threats, generations of general staff officers were educated in operational thinking, the main tenets of which were extremely influential on military planning across the globe and were adopted by American and Soviet armies. In the twentieth century, Germany's art of warfare dominated military theory and practice, creating a myth of German operational brilliance that lingers today, despite the nation's crushing defeats in two world wars. In this seminal study, Gerhard P. Gross provides a comprehensive examination of the development and failure of German operational thinking over a period of more than a century. He analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of five different armies, from the mid--nineteenth century through the early days of NATO. He also offers fresh interpretations of towering figures of German military history, including Moltke the Elder, Alfred von Schlieffen, and Erich Ludendorff. Essential reading for military historians and strategists, this innovative work dismantles cherished myths and offers new insights into Germany's failed attempts to become a global power through military means.

In this seminal study, Gerhard P. Gross provides a comprehensive examination of the development and failure of German operational thinking over a period of more than a century. He analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of five different armies, from the mid-nineteenth century through the early days of NATO. He also offers fresh interpretations of towering figures of German military history.

As a central part of his philosophy of symbolic forms as a form of religious expression, and as a political problematic the question of myth belongs at the heart of Ernst Cassirers intellectual enterprise. Using a variety of methodological and conceptual approaches, these papers examine the persistence of myth as a symbolic form from a variety of perspectives: philosophical, anthropological, psychological, political, and historico-cultural. In its way each paper attempts, in Cassirers phrase, to see the adversary face to face.

Christina Morina's book examines the history of the Eastern Front war and its impact on German politics and society throughout the postwar period. She argues that the memory of the Eastern Front war was one of the most crucial and contested themes in each part of the divided Germany. Although the Holocaust gained the most prominent position in West German memory, official memory in East Germany centered on the war against the USSR. The book analyzes the ways in which these memories emerged in postwar German political culture during and after the Cold War, and how views of these events played a role in contemporary political debates. The analysis pays close attention to the biographies of the protagonists both during the war and after, drawing distinctions between the accepted, public memory of events and individual encounters with the war.

"The Reich lost the war, but it conquered the minds and souls of the German people. This feat was accomplished by one primary method -- manipulation of the mass media. And the man responsible for engineering the propaganda Goliath was Paul Joseph Goebbels. Idealist, cynic, genius, his satanic exploitation of every facet of communication -- radio, posters, magazines, placards, and documentary films -- gained him utter totalitarian control over the German people. In this meticulously researched study, Robert Edwin Herzstein focuses on Goebbels the man and master-hypnotist. He uses previously unpublished materials from German and American archives and emphasizes the large part newsreels and documentaries played in Nazi mind control. Richly illustrated, The War That Hitler Won gives us a striking picture of German life and attitudes in wartime and a new perspective on the behavior of the Nazi elite. Above all, it is a cautionary tale about a world gone very, very wrong." -- Back cover.

As the title The Myth of German Villainy indicates, this book is about the mischaracterization of Germany as historys ultimate villain. The official story of Western Civilization in the twentieth century casts Germany as the disturber of the peace in Europe, and the cause of both World War I and World War II, though the facts dont bear that out. During both wars, fantastic atrocity stories were invented by Allied propaganda to create hatred of the German people for the purpose of bringing public opinion around to support the wars. The Holocaust propaganda which emerged after World War II further solidified this image of Germany as historys ultimate villain. But how true is this official story? Was Germany really historys ultimate villain? In this book, the author paints a different picture. He explains that Germany was not the perpetrator of World War I nor World War II, but instead, was the victim of Allied aggression in both wars. The instability wrought by World War I made the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia possible, which brought world Communism into existence. Hitler and Germany recognized world Communism, with its base in the Soviet Union, as an existential threat to Western, Christian Civilization, and he dedicated himself and Germany to a death struggle against it. Far from being the disturber of European peace, Germany served as a bulwark which prevented Communist revolution from sweeping over Europe. The pity was that the United States and Britain did not see Communist Russia in the same light, ultimately with disastrous consequences for Western Civilization. The author believes that Britain and the United States joined the wrong side in the war.

A major new account of Germany's drive on Moscow in November 1941, one of the key battles of World War II.

These essays honor Dennis Showalter, a pioneer in the field of military history and a mentor to an entire generation of scholars. The essays themselves are written by some of the best-known and most highly-respected scholars in the field. They span the globe and cover a wide range of military history topics from the ancient world to the present day. As a group, this book represents not only a collection in honor of a great scholar, but a collection of some of the highest-quality cutting-edge scholarship in the field today. It will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the history of warfare. Contributors are William J. Astore, Mary Kathryn Barbier, Jeremy Black, Robert M. Citino, Kelly DeVries, Richard L. DiNardo, Robert A. Doughty, Holger H. Herwig, Eugenia C. Kiesling, Robert McJimsey, Michael S. Neiberg and Dennis Showalter.