German Military

German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the result a specifically German way of war. Peter Wilson challenges this narrative. Looking beyond Prussia to German-speaking Europe across the last five centuries, Wilson finds little unique or preordained in German militarism or warfighting. Iron and Blood takes as its starting point the consolidation of the Holy Roman Empire, which created new mechanisms for raising troops but also for resolving disputes diplomatically.

Drawing on more than a half-century of research and teaching, Dennis Showalter presents a fresh perspective on the German Army during World War I. Showalter surveys an army at the heart of a national identity, driven by - yet also defeated by - warfare in the modern age, that struggled to capitalize on its victories, and ultimately forgot the lessons of its defeat.

As early as 1941, Allied victory in World War II seemed all but assured. How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years? In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of primary source materials - personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence - to answer this question. He offers an unprecedented portrait of wartime Germany, bringing the hopes and expectations of the German people to vivid life.

May 1945. Hitler is dead, and the Third Reich is little more than smoking rubble. No GI wants to be the last man killed in action against the Nazis. But for cigar-chewing, rough-talking, hard-drinking, hard-charging Captain Jack Lee and his men, there is one more mission: rescue 14 prominent French prisoners held in an SS-guarded castle high in the Austrian Alps. It's a dangerous mission, but Lee has help from a decorated German Wehrmacht officer and his men, who voluntarily join the fight.

Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring 39 individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians, Bavarians, and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France - all without destroying itself in the process?

For almost four desperate years between 1939 and 1943, British and American navies fought a savage, losing battle against German submarine wolf packs. The Allies might never have turned the tide of that historic battle without an intelligence coup. The race to break the German U-boat codes is one of the last great untold stories of World War II.

The German Revolution of November 1918 is nowadays largely forgotten outside Germany. It is generally regarded as a failure even by those who have heard of it, a missed opportunity that paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and the catastrophe to come. Robert Gerwarth argues here that to view the German Revolution in this way is a serious misjudgment. Not only did it bring down the authoritarian monarchy of the Hohenzollern, it also brought into being the first ever German democracy in an amazingly bloodless way.

Wo eine Mission endet, beginnt eine andere... Cole und seine Mannschaft sind keine Fremden, wenn sie Pech haben. So ist das Leben nun mal. Während im anypsianischen Territorium ein Krieg tobt, spielt es keine Rolle, dass ihre Aufgabe erfüllt ist. Gray gehört zur Familie, und einer Familie kehrt man nicht den Rücken zu. Seine Erinnerungen sind nach wie vor schwer zu finden, und die feindlichen Kräfte arbeiten hinter den Kulissen weiter an ihrer Macht. Um sie zu stoppen, tut sich Cole mit der schattenhaften Organisation Chaos zusammen.

The summer that Patty Bergen turns twelve is a summer that will haunt her forever. When her small hometown in Arkansas becomes the site of a camp housing German prisoners during World War II, Patty learns what it means to open her heart. Even though she’s Jewish, she begins to see a prison escapee, Anton, not as a Nazi, but as a lonely, frightened young man. As their gentle friendship blossoms, Patty experiences a kind of love she never felt from her abusive father or her distant mother.

While the Germans knew an invasion was inevitable, no one knew where or when it would fall. Those manning Hitler's mighty Atlantic Wall may have felt secure in their bunkers, but they had no conception of the fury and fire that was about to break. After the initial assaults of June established an Allied bridgehead, a state of stalemate prevailed. The Germans fought with great courage - hindered by lack of supplies and overwhelming Allied control of the air. This book describes the catastrophe that followed, in a unique look at the war from the losing side.

In Prevail Until the Bitter End, Alexandra Lohse explores the gossip and innuendo, the dissonant reactions and perceptions of Germans to the violent dissolution of the Third Reich. Mobilized for total war, soldiers and citizens alike experienced an unprecedented convergence of military, economic, social, and political crises.

After World War II, 50 percent of Americans polled said they didn’t believe Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had committed suicide in their bunker in 1945, as captured Nazi officials claimed. Instead, they believed the dictator faked his death and escaped, perhaps to Argentina. This wasn’t a crazy opinion: Joseph Stalin told Allied leaders that Soviet forces never discovered Hitler’s body and that he personally believed the Nazi leader had escaped justice. At least two German submarines crossed the Atlantic and landed on the coast of Argentina in July 1945.

May 1945: In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss' capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day.

Using his own experiences, log books, and correspondence with other U-boat crewmen, Hans Goebeler offers rich and personal details about what life was like in the German Navy under Hitler. Since his first and last posting was to U-505, Goebeler's perspective of the crew, commanders, and war patrols paints a vivid and complete portrait unlike any other to come out of the Kriegsmarine. He witnessed it all, from deadly sabotage efforts that almost sunk the boat to the tragic suicide of the only U-boat commander who took his life during World War II.

Dawn on Sunday, June 22, 1941 saw the opening onslaughts of Operation Barbarossa as German forces stormed forward into the Soviet Union. Few of them were to survive the five long years of bitter struggle. A posting to the Eastern Front during the Second World War was rightly regarded with dread by the German soldiers. They saw epic battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk, and yet it was a daily war of attrition which ultimately proved fatal for Hitler's ambition and the German military machine.

In December 1943, with the rising realization that the Allies are planning to invade Fortress Europe, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is assigned the title of General Inspector for the Atlantic Wall. His mission is to assess their readiness. His superior, theater commander, crusty old Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who had led the Reich to victory in the early years of the war, is now fed up with the whole Nazi regime. He lives comfortably in a plush villa in a quiet Paris suburb, waiting for the inevitable Allied invasion that will bring about their final defeat.

In the dark days of war, who can you trust? When journalist Marlene Villeret parachutes into Nazi-occupied France by moonlight, her role is to observe the French way of life until her departure at the next full moon. With swastikas draped around Paris and families torn from their homes in front of helpless friends and neighbours, Marlene wants to do more with her short time in the city. But when she forms a bond with Niklas, a German soldier, she has cause to question all that she thought she knew about the war. With every passing day, Marlene is drawn further into danger. When she is ...

Considered one of the finest tanks of WWII, the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger tank killed 11.52 tanks for every one Tiger destroyed in battle. Tigers suffered a large number of non-combat losses, however, as the chaos of wartime and the Tiger’s mechanical reliability reduced the number of deployable tanks, then along with frequent breakdowns the Tiger managed only 5.25 enemy tanks killed for every lost Tiger. The Second World War began with the lightning German Blitzkrieg as their Wehrmacht raced across Europe, spearheaded by the most dreaded weapon of the 20th century. No German tank better ...

A handler trusts her dog. A mountain holds them captive. A bond that will be tested by fire and ice. Maya Ruiz and her K-9 partner, Echo, are a legendary search-and-rescue team, their bond forged in the unforgiving peaks of the high Rockies. For Maya, a former army medic haunted by the losses she couldn’t prevent, the work is more than a job—it’s a reason to live. Echo is more than a dog; she’s the partner who rescued her handler first. But their well-honed skills are put to the ultimate test when a "Code One" alert shatters a perfect winter morning. A massive avalanche has ...

Kenneth Macksey's highly regarded biography of Generaloberst Heinz Guderian gives clear insight into the mind and motives of the father of modern tank warfare. Panzer General shows Guderian as a man of ideas equipped with the ability to turn inspiration into reality. A master of strategy and tactics, he was the officer most responsible for creating blitzkrieg in World War II.