Description
In War of Annihilation, noted military historian Geoffrey P. Megargee provides a clear, concise history of the Germans' opening campaign of conquest and genocide in 1941. By drawing on the best of military and Holocaust scholarship, Megargee dispels the myths that have distorted the role of Germany's military leadership in both the military operations themselves and the unthinkable crimes that were part of them.
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Contrary to the received wisdom that history is written by the victors, suggests Megargee (Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, US Holocaust Memorial Museum), histories of World War Two's eastern front conflict between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was written by the losers, with former German generals achieving surprising success in shaping popular understandings of the war as one in which the German Wehrmacht fought an honorable war against a barbarous foe and in convincing succeeding generations that responsibility for both military losses and genocidal criminality rested solely with Hitler and his Nazi minions. On the contrary, Megargee argues, German military officers fully supported the attack on the Soviets and understood it to be a Verichtungskrieg, a war of annihilation in which the German military would take an active role in pursuit of Nazi racial goals. Further, the German military leadership shares the responsibility for military failure. He aims to correct the record by bringing together discussion of the military history with the history of Nazi occupation policies, which hitherto have too often been treated separately in his estimation. This is a paperbound edition of a work first published in 2006. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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