German Military

For most of its existence, German-speaking Europe has been splintered into innumerable states—some substantial and some consisting of just a few Alpine meadows. Its military experience has also been extraordinarily varied: threatened and threatening; a mere buffer-zone, and a global threat. Iron and Blood is a startlingly ambitious and absorbing book. It encompasses five centuries of political, military, technological and economic change to tell the story of the German-speaking lands, from the Rhine to the Balkan frontier, from Switzerland to the North Sea.

By 1943, the war was lost, and most German officers knew it. What kept the German army going in an increasingly hopeless situation? Where some historians have found explanations in the power of Hitler or the role of ideology, Robert M. Citino, the world's leading scholar on the subject, posits a more straightforward solution: Bewegungskrieg, the way of war cultivated by the Germans over the course of history. In this book, Citino charts the path by which Bewegungskrieg, or a "war of movement," inexorably led to Nazi Germany's defeat.

It is sometimes difficult to remember that in war there are innocents on all sides who suffer. German citizens who had no connection to the atrocities committed by their countrymen nonetheless endured great hardships because of them.

The 16 case studies in this volume examine the culture of armies, navies, and air forces from the Civil War to the Iraq War and how and why culture affected their performance in the ultimate arbitration of war. 

The classic World War II thriller from the acclaimed master of action and suspense. The guns of Navarone, huge and catastrophically accurate, embedded atop an impregnable iron fortress in the Mediterranean Sea. Twelve hundred British soldiers trapped on a nearby island, with no hope of rescue...

»Sie wollen mich, oder?«, frage ich in meiner verruchtesten Schlafzimmerstimme. »Wir sind allein. Ich sitze gefesselt vor Ihnen. Niemand wird es erfahren. Worauf warten Sie, Lieutenant?« Um sich der streng geheimen Spezialeinheit Arctic Counter Squad anzuschließen, hat Laurine Walker...

Die Terranisch-Stellare Föderation ist das größte Reich, das die Menschheit jemals aufgebaut hat. Unter ihrer Führung, eroberten die Bewohner der Erde vor fast dreihundert Jahren die Sterne. Doch die Nation steht an einem Scheideweg. Im Solsystem intrigieren extremistische Politiker und schmieden Pläne, um die Macht der Föderation auszuweiten. Major Allister Thorpe kehrt nach Ablauf seiner Militärzeit auf seine Heimatwelt Clementis zurück, nur um festzustellen, dass sich die Straßen, in denen er aufgewachsen ist, grundlegend verändert haben.

Das Vereinigte Koloniale Königreich führt im Jahre 2625 einen erbitterten Bürgerkrieg gegen einen abtrünnigen Planetenverbund. Während der Belagerung der Rebellenwelt Tessa kommt es zu einem folgenschweren Zwischenfall. Commodore Dexter Blackburn, Befehlshaber eines Einsatzgeschwaders der Colonial Royal Navy, bombardiert versehentlich die Stellungen eigener Truppen auf der Oberfläche des Planeten. Mehrere Marines verlieren ihr Leben. Mit Schimpf und Schande unehrenhaft entlassen und zur Zwangsarbeit verurteilt, steht er plötzlich vor dem Nichts.

Bloomsbury presents Hunt the Bismarck: The pursuit of Germany's most famous battleship by Angus Konstam, read by David Monteath Hunt the Bismarck tells the story of Operation Rheinübung, the Atlantic sortie of Nazi Germany's largest battleship, Bismarck, in May 1941 and her subsequent pursuit...

In just four weeks in the summer of 1941 the German Wehrmacht wrought unprecedented destruction on four Soviet armies, conquering central Ukraine and killing or capturing three quarters of a million men. This was the Battle of Kiev - one of the largest and most decisive battles of World War II and, for Hitler and Stalin, a battle of crucial importance. For the first time, David Stahel charts the battle's dramatic course and aftermath.

Brought to you by Penguin. Central Europe is not just a space on a map but also a region of shared experience - of mutual borrowings, impositions and misapprehensions. From the Roman Empire onwards, it has been the target of invasion from the east. In the Middle Ages, Central Europeans cast...

From the overwhelming operational victories at Kerch and Kharkov in May to the catastrophic defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Death of the Wehrmacht offers an eye-opening new view of that decisive year. Building upon his widely respected critique in The German Way of War, Citino shows how the campaigns of 1942 fit within the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions.

Als Intimus Hitlers, Propagandaminister und Bevollmächtigter für den totalen Kriegseinsatz war Joseph Goebbels eine der zentralen Gestalten des Dritten Reiches. Kindheit und Jugend sind für Ralf Georg Reuth der Schlüssel zum Verständnis des Mannes, der aufgrund eines körperlichen Makels schon früh zum Außenseiter gestempelt wurde und einen beinahe krankhaften Ehrgeiz entwickelte, um seinen Minderwertigkeitskomplex zu kompensieren.

In the wake of World War I, the German army lay in ruins - defeated in the war, sundered by domestic upheaval, and punished by the Treaty of Versailles. A mere 20 years later, Germany possessed one of the finest military machines in the world, capable of launching a stunning blitzkrieg attack against Poland in 1939. Well-known military historian Robert M. Citino shows how Germany accomplished this astonishing reversal and developed the doctrine, tactics, and technologies that its military would use to devastating effect in World War II.

The codebreakers at Bletchley Park have been immortalised in films such as The Imitation Game and Enigma, but the Germans were also breaking Allied ciphers. The Third Reich Is Listening is the comprehensive account of the successes, failures and science of Germany's codebreaking and signals intelligence operations from 1935 to 1945. This fast-moving blend of modern history and popular science is told through colourful personal accounts of the Germans at the heart of the story.

Der junge Leutnant Blankenhorn kommt 1944 mit 22 Jahren an die Ostfront. Er nimmt teil an den sinnlosen Rückzugsgefechten der deutschen Wehrmacht in Ostpreußen und gelangt schließlich ins eingeschlossene Königsberg, wo er in Gefangenschaft gerät. Es folgen vier unerbittliche Jahre in Lagern diesseits und jenseits des Urals, bevor er endlich nach Deutschland zurückkehren kann. Fritz Blankenhorn hat seine Erlebnisse ohne Pathos und doch ergreifend beschrieben.

In 1940, as Nazi Germany spread its wings of war, France stood secure in the knowledge that they possessed the largest, most formidable, and best equipped army in Europe. France also had a stalwart ally in Britain and the support of Holland and Belgium. But they were all about to face a new kind...

Wer gehörte zum innersten Kreis um Hitler? Welche Funktion erfüllte dieser Hofstaat? Und wie beeinflusste er das Geschichtsbild nach 1945? Auf der Grundlage bisher unbekannter Quellen erforscht Heike Görtemaker Hitlers privates Umfeld und zeigt, wie sein Kreis ihn zu dem machte, der er war. Ihr Buch rückt bis in die nächste Nähe zu Hitler vor und ist zugleich eine brillante Dekonstruktion des Führermythos. Sein innerer Kreis, die Berghof-Gesellschaft, war sein privater Rückzugsraum.

With Allied armies poised on the banks of the Rhine, Nazi Germany tottered on the brink of collapse. The ensuing battles on German soil - especially those in the so-called Ruhr Pocket - were as fierce and hard-fought as any in the European theater. Going well beyond previous accounts, Derek S. Zumbro chronicles this key military campaign from a unique and fresh perspective - that of the defeated German soldiers and civilians caught in the final maelstrom of the war's Western front.   

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen—Winston...