Hitler's Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted - Softcover

Stolfi, R.H.S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806125810 ISBN 13: 9780806125817

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993

Synopsis

How close did Germany come to winning World War II?  Did Hitler throw away victory in Europe after his troops had crushed the Soviet field armies defending Moscow by August 1941? R.H.S. Stolfi offers a dramatic new picture of Hitler’s conduct in World War II and a fundamental reinterpretation of the course of the war.

Adolf Hitler generally is thought to have been driven by a blitzkrieg mentality in the years 1939 to 1941. In fact, Stolfi argues, he had no such outlook on the war. From the day Britain and France declared war, Hitler reacted with a profoundly conservative cast of mind and pursued a circumscribed strategy, pushing out siege lines set around Germany by the Allies. Interpreting Hitler as a siege Führer explain his apparent aberrations in connection with Dunkirk, his fixation on the seizure of Leningrad, and his fateful decision in the summer of 1941 to deflect Army Group Center into the Ukraine when both Moscow and victory in World War II were within its reach.

Unaware of Hitler’s siege orientation, the German Army planned blitz campaigns. Through daring operational concepts and bold tactics, the army won victories over several Allied powers in World War II, and these led to the great campaign against the Soviet Union in summer of 1941. Stolfi postulates that in August 1941, German Army Group Center had the strength both to destroy the Red field armies defending the Soviet capital and to advance to Moscow and beyond. The defeat of the Soviet Union would have assured victory in World War II. Nevertheless, Hitler ordered the army group south to secure the resources of the Ukraine against a potential siege. And a virtually assured German victory slipped away.

This radical reinterpretation of Hitler and the capabilities of the German Army leads to a reevaluation of World War II, in which the lesson to be learned is not how the Allies won the war, but how close the Germans came to a quick and decisive victory?long before the United States was drawn into the battle.

About this title

About the Author:

By R.H.S. Stolfi was Professor of Modern European History at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. With the distinguished German military writer, Frederick William von Mellenthin, he co-authored NATO Under Attack.

From Library Journal:

These two books represent entirely different approaches to the history of the World War II German war machine. Lucas, author of Storming Eagles: German Airborne Forces in World War II (Sterling, 1989), uses a poor bibliography and does not document his military account of an SS division. Some chapters are little more than transcripts of stories told by men who served the Reich, hardly objective sources. Worse, the author is unwilling to say anything bad about the SS. He devotes only one brief sentence, for example, to the incident at Oradour sur Glane, where SS units killed every man, woman, and child, a total of 642 people, because the French Resistance had shot a German officer. The author has written a biased account aimed at readers who see the SS only as the elite, loyal, and glorious troops of the Fatherland. Not recommended. For an objective view of an SS division, see Charles W. Sydnor's Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division ( LJ 10/1/77). Stolfi (modern history, Naval Post-Graduate School) differs from other military historians in that he believes the turning point of the European war came not at Stalingrad or El Alamein in 1942, but during the German army's push toward Moscow in 1941. If Hitler had not turned his troops away from Moscow and toward the Ukraine, he argues, the Germans would have won the war in Europe. Scholars and specialists in the field will find this book valuable; newcomers to the literature should start with B.H. Liddell Hart's History of the Second World War (Putnam, 1971). Recommended for academic libraries with a strong military history collection.
- Dennis L. Noble, Washington State Lib., Clallam Bay Corrections Ctr.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0806125810
• ISBN 13: 9780806125817
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 294