Hitlers Soldiers, Ben H. Shepherd
Hitlers Soldiers, Ben H. Shepherd
21 Rating(s)
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Hitler's Soldiers
The German Army in the Third Reich

Author: Ben H. Shepherd

Narrator: Michael Page

Unabridged: 26 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/20/2018


Synopsis

For decades after 1945, it was generally believed that the German army, professional and morally decent, had largely stood apart from the SS, Gestapo, and other corps of the Nazi machine. Ben Shepherd draws on a wealth of primary sources and recent scholarship to convey a much darker, more complex picture. For the first time, the German army is examined throughout the Second World War, across all combat theaters and occupied regions, and from multiple perspectives: its battle performance, social composition, relationship with the Nazi state, and involvement in war crimes and military occupation.

This was a true people's army, drawn from across German society and reflecting that society as it existed under the Nazis. Without the army and its conquests abroad, Shepherd explains, the Nazi regime could not have perpetrated its crimes against Jews, prisoners of war, and civilians in occupied countries. The author examines how the army was complicit in these crimes and why some soldiers, units, and higher commands were more complicit than others. Shepherd also reveals the reasons for the army's early battlefield successes and its mounting defeats up to 1945, the latter due not only to Allied superiority and Hitler's mismanagement as commander-in-chief, but also to the failings of the army's own leadership.

About Ben H. Shepherd

Ben H. Shepherd is reader in history, Glasgow Caledonian University. He lives in Glasgow, U.K.


Reviews

Fascinating revisionist history of the Wehrmacht Ben Shephard pulls aside the curtain of respectability that many accounts of the German Army are cloaked in, demolishing the image of an honourable and decent fighting force compared to the SS. In a detailed account he highlights countless occasions whe......more

This was particularly relevant as a booster shot to have while refuting the new wave of "oh, the German army was full of good people just doing their jobs--it was the SS that did *bad* things" (and inevitably, "just like the Confederates!" Shepherd exhaustively lays out just how involved the German......more