War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 (Total War (Unnumbered).)

Book Description

On June 22, 1941, Hitler began what would be the most important campaign of the European theater. The war against the Soviet Union would leave tens of millions of Soviet citizens dead and large parts of the country in ruins. The death and destruction would result not just from military operations but also from the systematic killing and abuse that the German army, police and SS directed against Jews, Communists and ordinary citizens. 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. Generously illustrated with 24 photographs and 7 maps.

Customer Reviews:

War of annihilation?.......2007-03-08

Megargee's book is a useful contribution to the growing volume of writing that is now (over half a century after the end of the Second World War)becoming available to the English-reading public about what the war was about. It counters the Cold War stories that monopolised writing by "military historians", by generals of the Nazi army and the de-politicised genre of "cowboy and Indians", also largely written by Nazi solders, that were/are popular as derring-do stuff.

This volume helps explain to a new generation (and to an older one that has forgotten much)why the Nuremburg Trials correctly condemned the Nazi Army itself for being a sine qua non, a willing participant, and intrinsic to the programme of Nazi conquest. Without the German Army (and it did not need purging to make it work for Fascism) there would not have been the barbarous war. That was not the work of a minority of bad SS people, a relatively small number of convinced Nazis which, somehow, controlled an unwilling and gentlemanly military machine. It also illustrates that the war was initiated by the Fascist government of Germany in the pursuit of plunder and the destruction of "Bolshevism."

Everything else was secondary to that, including the mass murder of European Jewry, the Rom and Sinta peoples and, by the way, the largest contingent of those on the Nazi list of "subhumans", the Slavs of Poland and the then Soviet Union, as racial perveyors of the virus of Bolshevism.

The author tells a little, also, of the economic requirements of the big employers like Krupp, that the brutal Nazi policies served. Placing the Nazi war aims and conduct before a new set of readers might counter the sort of stuff that is still being peddled, and is popular, such as the works by Anthony Beevor, Richard Overy and John Erickson, who would still have us see the Fascist war on the "East" as part of some unexplained "titanic" struggle that took place between two powerful machines. The only thing they leave out is what the war was about, and Geoffrey Megargee tells us a lot about that.

Good on the publishers - a book that makes a good present to a friend.

Michael Costello

Poor history from carefully cherry-picked incidents with worse conclusions........2007-02-18

The author, a young "scholar" at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, indicts the German Army on the Eastern Front in total as criminal for its actions against the Jews and its lack of action to prevent their elimination by other organizations. Much of the author's presentation is invalid being based on half-truths, misstatements, and distortion of facts. He overlooks the fact that Hitler was able to use the term "Jewish-Bolshevik" with some accuracy in Germany due to the over-representation of Jews in the Bolshevik leadership and the spearheading of Communist activity in Germany by German Jews. The research is poor, and I grew tired of noting "no!" and "no such evidence!" in the margin while reading. The author treats von Manstein very unfairly, to note one of many. He dismisses Goerlitz's work, "The German General Staff" as containing "a great deal of misleading material" and stating "but its author was himself a General Staff Officer". One is tempted to reply that Megargee is not to be trusted because he works for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Megargee also states: "Beware of the German memoir literature! Books by the likes of Guderian and von Manstein are still selling briskly in English and German, but much of what they contain is not to be trusted...." Having read those works and compared the operations described within with other primary sources, I cannot agree with Megargee's statement. Von Manstein specifically mentions his victories at Kerch and Sevastopol as true battles of annihilation in which 260,000 prisoners were taken. "Annihilation" does not always mean killing or murder. The author must surely know that the evidence against von Manstein was extremely contradictory, and that no less a person than Winston Churchill contributed to Manstein's defense (although political motives undoubtedly played a part.) I would have been more sympathetic to the author had he revealed that the Soviets massacred whole villeges of peasants they felt to be unreliable during their retreat in 1941 and 1942, but the author is only interested in damning the Germans. That the war on the Eastern Front was brutal and merciless in the extreme is beyond doubt, but like everything, there were two sides. This work does not present anything new or of interest to the serious historian and is not worth the purchase.

An introduction and overview.......2006-09-04

This is an excellent, well-written, introduction and overview of the Eastern Front, 1941, with regard to German policies vis-a-vis the general populace. However, the author says upfront that the book is not intended as a work of great scholarship and, as indicated by the footnotes, it is not. Megargee wrote a great book in 2000 about the German General Staff (a WWII "must read"), and has a dream job at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. He is a top-notch military historian in the prime of his career, which is the reason I was so very disappointed with the book's bibliography. His book brings to mind scores of questions, and needs a good bibliography to lead the reader to appropriate literature. Instead, all we get is some lame "bibliographic essay". A definite flaw in the book.

An Outstanding Introduction to the War with Russia.......2006-04-30

For far too long historians of the Russo German war focused on either the military operations or the abuses of the civilian population in Soviet Russia. The most notably of these were obviously the Jews, although the Slavs and others suffered terribly. Although, in some instances Wehrmacht rear service units and the general staff have been identified as contributing to the escalation of brutality, for the most part the work of murder and starvation has been attributed to the various civil administration authorities and most notably, the SS. It is to this lack of connection between the occupation policies in Soviet Russia and the actual prosecution of the war that Geoffrey P. Megargee addresses in his book. Before I get any further however, let me be clear as to what this book is and is not. As the author informs the reader in the introduction, this book is not a comprehensive history of the Russo German war told from both sides of the story. It is primarily told from the perspective of the German plans and actions. This book is also not a shocking piece of new scholarship. What it is though, is a refreshingly new look at all of the pieces of evidence that have been laid down by other researchers and not previously seen for their interconnected nature. This book is a concise history of both the Nazi war against the USSR and the occupation policies and how the two inevitably led to the defeat of the Germany.

Finally there is the issue of the author's style. Simply said, it is excellent and the book is laid out in a very readable way. Each chapter is divided into sections describing military operation and rear area operations in regards to partisan warfare, POWs and `Jewish actions'. Furthermore, having side by side histories allows the author to clearly demonstrate their interconnectedness. The author uses a good number of sources to make his arguments but does so with a good degree of control in regards to the additional information given in the endnotes. I never once caught myself in the constant back and forth flipping that occurs when a less skilled historian writes a separate book in the endnotes. This book was a quick read and certainly the type of book a person can get through in a single weekend.

In the initial two chapters, the author, in an expert manner lays out the military and social background to the war in the east. He clearly shows how the General Staff's own long held biases, racism, social Darwinism, adherence to the `Stab in the Back' myth of the end of the first World War, and the connection of Jews and communists who supposedly committed this betrayal, led to enthusiastic support of an eastern campaign. Furthermore he shows the complete disregard that the Wehrmacht's leadership had for the well-being, even the very survival of the civilian population and Soviet POWs.

The next three chapters, lay out the various phases of the military campaign against the USSR and describes the several instances in which one army group or another lacked strength to meet an objective and was forced to pare strength from other groups in order to do so. Megargee clearly lays out the failures of resupply and reinforcement that caused this. He does this as well as describing the ever increasing brutality in occupation policies and an equal increase in the strength of the partisan movement. He also goes on to describe both the resources dedicated to the brutal pacification of the rear area and the nonexistence of resources to care for Soviet POWs.

In the last chapter, Megargee shows how the ever increasing brutality against civilians and POWs, intelligence agencies neglected to the point of uselessness and a supply system strained to the point of failure culminated in the Wehrmacht's famous defeat at the very gates of Moscow and Leningrad. Moreover he asserts that it was the racist and elitist beliefs of the General Staff that caused the deliberate starvation and death by exposure of thousands of POWs daily at a time when the German leadership was already beginning to struggle to replace a workforce pulled away for military duty.

In his conclusion the author states, with the weight of the evidence cited to support him, that it was in the opening months of the eastern campaign that the Wehrmacht lost the war. Through their ruthlessness and racist policies from the opening of hostilities as well as their lack of concern for logistics and intelligence gathering, the General Staff threw away any chance that they had of defeating the Soviet Union.

A quick introduction to the Eastern Front.......2006-01-17

This book is both for the layman and for those who want a better understanding of why the Eastern Front was such a struggle for life and death on the part of civilians and POW's not even speaking of soldiers on the front lines. The author goes through the history of Nazi ideology and the role it played in the creation of the Third Reich as well as the history of the German Army and why in the end it proved an essential tool in the genocidal campaign Germany would launch when it attacked the Soviet Union (although keeping in mind the Polish campaign showed signs of what was to come on a smaller scale). Although military movements are described, they are done so in a general sense simply to show the success the German Armed forces were enjoying and the amount of territory that was falling under their supervision. Then come the explanations for how involved the Army was in the genocide of Jews, Communists, and various other groups throughout the Soviet Union. Mainly the Armed forces helped the SS, Einzatsgruppen, Order Police, and other various units in their mass murders throughout the rear areas that they had just occupied. As well as making it possible for POW's to starve on a massive scale without a second thought to their fates. Without the Army's cooperation millions of Soviet POW's would have lived to see 1942 and perhaps tens of thousands of Jews and Communists would have lived to see the end of the war. The Army's complication in these crimes is now being shown for what it was, although the book is small, around 150 pages of text, the revelations it makes are very important for understanding what went on on the Eastern Front and how it evolved into outright genocide. Well worth the money.

Book Description

Here is the lurid story of crime, detection, conviction, and punishment, murder as a lust and murder as a trade and more.

Roots of Evil: A Social History of Crime and Punishment

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Roots of Evil: A Social History of Crime and Punishment
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The Roots of Evil; a Social History of Crime and Punishment

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The Roots of Evil; a Social History of Crime and Punishment
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This didactic approach to the principles and modeling of mass transfer as it is needed in modern industrial processes is unique in combining a step-by-step introduction to all important fundamentals with the most recent applications. Based upon the renowned author's successful new modeling method as used for the O-18 process, the exemplary exercises included in the text are fact-proven, taken directly from existing chemical plants.
Fascinating reading for chemists, graduate students, chemical and process engineers, as well as thermodynamics physicists.

Mass Transfer: Fundamentals and Applications (Prentice Hall International Series in the Physical and Chemical Engineering Sciences)

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A decent introduction to mass transfer and separations
It's a very good begining

Mass Transfer: Fundamentals and Applications (Prentice Hall International Series in the Physical and Chemical Engineering Sciences)
Anthony L. Hines , and Robert N. Maddox
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
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A decent introduction to mass transfer and separations.......1998-01-30

I used this text for a junior level mass transfer and separtions course at Michigan State University. It's a good book because it covers everything from the basics of formulating mass transfer models to convective mass transfer to distillation, absorbtion and extraction, but I believe the book is better suited to graduate students or chemical engineering professionals. My undergraduate course only made use of the second half of the book, and I didn't feel it had enough design and application material.

It's a very good begining.......1997-01-26

I've used the book in my mass transfer course in Cemical Eng. at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana and I think thet this book is the best oriented book to the first sight to the subject. However, I think that it could be a little deeper in design oriented themes. That's why I would invite to all seniors and majors in ChemEng to study it and reflect it. After having a good base, any one of you may see a good design book such as Brown's Chemical Engineering Operations.

Mass Transfer: From Fundamentals to Modern Industrial Applications

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Mass Transfer: Fundamentals and Applications

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Searching for national security in an NBC world : four papers on changing nuclear, biological, and chemical threats and US government policy in the post-Cold ... security environment (SuDoc D 305.2:SE 2)

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The Evolution of National Wildlife Law: Third Edition (Project of the Environmental Defense Fund and World Wildlife Fund-U.S)

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THE definitive text on wildlife law

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When the first edition of this book was published in 1977--to overwhelming critical and popular acclaim--it was the only publication to analyze wildlife law comprehensively as a distinct component of federal environmental law. The second edition, published in 1983, provided a thorough and authoritative update. Since then, the intense public interest in wildlife law has been reflected in a tremendous growth in both litigation and new legislation. This, the third edition, thoroughly revises and updates the earlier edition in light of current legal perspectives on the conservation of wildlife and biological diversity. Two decades after its first publication, this book remains the standard reference for anyone seeking to understand the statutes, regulations, and court decisions governing wildlife law. "Like the two that preceded it, the new edition of The Evolution of National Wildlife Law is a monumental achievement that will serve lawmakers, administrators, educators, conservationists, and scholars for years to come." --From the Foreword by Bruce Babbitt.

Customer Reviews:

THE definitive text on wildlife law.......2001-08-08

The first edition of this work, published in 1977, was considered a landmark in legal scholarship. Subsequent editions have lived up to that standard. The present edition (3rd) is expanded to cover related laws in the United States that impact wildlife. The organization of this book follows an historical view up until the 1970s. From that point the book follows the development of wildlife law in response to the changing cultural values of "the environmental era."

There is little concerning wildife law in the United States that is not covered in this volume. The exception is the myriad of state laws, a task that would have consumed ten times the amount of space. All in all, this is a standard reference in the highest sense of the word. I have used this as a text in not only wildlife management classes, but also environmental ethics and environmental policy. The book is that useful. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in wildlife and wildlife law.

The environment of national security ([Blue Books. ICAF Non-resident program])

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