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A groundbreaking history of what drove the Germans to fight -- and keep fighting -- for a lost cause in World War II
In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of firsthand testimony -- personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence -- to explore how the German people experienced the Second World War.
When war broke out in September 1939, it was deeply unpopular in Germany. Yet without the active participation and commitment of the German people, it could not have continued for almost six years. What, then, was the war the Germans thought they were fighting? How did the changing course of the conflict -- the victories of the Blitzkrieg, the first defeats in the east, the bombing of German cities -- alter their views and expectations? And when did Germans first realize they were fighting a genocidal war?
Told from the perspective of those who lived through it -- soldiers, schoolteachers, and housewives; Nazis, Christians, and Jews -- this masterful historical narrative sheds fresh and disturbing light on the beliefs and fears of a people who embarked on and fought to the end a brutal war of conquest and genocide.
About the author
Nicholas Stargardt, geboren 1962 in Melbourne, ist Professor für Neuere Europäische Geschichte an der Universität Oxford. Er zählt zu den interessantesten Köpfen der britischen Historikerschule. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind die Neuere Deutsche Geschichte und der Holocaust.
Summary
A groundbreaking history of what drove the Germans to fight -- and keep fighting -- for a lost cause in World War II
In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of firsthand testimony -- personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence -- to explore how the German people experienced the Second World War.
When war broke out in September 1939, it was deeply unpopular in Germany. Yet without the active participation and commitment of the German people, it could not have continued for almost six years. What, then, was the war the Germans thought they were fighting? How did the changing course of the conflict -- the victories of the Blitzkrieg, the first defeats in the east, the bombing of German cities -- alter their views and expectations? And when did Germans first realize they were fighting a genocidal war?
Told from the perspective of those who lived through it -- soldiers, schoolteachers, and housewives; Nazis, Christians, and Jews -- this masterful historical narrative sheds fresh and disturbing light on the beliefs and fears of a people who embarked on and fought to the end a brutal war of conquest and genocide.
Foreword
A major new history of the Third Reich that explores the German psyche to explain why the nation continued to support a war they knew could not be won
Report
One of the New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of 2015 Winner of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize
