Often written during imprisonment in Allied War camps by former German officers, with their memories of the World War fresh in their minds, The Foreign Military Studies series offers rare glimpses into the Third Reich. In this study Oberst a.D. Wilhem Willemar discusses his recollections of the climatic battle for Berlin from within the Wehrmacht. “No cohesive, over-all plan for the defense of Berlin was ever actually prepared. All that existed was the stubborn determination of Hitler to defend the capital of the Reich. Circumstances were such that he gave no thought to defending the city until it was much too late for any kind of advance planning. Thus the city’s defense was characterized only by a mass of improvisations. These reveal a state of total confusion in which the pressure of the enemy, the organizational chaos on the German side, and the catastrophic shortage of human and material resources for the defense combined with disastrous effect. “The author describes these conditions in a clear, accurate report which I rate very highly. He goes beyond the more narrow concept of planning and offers the first German account of the defense of Berlin to be based upon thorough research. I attach great importance to this study from the standpoint of military history and concur with the military opinions expressed by the author.”-Foreword by Generaloberst a.D. Franz Halder.

Now available in a revised and updated version, this book examines Western warfare from antiquity to the present day.

This book looks at several troop categories based on primary function and analyzes the ratio between these categories to develop a general historical ratio. This ratio is called the Tooth-to-Tail Ratio. McGrath's study finds that this ratio, among types of deployed US forces, has steadily declined since World War II, just as the nature of warfare itself has changed. At the same time, the percentage of deployed forces devoted to logistics functions and to base and life support functions have increased, especially with the advent of the large-scale of use of civilian contractors. This work provides a unique analysis of the size and composition of military forces as found in historical patterns. Extensively illustrated with charts, diagrams, and tables. (Originally published by the Combat Studies Institute Press)

Includes more than twenty portraits and the World War Two On The Eastern Front (1941-1945) Illustration Pack – 198 photos/illustrations and 46 maps. The HISTORY OF THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF is the first comprehensive history of the Prussian and later German General Staff from its earliest beginnings in the Thirty Years’ War to the German unconditional surrender in 1945. With the dawn of the industrial age, war was taken out of the hands of monarchs and aristocrats. During the first decades of its existence the German General Staff was led by idealists with constructive political conceptions and ethical and Christian mentality. The emergence of the anonymous technicians, whose political convictions were either non-existent or formed by military necessity or ambitions, only served to aggravate an expansionist, adventurous, and militaristic national temperament. Hitler’s decision to force his country into a war which could not end well and his deep hostility toward the General Staff created the greatest tragedy in its history when most of its members were continually torn by the struggle between human, ethical, and patriotic responsibilities on the one hand and by military obedience as exemplified in their military oath on the other. The continual conflict ended in the attempt on Hitler’s life and also in the complete destruction of the German General Staff by Hitler himself...There were aloof and cold technicians, warm-hearted, emotional men with European conceptions, fanatical Nazis, gullible dupes, drill-sergeant types, and true idealistic aristocrats like Stauffenberg. The...HISTORY OF THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF, which is based on tremendous research in German and foreign sources and on many interviews with German generals and staff officers who survived World War II, is considered the standard work in the field.

On October 10, 1941, the Jewish population of the Belarusian village of Krucha was rounded up and shot. This atrocity was not the routine work of the SS but was committed by a regular German army unit acting on its own initiative. Marching into Darkness is a bone-chilling exposé of the ordinary footsoldiers who participated in the Final Solution on a daily basis. Although scholars have exploded the myth that the Wehrmacht played no significant part in the Holocaust, a concrete picture of its involvement has been lacking. Marching into Darkness reveals in detail how the army willingly fulfilled its role as an agent of murder on a massive scale. Waitman Wade Beorn unearths forced labor, sexual violence, and grave robbing, though a few soldiers refused to participate and even helped Jews. Improvised extermination progressively became methodical, with some army units going so far as to organize "Jew hunts." The Wehrmacht also used the pretense of Jewish anti-partisan warfare as a subterfuge by reporting murdered Jews as partisans. Through military and legal records, survivor testimonies, and eyewitness interviews, Beorn paints a searing portrait of an army's descent into ever more intimate participation in genocide.