Challenging previous accounts, Megargee shatters the myth that German generals would have prevailed in World War II if only Hitler had not meddled in their affairs. Instead, he observes that the military's strategic ideas were no better than Hitler's and often were worse. 20 photos.

Challenging previous accounts, Geoffrey Megargee shatters the myth that German generals would have prevailed in World War II if only Hitler had not meddled in their affairs. Indeed, Megargee argues, the German high command was much more flawed than many have suspected or acknowledged. Inside Hitler's High Command reveals that while Hitler was the central figure in many military decisions, his generals were equal partners in Germany's catastrophic defeat. Megargee exposes the structure, processes, and personalities that governed the Third Reich's military decision making and shows how Germany's presumed battlefield superiority was undermined by poor strategic and operational planning at the highest levels. His study tracks the evolution of German military leadership under the Nazis from 1933 to 1945 and expands our understanding of the balance of power within the high command, the role of personalities in its organizational development, and the influence of German military intellectuals on its structure and function. He also shows how the organization of the high command was plagued by ambition, stubbornness, political intrigue, and overworked staff officers. And his "a week in the life" chapter puts the high command under a magnifying glass to reveal its inner workings during the fierce fighting on the Russian Front in December 1941. Megargee also offers new insights into the high command crises of 1938 and shows how German general staff made fatal mistakes in their planning for Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Their arrogant dismissal of the Soviet military's ability to defend its homeland and virtual disregard for the extensive intelligence and sound logistics that undergird successful large-scale military campaigns ultimately came back to haunt them. In the final assessment, observes Megargee, the generals' strategic ideas were no better than Hitler's and often worse. Heinz Guderian, Franz Halder, and the rest were as guilty of self-deception as their Fuhrer, believing that innate German superiority and strength of will were enough to overcome nearly any obstacle. Inside Hitler's High Command exposes these surprising flaws and illuminates the process of strategy and decision making in the Third Reich.

By prosecuting war crimes, the Nuremberg trials sought to educate West Germans about their criminal past, provoke their total rejection of Nazism, and convert them to democracy. More than all of the other Nuremberg proceedings, the High Command Case against fourteen of Hitler's generals embraced these goals, since the charges-the murder of POWs, the terrorizing of civilians, the extermination of Jews-also implicated the 20 million ordinary Germans who had served in the military. This trial was the true test of Nuremberg's potential to inspire national reflection on Nazi crime. Its importance notwithstanding, the High Command Case has been largely neglected by historians. Valerie Hébert's study—the only book in English on the subject—draws extensively on the voluminous trial records to reconstruct these proceedings in full: prosecution and defense strategies; evidence for and against the defendants and the military in general; the intricacies of the judgment; and the complex legal issues raised, such as the defense of superior orders, military necessity, and command responsibility. Crucially, she also examines the West German reaction to the trial and the intense debate over its fairness and legitimacy, ignited by the sentencing of soldiers who were seen by the public as having honorably defended their country. Hébert argues that the High Command Trial was itself a success, producing eleven guilty verdicts along with an incontrovertible record of the German military's crimes. But, viewing the trial from beyond the courtroom, she also contends that it made no lasting imprint on the German public's consciousness. And because the United States was eager to secure West Germany as an ally in the Cold War, American officials eventually consented to parole and clemency programs for all of the convicted officers, so that by the late 1950s not one remained imprisoned. Superbly researched and impeccably told, Hitler's Generals on Trial addresses fundamental questions concerning the meaning of justice after atrocity and genocide, the moral imperative of punishment for these crimes, the link between justice and memory, and the relevance of the Nuremberg trials for transitional justice processes today. Inasmuch as these trials coined the vocabulary of modern international criminal law and set an agenda for transitional justice that remains in place today, Hébert's book marks a major contribution to military and legal history.

“A dense and scholarly book about . . . the relationship between the Nazi party and the occult . . . reveals stranger-than-fiction truths on every page.”—Daily Telegraph The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire. “[Kurlander] shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media.”—The Washington Post “Deeply researched, convincingly authenticated, this extraordinary study of the magical and supernatural at the highest levels of Nazi Germany will astonish.”—The Spectator “A trustworthy [book] on an extraordinary subject.”—The Times “A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism.”—Kirkus Reviews “Kurlander provides a careful, clear-headed, and exhaustive examination of a subject so lurid that it has probably scared away some of the serious research it merits.”—National Review

Of more than a million pages of Hitler's military conferences that were recorded, about 1,000 survived destruction. This book contains newly discovered documents never before published.

A remarkable tale of espionage and intrigue—the true story of Hitler’s intelligence chief and his role in the conspiracy to assassinate the Führer. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was appointed by Adolf Hitler to head the Abwehr (the German secret service) eighteen months after the Nazis came to power. But Canaris turned against the Fu¨hrer and the Nazi regime, believing that Hitler would start a war Germany could not win. In 1938 he was involved in an attempted coup, undermined by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. In 1940 he sabotaged the German plan to invade England, and fed General Franco vital information that helped him keep Spain out of the war. For years he played a dangerous double game, desperately trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. The SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, became suspicious of Canaris and by 1944, when Abwehr personnel were involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler, he had the evidence to arrest Canaris himself. Canaris was executed a few weeks before the end of the war. In a riveting true story of intrigue and espionage, Richard Bassett reveals how Admiral Canaris’s secret work against the German leadership changed the course of World War II.

A New York Times bestseller, Norman Ohler's Blitzed is a "fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich” (Washington Post). The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to German soldiers. In fact, troops were encouraged, and in some cases ordered, to take rations of a form of crystal meth—the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to account for the breakneck invasion that sealed the fall of France in 1940, as well as other German military victories. Hitler himself became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs—ultimately including Eukodal, a cousin of heroin—administered by his personal doctor. Thoroughly researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows. “Delightfully nuts.”—The New Yorker