Germany Books

I am not sure how I picked out this book, but I couldn't put it down. I learned about our Germans, American prairie life and technology, or lack thereof. I had some good laughs - the group's solution for the tall, incompetent worker comes to mind. I also felt great sorrow. You know, that is this book's strength - it inspires feelings. I came out of each short story with a strong emotion - happiness, sorrow, curiosity, sated...

This author has deeply researced his subject matter. The historical facts are reliable and the read flows effortlessly. I recomnend this book without reservation.

There are so many conversations recorded here, with so many different German officers, that by the end of the book I was convinced that they painted a genuine picture of what the German army's officers thought of the war.

About half of the book is about two topics: the plot against Hitler's life, and the treatment of the Jews. The plot is perhaps the most illuminating as in discussing it the officers discuss what they think of him, and the current regime. Most of the officers appear to be high-ranking, and it is clear from their conversations that they knew about the atrocities that were going on.

The book is also interesting as an observation of what happens when you dissent from the mainstream. A few of the officers are very open about their support of the plot, and their dark predictions of how history will see them. This position makes them disliked for not being team players.

Sonke Neitzel's "Tapping Hitler's Generals" presents an unusual glimpse into history. German generals who had been captured during WWII and interned in British camps talked with each other in captivity without realizing they were being recorded. While some of the conversations may be interpreted as perhaps cautiously feeding a line to the British, the unvarnished statements suggest that on the whole, the generals were speaking their version of truth. What is amazing about the statements is the range of moral thinking about the goals and implementation of Nazism. We hear generals who are still advocates of the Nazi view and were hear others who are strongly critical. However, all of them caved in to a higher respect for honor and obedience - regardless of their incipient moral disgust with certain actions. One also hears rationalizations for brutality expressed with little evidence of discomfort over the crimes. For Americans, these testimonies should have an eerie resonance with the likes of Rumsfeld who dismisses the civilian casualties and economic disasters of the Iraq war as part of the messiness of democracy. What is so striking about the generals is how civil they are and how conscious they are of the evils of the Nazi regime, in spite of some protestations about "not knowing." Several of the generals also voice the shame to fall on Germany and perhaps there is some redemption to follow from that. It would be fascinating to see more biographical information on the lives of these men after the war. Neitzel supplies some brief notes, but one wonders about how these men re-integrated into life and their families.

Sonke Neitzel has also supplied a wealth of footnotes (very easily accessed, by the way)to either confirm or refute the statements made by the generals. The contrast is fascinating. Not uncommonly, the general's information about slaughter actually overestimates the number of victims.
Neitzel's scholarship is peerless. This is a rich study and one that offers a unique view of the Second World War.

This book is amazing read for everyone interested in the little known and mysterious folds of Hitler's life. Mr Duffy presents at least 25 attempts to kill Hitler that had been made before the well known Stauffenberg plot of July 1944. I was surprised to learn that attempts against Hitler's life were made even in the early 1920s, that many individuals made desperate trials and paid with their lives and that even Himmler may be the mastermind behind a bomb explosion in Munich which missed Hitler only for a few minutes. The Stauffenberg affair is also analysed in a simple but terrific way, with all the interesting details. The author also gives some clues of how Hitler managed to escape death so many times and one of this is surely his love for the unpredictable: "Most assassination plots relied on Hitler's adherence to a predetermined agenda, but the assassins were invariably thwarted by Hitler's practice of avoiding routine or established schedules in his travels. Hitler's policy was to live his life "irregularly", as he put it. "Walk, drive and travel at irregular times and unexpectedly" was his personal formula for security against assassins". Some times though, he was saved just from his intuition, when he apparently sensed that something was wrong with the attitude of officers who met or invited him. The author's conclusion is very realistic and interesting: "Was Providence really on Hitler's side, as he so often claimed? In truth the answer is simple. The men who plotted the destruction of the Nazi government were simply not revolutionaries. They were not assassins. Many of them were too deeply religious to act in a manner required to bring down a bloodthirsty tyrannical government. Such an act requires men who can become as bloodthirsty as their opponents". No maps or photographs are included in the book. There are also some annoying and persistent errors, like spelling Abwehr as Abwer, or Speidel as Spiedel etc. but this is a minor problem which does not damage the excellent value of this book.

Most books about the Third Reich mention the von Stauffenberg plot (sometimes called the General's Plot) against Hitler, and a few allude to "other" plots, but Target Hitler attempts to provide a history of not only the General's Plot, but the other serious (and sometimes tragically comic) plots against Hitler. Contrary to some other writings on the subject, Duffy & Ricci assert that Rommel was not a conspirator in the Stauffenberg scheme, but simply one of the many officers who chose to remain silent about the plot, waiting for the risks to be taken by others.

There were plots discussed here that were completely new to me, such as the bomb that appears to have been planted with Himmler's active assistance -- though it is unclear whether this was an internal power struggle of Himmler to replace Hitler, or an attempt to produce a plot for propaganda purposes, for which it was well used.

There are tragicomic efforts here, such as Maurice Bavaud's. Bavaud was an anti-Communist Swiss seminary student who sought to assassinate Hitler for cozying up to the Communists -- and thought he was going to succeed using a .25 pocket pistol, which even Bavaud knew was only accurate enough with this gun to kill Hitler if he could get with 25 feet of his target! Unfortunately, Hitler walked down the wrong side of the street in Munich in commemoration of the Beer Hall Putsch.

Duffy & Ricci also demonstrate that, contrary to the view taken by some other historians, the General's Plot was not simply the result of the German officer corps attempting to save their own necks once the war was lost, but the last in a long series of efforts made before the war to remove Hitler from power, out of opposition to the immorality of National Socialist Party rule. Much of the opposition was founded on the belief that Hitler's actions in provoking wars, passing of the Nuremburg laws, and other such actions against the Jews, were contrary to Christianity. Especially among the military and diplomatic opposition, this Christian basis to opposition to Hitler created a serious problem, because of a profound reluctance to commit murder, even of someone such as Hitler. Eventually, as the nature of the brutality of the Nazi policies became impossible to miss, the major plotters, such as von Stauffenberg, overcame their reluctance. The plot to depose Hitler became a plot to assassinate.

After the war, many officers sought to find protection in the argument, "I was only following orders." Duffy & Ricci provide an example of the traditional German military view with a quote from General Beck's memorandum of July 16, 1938:

"Vital decisions for the future of the nation are at stake. History will indict these commanders [who blindly follow Hitler's orders] of blood guilt if, in the light of their professional and political knowledge, they do not obey the dictates of their conscience. A soldier's duty to obey ends when his knowledge, his conscience, and his sense of responsibility forbid him to carry out a certain order."

There were many officers in the German military who, because they had sworn a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler in the early days of the National Socialist government of Germany, were reluctant to directly participate in the plot against Hitler -- but were ready to help as soon as Hitler was dead.

There were other factions as well, including labor leaders not already incarcerated, and various Social Democrats. While they and the aristocratic conservative elements that made up the plot were not able to completely agree on what the new Germany should be, they were able to reach agreement that Hitler had to be removed, one way or another.

The courage of many of the conspirators is astonishing. Duffy & Ricci recount a number of instances where high officers put plastic explosive charges in their pockets, started the fuses, then attempted to get close enough to Hitler to grab hold. Other generals attempted to enter Hitler's presence while armed, in the hopes of getting at least one lethal wound inflicted on Hitler before being killed themselves.

Hitler's luck is also astonishing. Plot after plot were foiled by Hitler's habit of changing plans and schedules at the last moment. The General's Plot, however, failed because many elements in the plot failed to take action immediately after the bomb went off -- and in failing to take action, provided enough time for Hitler loyalists to mobilize.

One annoying error is that throughout the book the military intelligence organization, which was a center of the conspiracy against Hitler, even going so far as to give military intelligence ID cards to Berlin Jews, to enable them to leave the country safely posing as military intelligence officers, is consistently misspelled as "Abwer" instead of "Abwehr." Since the authors have relied heavily on memoirs of survivors of the plots, this error is all the more mystifying.

The book concludes with a description of what finally happened to the major participants in the General's Plot. The courage of these people, confronting the Nazi People's Court, destroyed whatever propaganda value these trials might have had. As Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben told Judge Freisler, "You can hand us over to the executioner, but in three months' time this outraged and suffering people will call you to account and drag you alive through the mud of the streets."

During World War II it appears that the Germans had just about the worst spy network of them all. As part of Operation Double Cross the British were able to capture every German spy sent to England and either turn them or execute them.

In the United States there appears to have been much less German activity. The most famous was the landing of Nazi Spies and Saboteurs by sub along the East Coast. These were cought, tried before a military tribunal, found guilty and most of them were executed.

This book covers this case in great detail with an amazing number of photographs. It also covers various other spying situations, where information was being passed to Germany, sometimes by Americans. There is one case discussed where a Japanese consular official was deported.

I was struck by two thoughts while reading this book:

1. No cases against the Japanese living here were ever made. We put many thousands of Japanese into concentration camps, but no Germans or Italians. Was this just racially based?

2. The use of military tribunals to try spies is just what President Bush is doing with the 'detainees' we are holding in Cuba. I guess the Germans during WW II were the necessary precedent.

Most interesting book about a little known series of incidents.

Assisted by Richard Gay, Stan Cohen and Don DeNevi effectively collaborate in They Came To Destroy America, a pictorially oriented history which focuses upon the landings of Nazi spies and saboteurs upon American shores during the years of World War II -- as well as pre-war Nazi spy operations, and some of the other Axis operations which were planned but never successful. A wealth of black-and-white photographs are combined with information from FBI files and primary source documents to present readers with an engaging and informative narrative text. A welcome addition to academic and community library 20th Century American History collections, They Came To Destroy America is recommended as a true and factual record of a deadly internal threat to America and how the FBI vigilantly responded to it.

This book is another intellectual feast produced by the great Valmek VolKan. He and his colleagues propose in this book that psychic trauma can be transmitted collectively to succeeding generations through a process coined "trans-generational transmission."

Part I of the book sets up the conceptual machinery for defining and exploring the meaning of "trans-generational transmission;" part II, examines a carefully chosen variety of case studies dealing with victims of the Nazi and Armenian Holocausts. Interestingly, these include at least one German who lived as a "perpetrator" during that period. Part three deals with the therapeutic consequences of "trans-generational transmission." As usual, Volkan's work is on the cutting edge intellectually and is as stimulating as it is provocative.

In part I the authors explain how traumatized victims often oblige their descendants (and do this almost always unconsciously) to carry the weight of, and help resolve the unfinished business of their past traumas, thus among other things, helping them reverse (or at least attenuate) hopelessness and accumulated residual psychic pain. Images of past traumas are carried forward and relived in the mind of succeeding generations of individuals and groups that are culturally related, as unconscious fantasies. That is to say, the progeny or descendants of past traumas learn to live in two worlds: their own (present-oriented) world, and vicariously in that inhabited by their victimized ethnic survivor/ancestors and simultaneously in "an imagined but un-experienced" past oriented-world. Like the real victims of such experiences, these "vicarious victims" too are caught up in the same time warp of past traumatic experiences as the "real victims" are. However, with the important twist that the "vicarious victims" have never experienced the traumas they imagine.

Such is the case with Jews whose parents and relatives were victims of the European Holocaust; American blacks whose ancestors were victims of slavery; the sons and daughters of the Armenian genocide, and the descendants of the genocide against Native Americans, to name just a few select examples. These "unremembered" and "un-experienced" events become "real" in the imagination, and an unforgettable part of the conscious (but "wholly imagined") experiences and life-histories of the descendants. The imagined experiences become in effect "chosen traumas" and a part of a shared "chosen history" to use two other phrases coined by Volkan in his earlier books.

The personalities of these "vicarious victims," adapt to a set of "imagined events" as if they were real and had actually happened to them. They "playact" as if the imagined events are a part of a "shared victimization experience." Their simulated and imagined world becomes a part of the repertoire and a part of a continuum of culturally shared experiences: a kind of "transference neurosis," as it were, that can be as real in its consequences as any other shared experiences can be. Indeed, as these authors so carefully point out in Part III, they eventually become an integral part of the daily repertoire of the "vicarious victim's" own behavioral responses.

The larger and much deeper question this research raises is this: To what extent does this phenomenon of trans-generational transmission represent just the more complex, and more obvious end of a continuum: from strong to weak trauma, and from strong to weak ethnic identification? Indeed, is it possible that trans-generational transmission is just a larger "backdoor" way to defining cultural and ethnic identification itself? Or put differently, to what extent is all ethnic history and identification just a more complex form of identity based on imagined traumas? That is to say, to what extent is ethnic identity a more general but greatly attenuated form of trans-generational transmission?

I raise these questions only because after a careful reading of Part III, which is dense to say the least, the reader is left with the notion that at some level all ethnic grievances may in some sense be viewed as part of a continuum of shared or "chosen traumas" (that is from massive to minimal traumas). And since it is true that ethnic identification (and arguably even ethnicity) is, as often as not, defined by collective grievances, collective insecurity, shared threats to security, shared collective fears and "chosen histories of past traumas," - that is by the gaps in the mental space of group identity -- it is not unreasonable to suggest that the effects of traumas on succeeding generations can easily fit along a continuum, or even a series of continua.

Even if this last suggestion seems premature, or unsuited for the clinical setting, it certainly does no harm to raise the larger issue of whether or not the concept of trans-generational transmission has much wider application and whether or not despite these misgivings it can be seen in a more general, global light as a more systemic psychological phenomenon. Certainly the author's arguments in Chapter III, where traumas take on symbolic and proto-symbolic representations can be read and interpreted in this way.

But this is not the only meaning that can be mined from this conceptually rich mother lode. There are endless possible permutations to how the concept of trans-generational transmission might be expanded and put to further clinical as well as theoretical use, as the term "massive trauma" is further delineated and parsed. It is not unreasonable to suggest that it could, for instance, be expanded to include "perpetrator groups" as well as "victim groups" by the following logical analysis:

Since it is true that wherever there is a "victim group" there is usually also a corresponding "perpetrator group," whose identity is equally "fragmented, equally full of gaps in their mental spaces, and defined by and tied to "shared acts of cruelty," such groups, at least at the unconscious level, experience the same kind of "reverse or indirect trauma," as do "victim groups" do directly. This is another way of saying that "perpetrator groups" are defined as much by their shared "unconscious guilt" from committing acts of cruelty as victim groups are by the cruelty perceived to have been inflicted upon them by actual cruelty.

Is it not true that in the end these are but different sides of the same psychological coin? Building rationalizations and a defensive wall of solidarity becomes as important a form of group identification for perpetrator groups as "reliving victim-hood" does for victimized groups -- and often are the only tangible bases of group solidarity and identification for either group.

As but a couple of interesting examples we could take the results of the American Civil War as a case in point.

It would be difficult to argue that Southern whites did not experienced a kind of collective "massive trauma" by any definition of the term, and whether it be a situational definition or a more general one. However, the same could be said of two other groups' experiences from that war: "The Northern victors, " and the blacks who were "freed" from slavery. In each of these latter cases, the indirect trauma of upheaval and war were no less traumatic than it was directly to southerners, whether or not it was consciously perceived as such by either of these latter two groups. The gaps in their respective collective identities and mental space were nevertheless filled by fears and insecurities of that war. Their respective subgroup identities were defined by and bound by the experiences shared during that period. And so too were the vicariously imagined experiences of their descendants.

The point, of course is that while there are many large definitional problems involved with the concept of "massive trauma," and with the psychological meaning of "ethnic identity," theoretically these are nevertheless a very rich and very useful set of terms, and when they are coupled with Volkan's term transgenerational transmission, the depths of what they can do together has yet to be completely plumbed.

One cannot say enough about the work of Valmik Volkan. Fifty stars! Amen.

Dr. Volkan, this time with some colleagues, presented an enlightened thesis about Transgenerational Transmissions of Traumas and its Consequences. Although aim at the legacy of the third rich in the mind, it can be applied to established a new outlook about transgenerational transmissions of traumas in others scenarios.

This is clearly the definitive biography of Thomas Mann ...by perhaps this era's leading biographer .....to be sure there are several bios out there ....but having read the most recent two ....i must say they were merely an excursus compared to Mr. Heymans outstanding effort ! his is both comprehensive and perspicuous ....not an easy task when being an exegete of Mann's life and works ....Mann was both an accomplished author and prescient political analyst .....and led a long and complicated life .....which Mr. Heyman documents with unusual clarity and verve!.. of the three major biographies on T.Mann recently published ....his (heymans) is the best of the trio ....the other two being discursive and garbled thus confusing to the common reader by all means read this edition if you have any interest in T. Mann's work and life...it's COMPLEAT ! thankyou Mr. Heyman !

If you're looking to find the connection between T Mann's great books and his amazing life, this is the book to read! Though this book does emphasize his bisexual tendencies, this is really done in a limited way, mainly in explaining his real experiences in "Death in Venice", and the very late edition to "Felix Krull", easily his most amusing book! Oddly, this man of phenomenal powers of observation was duped at a seance, the experience leading to spiritualist scene (Highly Questionable) in the Magic Mountain. The author does not mention Mann's own observations on this odd subject. in his Essays for 3 Decades. Even more than Hemingway, his family had severe suicidal tendencies, including his sister, sister in law, and two children, including Klaus, a renowned author in his own right. T. Mann was surely an imperious father, distant and aloof, and had his disputes with his older brother , Heinrich, mainly during the great war. Thomas was a great defender of German Kulture, Heinrich an international socialist. Still, his leading role as an anti-Nazi "Good German" cannot be denied, and after the war, he was subject to anti-communist hysteria rumor-mongering in the USA, so he moved back to Switzerland. He was an inveterate traveller, often ill, but still managed to find the time to write some of the greatest literature ever. In sum, an excellent bio of a rare, though flawed, genius!

This is a truly brilliant book. It highlights the fact that political and economic crises often produce similar results, specifically a centralization of state power. Some people may not like this book because it suggests similarities between Roosevelt's New Deal and Fascism. However, the point here is not to suggest Roosevelt was racist or antisemitic (a totally idiotic notion) but to focus on the much larger issue of the use of state power in a crisis. The book has important lessons for the future. The current world order is doing a very poor job is dealing with deadly threats like the global environmental crisis. In a new series of world crises there is likely to be a huge centralization of power. Albert Speer once observed that when fascism comes back, it will come back as anti-fascism. The larger issue here is totalitarianism and its potential role in the world future.

Mr. Schivelbusch, in this remarkably well researched and startling book draws parallels between the programs and leadership styles of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Franklin Roosevelt. He shows how many similarities there were to be found between each of these very different men. His purpose is not to demonize FDR, excuse the Nazis and Fascists or even to mitigate the failure of the average German and Italian to stand up their leaders. It is, rather, to provide a warning to the future that populism can shift from the benign to the monstrous. It is must reading for the general reader.

Having been a fan of Mr Schivelbusch's varied work for many years, I recently had the opportunity to dine with him at the home of friends of mine. I was interested to learn that he was a man of the Left, whose views were very different from mine. It is a tribute to his ability as a scholar that I never would have guessed his affiliations. He follows the truth where he finds it and never lets his own biases seep into his work.

He is a careful and diligent researcher. By way of example, T. Harry Williams' Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Huey Long merely casts doubt on those who attribute to Long the most famous of his quotes to the effect that "when Fascism comes to America, it will come in the guise of anti-Fascism." Williams does not make any serious attempt to track down the origin of the attribution, something you would expect from the author of a nearly 1000 page biography. In this short work, in a learned and careful footnote, Schivelbusch offers a variety of possible sources for this quote. THAT is careful research!

I highly recommend Three New Deals.

This book has allot to offer but for me the real exception is in the mission journal, summarizing what it was like for this B17 crew over 34 missions. You read it as the Bombardier recorded it and this crew had many amazing experiences. These were brave men who risked it all for their country. I was left satisfied with my understanding of their experiences and this is a big compliment. I discovered this book after it was published, finding that my Father (long deceased) was a member of the crew..

"Through Blue Skies to Hell" delivers a real punch. It contains a mission-by-mission diary of 1st Lieutenant Richard R. Ayesh, from Wichita, Kansas, uncle of author Edward M. Sion and a bombardier who flew 34 missions over Europe in a B-17 "Flying Fortress" with the 100th Bombardment Group, 13th Combat Wing, 8th Air Force during the closing days of World War II. Among his combat awards were the Distinguished Flying Cross, Croix de Guerre and the Air Medal with four Oak Leave clusters.

"Through Blue Skies to Hell" begins with a brief biography of Lt. Ayesh, during the depression, in Wichita, Kansas to his arrival in England as a bombardier, assigned to the 100th Bombardment Group, through 34 missions and his return home.

Author Sion, PhD, and current Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Villanova University, then examines the bombs and bomb sight, the principles of American daylight bombing, bomber formations and tactics. He writes a brief history of Thorpe Abbotts, in East Anglia, just north of London, home of the 100th Group, followed by a mission-by-mission diary of Lt. Ayesh. The diary reminds us of the daily risks taken by young men seeing death on a daily basis, facing fields of flak, fierce enemy fighters and foul weather.

This is not a history of the 'Bloody 100th Bomb Group. That has been done before. It is a fine, straight forward, informative look at the air war over Europe after June 6th 1944, with a surprising amount of new perspective on the moral issues of area bombing with implications in the present century.

A worthy book about yesterday for today and tomorrow.

Richard N. Larsen
Reviewer

"Through Blue Skies to Hell," by Edward Sion, started out as a tribute to his uncle who flew 34 combat missions in a B-17 with the 100 Bombardment Group. He finished with his uncle's diary as the book's centerpiece, supplemented by very readable discussions of the technical and strategic contributions of the allied bombing campaign against Germany.

Sion's book is intended for the mainstream reader interested in World War II strategic bombing. His style brings to life dry topics such as the Norden bomb sight. Detailed discussions of this technological marvel could cure the most devoted reader's insomnia, but Sion's readable prose combined with apropos diagrams will keep readers engaged.

The Wizard's War between Germany and the Allies saw the development of numerous radar and electronic countermeasure systems. Sion includes chapters on some of these other technological marvels such as the German Wassermann, Freya, Würzburg-Reissen, and Lichtenstein radar systems. From the allied side, he includes radar guided bombing systems such as the GEE, H2S and H2X, the last of which is supplemented by an amazing photo of its radar image of the D-Day landings.

In warfare, technological advances drive new tactics and strategy. Sion again does an outstanding job describing contentious issues such as target selection, which caused a rift between US and British bomber strategists, into terms for the layman. More importantly, he provides the strategic context for how the ground war in western Europe was progressing, and how the bomber campaign contributed to the overall allied efforts.

With the technological and strategic environments in context, Sion then presents his uncle's diary. After each diary entry, he provides a layman's analysis of each mission describing the bomb payload and where the aircraft flew in the bombing formation. In a few instances, he also included personal interviews with other crew members to share additional perspectives on the more memorable bombing missions.

Sion concludes the book with a discussion on the moral implications of strategic bombing, again placing the bombings and destruction into strategic context. The intellectual arguments are very similar to those presented in other works such as "Among the Dead Cities", by A.C. Grayling. Sion's arguments are more succinct, yet just as effective.

My only complaint is that Sion seems to be unjustifiably critical of the British, especially his perspective that the tactic of area bombing used by the British was immoral. With the luxury of 5 decades of hindsight, it is difficult for today's strategists to appreciate the true historical context of these strategic decisions. He is equally critical of the United States' firebombing of Japan, but I just felt he was too harsh on the British.

This book is well-researched, well-supported by diagrams and photographs, and easy to read. I highly recommend "Through Blue Skies to Hell" for any airpower enthusiast. If you enjoyed, Stephen Ambrose's "Into the Wild Blue", you will enjoy this one too.

If one wishes to learn about the contributions of the US ArmyAir Forces in Europe during World War II, the literature is repletewith books and articles about strategic precision daylight bombing. However, in To Command the Sky, the authors have broken from the strategic bombing mold to inform us of how air superiority was achieved, and how important that victory was to allow the Allied forces to not only carry out their strategic bombing mission, but also to prepare the battlefield for D-Day. Indeed, without air superiority over the landing areas, the D-Day invasion of the continent would have certainly been more costly, if not impossible to achieve. This excellent book recounts how the Luftwaffe was defeated through a combination of strategic bombing and, more importantly, attrition of the Luftwaffe planes and pilots. Although the book begins with a brief history of military aviation and doctrine, the highlight for this reviewer was the chapter dedicated to training, especially since the authors look at both the American and German programs. Flaws in the German training programs directly contributed to their aerial defeat in 1942 - 1944. Due to the prohibition to maintain a German air force by the Treaty of Versailles after WW I, the Luftwaffe started training its pilots in Russia and Italy during the 1920s and 1930s. By the time Hitler announced to the world the existence of the Luftwaffe in 1935, he had established a formidable force. For myriad reasons though, problems consistently nagged the Luftwaffe and ultimately led to its defeat. These included a lack of training planes, a lack of qualified instructor pilots, little instrument flying time, and shortages of aviation fuel. The authors develop these shortfalls throughout the book and keep coming back to the conclusion that inadequate training was a major factor in the Luftwaffe's demise. Two other aspects of the battle for air superiority that the authors examine are the realizations that fighter escort would be needed to defend the bombers on their strategic strikes, and attrition warfare would be needed to defeat the Luftwaffe. Despite the fact losses from attrition warfare were high, the Allied commanders were willing to accept them knowing that replacement aircraft and qualified pilots were readily available. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading To Command the Sky as I felt it gave a truly balanced account of how fighters and bombers were both needed to achieve air superiority and bring about the defeat of the Luftwaffe. Lastly, the authors' insight into some of the key commanders (Eaker, Doolittle, Spaatz, Arnold) thinking was especially enlightening and appreciated. It put the struggles they faced in commanding such a large force in perspective, especially with regard to the D-Day timeline under which they operated. I believe To Command the Sky is a must read for anyone wishing to study the air campaign against Germany during World War II.

The authors do an excellent job of showing how the Allies were able to use their material superiority to best advantage and defeat the Luftwaffe. Counterintuitively, the main advantage gained by the strategic bombing program was the defeat of the Luftwaffe. It was only when the bombers started hitting important targets in Germany accompanied by escort fighters that the German fighters had to fight at unequal terms.

Great description of how the air war was won.

This book is a story which could be true for thousands of Germans expelled from their homeland, Silesia. The account of the Russian invasion and Polish take-over moved me very much and gave me a more clear picture of what my parents went through. As the author goes back to her homeland to visit I felt a new compassion for the Polish population, who inherited this land, due to the author's insight and integrity. This both is well worth reading even if your personal history is not intertwined with Silesia.

"To Lose A War" by Regina Maria Shelton. Subtitled: "Memories Of a German Girl". Southern Illinois University Press, 1982.

This is a very personal memoir of a young German girl, growing up during the Second World War. Born in 1927, Regina Maria was just reaching womanhood when the Soviet tanks were entering eastern Germany: Silesia, Pomerania, Prussia, etc. She begins the book with a brief story concerning visiting modern Communistic German in the 1980s, and, with one anecdote, she makes the point that the Communistic German border guards were as repressive, if not more so, than the old Nazi party members. Then, in the next chapter, she jumps to a nostalgic but wonderfully vivid description of Christmas Past, before the War: "Christmas began on the day that Mama melted the butter and honey in an enormous tin pan..." (p. 19). I have to tell my own children that Christmas Eve was once a fast day, with no eating until Midnight Mass, and I sense a kinship of the Past gone by with this writer, even though my Christmases were in NYC and hers in Germany.

Her last chapter deals with what the Poles have done to her hometown, her childhood town.
"My sentimental quest for my hometown is over. I have been walking in the streets of Klodzko, Poland. Glatz has ceased to exist save in my memories." (P. 218). She has written an interesting and complete personal history of living in a few decades in a town in Silesia, decades which saw the rise and fall of many.