Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté. Image fixe : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Mercatante, Steven D.
Titre(s) : Why Germany nearly won [Texte imprimé] : a new history of the Second World War in Europe / Steven D. Mercatante
Publication : Santa Barbara (Calif.) : Praeger, cop. 2012
Description matérielle : xviii- 408 p. : ill. ; 25 cm
Collection : War, technology, and history
Lien à la collection : War, technology, and history
Comprend : The German War Machine on the Eve of War : Myth versus Reality ; The Third Reich
Ascendant : The Reasons Why ; Comparing the World's First Military Superpowers on
the Eve of War ; History's Bloodiest Conflict Begins ; An Inconvenient Decision
Confronts Germany's Masters of War ; Another Roll of the Dice ; Stalingrad in Context
; The European War's Periphery ; Seizing the Initiative : The Sword versus the Shield
; A New Perspective for Explaining D-Day's Outcome ; Hitler's Greatest Defeat ;
How the Third Reich Staved Off Total Defeat during the Summer of 1944 ; End Game.
Note(s) : Includes bibliographical references (p. [381]-386) and index
This book offers a unique perspective for understanding how and why the Second World
War in Europe ended as it did and why Germany, in attacking the Soviet Union, came
far closer to winning the war than is often understood. Conventional wisdom explains
German defeat during World War II as almost inevitable, primarily for reasons of economic
or military brute force created when Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 and
entered into a two-front war. Author Steven Mercatante challenges this in highlighting
how the re-establishment of the traditional German art of war, updated to accommodate
new weapons systems, paved the way for Germany to forge a considerable military edge
over its much larger potential rivals by playing to its qualitative strengths as a
continental power. These methodologies also created internal contradictions that undermined
the same war machine and left it vulnerable to enemies with capacity to adapt and
build on potent military traditions of their own. The book begins by examining methods
by which German economy and military prepared for war, German military establishment's
formidable strengths, and its weaknesses. The author then takes a new perspective
on explaining the Second World War in Europe. He demonstrates how Germany, through
its invasion of the Soviet Union, came within a whisker of cementing a European-based
empire that would have allowed the Third Reich to challenge the Anglo-American alliance
for global hegemony. The last section explores final year of the war and addresses
how Germany was able to hang on against the world's most powerful nations working
in concert to engineer its defeat. The author demonstrates how closely fought the
war actually was and demolishes the long-standing myth that Germany's purportedly
professional war machine would have won the war but for Hitler's incompetent leadership.
He explains how the Mediterranean Theater of the War represented a crucial distraction
and net drain on the primary German war effort in Eastern Europe and reveals why it
was the combined arms panzer division as one key bolstering German army's renaissance,
not the tank itself
Sujet(s) : Guerre mondiale (1939-1945) -- Allemagne
Guerre mondiale (1939-1945) -- Opérations militaires -- Front occidental
Guerre mondiale (1939-1945) -- Technologie
Forces armées allemandes -- 1900-1945
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9780313395925 (hard copy) (acid-free paper). - ISBN 0313395926 (hard copy) (acid-free
paper). - ISBN 9780313395932 (ebook). - ISBN 0313395934 (ebook)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb42749252r
Notice n° :
FRBNF42749252
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
