War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 (Total War (Unnumbered).) | 
 enlarge | Author: Geoffrey P. Megargee
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 562835
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1
ISBN: 0742544818
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.54217
EAN: 9780742544819
ASIN: 0742544818
Publication Date: February 25, 2006
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Condition: 2006 hardcover; new; text pristine: crisp, clean, unmarked, unread; usually ships in 1 business day
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Product Description
On June 22, 1941, Hitler began what would be the most important campaign of the European theater. The war against the Soviet Union would leave tens of millions of Soviet citizens dead and large parts of the country in ruins. The death and destruction would result not just from military operations but also from the systematic killing and abuse that the German army, police and SS directed against Jews, Communists and ordinary citizens. In War of Annihilation, noted military historian Geoffrey P. Megargee provides a clear, concise history of the Germans' opening campaign of conquest and genocide in 1941. By drawing on the best of military and Holocaust scholarship, Megargee dispels the myths that have distorted the role of Germany's military leadership in both the military operations themselves and the unthinkable crimes that were part of them. Generously illustrated with 24 photographs and 7 maps.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
The End Product of the Evolution of Total War July 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The author provides an excellent overview of the origin of Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union, which involved a toxic mixture of Hitler's ideology of ethnic racism and acquiring 'living space', the momentum provided by the success of the prior campaigns, Hitler's grand strategy of becoming a self sufficient continental power (thereby forcing Great Britain and the USA to terms), and a gross underestimation of the Soviet Union. Especially valuable is the analysis of the intelligence and logistical reasons for the failure of Barbarossa; emphasis on the tactical proficiency of the Wehrmacht and Cold War antipathy towards the Soviet Union has appeared to diminish interest in this failure until recently. For readers in the USA, where logistical problems for its armed forces are virtually unheard of, the limitations imposed on the Wehrmacht are likely to be a revelation. My only reservation is that the tone of the discussion of moral issues tends to be somewhat out of the context of the events the book describes. While Nazi crimes in Barbarossa were immoral, horrendous, and criminal, they seem of a piece with those of Stalin's communist regime, which in the decade before the invasion reportedly killed up to 9 million people, including by starvation. Interstate Industrial War (as described by Rupert Smith) or total war by WWII had evolved to the point where the entire structure of the nation was required to support the military forces, which allowed the targeting of civilian populations to be rationalized. This is evident in Barbarossa, but also in a more impersonal sense in operations like 'area bombing' and 'fire bombing'.
A fine introduction to an integrated approach to the Eastern Front June 14, 2008
This is the first book on the Russo-German war I have encountered that specifically synthesizes a serious if broad operational history of "Barbarossa" in 1941 and the perpetration of genocide that was one of its major goals. As the author points out, the history of the "Eastern Front" and the history of the Holocaust are usually treated as separate subjects, with military historians often ignoring the racial and ideological components of the war, and Holocaust historians being weak on sound analysis of the fighting. Megargee, who, by his own admission, is not introducing any new theses or scholarship, concisely integrates these two topics.
Readers familiar with the subjects under discussion will probably find nothing earth-shattering here, although as a general refresher to inspire further research it's well-worth the modest investment of time, but those who are well-versed in the strictly operational side of the Russo-German conflict but not the Holocaust and Nazi colonialism, or vice-versa, might find this an excellent starting point to a broader understanding of the war, and of how and why it was fought.
My only reservation would be that this new approach to such an important subject perhaps demands a more massive and densely-documented book, or books, but as far as it goes, it's a valuable contribution.
 War of annihilation? March 8, 2007
9 out of 16 found this review helpful
Megargee's book is a useful contribution to the growing volume of writing that is now (over half a century after the end of the Second World War)becoming available to the English-reading public about what the war was about. It counters the Cold War stories that monopolised writing by "military historians", by generals of the Nazi army and the de-politicised genre of "cowboy and Indians", also largely written by Nazi solders, that were/are popular as derring-do stuff.
This volume helps explain to a new generation (and to an older one that has forgotten much)why the Nuremburg Trials correctly condemned the Nazi Army itself for being a sine qua non, a willing participant, and intrinsic to the programme of Nazi conquest. Without the German Army (and it did not need purging to make it work for Fascism) there would not have been the barbarous war. That was not the work of a minority of bad SS people, a relatively small number of convinced Nazis which, somehow, controlled an unwilling and gentlemanly military machine. It also illustrates that the war was initiated by the Fascist government of Germany in the pursuit of plunder and the destruction of "Bolshevism."
Everything else was secondary to that, including the mass murder of European Jewry, the Rom and Sinta peoples and, by the way, the largest contingent of those on the Nazi list of "subhumans", the Slavs of Poland and the then Soviet Union, as racial perveyors of the virus of Bolshevism.
The author tells a little, also, of the economic requirements of the big employers like Krupp, that the brutal Nazi policies served. Placing the Nazi war aims and conduct before a new set of readers might counter the sort of stuff that is still being peddled, and is popular, such as the works by Anthony Beevor, Richard Overy and John Erickson, who would still have us see the Fascist war on the "East" as part of some unexplained "titanic" struggle that took place between two powerful machines. The only thing they leave out is what the war was about, and Geoffrey Megargee tells us a lot about that.
Good on the publishers - a book that makes a good present to a friend.
Michael Costello
 Poor history from carefully cherry-picked incidents with worse conclusions. February 17, 2007
51 out of 95 found this review helpful
The author, a young "scholar" at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, indicts the German Army on the Eastern Front in total as criminal for its actions against the Jews and its lack of action to prevent their elimination by other organizations.
Much of the author's presentation is invalid being based on half-truths, misstatements, and distortion of facts. He overlooks the fact that Hitler was able to use the term "Jewish-Bolshevik" with some accuracy in Germany due to the over-representation of Jews in the Bolshevik leadership and the spearheading of Communist activity in Germany by German Jews.
The research is poor, and I grew tired of noting "no!" and "no such evidence!" in the margin while reading. The author treats von Manstein very unfairly, to note one of many. He dismisses Goerlitz's work, "The German General Staff" as containing "a great deal of misleading material" and stating "but its author was himself a General Staff Officer". One is tempted to reply that Megargee is not to be trusted because he works for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Megargee also states: "Beware of the German memoir literature! Books by the likes of Guderian and von Manstein are still selling briskly in English and German, but much of what they contain is not to be trusted...." Having read those works and compared the operations described within with other primary sources, I cannot agree with Megargee's statement. Von Manstein specifically mentions his victories at Kerch and Sevastopol as true battles of annihilation in which 260,000 prisoners were taken. "Annihilation" does not always mean killing or murder. The author must surely know that the evidence against von Manstein was extremely contradictory, and that no less a person than Winston Churchill contributed to Manstein's defense (although political motives undoubtedly played a part.)
I would have been more sympathetic to the author had he revealed that the Soviets massacred whole villeges of peasants they felt to be unreliable during their retreat in 1941 and 1942, but the author is only interested in damning the Germans. That the war on the Eastern Front was brutal and merciless in the extreme is beyond doubt, but like everything, there were two sides. This work does not present anything new or of interest to the serious historian and is not worth the purchase.
An introduction and overview September 4, 2006
12 out of 22 found this review helpful
This is an excellent, well-written, introduction and overview of the Eastern Front, 1941, with regard to German policies vis-a-vis the general populace. However, the author says upfront that the book is not intended as a work of great scholarship and, as indicated by the footnotes, it is not. Megargee wrote a great book in 2000 about the German General Staff (a WWII "must read"), and has a dream job at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. He is a top-notch military historian in the prime of his career, which is the reason I was so very disappointed with the book's bibliography. His book brings to mind scores of questions, and needs a good bibliography to lead the reader to appropriate literature. Instead, all we get is some lame "bibliographic essay". A definite flaw in the book.
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