Violence in defeat : the Wehrmacht on German soil, 1944-1945 / Bastiaan Willems.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Willems, Bastiaan, author.

Series:

Cambridge military histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

World War, 1939-1945--Germany.

World War, 1939-1945.

Armed Forces.

History.

Germany--Armed Forces--History--20th century.

Germany.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 348 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2021.

System Details:

text file

PDF

Summary:

In the final year of the Second World War, as bitter defensive fighting moved to German soil, a wave of intra-ethnic violence engulfed the country. Bastiaan Willems offers the first study into the impact and behaviour of the Wehrmacht on its own territory, focusing on the German units fighting in East Prussia and its capital Königsberg. He shows that the Wehrmacht's retreat into Germany, after three years of brutal fighting on the Eastern Front, contributed significantly to the spike of violence which occurred throughout the country immediately prior to defeat. Soldiers arriving with an ingrained barbarised mindset, developed on the Eastern Front, shaped the immediate environment of the area of operations, and of Nazi Germany as a whole. Willems establishes how the norms of the Wehrmacht as a retreating army impacted behavioural patterns on the home front, arguing that its presence increased the propensity to carry out violence in Germany.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 04 Mar 2021).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781108856270

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.