A thoroughly researched piece

What a great listen

The narrator was engaging and the narrative compelling

Thanks to Ben Shepard and Micheal Page

I’ll be listening to this book many times

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3 people found this helpful

update on how complicit the normal solders

Well worth reading as it shows just how complicit the normal solders were in all the atrocities , not the normal white washed version that has been peddled for years.
This information has been coming out in dribs and drabs the "we were just normal solders doing our duty it was all the ss " myth has been debunked and this book puts it all together.

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9 people found this helpful

Good factual account

Not easy listening due to brutality of the atrocity towards civilians but I learnt a lot about the complex relationship between the Nazis and the Wehrmacht . It highlighted the many reasons that a disciplined and professional European army killed so many civilians .Ultimately Hitler and the Nazi Party were responsible and destroyed Germany . I learnt a lot from this book . Very good !

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1 person found this helpful

Fantastic

Cannot recommend this enough. Very well researched and approached an emotive historical period with nuance and objectivity

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1 person found this helpful

Great History of WW2

Great book with understanding of the German position, it’s successes and failings
A good listen

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1 person found this helpful

The Evil that Men Do

A well narrated account of the moral and cultural collapse of a modern society

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1 person found this helpful

well researched with a balanced viewpoint.

The book covered the German army from the key pre-era
with references and comparisons to the first world war. it also charted the change in the army as the war progressed until it's final destruction in 1945 using a wide range of references including testimonies from German soldiers and officers after the war. it also balanced the capabilities of both allies and German forces and how they change during the war. With respect to the question "was the German soldier innocent of the atrocities committed?" No one was completely innocent but the indoctrination of younger soldiers prepared them for atrocities especially with to lesser race. However, it was stated that Hitler and his officers were overwhelmingly to blame and other contributing factors such as inadequate means of dealing with prisoners, lack of provisions and food to fight played a great part.

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3 people found this helpful

Soldier,soldier

Interesting but a little drawn out in places, with measurements given in metric and imperial

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In Depth and Detailed

When I first started to listen to this I thought it was a tad dry, but very quickly I was utterly drawn in by the sheer breadth and depth of information and astonishing insightful information presented here. It quickly moved from dry to absolutely riveting listening and at the end despite having read and listened to numerous well known books about this period of time I can say that I learned huge amounts that I had never even considered before.

The narrative follows the natural course of the period of time when Germany militarised through to the start of its war on nearly everyone to the tragic horrific end.

The astonishing thing is that the perspective of time gives the reader/listener the understanding that from the moment that Germany failed to beat the UK, it was doomed. And yet not one senior person in the German leadership understood the big picture. Undoubtedly, if the Germans had stopped when they were ahead and introduced some humanity to their actions the look of Europe would have been entirely different today.

A large part of this book rightfully focus' on the German actions in Soviet Russia where the army was broken. The actions of Germany and the huge losses they took during the campaign in the East sucked the life out of the military machine. Most of all it removed what little humanity existed within the German army.

History, especially immediately post WW2 likes to paint the German army as essentially honourable whilst the atrocities were by and large perpetrated by the SS. This book neatly dispels all those misconceptions pretty quickly. Whilst the main army was not as horrific as the Waffen SS it is simply by comparison. The German army perpetrated truly horrific crimes against humanity en masse and the only reason that the myth of their honour existed is that the Allies post WW2 needed to turn attention away from Germany to the equally terrible USSR under Stalin.

The book takes on the monumental task of explaining how the ordinary man in the German army - and to a large extent the people of Germany - became utterly radicalised to the point of genuinely looking at the world through racial glasses. That this book does so in such a way that even a non scholar can understand it, is absolutely incredible.

The latter stages of the book naturally focus on the fragmentation and defeat of the German army when most of their worst crimes were committed. It also makes an excellent effort to explain why they kept fighting which was a combination of fear, hatred, and in the end no other idea what to do.

To anyone interested in this period of time this is one of the best books ever written and in Audible format superbly narrated and conveyed.

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2 people found this helpful

An interesting book

Whilst I would not put it in the same class as Antony Beevor Berlin/Stalingraf it is still an interesting account of the German soldier's on all fronts in World War 2. Also gives a look into any involvement by the army's involvement in War Crimes etc. It is well read by the narrator (although some pronunciations or a little odd) and is well worth a listen

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