| Panzer Battles - A Study of the Employment of Armour in the Second World War
(1982)
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| Front Cover |
Book Details |
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| Genre |
Non-Fiction |
| Subject |
Tank warfare; World War, 1939-1945 - Campaigns; World War, 1939-1945 - Personal narratives, German |
| Publication Date |
November 1982 |
| Format |
Softcover (9.3
x
6.3
mm)
|
| Publisher |
University of Oklahoma Press |
| Language |
English |
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| Product Details |
| LoC Classification |
D757 .M372 1956 |
| Dewey |
940.542 |
| ISBN |
9780806118024 |
| Cover Price |
$17.95 |
| No. of Pages |
383 |
| First Edition |
No |
| Rare |
No |
|
| Notes/Review |
Perhaps more like 2.5 stars than 2. Parts of the book are interesting, but far too much of it is simply a recitation of troop dispositions. There are numerous maps that assist in following the text, but I still felt at times it would be better to place tokens on a map. Very dry stuff. I felt the book improved when he went to Russia, or when he used extended quotes from some of his colleagues.
There really aren't any people in the book, other than a handful of admired commanding officers. There are many battalions, divisions, and armies, but no soldiers.
I'm perhaps most interested in the author's moral blind spot. At one point he says the Russian advances into eastern Germany rival only ancient Rome for violence and human deprivation. I'd guess those Russian soldiers might make a much more recent comparison. In the last few weeks of the war, when he was posted on the western front, he is saddened by the collapse of his army but doesn't seem upset by the destruction of his country.
In his final analysis he makes sure to point out that he restricted his work to the purely military, as if to say it is independent of the state for which it does its business. He feels he should hold his head up proudly to have done an honorable job as a German officer. He says that it wasn't until he was in captivity that he learned of what the Nazis had done. He feels nothing would have been served had Hitler died in the July 20 attempt. He also asks the question whether the Germans could have won the war.
It seems to me he's missing the big picture. If it's true he never knew about Nazi atrocities until after the war (as seems to be the case of the vast majority of German personal narratives from WWII), he must certainly understand from what he learned later that rather than asking the question "could we have won?" he should have asked "should we have won?"
Mellenthin, to my eyes, is that most dangerous of patriots: the man who says "my country, right or wrong". Hitler was only able to exterminate Europe's Jews because the honorable German officer class did such magnificent jobs overrunning Europe. Perhaps if Mellenthin and his colleagues had had a little less honor, a little less patriotism, things might have turned out differently. |
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