The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945

by Nicholas Stargardt

Overview

A groundbreaking history of what drove the Germans to fight — and keep fighting — for a lost cause in World War II


In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of firsthand testimony — personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence — to explore how the German people experienced the Second World War.


When war broke out in September 1939, it was deeply unpopular in Germany. Yet without the active participation and commitment of the German people, it could not have continued for almost six years. What, then, was the war the Germans thought they were fighting? How did the changing course of the conflict — the victories of the Blitzkrieg, the first defeats in the east, the bombing of German cities — alter their views and expectations? And when did Germans first realize they were fighting a genocidal war?


Told from the perspective of those who lived through it — soldiers, schoolteachers, and housewives; Nazis, Christians, and Jews — this masterful historical narrative sheds fresh and disturbing light on the beliefs and fears of a people who embarked on and fought to the end a brutal war of conquest and genocide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465094899
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/09/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	768
Sales rank:	139,857
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 2.10(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Stargardt is one of Britain's foremost scholars of Nazi Germany. He is a professor of modern European history at Magdalen College, Oxford, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. The author of Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis, Stargardt lives in Oxford, England.

Table of Contents

Maps vii

List of Illustrations xix

Preface xxiii

Dramatis Personae xxvii

Introduction 1

Part 1 Defending the Attack

1 Unwelcome War 23

2 Closing Ranks 52

3 Extreme Measures 70

Part 2 Masters of Europe

4 Breaking Out 91

5 Winners and Losers 124

Part 3 The Shadow of 1812

6 German Crusade 157

7 The First Defeat 200

Part 4 Stalemate

8 The Shared Secret 233

9 Scouring Europe 268

10 Writing Co the Dead 304

Part 5 The War Comes Home

11 Bombing and Retaliation 345

12 'Holding Out 382

13 Borrowed Time 419

Part 6 Total Defeat

14 Digging in 449

15 Collapse 482

16 Finale 521

Epilogue: Crossing the Abyss 545

Notes 571

Bibliography 639

Index 683

First photo section appears after 230

Second photo section appears after 342

Third photo section appears after 446

Editorial Reviews

One of the New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of 2015
Winner of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize

"[A] gripping new book.... To write like this requires a rare sensitivity and psychological sophistication coupled with a degree of fearlessness.... Stargardt impresses not only as a cultural historian. He also has an impressively strong grasp on the military narrative of the war. And this is indispensable.... Stargardt has given us a truly profound piece of history."—Adam Tooze, New York Times Book Review

"Nicholas Stargardt's...gracefully written The German War offers by far the most comprehensive and readable guide to these issues...This is splendid scholarship.... Anyone interested in National Socialist Germany, World War II and the many murderous regimes that still disfigure the earth should relish The German War."—Wall Street Journal

"A dramatic look at the lives of ordinary German men and women during World War II."—Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review

"[Stargardt's] method of using letters and diaries of ordinary Germans yields unexpected insights, both into the Germans' humanity and their turn to barbarism."—Economist

"This vivid history of everyday life captures the complex feelings of ordinary Germans under the Nazi regime.... A superb study."—Guardian

"[Stargardt] draws on diaries, letters, and contemporary documents to paint a huge social canvas of Germans at war, soldiers and civilians, men and women of all ages...[he] tells his bleak story fluently and well, and illustrates it with a host of telling and often unfamiliar anecdotes."—New York Review of Books

"Enthralling.... Stargardt puts together a complex portrait of a nation gripped by patriotism and resentment, thrilled by early military victories, and proud of the fighting skills of the Wehrmacht."—Foreign Affairs

In his new and excellent book, The German War, Oxford University historian Nicholas Stargardt exhumes the letters and diaries of German soldiers and others. He details how a cultured nation went insane, how ordinary soldiers became mass killers, and how the churches of Germany looked the other way as the innocent were murdered."—Washington Post

"Superbly researched and clearly written, The German War is an important and significant book."—Spectator, (UK)

"[A] massive but thorough meditation.... A well-researched, unsettling social history of war that will prove deeply thought-provoking—even worrying—for readers who wonder what they might have done under the same circumstances."—Kirkus Reviews

"The German War brilliantly and with impressive nuance and texture deals with the astounding questions of how the most educated and cultured nation on earth could unloose such a murderous, barbarous and genocidal war.... Stargardt smoothly and vividly weaves together the stories of more than a score of individual Germans from all walks of life and the unfolding events of the war."—Steve Forbes, Forbes.com

From the Publisher

…gripping…The German War takes us into the lives of men and women from all walks of life, as they fought, survived and suffered…Stargardt…puts flesh on the bones of familiar stereotypes—the "ordinary men" who found themselves knee deep in the killing fields of Poland and Ukraine, nationalist Protestants struggling to adjust their faith to the "new times," stalwart Catholics refusing to reconcile themselves to Hitler's godless regime. But this is no static inventory of social and political types. What makes this book so dramatic is that it shows us political and personal identities in motion…Stargardt impresses not only as a cultural historian. He also has an impressively strong grasp on the military narrative of the war…The fact that one puts down this book wanting more testifies to the lightness with which it bears its enormous weight. In revealing to us how Germans struggled to comprehend the chasm that their violence had opened up and how they understood their own perilous transition across it, Stargardt has given us a truly profound piece of history.

The New York Times Book Review - Adam Tooze

★ 08/24/2015
How a people takes to defeat has been a staple of historical inquiry since ancient times, and in this gut-wrenching work, Cambridge University historian Stargardt (Witnesses of War) examines the German experience during WWII. His extraordinarily deep and wide research allows him to fill in an otherwise solid history of the war with intimate, newly unearthed recollections of harrowing service on the battlefield and homefront. Such is the complexity of human nature that, after millions of deaths, massive destruction, and unbelievable “psychological shock waves,” Germans maintained their fierce nationalism and took pride in their ability to endure individually and collectively. What will be difficult for many readers to believe is that the people of the country responsible for the Holocaust long considered themselves the victims—of failed Nazi leadership, the Allies (whom they saw as Jews in another guise), and the Soviets. Seeing the bombing of their cities as equivalent to the death camps, and sustaining unbelievable losses on the battlefield, many Germans preferred outright destruction to a negotiated peace as in 1918. Only the next, postwar generation of Germans could get beyond disbelief and disillusionment and begin to free itself of ruinous attachments and convictions. Stargardt has produced a brilliant, sobering work. Maps & illus. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Associates. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

09/15/2015
What was World War II like for the Germans? Devoted complicity with the Nazi regime is typically assumed, and attempts to humanize everyday German citizens and soldiers are controversial even 70 years after the end of the war. Without that perspective, however, an understanding of the conflict is incomplete. In his latest work, Stargardt (Witnesses of War) continues his exploration of German lives during that grim time. While this account is important, it doesn't always make for easy reading as we are confronted with stories from men and women suffering the effects of war on their daily lives. These anecdotes are culled from letters, diaries, and archives, among other sources. From our postwar viewpoint, their experiences may come across as tragic and even ironic, since readers know what they don't—when and how the war ended. VERDICT Stargardt provides a vital and necessary addition to the World War II canon that will appeal to World War II buffs and anyone with an interest in 20th-century German history.—Brett Rohlwing, Milwaukee P.L.

Library Journal

2015-06-15
The story of World War II seen through the eyes of regular German citizens. In this massive but thorough meditation, Stargardt (European History/Magdalen Coll., Cambridge; Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis, 2005, etc.) carefully avoids fixing blame on how the war affected both the attitudes and daily lives of German citizens. Instead, the author takes a studiously clinical approach to provide a contemporary perspective on how an entire nation rose up to follow Hitler into a war of conquest and genocide. In addition to providing greatly needed context to the central problem, Stargardt also examines the long-suppressed notion that the average German citizen was under the impression that Germany was fighting "a war of national defense, forced upon them by Allied machinations and Polish aggression." Yet the author never denies that a significant majority of the population was well-aware of the atrocities being committed in their name. "Where other historians have highlighted the machinery of mass murder, and discussed why or how the Holocaust happened, I find myself more concerned with how German society received and assimilated this knowledge as accomplished fact," he writes. "How did it affect Germans to gradually realize they were fighting a genocidal war?" Stargardt covers this historic arc in deliberative detail, but he also knows when to dive down from the macro level to focus closely on soldiers, civilians, commanders, and victims. The author has clearly drawn on a wealth of letters and documents written at the time, and when he punches a specific line or memory at the right time, it's chilling. Near the end of the story, he finds eerie prescience in defeat from the late journalist Ursula von Kardorff: "And when the others [Allies] come with their boundless hatred and gruesome accusations, we will have to keep quiet because they are true." A well-researched, unsettling social history of war that will prove deeply thought-provoking—even worrying—for readers who wonder what they might have done under the same circumstances.

Kirkus Reviews