The victorious siege commander of Sevastopol garners a formal, meticulous new study.
Melvin, a British major general (Royal College of Defense Studies, London), emphasizes Erich von Manstein’s (1887–1973) operational skill as well as his problematic ethical decisions while commanding assaults on the Eastern Front during World War II. Born to an aristocratic East Prussian family with a strong military tradition, Manstein was schooled at the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps, trained as an officer in Berlin’s War Academy and wounded during World War I. He amply absorbed the “twin punch of defeat and deprivation” suffered by the Germans after the armistice, believing as many did that the Versailles Treaty was a “shameful Diktat.” Manstein became one of the rising stars in the quietly expanding Reichswehr between the wars, and was swept up into the general euphoria of Hitler’s rise to power, though he did reveal contradictory positions by composing a letter in 1934 protesting the ban on the employment of Jewish officers. A member of Hitler’s General Staff during the years of 1935–38, when Germany undertook breathtaking modernization and plans to build a “storm artillery,” Manstein was posted to command in Silesia, then enlisted in the invasion of Poland. He was key in forming the “triumphant invasion plan in the West,” though he claimed in his considerable late-life memoirs that he was not consulted in planning the ill-fated Operation Barbarossa. Nonetheless, he spearheaded the siege attacks on Sevastopol, Stalingrad and Kursk, to ferocious Russian resistance, and his mounting frustration with Hitler’s leadership prompted him to tender his resignation several times. The “scorched earth” policy he implemented upon retreat and other crimes committed by the Nazi leadership gained him conviction at trials in Nuremberg and later Hamburg; he served eight years but was largely rehabilitated by his memoirs and work in bolstering the Bundeswehr during the Cold War. Too thick for casual readers lacking a strong interest in European history, but Melvin provides a fair, thorough reappraisal that carefully considers Manstein’s military prowess while challenging his moral amnesia.
Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-56312-7
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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