HITLER'S WAR

This precise, highly detailed academic look at the strategic decisions made by Hitler and his General Staff throughout the latter part of WWII offers little to anyone but the most specialized of military scientists. While flirting with the burgeoning nonfiction trend of “what-if” speculation, Austrian military historian Magenheimer offers substantial background when evaluating both the decisions made and the alternatives rejected at WWII’s key turning points (though the author avoids this phrase as reductive). Among the areas scrutinized: the Battle of Britain, Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, the ever-puzzling declaration of war on the US—puzzling to historians, as a close reading of their alliance shows no Nazi obligation to declare war when Japan did—the disastrous siege of Stalingrad, and the general Axis downturn in 1943, followed by D-Day and eventual defeat. Magenheimer organizes his narrative chronologically, beginning with Germany’s blitzkrieg assaults, moving through the early campaigns to the point at which Germany lost strategic initiative and began to lose hold of “Fortress Europe,” then eventually considering its defeat. While Magenheimer intelligently dissects German decisions and actions, he makes little attempt to place these actions in the broader context of the Nazis” other strategic although nonmilitary goal, genocide. The author’s dense arguments concerning why various campaigns developed as they did will take far more than the sparse maps provided in the book to make any sense to the less-than-omnisciently informed. Such readers will do far better to refer to any of the excellent strategic overviews of the war now in print. An altogether dry and impenetrable, albeit well researched and carefully argued, attempt to make sense of the manner in which the Nazis waged war.