Hitler's Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted

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University of Oklahoma Press, 1991 - History - 272 pages

How close did Germany come to winning World War II?  Did Hitler throw away victory in Europe after his troops had crushed the Soviet field armies defending Moscow by August 1941? R.H.S. Stolfi offers a dramatic new picture of Hitler’s conduct in World War II and a fundamental reinterpretation of the course of the war.

Adolf Hitler generally is thought to have been driven by a blitzkrieg mentality in the years 1939 to 1941. In fact, Stolfi argues, he had no such outlook on the war. From the day Britain and France declared war, Hitler reacted with a profoundly conservative cast of mind and pursued a circumscribed strategy, pushing out siege lines set around Germany by the Allies. Interpreting Hitler as a siege Führer explain his apparent aberrations in connection with Dunkirk, his fixation on the seizure of Leningrad, and his fateful decision in the summer of 1941 to deflect Army Group Center into the Ukraine when both Moscow and victory in World War II were within its reach.

Unaware of Hitler’s siege orientation, the German Army planned blitz campaigns. Through daring operational concepts and bold tactics, the army won victories over several Allied powers in World War II, and these led to the great campaign against the Soviet Union in summer of 1941. Stolfi postulates that in August 1941, German Army Group Center had the strength both to destroy the Red field armies defending the Soviet capital and to advance to Moscow and beyond. The defeat of the Soviet Union would have assured victory in World War II. Nevertheless, Hitler ordered the army group south to secure the resources of the Ukraine against a potential siege. And a virtually assured German victory slipped away.

This radical reinterpretation of Hitler and the capabilities of the German Army leads to a reevaluation of World War II, in which the lesson to be learned is not how the Allies won the war, but how close the Germans came to a quick and decisive victory?long before the United States was drawn into the battle.

 

Contents

Reaction
3
Hitler and the Opening Battles of Three Great Blitz
26
Barbarossa North the Great Opportunity in
41
Hypothesized German positions based on offensive
62
June 1941
65
Army Group Center Destroys the Soviet Field Armies
76
15
82
Red Army forces committed to the defense of
88
Did
153
German and Soviet casualties compared 22 June
154
Could the Germans Support
166
Barbarossa German concentration of forces
170
Taking
181
Soviet casualties 22 June10 October 1941
192
The German Führer Driven by a Siege
201
Barbarossa the Hinge of Fate?
223

Comparing the Fight in France with that in White
107
Reevaluating the German Advance Through White
118
Soviet prisoners and booty BialystokMinsk 22 June
122
The German Capability to Advance on Moscow
139
Soviet collapse at Vyasma and Bryansk losses largely
146
Chart
229
Notes
237
Bibliography
253
Copyright

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About the author (1991)

By R.H.S. Stolfi was Professor of Modern European History at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. With the distinguished German military writer, Frederick William von Mellenthin, he co-authored NATO Under Attack.

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