In 1947 German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was tried and
convicted of war crimes committed during World War II. He was held
responsible for his troops having executed nearly 9,000 Italian
citizens--women, children, elderly men--in retaliation for partisan
attacks. His conviction, however, created a real dilemma for the
United States and western Europe. While some sought the harshest
punishments available for anyone who had participated in the war
crimes of the Nazi regime, others believed that the repatriation of
alleged war criminals would help secure the allegiance of a rearmed
West Germany in the dangerous new Cold War against the Soviet
Union.
Kerstin von Lingen's close analysis of the Kesselring case
reveals for the first time how a network of veterans, lawyers, and
German sympathizers in Britain and America achieved the commutation
of Kesselring's death sentence and his eventual
release--reinforcing German popular conceptions that he had been
innocent all along and that the Wehrmacht had fought a "clean war"
in Italy. Synthesizing the work of contemporary German and Italian
historians with her own exhaustive archival research, she shows
that Kesselring bore much greater guilt for civilian deaths than
had been proven in court--and that the war on the southern front
had been far from clean.
Von Lingen weaves together strands of the story as diverse as
Winston Churchill's ability to mobilize support among British
elites, Basil Liddell Hart's need to be recognized as an important
military thinker, and the Cold War fears of the "Senators' Circle"
in the United States. Through this rich narrative, she shows how
international politics shaped the trial's proceedings and
outcome--as well as the memory and meaning of the war for German
citizens--and sheds new light on the complex interplay between the
combatants' efforts to "master the past" and the threatening state
of international relations in the early Cold War.
In analyzing the efforts to clear Kesselring's name, von Lingen
shows that the case was about much more than the fate of one
convicted individual; it also underscored the pressure to wrap up
the war crimes issue--and German guilt--in order to get on with the
business of bringing a rearmed Germany into the Western alliance.
Kesselring's Last Battle sheds new light on the "politics of
memory" by unraveling a twisted thread in postwar history as it
shows how historical truth is sometimes sacrificed on the altar of
expediency.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
