Perhaps the most famous soldier to fight in World War II was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who achieved immortality as "the Desert Fox." He is also one of the most admired. Rommel's first field command during the war was the 7th Panzer Division, also known as the Ghost Division, which he led in France in 1940. During this campaign, the 7th Panzer suffered more casualties than any other division in the German Army, at the same time inflicting a disproportionate number of casualties upon the enemy. It took 97,486 prisoners, captured 458 tanks and armored vehicles, 277 field guns, 64 anti-tank guns and 4,000 to 5,000 trucks, and destroyed dozens of others in each category. It captured or destroyed hundreds of tons of other military equipment, shot down 52 aircraft, destroyed 15 more on the ground, and captured 12 more. It destroyed the French 1st Armored Division and the 4th North African Division, punched through the Maginot Line extension near Sivry, and checked the largest Allied counteroffensive of the campaign at Arras. When France surrendered, the Ghost Division was within 200 miles of the Spanish border. No doubt about it--Rommel had proven himself a great military leader who was capable of greater things. His next command, in fact, would be the Afrika Korps, where the legend of the Desert Fox was born. Rommel had a great deal of help in France-- much more than his published papers suggest. His staff officers and company, battalion and regimental commanders were an extremely capable collection of military leaders that included 12 future generals (two of them SS), and two colonels who briefly commanded panzer divisions but never reached general rank. They also included Colonel Erichvon Unger, who would no doubt have become a general had he not been killed in action while commanding a motorized rifle brigade on the Eastern Front in 1941, as well as Karl Hanke, a Nazi gauleiter who later succeeded Heinrich Himmler as the last Reichsfuehrer-SS. No historian has ever before recognized the talented cast of characters who supported the Desert Fox in 1940. No one has ever attempted to tell their stories. This book remedies that oversight.

Perhaps the most famous and admired soldier to fight in World War II was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who achieved immortality as the Desert Fox. Rommel's first field command during the war was the 7th Panzer Division-also known as the Ghost Division-which he led in France in 1940. During this campaign, the 7th Panzer suffered more casualties than any other division in the German Army. During the process, it inflicted a disporoportionate amount of casualties upon the enemy. It took 97,486 prisoners, captured 458 tanks and armored vehicles, 277 field guns, 64 anti-tank guns and 4,000 to 5,000 trucks. It captured or destroyed hundreds of tons of other military equipment, shot down 52 aircraft, destroyed 15 more aircraft on the ground, and captured 12 additional planes. It destroyed the French 1st Armored Division and the 4th North African Division, punched through the Maginot Line extension near sSivry, and checked the largest Allied counteroffensive of the campaign at Arras. When France surrendered, the Ghost Division was within 200 miles of the Spanish border. No doubt about it-Rommel had proven himself a great military leader who was capable of greater things. His next command, in fact, would be the Afrika Korps, where the legend of the Desert Fox was born. Rommel had a great deal of help in France-and much more than his published papers suggest. His staff officers and company, battalion and regimental commanders were an extremely capable collection of military leaders, which included 12 future generals (two of them SS), and two colonels who briefly commanded panzer divisions but never reached general rank. They also included Colonel Erich von Unger, who would no doubt have become a general had he not been killed in action while commanding a motorized rifle brigade on the Eastern Front in 1941, as well as Kark Hanke, a Nazi gauleiter who later succeeded Heinrich Himmler as the last Reichsfuehrer-SS. No historian has ever recognized the talented cast of characters who supported the Desert Fox in 1940. No one has ever attempted to tell their stories. This book remedies this deficiency. In the weeks prior to D-Day, Rommel analyzed Allied bombing patterns and concluded that they were trying to make Normandy a strategic island in order to isolate the battlefield. Rommel also noticed that the Allies had mined the entire Channel coast, while the naval approaches to Normandy were clear. Realizing that Normandy would be the likely site of the invasion, he replaced the poorly-equipped 716th Infantry Division with the battle-hardened 352nd Infantry Division on the coastal sector. But his request for additional troops was denied by Hitler. Mitcham offers a remarkable theory of why Allied intelligence failed to learn of this critical troop movement, and why they were not prepared for the heavier resistance they met on Omaha Beach. He uses a number of little-known primary sources which contradict previously published accounts of Rommel, his officers, and the last days of the Third Reich. These sources provide amazing insight into the invasion of Normandy from the German point of view. They include German personnel records, unpublished papers, and the manuscripts of top German officers like general of Panzer Troops Baron Leo Geys von Schweppenburg, the commander of Panzer Group West. This book also contains a thorough examination of the virtually ignored battles of the Luftwaffe in France in 1944.

The last place a German soldier wanted to be in 1944 was the Russian front. That summer, Stalin hurled into battle more than six million men and 9,000 tanks, supported by 16,000 fighters and bombers and more than 12,800 guns and rocket launchers. Despite this massive effort and the resulting decimation of German forces, events on the Eastern Front are largely neglected by historians who focus instead on German defeats in Normandy and the Ardennes. This account details the massive battles on the Eastern Front from the summer of 1944 until the fall of Budapest in early 1945, a period when Hitler lost the majority of his conquered Eastern territories and many of his best remaining divisions. To destroy the Third Reich, the Allies needed to defeat the German Wehrmacht militarily, and the decisive victories of this period occurred on the Russian Front. More German soldiers were lost in White Russia than at Stalingrad; more troops were lost in Rumania in a brief ten days than in the entire Normandy campaign; and German losses in Hungary were greater than the Battle of the Bulge. The most mobile army in the world in 1940, the German Army was the least mobile by 1944, and Hitler's stand fast and fortified place policies imposed a paralysis that neither senior German generals nor the High Command of the Army were able to overcome. Outnumbered 3 to 1 in men, 5 to 1 in tanks, and 20 to 1 in airplanes, the German Army was slaughtered, as casualties mounted and the empire crumbled.

Perhaps the most famous and admired soldier to fight in World War II was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who achieved immortality as the Desert Fox. Rommel's first field command during the war was the 7th Panzer Division—also known as the Ghost Division—which he led in France in 1940. During this campaign, the 7th Panzer suffered more casualties than any other division in the German Army, at the same time inflicting a disproportionate number of casualties upon the enemy. It took 97,486 prisoners, captured 458 tanks and armored vehicles, 277 field guns, 64 anti-tank guns and 4,000 to 5,000 trucks. It captured or destroyed hundreds of tons of other military equipment, shot down 52 aircraft, destroyed 15 more aircraft on the ground, and captured 12 additional planes. It destroyed the French 1st Armored Division and the 4th North African Division, punched through the Maginot Line extension near Sivry, and checked the largest Allied counteroffensive of the campaign at Arras. When France surrendered, the Ghost Division was within 200 miles of the Spanish border. No doubt about it—Rommel had proven himself a great military leader who was capable of greater things. His next command, in fact, would be the Afrika Korps, where the legend of the Desert Fox was born. Rommel had a great deal of help in France—much more than his published papers suggest. His staff officers and company, battalion, and regimental commanders were an extremely capable collection of military leaders that included 12 future generals (two of them SS), and two colonels who briefly commanded panzer divisions but never reached general rank. They also included Colonel Erich von Unger, who would no doubt have become a general had he not been killed in action while commanding a motorized rifle brigade on the Eastern Front in 1941, as well as Karl Hanke, a Nazi gauleiter who later succeeded Heinrich Himmler as the last Reichsfuehrer-SS. No historian has ever recognized the talented cast of characters who supported the Desert Fox in 1940. No one has ever attempted to tell their stories. This book remedies that deficiency.

Hitler's tank divisions were some of his most feared troops and most lethal weapons in the taking and securing of territory during World War II. From success to failure, in victory and in defeat, each division played a role in Hitler's campaign against the Allies. This is the first guide to chronicle the history of each division from its inception to its destruction. With painstaking research and attention to detail, Mitcham describes the formation and organization of each, then discusses its overall combat history. He also includes a career sketch of every panzer divisional commander.

While this reference will serve as a valuable research tool, it contains more than facts and figures. Mitcham assesses the performance and quality of each division, including how and why it changed over time. He evaluates strengths and weaknesses during different phases of the conflict in terms of manpower, vehicles, and armor quality. He also analyzes commander performance and its impact on overall efforts. The story follows the panzer legions until their ultimate disposition-destruction or disbanding. Includes a comprehensive index of individuals, units, battles and campaigns.

The Battle of the Bulge was the "last hurrah" for the German Army on the Western Front. With the help of various unpublished sources, Samuel Mitcham sets out to tell the story of that battle and of the Ardennes Offensive from the German point of view. The greatest military disaster the United States suffered in the European Theater of Operations in World War II occurred in the Ardennes Offensive, when most of the U.S. 106th Infantry Division was destroyed in the Schnee Eifel (Snow Mountains). This defeat was not inflicted by the vaulted panzer troops, the elite paratroopers, the hardened SS men, or Skorzeny's commandos. It was administered by a mediocre and unheralded unit-the 18th Volksgrenadier Division. Mitcham covers the Battle of the Schnee Eifel from the German point of view in greater depth than any book has ever done, using unpublished German after-action reports and manuscripts, especially those of Lieutenant Colonel Dietrich Moll, the chief of operations of the 18th Volksgrenadier. Similar unpublished works, as well as the papers of Theodor-Friedrich von Stauffenberg, contribute to a unique account of the Battle of the Bulge. Readers will find the organizational structure of Panzers in Winter different from that of other works on the topic. Mitcham uses the first two chapters to set the stage for the offensive and details the opening day in Chapter Three. Thereafter, the battle is discussed by sector, from north to center to south. This approach allows general readers to achieve a better feel for the engagement overall. Final chapters cover the clearing of the bulge and the lives and careers of the major participants.

Adolf Hitler attained power in 1933 as the result of a complex set of factors, some of which were complementary and some of which were mutually exclusive. This book describes and analyzes the reasons Hitler became chancellor of Germany, which included the harsh Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I; the Germans' lack of faith in democracy and the reasons behind it; the corruption and political and economic mismanagement which characterized the Weimar Republic; the hyperinflation of the early 1920s, when the cost of a dollar exploded to 4.2 trillion marks and the German currency lost 99.3% of its value; the Great Depression, during which nearly a quarter of the German work force was unemployed; the political and economic instability of the times, in which the Nazis thrived; and the evil genius of Hitler, the master politician. This book transports the reader back to the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s, so he or she can experience what it was like to be there as Hitler and his cronies grasped for power and the foundations of the Weimar Republic crumbled. How did an Austrian tramp named Adolf Hitler become chancellor of Germany, in a position to launch the most infamous reign of terror experienced in the 20th century? Why Hitler? explains the Nazi rise to power in captivating prose and uncompromising detail. Why Hitler^ focuses on the issue of why and how Hitler and his party attained power in Germany, a question asked by all reflective Americans. Author Samuel Mitcham presents new information, dispensing with the hackneyed theory—presented by Hitler in Mein Kampf and repeated by historians as illustrious as William Shirer and Alan Bullock—that the heroic young Fuehrer struggled to survive against poverty and incredible odds, working as a day laborer and living in a flop house, hunger his constant companion. In fact, Hitler's income from his father's pension was higher than that of a junior postal employee, a teacher with less than five years' service, or a court lawyer with one year's salary.

Appointed by Hitler to defend Nazi-held France against an imminent Allied invasion, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel saw how poor German defenses were when he arrived in Normandy in 1943. Rommel's growing awareness of the Allies' battle plans and his organization of the defense forces come into sharp focus in The Desert Fox in Normandy by World War II expert Samuel Mitcham, Jr. Mitcham uses little-known primary sources to tell the story of D-Day from the German perspective. His analysis reveals that Rommel led a brilliant campaign, despite his absence when the Allies landed. His insight and ability resulted in a powerful resistance against the invasion.

This is the definitive book on the organizational and technical aspects of the German ground forces--the infantry, panzer, panzer grenadier, motorized, Waffen-SS, mountain, parachute, Jaeger, light, Luftwaffe field, and flak divisions--that swept across Europe with such ruthless efficiency in 1939 and 1940 and battled Allied forces until the bloody end. It is the most comprehensive and accessible reference work on the German Army during World War II yet published, unmatched in the information it compiles while tracing each German division from inception to destruction.

The Allied landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, marked the beginning of the German defeat in the West. Military historian Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. vividly recaptures the desperation of the Wehrmacht as the thin gray line in Normandy finally snapped, the 5th Panzer and 7th Armies collapsed, and the survivors fled the Allied steamroller in a mad dash back to the Reich. From the reactions of soldiers in the field to military decisions at the highest levels, this is the story of the Reich's unraveling told from a German perspective.

Fighting hedgerow to hedgerow in the pitted Normandy landscape would delay the Allied Advance and make each small victory a costly one. Western forces would achieve their first strategic objective, the port of Cherbourg, but they would find it reduced to rubble, a result of the best-planned demolition in history. Still, the Allies did benefit from an ongoing anti-Hitler conspiracy that relayed false information to Berlin. While German forces would finally bring the Allied juggernaut to a halt on the borders of the Reich itself, this brief success would only delay the inevitable. With colorful descriptions and informative details, Mitcham recounts the German military retreat and the erosion of Germany's stronghold on Europe--as viewed through the eyes of a defiant, but ultimately defeated Wehrmacht.