East Front book talk

[Zovs]

More about herr Schmidt (aka Carrell)

The main task of Schmidt was the chairing of the daily press conferences of the ministry. He must therefore be seen as one of the most important and influential propagandists for National Socialism during World War II. Recent studies confirm that his influence was at least on the same level as that of Otto Dietrich (Reichspressechef of Adolf Hitlers) and of Hans Fritzsche (Pressechef the Reichspropagandaministerium). Schmidt was also responsible for the very well done German propaganda magazine 'Signal', which was published in several languages to tell the German side of the story in neutral and occupied countries during the war.

[Zovs]

And my final thoughts on herr Schmidt

That Schmidt justified the Holocaust through his propaganda  is now seen as certain. In May 1944, he even gave advice on how to justify the deportation and murder of Hungarian  Jews, to counter the potential accusation of mass murder:

His words

"The planned undertaking (against the Jews of Budapest) will create significant attention, and lead to a strong reaction because of its scope. Those who are against us will scream and talk of a hunt on humans, and will try to use terror propaganda to increase feelings against us in neutral states. I would therefore like to suggest whether it would not be possible to prevent these things by creating reasons and events justifying the undertaking, e.g. finding explosives in Jewish association buildings and Synagogues, plans for sabotage attacks, for a coup d’etat, attacks on policemen, smuggling of currency in significant amounts to destroy the fabric of the Hungarian economy. The final piece of this should be a particularly heinous case, which can then be used to justify the dragnet."

So in my opinion Schmidt (or Carrell or Karrell) has written nothing 'supurb' other then Propaganda from the Nazi side.

[Banzan]

German historians valued Paul Karrells books as very poor due glorifing and ignoring most criminal facts.

But this is a major problem with most books from german "war-veteran" authors, even when they are pretty good otherwise.
For example, Guderian was trying to set him on the "right side" by ignoring the Fuehrer Befehl to kill al sowjet commissioners, but let someone else commit it and transfered commissioners to back units, knowing they would kill them. He also stated that no warcrimes ever happend in his area of command wich was also false.

Things like this you find alot when reading books from Guderian, Manstein etc.


As it was said before already, you would also need to read a book from the "counterpart" of an author to find the truth somewhere between them.

[Zovs]

Banzan,

Good points.

[ComradeP]

In some ways, memoirs/war diaries from soldiers can be more informative and less biased than memoirs by (former) generals as most of the generals will try to sweep the ugly parts of their career under the rug.

The books by regular enlisted men or lower ranking officers often contain some influence by propaganda, but there's less need to present the (winning of the) war as a string of successes they participated in, with some defeats by others that may or may not have lost the war depending on their nationality/side.

[goranw]

Hi!
Some recommendations on literature,
D. M Glantz: Most of his books are exellent.Many titles and special studies.
Albert Seaton "The Russo-german War 1941-45"
Tony Le Tissier " Berlin: Then and Now"
Jean-Paul Pallud- "The battle of Bulge"
and "Blietzkrieg in the west" (Then and now)
Danny S. Parker " Battle of the Bulge
Ulf Balke "Der Luftkrieg in Europa - 1939-1945 I+II
Zetterling-Franksson, "Tjerkassy-44"
"The battle of Kursk-the greatest tank battle in history"
"The Korsun pocket-the encirclement and breakout of a German army in the East,1944 "
Zetterling " Hitler against Stalin-The struggle on the eastfront"
Eike Middeldorf "Taktik im Russlandsfeldzug"
Eugen Kreidler " Die Eisenbahnen im zweitem weltkrieg"
Craig Crofoot " The order of battle of the Soviet Armed Forces" ( Many parts)
Some of W. Haupt's books ( very german orientated)

Reference literature as;
Das Deutsche Reich und der zweite Weltkrieg No 4 mit Atlas Beiheft.
Peter Schmitz u Claus-Jürgen Thiess
"Die Truppenkennzeichen der Verbände u Einheiten
der deutschen Wehrmacht und Waffen-Ss und ihre Einsätze"
Georg Tessin "Formationsgeschichte der Wehrmacht"
Mueller-Hildebrand "Das Heer 1933-1945"
Wolf Keilig " Das Deutsche Heer 1938-1945"
Claus-Jürgen Thiess Atlas- Der Ostfeldzug-Heeresgruppe Mitte
D.M. Glantz Atlas and operational summary-the border battles 22-6---1-7 1941
GoranW

[wiking62]

A good soldiers memoir is "In Deadly Combat" by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann. Bidermann served in the 132nd Infanterie Division.
 
"Soldiers of Destruction" by Charles Sydnor is also a good read. Basically the history of the 3rd SS Totenkopf division.

[SGHunt]

Goran - Gulp! - I withdraw my offer of a PBEM [;)] That's some booklist...

Hart - I enjoyed the Bidermann book too.

I was also going to write that I enjoyed 'HELL'S GATE: The Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket January to February 1944' by Douglas Nash, but I'm worried that I'll upset Helpless again![:'(]

Stuart

[colberki]

I have read Glantz - seems very pro Soviet. Its great from a historical point of view that a senior SS person has penned the war in the east from their vantage point as one of the protangists. Else, we will all believe after watching the Battle of the Bulge that Henry Fonda singlehandedly defeated 5th Panzer Army in December 1944 and the Germans were uncompetent. I dont condone the atrocities. 20+ millions of my Chinese brethen died at the hands of the Japanese Army in China, and Japanese bombers dropped their load over my great grand parents in Malaya. I am still very interested in the Japanese viewpoint of the war too.

As an example, is not the works of Churchill and Fuller on the war in west biased?

Anyway, this is a gaming forum, we should stay away from the politics.

[Berkut]

Glantz pro-Soviet?

Uhhh....no. While he is one of the few to tell the story from the Soviet side, he is actually (in many cases) rather hyper-critical of the Red Army and the Soviet Union. He certainly does not pull any punches when it comes to laying blame for the disasters of 1941 and 1942, and there is plenty of blame to go around.

Hell, the more I realize how badly the USSR screwed up the preparation and early parts of the war, the more I am amazed that the Germans were stupid enough to start it.

[Zovs]

Its great from a historical point of view that a senior SS person has penned the war in the east from their vantage point as one of the protangists.

Your completely missing the point. Paul Karl Schmidt (aka Paul Carrell) was a Nazi propagandist, that is not history, but slanted one sided racist socialism. After World War Two all the Nazi German Generals (yes there were thousands of them and don't let them fool you with "I was just a poor German Soldier/Officer doing my duty and carrying out my orders" blind you to the truth of the matter) that surrendered to the West influenced 80% of the West history books with their 'one-sided' German viewpoints. It was not until the likes of Erickson, Ziemke and Glantz came along to open up the Russian archives did we get anything of a more realistic viewpoint from the correct winning side, yes the Russians defeated the Germans in World War Two, plain and simple.

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: dlazov66

Its great from a historical point of view that a senior SS person has penned the war in the east from their vantage point as one of the protangists.

Your completely missing the point. Paul Karl Schmidt (aka Paul Carrell) was a Nazi propagandist, that is not history, but slanted one sided racist socialism. After World War Two all the Nazi German Generals (yes there were thousands of them and don't let them fool you with "I was just a poor German Soldier/Officer doing my duty and carrying out my orders" blind you to the truth of the matter) that surrendered to the West influenced 80% of the West history books with their 'one-sided' German viewpoints. It was not until the likes of Erickson, Ziemke and Glantz came along to open up the Russian archives did we get anything of a more realistic viewpoint from the correct winning side, yes the Russians defeated the Germans in World War Two, plain and simple.

Well, while I agree that there has been a great adjustment in how we look at the WW2 in the east, I think you are over-stating it quite a bit.

The German accounds, by an large, were not nearly as grossly biased as you are making them out to be. In fact, I would say that the Soviet accounts of WW2 prior to some historians getting into source materials and giving more rational Soviet views of the war, were MUCH more biased. That is part of the reason the German viewpoint dominated - the Soviet "history" was pretty universally seen as just utter crap, and it largely was.

The Soviets, IMO, have nobody to blame but themselves at the German/Western domination of scholarship post war - it was the only real alternative. And while there certainly was plenty of bias, it was largely known and understood, and accounted for. The Germans, furthermore, were generally pretty meticulous at record keeping, and since they lost, those records were very available. The Soviets kept their records under lock and key for a very, very long time.

The relatively recent scholarship from the Soviet side (meaning driven by Soviet primary sources, but not Soviet propaganda) has done much to address this, but there is some sense of it being over-done, and there is still plenty of now Russian nationalism creeping into some of the scholarship, with the role of the non-Eastern Fronts, Lend-Lease, etc., etc., being intentionally de-emphasized as either non-decisive, or even completely irrelevant.

I am confident that we will end up with a reasonable balance, once all is said and done though.

[Ron]

My thoughts exactly Berkut, well said.

[Helpless]

The relatively recent scholarship from the Soviet side (meaning driven by Soviet primary sources, but not Soviet propaganda) has done much to address this, but there is some sense of it being over-done, and there is still plenty of now Russian nationalism creeping into some of the scholarship, with the role of the non-Eastern Fronts, Lend-Lease, etc., etc., being intentionally de-emphasized as either non-decisive, or even completely irrelevant.

Any examples of these "plenty of now Russian nationalism creeping into some of the scholarship.. "? I think you are very wrong in your assumptions.

[MikeBrough]

Another good 1-volume overview is Chris Bellamy's Absolute War. He tries to present the Soviet view (partially successful) but the second half of the war is a bit condensed.

A trifle dry but adds a few tidbits I wasn't previously aware of.

[Flaviusx]

Well, the Sovs did hide that fiasco of operation Mars (among other things), until Glantz dug it up. And he is now persona non grata in Russia because of this, btw. So the nationalism is there to some extent and some subjects are still very touchy in post Soviet Russia. (Vlasov appears to be another such touchy subject, according to Glantz.) Not so much in what they say, but in what they don't say and what subjects get ignored.
 
But, really. I cannot believe anybody takes Paul Carrell seriously at this point. There's a huge difference between this kind of dreck and what you read from Russia today, which is basically reliable as far as it goes.

[Helpless]

Not so much in what they say, but in what they don't say and what subjects get ignored.

Again any examples? You read russian?

Believe me, there is no taboos in modern historical society in Russia, but it doesn't make it "cleaner" though. And all these old Soviet "secrets" done dirty job, but they are not a real threat right now. Most "average" people are much more influenced by post-Soviet suvorov-like revisionistic crap...

[Flaviusx]

The forgotten battles. (Mars is by no means the only such one, Glantz claims that as many as 40% of the battles that took place in the Eastern Front have been systematically ignored by the Russians for a variety of reasons.) Look, if you want the details on this, read Glantz. Or scroll all the way up to the top and check out that Youtube link I posted, which is a recorded hour long lecture from him he recently gave, and he touched on this in that lecture.
 
I don't read Russian. He does and I respect his opinion on these matters.

[Helpless]

I don't read Russian. He does and I respect his opinion on these matters.

I respect Glatz as well, but I don't see anything which could lead to the conclusions you made. And I read russian.

[Flaviusx]

Helpless, if you force me to choose between you and Glantz, I'm going to have to go with Glantz on this.
 
Anyways, if you don't want to slog through Colossus Reborn (which goes through this in huge detail, literally hundreds of pages of it), then check this out:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Clz27nghIg