Holocaust versus Wehrmacht: How Hitler's "Final Solution"

Holocaust versus Wehrmacht: How Hitler's "Final Solution" Undermined the German War Effort (Modern War Studies)

In 1941, as Nazi Germany began its disastrous campaign against the Soviet Union, Hitlerâ€™s other campaign, to exterminate European Jewry, was also commencing in earnest. What began with organized executions carried out by the Einzatsgruppen evolved into systematic genocide, reaching its frenzied final moments just as the Wehrmacht was meeting defeat on the military front. These campaignsâ€”and Germanyâ€™s failureâ€”were inextricably linked, Yaron Pasher tells us in Holocaust versus Wehrmacht. Pasher argues, in fact, that the major share of the logistical problems faced by the Wehrmacht during World War II stemmed from Hitlerâ€™s obsession with securing the resourcesâ€”especially from the Reichsbahn railwayâ€”needed to implement the â€œFinal Solution.â€ To a degree never fully recognized or understood, Hitlerâ€™s anti-Semitic ideology was his warâ€™s undoing.

Through four major Wehrmacht military campaignsâ€”Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk in the east and Normandy in the westâ€”Pasher explores this fatal contradiction in Hitlerâ€™s efforts to dominate the European continent. As Operation Typhoon, the sequel to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, got underway in November 1941, organized train transports began carrying Jews to the Eastâ€”with the last trains taking Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz just as the Allies invaded Western Europe and moved inexorably to encircle the Third Reich. In these years, this book shows us, the trains transporting Jews could have carried men, machines, and fuel to depleted and trapped divisions in the Caucasus, and later, to the Western Front. As the Germans moved deeper into Soviet territory, they became increasingly dependent on train transportâ€”which entailed converting Soviet railway line to German specifications; and yet, however successfully this conversion was completed, the trains that might run on these rails were working elsewhere in service of the Final Solution, leaving the Wehrmachtâ€™s overextended armies without the resources to survive, let alone win, their final battles.

In the end, what Hitler called â€œthe Jewish problemâ€ was his downfall. In documenting the distribution of Germanyâ€™s resources and operational capabilities through four major campaigns, Holocaust versus Wehrmacht offers a clear picture of the Nazisâ€™ military objectives as inseparable fromâ€”and finally, fatally susceptible toâ€”Hitlerâ€™s and his henchmenâ€™s other, ideological war to rid Europe of Jews.
Country USA
Brand University Press of Kansas
Manufacturer University Press of Kansas
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2014-12-21
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780700620067

Country	USA
Brand	University Press of Kansas
Manufacturer	University Press of Kansas
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2014-12-21
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780700620067

Holocaust versus Wehrmacht: How Hitler's "Final Solution" Undermined the German War Effort (Modern War Studies)

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