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Bolstering the Myth of World War II Germans as Victims, August 4, 2006
This review is from: The Other Price of Hitler's War: German Military and Civilian Losses Resulting From World War II (Contributions in Military Studies) (Hardcover)
Martin K. Sorge's "The Other Price of Hitler's War. German Military and Civilian Losses Resulting from World War II" may have been new and insightful when it was published in 1986, but it is no longer so, nor is the book either authoritative or well written. And it is certainly not worth the hefy price.
The book examines losses among the German ground, naval, air and special forces, losses inflicted by partisans, and losses among the civilian population, before providing various summaries of the dead, wounded and missing in World War II. The author then deviates to address, in a disorganized manner, the plight of German prisoners of war, resistence to Hitler, the large-scale rape of German women by Soviet soldiers and the massive expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe.
The problem is that Sorge cites every figure he can find, from every source, both primary and secondary sources, never bothering to analyze these figures and present the reader with any conclusions as to which are accurate and which are not.
Indeed, it is clear that the true intent of this book is to bolster the myth of World War II Germans as victims, while ignoring their complicity in the Holocaust and the massive extermination of Jews, Slavs and others in Russia and Eastern Europe ordered by Hitler and carried out by the Wehrmacht and SS.
Yes, Germans suffered terribly during the war, but it was a war they started. And while the Wehrmacht went from one victory to another, the German people stood solidly behind Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party. Only after they started to suffer, first at the hands of Allied bombers and later at the hands of the Red Army, did the German population begin to question the war. But by then it was too late and they reaped the hate-filled whirlwind their leaders and military had sown.
After the war, Nazi leaders, most notably Hermann Goering at Nurnberg, created the myth of the German people and the Wehrmacht as victims of the war, free from any complicity in its origins or the mass murders. German historians have since debunked this myth, but it took forty years and many Germans have yet to accept their nation's responsibility for the war.
Anyone interested in learning the true cost of Hitler's wars to the Germans should turn to the excellent new ten-volume history published in Germany and recently translated.
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