Customer Reviews

WHY THE GERMANS LOSE AT WAR: The Myth of German Military Superiority

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

All in all this book is a very basic overview of the Second World War, with some history of the general staff thrown into the mix. Ultimately this book does not live up to its' title. If you are moderatly to well read on the Second World War, you will find very little new in this book. In fact, any general history of the Second World War is a recitation of German military blunders, which is basicly all this book is.

If you have read "The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich", "Inside the Third Reich" and throw in "The Arms of Krupp" for some odd insight into the Germans, you have read 85% of this book. Unfortunatly, I read Overy's "Why the Allies Won" prior to this book and that pushes the percentage (for me) to 98%.

Does the book offer anything new or different ? Yes, Kesselering gets deservedly good billing and the fighting in Italy and the Balkans gets more than the usual passing mention. Unfortunately, if you have read "The Forgotten Soldier", "Heaven & Hell", "Campaign in Russia", "Soldiers of Destruction" and "D-Day", you do not need to read this book to know why the Germans lost.

Bottom line: Buy Overy's book "Why the Allies Won" to answer the question "Why [do] the Germans Lose at War [? ]".

The title is *WHY* the Germans Lose at War. I read the book and all I saw was a bunch of high level summaries of battles fought and lost by the Germans. I never saw an analysis of *why* beyond the author slamming the Germans as being arrogant. There is nothing new presented in this book - not even something as simple as taking a different point of view. This book is nothing but German bashing and I am ashamed to have purchased it. If Amazon had allowed me to rate this as zero stars, I would.

The early chapters of Why the Germans Lose at War show a great deal of promise. There is an informative and thorough examination of the metamorphosis from the early Prussian leadership, with its constant infighting between aristocracy and professional soldier, to the modern German General Staff, circa WWI, with its thoroughly inbred bickering between the Kaiser and his circle of confidantes, the remaining professional soldiers of high rank, and the plethora of hangers-on who invariably interfere with and denigrate the effectiveness of any military decision making process. Unfortunately, as the book moves into the Hitlerian era, it loses much of its focus and provides almost no original information.

From 1933 on, the book becomes a stock review of the petty jealosies between OKH, OKW, OKL and OKM. There is nothing here that anyone with a more than passing familiarity with Nazi Germany will find surprising. The lone breath of fresh air is a frank appraisal of the strategic and tactical capabilities of the twin masters, Kesselring and Guderian, and a pointed debunking of the myth of Rommel.

Why the Germans Lose at War provides a limited number of insights into the origins of the psyche and staff level mechanisms that led to the debacles of the World Wars but, in the final analysis, is more than a little disappointing.

This is an odd book. Kenneth Macksey writes military history about WW2, and he often does topical stuff (on Hitler's errors in the war, etc.) and biographies, rather than straight battle or campaign histories. His one account of a campaign is fictional, depicting the invasion of England as it might have happened in 1940. From all of this you would expect a book with a title like "Why the Germans Lose at War" to be unusual. It is, but not in the way you would suspect.

In the first place, the title could have been "Why the Germans Lost World War II." The author is clearly more comfortable dealing with this war than the others cited in the subtitle, which promises to cover Germany's conflicts from Napoleon to Hitler. As a result, the prelude to Hitler takes up about 30 pages of a 200 page book, with the remainder being WW2. The Napoleonic era all the way to the Franco-Prussian war is covered in one short chapter. The focus of the book is almost exclusively WW2.

That being said, there are some interesting insights here. For one thing, Alfred Jodl emerges as a more skilled staff officer, and manipulator of Hitler, than I had previously thought, while Rommel is lambasted for incompetence. There is much discussion of the backbiting and intriguing that went on in the High Command of the German army, right up til the end, and much talk of personalities and ego. The author makes the point that the Germans apparently couldn't conceive of someone being smart enough to break the Enigma code when they themselves couldn't (the British used a version of the Enigma machine themselves during the war, and it was never broken by the Germans), and they were incapable of believing that the Soviets could gather the forces and equipment they did. The word arrogance is used several times.

This is all very well and good, and there's a considerable amount of truth in what the author says, especially about the culpability of the generals and the German populace in what happened in Germany during the war. He rather bluntly states that they were accomplices of Hitler, and can't escape the judgment of history. That being said, the larger question of why the Germans lose at war, or at least lost World War 2, is allowed to remain relatively obscure, though some of the reasons are at least touched on. I would only tentatively recommend this book.

The title of this book is completely misleading. Almost all of it pertains to WWII, so a much more accurate title would have been "Why Germany Lost WWII". The conclusions; arrogance, over confidence and a denigration of ones opponents are universal contributors to all defeats, not just those suffered by Germany. They apply to Napoleon and his army as well as to Germany and its army. Thus, a better title might have been, "Why Wars are Lost". To be sure there were special factors leading to the German defeat in WWII, such as the fact that the German Enigma machine was defeated and their radio messages read. Nazi criminality also led potential allies (such as the Ukrainians) to become implacable enemies. Also, Hitler's interference with the conduct of the war was an important factor leading to Germany's defeat. He was a gambler, whose early gambles paid off, leading him, and most Germans, to believe that he was a military genius. Later his overreaching led to his, and Germany's, downfall. While interesting, these conclusions are not novel or new and form the core of most histories of WWII.

This book is interesting as an overview of WWII from the German perspective. It also contains a useful list of German leaders and organizational charts for the Prussian staff system, the WWII Army High Command and the WWII Supreme High Command. There are, however, many much more comprehensive books on the European aspects of WWII.

I'll agree with everyone else that it's really a book about WWII. One person said it was well written. I have to disagree. I felt like I was reading Star Wars, and Yoda was doing all the talking. Times very many backward writing was he. VERY hard to follow his convoluted writing style. I would sometimes have to read a whole sentence several times to get the essence of what he was trying to say. Well, I think I got the essence of what he was trying to say. If you need to kill some time reading a re-hash of history, and want to be incredibly frustrated while you read it, buy this book (I did see there was one available used for $0.01 - that's almost worth it); Otherwise, pass on it.

The title "Why the Germans Lose at War" is an enticing one. Many texts on the German military focus on their superiority, while very few go after any deep seated internal issues that caused their demise in two world wars. This one, before you read it, gives the feeling that you are about to embark on an edgy, maybe even revisionist journey that many in the historical community may never take. Unfortunately it says little that hasn't been said before and does so very blandly.

Macksey starts off the book with the 1870's after Germany's unification and then progresses up to the end of WWII. It provides a nice, if slightly meandering, overview of Germany's military history. Along the way he points out missteps the Germans took to bring about defeat. This method I believe does not help the writer or the reader. Instead of laying out a thesis or several reasons why the Germans lose, and then doing a rundown on the commonalities of the different periods, he throws the various reasons in with the historical summary. They get lost amongst the facts and figures and it becomes very difficult to compare say, WWI to WWII with the book written in this fashion.

Also it seems that no specific major reason or reasons are given. The best I could glean throughout both World Wars was an overdependence on an under qualified general staff. However, he throws in the usual statements about Hitler's meddling, the lack of complete mobilization and the overrating of some general's talents. While these might be unfamiliar to more novice historians and certainly need to be mentioned, Macksey does nothing to tie them all together, especially with other time periods.

Also, while this might be a nitpick, Macksey uses no footnotes or endnotes, just a bibliography. Maybe it's just me, but I like citations in historical works.

Overall, "Why the Germans Lose at War" would be a ok read for a WWII history novice and perhaps to help a high school student with a report, but it fails to live up to what its title promises.

When picking up Kenneth Macksey's "Why the Germans Lose at War: The Myth of German Military Superiority" one might expect some 'magic bullet', given the title, to explain Germany's defeat in two World Wars. The book offers no simple explanation, rather it details a history of bad decision making by German political/military leadership in the early 20th century. Macksey presents a theme that has been offered many times before- Germany's generals in World War I and II typically thought about winning the next battle or campaign, but rarely had the foresight to think in a truly strategic way. This problem of Germany being unable to marry its political will with its military abilities comes perhaps as close as anything to explaining just why the Germans lost the two wars. This doesn't account for the many other, smaller 'frictions' that led to German defeat in 1918 and 1945 of course. As a general overview of German political/military history during the wars, this slim volume is as good as any. But for a deeper explanation into Germany's wartime failures I would advise the reader to check out Trevor N. Dupuy's "A Genius for War", Walter Gorlitz's "A History of the German General Staff" or John Mosier's more recent "Cross of Iron."

An accurate title for this book would be: "Why the Germans Lost World War One and World War Two" or maybe, "Why the Germans Lost the Wars They Lost." There is little mention of Frederick the Great's feats of arms although technically that was just Prussia and not Germany in the modern sense of that term. Similarly, the success of Moltke in the wars of unification commands a whole two or three pages.

The most valuable part of this book is the charts in front that show the organization of the general staff of the 1800s and OKH and OKW in WWII. There are also some good maps showing the German unification and grand scale movements of WWI and WWII. Also handy is the list of "Principal German Leaders."

First the good news. This book is worth reading because it is entertaining, competently written, and if you like the subject matter will keep you pleasantly occupied for a couple of hours.

Now the bad news. Kenneth Macksey joins a long list of authors writing about international conflict who just don't get it. Wars are not won or lost by military considerations alone - or even primarily. There is actually a simple rule: if you can't describe what you are fighting for in a simple sentence, you will lose the war. Examples: "To defeat Hitler and Nazism", "To establish an independent Vietnam", "To survive, despite what the Arabs want", "To stop the Persian invasion", "To spread Pax Romana" etc. etc. If a German soldier on the Russian front in the summer of 1941 was asked what he was fighting for, the answer would have made it clear that whatever the military situation was at that point, the war was already lost for Germany.

All military campaigns consist of some success and lots of failure. It's the nature of armed conflict which has remained constant throughout history. The mistake this book makes (along with numerous others) is to propose these failures as the primary cause of final defeat. In the case of Nazi Germany, that defeat was inevitable and can be found, as always, in the politics of the conflict.