World War II Archives - Page 2 of 2

Cover of Tanks in Detail - Panzer 3

Tanks in Detail – Panzer III
Terry J. Gander
96 pages
published in 2004

Tanks in Detail is one of those overpriced series of military technology books quarely aimed at those of us with war nerd tendencies: short, packed with photos and drawings and going into slightly obsessive detail on a subject normal people at best find boring, at worst somewhat creepy. Reading books on warfare and military history can be justified because war is an important part of our history and it’s important to understand it, but you can’t justify this sort of book that way. This is for people who like their tanks, people like, well, me. As long as I don’t have to pay full whack for this, that is. At 12 pound 99 this isn’t exactly cheap for such a slender book, but fortunately the local remainder bookstore had these for five euros each. At that price, it was worth it.

Tanks in Detail – Panzer III is a reasonable introduction to the main German tank of the first half of World War 2, but which contains little that couldn’t be found on the internet for free. What makes up for it are the photos and drawings, especially the colour side views at the end of the book showcasing the various camouflage schemes used. There are some good pictures and drawings of the interior of the panzer III as well, showing e.g. the instrument panel and the gun mount. For those interested in such things, like model builders, there are however too few of these drawings to be helpful, nor is it clear which scale is used for the drawings and even dimensions aren’t given. It’s all a bit slapdash, to be honest.

Cover of Wehrmacht

Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality
Wolfram Wette
372 pages including index
published in 2002

One of the enduring myths of World War 2 is the idea that the crimes committed by nazi Germany were the work of a relatively small number of villains with the vast majority of the German population either being their victims or just trying to make the best of a bad situation or to do their duty to their country. More specially this myth lives on in the idea that while the Waffen SS was a criminal organisation responsible for uncounted numbers of warcrimes, the Wehrmacht, Germany’s most important military organisation, had relatively clean hands. With tens of millions of German men having served in the Wehrmacht during World War 2 it is no surprise that this myth came into being. Far easier to believe you were the innocent dupe of Hitler than to acknowledge that you may just be a fellow criminal. What’s strange is that this idea is believed not just in Germany, but throughout Western Europe and America. If like me you’re interested in military history, you sooner or later come across military enthusiasts extolling the martial virtues of the Wehrmacht, without much consideration of the context in which they fought.

Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality was written to explode this myth and explain how and why it came into being. Its author, Wolfram Wette, is a German historian who’s made his speciality in researching Germany’s history of militarism. Until 1995 he worked for the official German institute for military history research, where he worked on Germany’s official history of World War 2, which should lend considerable weight to this book. This is no firebrand outsider courting controversy with a perhaps overstated sensationalist thesis (as with Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners), but a distinguished senior historian attempting to put an generally accepted truth before the general public.

Articles with the Tag World War II

Panzer III – Terry J. Gander

Wehrmacht – Wolfram Wette