http://blog.unijimpe.net/rss https://www.bubok.es/ Puedes comprar en nuestra librería todos los libros publicados en Bubok. es info@bubok.com (Bubok Publishing) info@bubok.com (Bubok Publishing) https://www.bubok.es/libros/237754/messerschmitt-me-262-schwalbeLusfwaffe Archives Messerschmii Me 262 Schwalbehttps://www.bubok.es/libros/237709/bismarck-and-the-development-of-germany-the-period-of-consolidation-1871-1880 IN JUNE 16, 1871, the German Kaiser, preceded by Bismarck, Roon, and Moltke, entered the city of Berlin on horseback in triumph at the head of forty thousand troops newly returned from France. George Bancroft, the American minister, described the scene. "The via triumphalis was about three miles long, through streets as wide and in some places thrice as wide as Broadway." Cannon captured from the French were parked in close order on both sides of the route, which was also lined by "flag-staffs garlanded and festooned with oak-leaves and evergreens." At intervals stood three huge statues made of linen covered with gypsum and stuffed with straw: at the start a "gigantic image, representing the city of Berlin"; at midpoint "a colossal victory, having on her right hand and left statues of Strassburg and Metz"; at the end "a Germania receiving back into her arms Alsace and Lorraine." More than one million people crowded the sidewalks under a brilliant sun and, when night came, every house and building in Berlin was illuminated. At the opera a glittering company of royalty, nobility, and generals viewed two pageants specially composed for the occasion. "The first represented Justice as having done its work in the late war, and now introducing Peace attended by all the Seasons and all the Arts. The second showed Barbarossa spellbound in his cave, dreaming on till the empire should be restored, and seeing in his visions what the spectators saw in tableaux vivants, the epoch-making incidents of German history, from the crusades and early humble fortunes of the younger branch of the Hohenzollems, to the moment when its chief was upborne at Versailles as emperor by the arms of the princes of Germany." Germany, Bancroft concluded, enjoyed a "feeling of security such as it never had before." https://www.bubok.es/libros/237676/2nd-panzer-division-1935-1945This unit was originally formed on October 15th, 1935. In 1938, it moved to Austria after the annexation of that Country, taking on a large number of Austrians into its ranks. The Division then was used in the Polish Campaign in 1939, suffering heavy losses against the Poles. After Poland, the Division saw action in the West as a part of 12.Armee/Gen.Kdo. XIX.Armeekorps, starting in the Eifel area. In May, the 2.Panzer-Division took Abbeville along the English Coast which helped seal the ring around the Allied forces in the Dunkirk Pocket. After the Campaign in the West, the 2.Panzer-Division spent time on occupation duty in Poland. During the months in Poland, the 2nd was reorganized and it provided units to other forming divisions, as well as taking on new units itself. It was then moved to Rumania in April, 1941 for action in the Campaign in the Balkans. In the Balkans, the 2nd helped take Athens in Greece, along with the 6.Gebirgs-Division. After the Campaign in the Balkans ended the wheeled units of the 2.Panzer-Division moved to Yugoslavia via Albania and were entrained in Croatia for Germany. The tracked elements of the division were loaded for sea transport in the Greek port of Patras to Tarent in the south of Italy. On May 21st, 1941 the German transport ships Marburg and Kybfels carrying the tracked elements of the division were sunk by a recently laid British mine barrage. A considerable number of armored vehicles were thus lost causing any deployement of the division to be seriously delayed. The 2.Panzer-Division was in Germany when the Invasion of the Soviet Union began and in July of 1941 was transfered to Poland. In August, 1941 it was transfered to the south of France, and in September it was finally entrained for Russia, arriving at the front in October 1941. https://www.bubok.es/libros/237649/9th-panzer-division-1940-1945BLITZKRIEG" or lightning war is not a German term for just any kind of quickly waged and violent war. It is a name for a special kind of quickly waged and violent war which has a technique of its own. The ideas which lie back of this technique began taking shape in Germany in the period after the failure of either the Allies or the Germans to break through on the Western Front during 1915 and 1916, and they matured after the outbreak of the civil war in Spain. While some of the guiding conceptions of the Blitzkrieg were tried out in Ethiopia, the results were not considered conclusive. The Ethiopians were a semi-savage people, and they lacked the modern armament and equipment necessary to offer the Italian invaders the kind of resistance essential if Blitzkrieg were to receive a real and complete battlefield test. But Spain furnished a fine proving ground. Then Albania was a dress rehearsal. And in Poland the system was put to the final proof. The technique of Blitzkrieg is based on the principle of surprise as opposed to an effort to crush an enemy by bringing an overwhelming superiority in numbers and armament to bear against him. It can be likened to the swift and deadly thrust of a rapier as opposed to the crushing blow of a battle-axe or a war club. The objective is not the enemy civilian population but the enemy armed forces, both ground and air. From the days of earliest military history, surprise has played a prominent part in winning victory. When coupled with better tactics -- that is, superior methods of combat on the battlefield -- surprise has always given victory against an enemy that relies on superior numbers and courage. The Christians talked of "Mongol hordes" in an effort to explain their own quick and bloody defeats at Mongol hands. There were no military Mongol hordes in superior numbers. Probably the Christians outnumbered the Mongols in all the battles fought. But the Mongols used their ability to make long, hard marches on their tough Asiatic horses to take by surprise the slow-moving, ponderous masses of knights, men-at-arms and foot soldiers composing the Christian armies. In battle the Mongols had a definite tactical scheme. First their mounted archers, keeping out of reach of the Christians, shot holes in their ranks. When in consequence a certain amount of confusion had been created, then -- and only then -- did they charge. The Christians had no tactics in the proper sense of the word. They simply moved forward en masse, trusting to courage and numbers. https://www.bubok.es/libros/237622/7th-panzer-division-the-ghost-division The Division was organized and equipped into a tank-light, infantry-heavy unit. The 6th and 7th Kavallerie Schiitzen Regiments each consisted of two battalions of motorized infantry. Other divisional units included a reconnaissance regiment, an artillery regiment, an antitank battalion, a pioneer or combat engineer battalion, a signals battalion and other service and support units. Divisional armoured strength was provided by a single Panzer unit, the 33rd Panzer Battalion. This included one motorized signals platoon, one staff platoon, three light panzer companies, one motorized reserve platoon, one motorized maintenance platoon, and one light supply column. At the outbreak of war, the Panzer Abteilung had 62 tanks available, mostly Pz.Kpfw Is and IIs, with a few Pz.Kpfw IIIs and IVs becoming operational. The support units included more supply, maintenance and fuel columns, a divisional administration unit, a field bakery, a butcher detachment, various medical and veterinary units, a military police troop and a field post office. After the successful completion of the invasion of Poland, Hitler allowed Erwin Rommel to choose whatever unit he would like to command. Although Rommel had no practical experience in tank warfare, he asked for a Panzer division and on 15 February 1940 he received command of the 7th Panzer Division. In preparation for the invasion of the low countries, the 7th Panzer Division became part of the 15th Panzer Corps under the command of General Hoth. https://www.bubok.es/libros/237596/erwin-rommel-battles-and-campaigns-1940-1944His chances of survival were enhanced when his Regiment was sent to the Vosges, a move that saved him from the artillery maelstrom engulfing Verdun and the Somme in 1916 (where an individual infantryman's skill was of little account). It was further to his advantage when he was transferred to the Württemberg Mountain Regiment in October 1915, and given an intensive course in mountain warfare. This was to pave the way to his career as an outstanding combat leader, for in such a specialist assault force, his flair for mobility and initiative would be developed to the full. With them, he took post in the Vosges mountains and engaged in raids, mostly by night, on the French occupying this 'quiet' sector of the Western Front. Under ideal conditions, methodically and in his own time, he was here able to develop techniques of stealth and guile with the maximum resort to intensive fire support an ideal preparation for the wars of movement to come. Towards the end of November 1916, a few weeks after his unit had been transferred to the Rumanian Front, he took a short leave to marry "Lu", as he called her in his daily letters. Their five years' courtship had developed into a love-match of the most enduring quality, but, despite this, one is left with the feeling, after reading the published sources, that she was to take second place to the Army and his career. Patriotism urged him on, but the evidence of his pen and the comments of his closest colleagues portray an individualist absorbed in his profession to the exclusion of practically everything else. War was almost the sole subject of his reading; he cared not for the other arts and, in the company of his social equals, would often lapse into a deep silence, seemingly lost for conversation. Conviviality and relaxation he found much easier among the rank and file, with whom he would mix and jest in the rough Swabian dialect. Indeed, it was his sympathy for the men, rather than for his brother officers (with a few exceptions), that set him apart. The number of words he expends on descriptions of the suffering of the wounded and the praise he gives to noncommissioned ranks, to the virtual exclusion of his junior officers, indicate a clear bias. Of those officers, he demanded nothing more than he asked of himself: and, while many another newly-married man might have taken fewer risks, Rommel, in the words of one friend, "was just the same, just as tough, just as regardless of danger, just as preoccupied with winning the war in his particular sector". The italics are mine, since that phrase does seem to underline Rommel's self-centred approach to war-making, his preoccupation with events on his own front regardless of the overall demands of those set above him or positioned to a flank. True, as his closest comrade, Hermann Aldinger, was to say, "If Rommel was on your flank you knew you had nothing to worry about ..." and, less convincingly, "In those days he believed that every order must be carried out exactly ...". But already, in fact, he was fostering within himself a habit of insubordination which, in certain circumstances, would generate mistrust. https://www.bubok.es/libros/237558/1st-ss-leibstandarte-adolf-hitler-1933-1945 The German army had a number of special forces, most of which are best described by the French term hors de ligne, that is "outside of the regular army." Foreign troops have always fallen into this category in every army and the Germans certainly ended up with a tremendous force of foreign soldiers fighting in their uniforms. However, the Germans had three other non-traditional forces in their army. The first, the Waffen SS, sprang from Hitler's personal bodyguard and much like many other Guard forces in the world's long military history, developed into a completely independent army all unto itself. Though not intentionally, it most assuredly falls into a category quite similar to that held by Napoleon's Imperial Guard, whose roots also are found in a dictator's personal bodyguard. Unlike the Imperial Guard, which was Napoleon's favored children, the SS belonged not to Adolf Hitler, but to Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer der SS. It was not only a field force, but a tool in the internal political struggle between Hitler's cronies. The SS also, like Napoleon's Imperial Guard, contained large numbers of foreign troops. In contrast to Napoleon's Imperial Guard, however, the SS went on a massive recruiting effort among foreign nationals in an effort to make it as large as possible. And, also unlike Napoleon's Imperial Guard, the German portions of the SS were subjected to an ideological mania for racial purity that was frequently swept aside when it was convenient. Large portions of the SS contained non-Germanic troops. Much of the SS fought with a steadfastness that was found in Napoleon's Old Guard, while some parts formed with foreign nationals had very poor reputations that included mass desertions, mutiny, and atrocity. The second portion of forces hors de ligne in the German army was the Luftwaffe ground troops. The German division of operations between the army, navy, and air force was contorted by personalities and the political power base on which the Reich was formed. Hermann Goring claimed and was given anything that had any involvement with flying. As a result, the German paratroopers or fallschirmjägers, were part of the Luftwaffe. Operationally they were handled by the Army, but they were Goring's toys to play with as he wished. Like the SS, however, they also developed a ferocious reputation as fanatical fighters and were greatly feared and respected by their enemies. https://www.bubok.es/libros/237555/bismarck-and-the-development-of-germany-the-period-of-unification-1815-1871Preface THE career of a historical personality, observed Wilhelm Dilthey, is marked by reciprocating influences. In his early years such an individual is molded by forces the course of whose development he himself later helps to determine. Because of this interaction the biographer of Schleier-macher was compelled to broaden his subject to include the intellectual history of a whole epoch. What was true of Schleiermacher, the theologian, is also true of Bismarck, the statesman. The customary biographical form cannot capture the significance of a political figure of his stature. As important as the man himself were the many forces�social, political, intellectual, and institutional�which shaped his environment and with which he dealt. This work is concerned with the interaction between these forces and the will of a political genius. It is a study of the effect of one man of extraordinary talent upon the historical process. Hence the more personal and anecdotal aspects of Bismarck's life are included only where they indicate attitudes or affected policy and events. The purpose is to expose the elements of thought and outlook which determined his political aims, the techniques of strategy by which he strove for their achievement, and the ultimate consequences of both for German political development. Usually the period of German unification has been studied from the standpoint of foreign affairs. Such an orientation gives to the year 1871 the appearance of an end rather than a beginning. This book seeks to relate the story of diplomatic maneuver, war, and victory to the greater problem of Germany's internal political growth. The concentration is upon the internal consequences of both domestic and foreign policy and events. Seen from this viewpoint, the period of unification was one of revolution and reconstruction which established the character of German political attitudes and institutions until recent times. The subsequent period of consolidation, including the domestic history of the North German Confederation, has been reserved for a sequel volume. During the years of research consumed by this project I incurred personal debts of many kinds. By far the greatest is that howed to Hajo Holborn of Yale University. It was he who more than a decade ago first pointed out to me the need for a fresh approach to the Bismarck problem. Without his advice, support, and encouragement along the way this volume would never have been completed. I am also deeply grateful to Herbert Kaplan and Theodore Hamerow, who read the entire manuscript and were responsible for many improvements; to Walter Steiner, my research assistant, for his patient help on many boring tasks; to Lawrence Steefel for graciously permitting me to profit from the manuscript of his work on the war of 1870; to Frank Rodgers and the library staff of the University of Illinois for much technical assistance; and to my wife, Hertha Haberlander Pflanze, whose keen literary sense pruned away many stylistic errors. In 1951-1952 I was aided by a research grant from the American Council of Learned Societies and during 1955-1957 by a United States government grant under the Fulbright act for research in Germany. The Universities of Massachusetts and Illinois also provided financial assistance. To the history department of the University of Minnesota I am particularly indebted for the recognition accorded the manuscript. Otto Pflanze Minneapolis March 1, 1962 https://www.bubok.es/libros/237551/the-german-war-machine-volumen-iiiEl Suicidio Europeo Estoy seguro de que existe cierta escondida presión detrás de todos los problemas de Europa, Asia y América. Mariscal Smuts (citado por J. Creagh-Scott en Hidden Government, pág. 9). Desde finales de 1938 el Kremlin inicia un cambio en su política exterior, hasta entonces incondicionalmente hostil a la Alemania nacionalsocialista. En enero de 1939 el cambio apar cerá aún más evidente. El embajador soviético en Berlín, Merekaloff - un ruso que ha sustituido muy oportunamente al judío Suritz - propone a Von Ribbentrop la apertura de relaciones comerciales, pero éste se niega en redondo a discutir, siquiera, el asunto. Seeds, el embajador británico en Moscú, propone a MolotofF la conclusión de un pacto anglosoviético de ayuda mutua. En el Kremlin acogen esta propuesta con frialdad; no entra en sus cálculos «sacarles las castañas del fuego a los capitalistas occidentales, molestos por la competencia comercial alemana» según declara, sin eufemismos, Stalin. En cambio, "la Unión Soviética no considera las diferencias ideológicas con Alemania como un obstáculo insalvable para una mejor cooperación política entre ambos países", según manifiesta Merekaloff en Berlín. Durante seis largos meses, las insinuaciones de Moscú a Berlín se multiplicarán. En un discurso pronunciado el 10 de marzo ante el Comité Central del Partido, Stalin lanza sus filípicas de rigor contra los capitalistas de Occidente pero, por primera vez en seis años, se abstiene de atacar al nacionalsocialismo y al fascismo. Pero en Berlín no se dan por aludidos. Antes al contrario, en un violento discurso antibolchevique, Hitler manifiesta que el comunismo no es más que un grosero disfraz del judaismo, enumerando diversos altos personajes soviéticos pertenecientes a la raza judía. Después del discurso de Hitler (28 de abril de 1939 una serie de sorprendentes cambios tienen lugar en las altas esferas gubernamentales soviéticas. Stalin y su ministro del Interior, Beria, un criptojudío al que se tiene en Europa por georgiano, colocan a todos los trotskystas el sambenito de cosmopolitas y lo traducen, sotto voce, por sionistas. Litvinoff, el polifacético hebreo, es sustituido por un ruso de pura raza -y hasta de sangre azul- como Molotoff. Se le da, al "presidente" Vorochiloff una inusitada beligerancia y se recalca cuidadosamente su origen eslavo. Sven Hedin dice que «la Rusia soviética mostró una nueva faz a la Alemania hitleriana; una faz de trazos fríos, estoicos, eslavos o asiáticos, pero sin un sólo rasgo semítico. El mayor error cometido por los líderes del nacionalsocialismo fue creer que ese cambio era auténtico» https://www.bubok.es/libros/237549/the-german-war-machine-volumen-ii "La mayoría de los ingleses no se dan cuenta de que, habiendo hecho su trabajo para el círculo gobernante judío, deben ahora desaparecer como poder mundial". General Luddendorff: The Coming War. El Pacto de Munich era, en cierto modo, la prolongación del Tratado de Locarno, y tenía por principio fundamental el revisionismo y por método la colaboración organizada y permanente de las cuatro grandes potencias europeas: Gran Bretaña, Francia, Italia y Alemania. Deliberadamente, se dejaba al margen de los asuntos europeos a la U.R.S.S. y se sustraían las decisiones y los movimientos de las grandes potencias responsables a las peligrosas presiones de los pequeños intereses irresponsables. Munich consagraba, de hecho, la división del mundo en zonas de influencia, con su centro geopolítico en Europa. Reconocía, también, la legitimidad de la expansión alemana hacia el Este y el Sudeste de Europa; expansión marcada por la Naturaleza: el Danubio corre en dirección Oeste-Este. El III Reich emprendía el camino tomado cinco siglos atrás por los caballeros teutónicos de la Orden Hanseática; dos siglos atrás por los Habsburgos austríacos y treinta años antes por el kaiser Guillermo U. Ya en Locarno, el canciller Stressemann, que había aceptado como definitivas las fronteras Occidentales del Reich, rehusaba hacer lo mismo con las Orientales. En "Mein Kampf, Hitler hablaba de detener, definitivamente, la marcha de los germanos hacia Occidente, para dirigirse hacia el Oriente, hacia la Rusia soviética y los pueblos colocados bajo su dependencia. Alemania buscaría su espacio vital en el Este, engrandeciendo a Europa, y liquidando la amenaza bolchevique. Este era el espíritu de Munich, que sólo beneficios podía reportar a los pueblos europeos, incluyendo a Inglaterra y a la propia Rusia, que sería liberada de la tiranía soviética y volvería a formar parte del concierto de los países libres. Los acuerdos de Munich, fueron, pues, algo infinitamente más importante que la solución del problema de las minorías nacionales en Checoslovaquia. Significaba la ruptura de los Cuatro Grandes del Continente con la URSS y por consiguiente, la desaprobación del pacto francosoviético. Europa, para los europeos, y el bolchevismo en cuarentena. Ilya Ehrenbourg acusó, en un violento editorial de la Pravda, a «ciertos miembros del Gabinete inglés, incluyendo a su presidente, Chamberlain de haber dado carta blanca a Alemania para que atacara a la U.RS.S. https://www.bubok.es/libros/237548/the-german-war-machine-volumen-iCuando el 11 de noviembre de 1918 se firmó el Armisticio en Compiégne fue con la condición explícitamente aceptada por los países Aliados de que, en el subsiguiente tratado de paz se aplicarían los catorce puntos de Wilson, solemnemente proclamados como finalidad de guerra de los Estados de la Entente. Las circunstancias bajo las cuales el Armisticio fue firmado deben ser tenidas muy en cuenta. El Alto Mando alemán no solicitó el Armisticio por que sus ejércitos hubieran sido derrotados. En el transcurso de los cuatro años que duró la guerra, las tropas alemanas y austrohúngaras lucharon siempre en territorio extranjero; en Bélgica, Francia, Italia, Serbia, Rumania, Grecia. Rusia... Los Ejércitos Centrales nunca fueron vencidos en el campo de batalla, ni siquiera en Verdún, donde la heroica resistencia de los franceses hizo fracasar la ofensiva de Von Falkenhayn, pero sin que en el contraataque que siguió pudieran los galos obtener ventaja alguna. El Gobierno alemán solicitó el Armisticio por que los grupos "espartakistas" y comunistas de Rosa Luxembourg y Liebknecht estaban convirtiendo la retaguardia alemana en un campo de batalla y amenazaban con desatar una revolución generalizada del mismo tipo que la sobrevenida en Rusia un año atrás. Por otra parte, la entrada en guerra de los Estados Unidos convertía en problemática una rápida victoria germánica, y una victoria rápida era imprescindible si se quería evitar que la amenaza bolchevique interior degenerara en un cáncer imposible de controlar. Berlín pidió el Armisticio sobre la base del programa de Wilson, esto es, de una «paz sin vencedores ni vencidos», para poder dedicar todo el peso de su esfuerzo contra el bolchevismo interior y el que se insinuaba, amenazador, en las fronteras orientales del Reich. https://www.bubok.es/libros/237547/history-of-the-german-general-staff-1657-1945To two generations of Americans the German General Staff has stood as an object of hatred, fear and revulsion. In the two greatest of our wars Germany was our principal opponent; twice in a lifetime we have seen our normal world, if not our national existence itself, imperilled by her formidable and ruthless armies. Through the whole thirty years from 1914 to 1945 we were to live more or less under the shadow of the grimly expert, professional militarism by which those armies were led �a tradition nurtured, and in the world's eyes personified, by the German Great General Staff. This remarkable organization seemed so much a thing of evil in itself that its extirpation became a chief object of the Treaty of Versailles. Duly it was abolished, and Germany forbidden ever to recreate such an instrument of military power; apparently, the only result was that twenty years later it was functioning as it always had, managing still greater armies, launching them with still greater precision and more deadly effect upon a shattered world society. The General Staff, which traced its origins to the armies of Frederick the Great, did not finally cease to exist until that apocalyptic moment in the ruins of the Reichskanzlei, when Germany was at last left without an army of any kind through which it might operate. That it had left an indelible impress upon our national life, our history and our future was obvious enough. Less obvious � and certainly far less clearly understood � was the earlier influence which it had exerted upon our own institutions, in common with those of Western society as a whole. In the late Nineteenth Century it was far from seeming the evil power which it was later regarded as being; in the days of the elder Moltke it was, rather, a model, earnestly imitated by all the greater nations as they sought to bring their military systems and policies into line with the revolutionary changes which sociology and technology were working in the ancient art of war. The Napoleonic era had posed, or clearly foreshadowed, certain fundamental military problems of great complexity. It had combined the invention of the democratic, popular mass army with the beginnings of a technological revolution which was to make possible the mobilization, supply, deployment and maneuver of such masses on an unparalleled scale. Both the ideological foundations and the technical apparatus had been provided for a "total" outpouring of the national energies in war to an extent which would have seemed incredible even as late as the mid-Eighteenth Century. How were such tremendous potential forces to be controlled; how were they to be commanded; how, in particular, were they to be related to the political and social ends of the state, which they were supposed to serve https://www.bubok.es/libros/237544/lost-victories-erich-von-manstein-1958-editionForeword by Captain B. H. Liddell Hart THE general verdict among the German generals I interrogated in 1945 was that Field-Marshal von Manstein had proved the ablest commander in their Army, and the man they had most desired to become its Commander-in-Chief. It is very clear that he had a superb sense of operational possibilities and an equal mastery in the conduct of operations, together with a greater grasp of the potentialities of mechanised forces than any of the other commanders who had not been trained in the tank arm. In sum, he had military genius. In the earlier stages of the war he exerted a great influence behind the scenes as a staff officer. Later he became an outstanding commander, and played a key part from 1941 to 1944 in the titanic struggle on the Russian front. His detailed account of the campaigns, pungent comments, and very significant revelations combine to make his book one of the most important and illuminating contributions to the history of World War II. An extraordinary aspect of Erich von Manstein's career is that he is best known, outside Germany at any rate, in connexion with operations that took place when he was a relatively junior general, and in which he took no part. For his fame primarily arose from his influence on the design - or, rather, on the recasting � of the plan for the German offensive of 1940 which broke through the Western Front, and led to the fall of France, with all its far-reaching results. The new plan, for making the decisive thrust through the hilly and wooded Ardennes - the line of least expectation - has come to be called the 'Manstein Plan'. That is tribute to what he did in evolving it and striving to win acceptance for it in place of the old plan, for a more direct attack through Belgium � which would in all probability have resulted in a repulse. At that time Manstein was Chief of Staff to Rundstedt's Army Group, and when his arguments for changing the plan became irritating to his superiors he was honourably pushed out of the way by promotion to command a reserve corps, of infantry, just before the new plan was adopted under Hitler's pressure - after hearing Manstein's arguments. The book provides much fresh information on the course of this operational controversy and the evolution of the plan that led to victory. In the crucial opening stage of the offensive, which cut off the Allies' left wing and trapped it on the Channel coast, Manstein's corps merely had a follow-on part. But in the second and final stage it played a bigger role. Under his dynamic leadership, his infantry pushed on so fast on foot that they raced the armoured corps in the drive southward across the Somme and the Seine to the Loire. After the collapse of France, Hitler hoped that Britain would make peace, but when disappointed he began, belatedly and half-heartedly, to make "preparations for a cross-Channel invasion. Manstein was entrusted with the task of leading the initial landing with his corps, which was moved to the Boulogne-Calais area for the purpose. His book has some striking comments on the problem, on the strategic alternatives, and on Hitler's turn away to deal with Russia. https://www.bubok.es/libros/237542/the-liddell-hart-memories-1895-1930 The Bent A few years ago, at a dinner following a lecture I delivered in the University of London, I was staggered when a prominent figure in the political world and former teacher of philosophy at Oxford, Richard Grossman, said that he thought my career had been the most satisfying and enjoyable life of anyone that he knew. I retorted that such a view hardly tallied with the chapter in his book The Charm of Politics, called 'The Strange Case of Liddell Hart'. It seemed to me that I had failed in my main aims, and that almost every time there had been a prospect of being appointed to a post that I would have dearly liked, it had not come off! Dick Grossman's answer to ^this was that, although often appearing to fail, I had repeatedly succeeded, in the long run, in getting my ideas adopted�even if not in my own country. He ascribed this effect in large part to what he called a ' way of writing irrespective of the consequences'�pursuing and expressing the truth as seen, without worrying about the outcome, personal and otherwise. Although a hazardous course it had turned out a case of 'casting your bread upon the waters', and he pointed out that it had brought me the means of continuing to seek the truth, and write it, with an independence that no one in the Services or in politics could achieve. That, in itself, must have been very enjoyable, he said, whatever the frustrations met. He recalled Aristotle's saying that Happiness is the activity of the best tiling in us, and this energy is contemplative�keeping one's mind fully employed and fully active in the pursuit of truth. So perhaps I have had a pleasanter life, and a more satisfying one than I have realised, when conscious of exasperation at failing to get one's ideas accepted here, and then to see them all too often taken up abroad, to the disadvantage of the country I had been trying to serve. Gradually I have become more philosophical about this, and Cross-man's comment has helped to make me more aware of the enjoyable side. https://www.bubok.es/libros/237540/infantry-attacks-1937-edition Foreword to the 1937 Edition This book describes numerous World War I battles which I experienced as an infantry officer. Remarks are appended to many descriptions in order to extract worthwhile lessons from the particular operation.The notes, made directly after combat, will show German youth capable of bearing arms, the unbounded spirit of self-sacrifice and courage with which the German soldier, especially the infantryman, fought for Germany during the four-and-a-half-year war. The following examples are proof of the tremendous combat powers of the German infantry, even when faced with superior odds in men and equipment; and these sketches are again proof of the superiority of the junior German commander to his enemy counterpart. Finally, this book should make a contribution towards perpetuating those experiences of the bitter war years; experiences often gained at the cost of great deprivations and bitter sacrifice. ERWIN ROMMEL Lieutenant Colonel