Overview

In 1941, as Nazi Germany began its disastrous campaign against the Soviet Union, Hitler'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 campaigns--and Germany's failure--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 Hitler's obsession with securing the resources--especially from the Reichsbahn railway--needed to implement the """"Final Solution."""" To a degree never fully recognized or understood, Hitler's anti-Semitic ideology was his war's undoing. Through four major Wehrmacht military campaigns--Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk in the east and Normandy in the west--Pasher explores this fatal contradiction in Hitler'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 East--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 transport--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 Wehrmacht's overextended armies without the resources to survive, let alone win, their final battles. In the end, what Hitler called """"the Jewish problem"""" was his downfall. In documenting the distribution of Germany's resources and operational capabilities through four major campaigns, Holocaust versus Wehrmacht offers a clear picture of the Nazis' military objectives as inseparable from--and finally, fatally susceptible to--Hitler's and his henchmen's other, ideological war to rid Europe of Jews.

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9780700620067

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Reviews

Yaron Pasher has written a truly important work. After reading this book, no one will be able to deny that the Germans fought two wars, and the priority that Hitler and his ideological supporters gave to the racial war significantly hampered the German war effort. --Michael Berenbaum, Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute, American Jewish University

Pasher's masterful book makes an extremely important contribution to the study of World War II and the Holocaust. -- <p/>Doris L. Bergen, author of War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

Pasher s work is a natural but innovative extension of previous studies that demonstrated the tension between ideology and economics within the Third Reich as SS planning for the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish question resulted in severe economic consequences for the overall German war effort. H-Net Reviews

Pasher's carefully conceived study covers the critical issues in depth and within their broader wartime context and does so in a clear and convincing fashion. This is a book that should attract considerable favorable attention. --Gerhard L. Weinberg, author of A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II

Author Information

Yaron Pasher is a postdoctoral fellow at the International Institute for Holocaust Research Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel.

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