Collection
Publication
Michael Joseph, London (1952), Edition: First Edition
Description
The 50th-anniversary edition of the German general's legendary memoir
User reviews
LibraryThing member Chris_El
Heinz was an early believer in the power of the tank to change the battlefield and the tactics of war. His views on the proper use of the tank found acceptance with Hitler early in the war when his tactics helped ensure victory against France and her allies on the European continent. He was sent to
General Guderian was eventually recalled to service and served as a leading general in Germany on Hitler's staff trying to stem the losing tide against the Russians. It is clear Hitler and he had some screaming matching with most of the screaming and carrying on being done by Hitler.
Of note, the book includes a chapter on personalities in command at the top in Germany. I copy this portion on Hitler:
I must now turn to Hitler's personal characteristics as they impressed me. What sort of man was he? He was a vegetarian, a teetotaler, and a non-smoker. These were, taken independently, very admirable qualities which derived from his personal convictions and from his ascetic way of life. But, connected with this, was his isolation as a human being. He had no real friend. His oldest Party comrades were, it is true, disciples, but they could hardly be described as friends. So far as I can see there was nobody who was really close to him. There was nobody in whom he would confide his deepest feelings. There was nobody with whom he could talk freely and openly. As he never found a true friend, so he was denied the ability to deeply love a woman. He remained unmarried. He had no children. Everything that on this earth that casts a glow of warmth over our life as mortals, friendship with fine men, the pure love for a wife, affection for one's own children, all this was and remained for ever unknown to him. His path thru the world was a solitary one and he followed it alone, with only his gigantic plans for company. His relationship with Eva Braun may be cited as a contradiction of what I have written. I can only say that I knew nothing of this and that so far as I am aware I never once saw Eva Braun, though for months on end I was with Hitler an his entourage almost every day. It was only in prison that I first learned of this liaison. It is obvious that this woman cannot have had any influence over Hitler, and the more's the pity, for it could only have been a softening one." General Heinz Guderian in his memoirs: Panzer Leade
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join the attack against Russia and was eventually relieved of command because of disagreements with Hitler on how to extend their efforts in Russia. You can read in between the lines about how disappointed in hindsight Guderian was that Germany attacked Poland and then later Russia. General Guderian was eventually recalled to service and served as a leading general in Germany on Hitler's staff trying to stem the losing tide against the Russians. It is clear Hitler and he had some screaming matching with most of the screaming and carrying on being done by Hitler.
Of note, the book includes a chapter on personalities in command at the top in Germany. I copy this portion on Hitler:
I must now turn to Hitler's personal characteristics as they impressed me. What sort of man was he? He was a vegetarian, a teetotaler, and a non-smoker. These were, taken independently, very admirable qualities which derived from his personal convictions and from his ascetic way of life. But, connected with this, was his isolation as a human being. He had no real friend. His oldest Party comrades were, it is true, disciples, but they could hardly be described as friends. So far as I can see there was nobody who was really close to him. There was nobody in whom he would confide his deepest feelings. There was nobody with whom he could talk freely and openly. As he never found a true friend, so he was denied the ability to deeply love a woman. He remained unmarried. He had no children. Everything that on this earth that casts a glow of warmth over our life as mortals, friendship with fine men, the pure love for a wife, affection for one's own children, all this was and remained for ever unknown to him. His path thru the world was a solitary one and he followed it alone, with only his gigantic plans for company. His relationship with Eva Braun may be cited as a contradiction of what I have written. I can only say that I knew nothing of this and that so far as I am aware I never once saw Eva Braun, though for months on end I was with Hitler an his entourage almost every day. It was only in prison that I first learned of this liaison. It is obvious that this woman cannot have had any influence over Hitler, and the more's the pity, for it could only have been a softening one." General Heinz Guderian in his memoirs: Panzer Leade
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LibraryThing member Wprecht
This was my military history book for Pennsic. Each year for the last several years, I have taken the piece and quiet afforded by the first week of Pennsic to read a ‘book I have been meaning to read’. This year there was two, this one and Germs, Guns and Steel . As a result, I didn’t
First the overview: Don’t confuse this book with the terminally boring ‘Achtung Panzer!’. AP was a book length white paper that Guderian wrote for the German military press before WWII to gain support for the concept of mass use of armor in warfare. If you read this book, you will learn the concepts in that book and the reasoning of why it was necessary. This book is basically a biography of Guderian’s professional career. There are a couple of chapters about his early training and life and then we get into the meat of things, World War II and the role Guderian and his concepts played in the successful early campaigns.
Now, there are a zillion books that try to explain what went wrong with the German Military Machine and this, to some extent, is one of them. That is one of the reasons I read books like this: take something apart, see why it worked and why it broke. There are nearly as many reasons for these things as books, but approaching this as a true (if amateur) historian, I prefer to first hand accounts and as many as I can get my hands on. Then, I can synthesize the answer rather than have any one author’s predjustices feed to me.
If you are one of those people that think that the German Military Machine was a cohesive entity and the only real downfall was Hilter’s constant intervention, this book will set you straight. In addition to accounts of the battles and uses of panzers in warfare, you get a glimpse into the workings of the German General Staff and chain of command during the war.
My one complaint, if you can call it that, is that he did it all. Guderian portrays himself as fearless and efficient. On one occasion he broke a Soviet roadblock by personally firing the machine gun in his command car and driving through the confused soldiers. I don’t know about all that. Sure it is possible, but I am a little dubious when it comes to his personal behavior in and out of combat.
One of the coolest thing in the book is the inclusion of a significant number of Guderian’s Operational Orders in the appendices. These show you how lower level commanders were able to interpret orders and accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. Very good read.
As I said, I haven’t finished the book. I am before Moscow in the late Fall. We know where things are going: the offensive is going to stall and Guderian is going to be benched by Hilter, only to be brought back in once things are irretrievably hosed. Then benched again.
Being an old school Prussian officer who didn’t participate or condone any atrocities, Guderian escaped the Nuremberg fate of many of the other leaders and lived to retire to a quiet life.
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actually finish it (I kept switching back and forth). Unlike GGS, I will finish this one ‘eventually’. However, as with GGS, I think I have read enough to give a decent review for you.First the overview: Don’t confuse this book with the terminally boring ‘Achtung Panzer!’. AP was a book length white paper that Guderian wrote for the German military press before WWII to gain support for the concept of mass use of armor in warfare. If you read this book, you will learn the concepts in that book and the reasoning of why it was necessary. This book is basically a biography of Guderian’s professional career. There are a couple of chapters about his early training and life and then we get into the meat of things, World War II and the role Guderian and his concepts played in the successful early campaigns.
Now, there are a zillion books that try to explain what went wrong with the German Military Machine and this, to some extent, is one of them. That is one of the reasons I read books like this: take something apart, see why it worked and why it broke. There are nearly as many reasons for these things as books, but approaching this as a true (if amateur) historian, I prefer to first hand accounts and as many as I can get my hands on. Then, I can synthesize the answer rather than have any one author’s predjustices feed to me.
If you are one of those people that think that the German Military Machine was a cohesive entity and the only real downfall was Hilter’s constant intervention, this book will set you straight. In addition to accounts of the battles and uses of panzers in warfare, you get a glimpse into the workings of the German General Staff and chain of command during the war.
My one complaint, if you can call it that, is that he did it all. Guderian portrays himself as fearless and efficient. On one occasion he broke a Soviet roadblock by personally firing the machine gun in his command car and driving through the confused soldiers. I don’t know about all that. Sure it is possible, but I am a little dubious when it comes to his personal behavior in and out of combat.
One of the coolest thing in the book is the inclusion of a significant number of Guderian’s Operational Orders in the appendices. These show you how lower level commanders were able to interpret orders and accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. Very good read.
As I said, I haven’t finished the book. I am before Moscow in the late Fall. We know where things are going: the offensive is going to stall and Guderian is going to be benched by Hilter, only to be brought back in once things are irretrievably hosed. Then benched again.
Being an old school Prussian officer who didn’t participate or condone any atrocities, Guderian escaped the Nuremberg fate of many of the other leaders and lived to retire to a quiet life.
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LibraryThing member wfzimmerman
An essential book for any WWII buff. Edited by Liddell-Hart.
LibraryThing member Taurus454
Excellent account of service in the German Army from one of its most respected Generals. His story is straight forward and honest. Must read for military historians.
LibraryThing member ex_ottoyuhr
This book is the memoirs of Heinz Guderian, inventor of blitzkrieg and, to say the least, one of history's more capable generals; it focuses more or less exclusively on the Second World War, and details his role in the conquests of Poland and France more or less exhaustively. His style is engaging
But the question one has to ask about Guderian is this: he was a skilled, capable, personally fearless commander; did he really never notice who he was working for? Did he not know or not care that every victory he won established Hitler's power more securely -- that if he had deliberately lost the Battle of France, or just defected before the war, there would have been no Holocaust?
No; he did know. He may have been more enthusiastic for Naziism than he lets on in his book (or he might've just been paying the movement lip service; it's hard to imagine faking something like his take-down of Himmler); more likely, he might have been operating under the heuristic of the Thirty Years' War, that "provided we serve our master honestly, it matters not what master we serve." (Or it might just be that he was a career soldier, dedicated to serving Germany regardless of who Germany was ruled by at the time... Prussian Germany, with its long history of annexations and unjustifiable wars, /would/ tend to have officers like this.)
And, at least to hear him tell it, he did try to do something about the Holocaust; while he despised and refused to engage in the usual pattern of resistance, of telling Hitler everything he wanted to hear and then working against him behind his back, he did bring up the question of how Hitler was treating the Jews and Slavs, to Hitler's face. I think that Guderian was right in thinking that Hitler was more normal than we tend to imagine him as; had Guderian been supported by the rest of the General Staff, had it been impossible for Hitler to get anything done at a meeting because he was surrounded by people lecturing him about his massacres of Jews and Slavs, perhaps the Holocaust could have been stopped -- not by an all-out war, not by nuclear bombardment or saturation airstrikes, not even by assassinations, but by ordinary, old-fashioned peer pressure...
Or perhaps Guderian is just saying this because it's the postwar period and he doesn't want to get hanged. He was a slippery writer, by all indications, and one should not take everything in this memoir at face value: he appears to have been responsible for the awful lie about Polish cavalry charging German tanks; his soldiers may have used human shields in the invasion of Poland; and he apparently had a large, ugly role in the prosecutions after the July 20th plot.
After the war, the Poles and Russians wanted him hanged for war crimes; was this because he had actually committed them, or was it just because he had humiliated them by cutting their armies to ribbons? It's hard to tell from this book... although his joy in having arrived as a liberator in the Russian countryside, his disgust at the behavior of the Nazi civil authorities once conquered territory passed out of military control, and the little incidents like how he reopened a shoe factory and his soldiers helped with the harvest, feel hard to imagine as faked. (On the other hand, that harvest was probably one of those that the Germans stole from the Ukrainians -- a less bucolic and cheerful image than it sounds...!)
All told, Guderian is a hard figure to really form a full, confident appraisal of, and is almost as hard to trust as he is to mistrust (or perhaps the other way around). Would the reader behave better than he did, in his shoes? Part of answering that question is to determine what "better" would be in the first place; deliberately throwing the Battle of France, or defecting to England before the war, would probably have been the right choice, but such actions would have been hard to swallow...
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and memorable, but the reader becomes glad that he never had to have Guderian as a subordinate; the man must have been completely uncontrollable, given his penchant not just for disobeying orders (a venerable custom in the Prussian-German military), but disobeying them snidely. (He also had virtually complete impunity for his actions; Hitler fired him twice.)But the question one has to ask about Guderian is this: he was a skilled, capable, personally fearless commander; did he really never notice who he was working for? Did he not know or not care that every victory he won established Hitler's power more securely -- that if he had deliberately lost the Battle of France, or just defected before the war, there would have been no Holocaust?
No; he did know. He may have been more enthusiastic for Naziism than he lets on in his book (or he might've just been paying the movement lip service; it's hard to imagine faking something like his take-down of Himmler); more likely, he might have been operating under the heuristic of the Thirty Years' War, that "provided we serve our master honestly, it matters not what master we serve." (Or it might just be that he was a career soldier, dedicated to serving Germany regardless of who Germany was ruled by at the time... Prussian Germany, with its long history of annexations and unjustifiable wars, /would/ tend to have officers like this.)
And, at least to hear him tell it, he did try to do something about the Holocaust; while he despised and refused to engage in the usual pattern of resistance, of telling Hitler everything he wanted to hear and then working against him behind his back, he did bring up the question of how Hitler was treating the Jews and Slavs, to Hitler's face. I think that Guderian was right in thinking that Hitler was more normal than we tend to imagine him as; had Guderian been supported by the rest of the General Staff, had it been impossible for Hitler to get anything done at a meeting because he was surrounded by people lecturing him about his massacres of Jews and Slavs, perhaps the Holocaust could have been stopped -- not by an all-out war, not by nuclear bombardment or saturation airstrikes, not even by assassinations, but by ordinary, old-fashioned peer pressure...
Or perhaps Guderian is just saying this because it's the postwar period and he doesn't want to get hanged. He was a slippery writer, by all indications, and one should not take everything in this memoir at face value: he appears to have been responsible for the awful lie about Polish cavalry charging German tanks; his soldiers may have used human shields in the invasion of Poland; and he apparently had a large, ugly role in the prosecutions after the July 20th plot.
After the war, the Poles and Russians wanted him hanged for war crimes; was this because he had actually committed them, or was it just because he had humiliated them by cutting their armies to ribbons? It's hard to tell from this book... although his joy in having arrived as a liberator in the Russian countryside, his disgust at the behavior of the Nazi civil authorities once conquered territory passed out of military control, and the little incidents like how he reopened a shoe factory and his soldiers helped with the harvest, feel hard to imagine as faked. (On the other hand, that harvest was probably one of those that the Germans stole from the Ukrainians -- a less bucolic and cheerful image than it sounds...!)
All told, Guderian is a hard figure to really form a full, confident appraisal of, and is almost as hard to trust as he is to mistrust (or perhaps the other way around). Would the reader behave better than he did, in his shoes? Part of answering that question is to determine what "better" would be in the first place; deliberately throwing the Battle of France, or defecting to England before the war, would probably have been the right choice, but such actions would have been hard to swallow...
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LibraryThing member William-Tucker
Great book by a great mind.
LibraryThing member billt568
Great book by a great mind.
LibraryThing member expatscot
Slightly self-serving, but a must read.
Subjects
Original publication date
1951
Physical description
9.13 inches