While the Battle of Kursk has long captivated World War II aficionados, it has been unjustly overlooked by historians. Drawing on the masses of new information made available by the opening of the Russian military archives, Dennis E. Showalter at last corrects that error. This battle was the critical turning point on World War II's Eastern Front. In the aftermath of the Red Army's brutal repulse of the Germans at Stalingrad, the stakes could not have been higher. More than three million men and eight thousand tanks met in the heart of the Soviet Union, some four hundred miles south of Moscow, in an encounter that both sides knew would reshape the war. The adversaries were at the peak of their respective powers. On both sides, the generals and the dictators they served were in agreement on where, why, and how to fight. The result was a furious death grapple between two of history's most formidable fighting forces—a battle that might possibly have been the greatest of all time. In Armor and Blood, Showalter re-creates every aspect of this dramatic struggle. He offers expert perspective on strategy and tactics at the highest levels, from the halls of power in Moscow and Berlin to the battlefield command posts on both sides. But it is the author's exploration of the human dimension of armored combat that truly distinguishes this book. In the classic tradition of John Keegan's The Face of Battle, Showalter's narrative crackles with insight into the unique dynamics of tank warfare—its effect on men's minds as well as their bodies. Scrupulously researched, exhaustively documented, and vividly illustrated, this book is a chilling testament to man's ability to build and to destroy. When the dust settled, the field at Kursk was nothing more than a wasteland of steel carcasses, dead soldiers, and smoking debris. The Soviet victory ended German hopes of restoring their position on the Eastern Front, and put the Red Army on the road to Berlin. Armor and Blood presents listeners with what will likely be the authoritative study of Kursk for decades to come.

Product Description: While the Battle of Kursk has long captivated World War II aficionados, it has been unjustly overlooked by historians. Drawing on the masses of new information made available by the opening of the Russian military archives, Dennis E...read more

Product Description: While the Battle of Kursk has long captivated World War II aficionados, it has been unjustly overlooked by historians. Drawing on the masses of new information made available by the opening of the Russian military archives, Dennis E...read more

Product Description: Two distinguished historians tell the story of the early modern soldier of Europe, a figure often misunderstood, in the period spanning from 1494 to 1789. He is the freebooting Landsknecht of the sixteenth century, swaggering in dilapidated finery through the ruins he and his kind created...read more

A comprehensive guide to the daily lives of European soliders in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries covers the reasons and preparations for war, life in training and on the battlefield, and changes in these routines over the years.

A thought-provoking dual biography looks at the lives and military careers of two renowned World War II generals from opposite sides of the conflict--Erwin Rommel and George S. Patton--analyzing the paths each man took, the decisions they made, and their seminal influence on military tactics and history. Reprint.

Product Description: REFLECTIONS ON EISENHOWER

Product Description: Fighter ace Col. Johannes Steinhoff commanded an elite group of pilots trained to fly the first jet aircraft employed in combat, the famous Messerschmitt Me-262, at a time when Reich Marshal Hermann Goring, by then out of favor with Hitler for his failure to stop the Allied bombing raids, denounced his own pilots as cowards...read more

With his victory over the Russian army at the battle of Tannenberg in August 1914, Paul von Hindenburg became a war hero. By 1916 he had parlayed an exaggerated reputation for decisive victory into near dictatorial powers. After Germany’s defeat at Verdun and War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn’s dismissal in late 1916, Hindenburg, along with his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff, took over strategic direction of the war. The eponymous Hindenburg Program attempted with some success to mobilize Germany’s economy for war. He also oversaw many of Germany’s most important wartime decisions, including the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, Bethmann Hollweg’s dismissal as chancellor, Russia’s defeat and negotiation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and the “Ludendorff Offensives” of 1918, which sought decisive victory on the Western Front but ended in Germany’s catastrophic defeat. After the war, Hindenburg played a crucial role in creating the Dolchstosslegende (the myth that the German Army had been “stabbed in the back” by a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy on the homefront), in leading Germany as president of the Weimar Republic, and, most tragically, in acquiescing to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

Product Description: Dennis Showalter gives a full account of the international context as well as of the wars themselves and their consequences. Some of his arguments shed new light on the history of the period. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Discusses secondary historical literature dealing with World War I, with essays organized by country or region and chapters dealing with topics such as the war at sea, air war, the mobilization of industry, and new military technology.

Product Description: Offers students different critical perspectives on major historical events, drawn from all time periods and from all parts of the globe. Each volume has a thematic, era or subject-specific focus and contains roughly 50 entries. Entries begin with a brief overview summarizing the controversy followed by two or more signed, point-counterpoint essays...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: What caused the fall of the Roman empire? What did the second amendment to the U.S. constitution mean to the founding fathers? What was the role of black troops in the American Civil War? History in Dispute addresses these heavily debated questions by offering your students different critical perspectives on major historical events, drawn from all time periods and from all parts of the globe...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: What caused the fall of the Roman empire? What did the second amendment to the U.S. constitution mean to the founding fathers? What was the role of black troops in the American Civil War? History in Dispute addresses these heavily debated questions by offering your students different critical perspectives on major historical events, drawn from all time periods and from all parts of the globe...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)

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Experts suggest what might have happened if various events in World War II had gone differently, from the Munich crisis to the atomic bomb, including Hitler's declaration of war on the United States and the D-Day landings

Product Description: The campaigns of Frederick the Great were a watershed in the history of Europe. They inaugurated a new pattern - of total war for limited objectives - that was to endure until 1916. Frederick's battles were designed to convince his adversaries of the wisdom of making and keeping peace; for him, victory in the field was the means to the more enduring victory of a successful negotiation, and, as such, his wars prefigure those of Napoleon...read more