Hitler's Army

Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich

By: Omer Bartov

Narrated by: David Bern

In Hitler's Army, Omer Bartov focuses on the titanic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union—where the vast majority of German troops fought—to show how the savagery of war reshaped the army in Hitler's image. Both brutalized and brutalizing, these soldiers needed to see their bitter sacrifices as noble patriotism and to justify their own atrocities by seeing their victims as subhuman. In the unprecedented ferocity and catastrophic losses of the Eastern front, soldiers embraced the idea that the war was a defense of civilization against Jewish/Bolshevik barbarism, a war of racial survival to be waged at all costs. Bartov describes the incredible scale and destruction of the invasion of Russia in horrific detail. Even in the first months—often depicted as a time of easy victories—undermanned and ill-equipped German units were stretched to the breaking point by vast distances and bitter Soviet resistance. Bartov goes on to explore letters, diaries, military reports, and other sources, showing how widespread Hitler's views became among common fighting men—men who grew up, he reminds us, under the Nazi regime. In the end, they truly became Hitler's army.

This book sheds new light on how deeply Nazi ideology penetrated the nation. Hitler's Army makes an important correction not merely to the historical record but to how we see the world today.

©1992 Oxford University Press, Inc. (P)2022 Tantor

Eye-opening

First off, the narrator is great. He obviously read and understood the book before recording began and always has the appropriate emphasis and inflection. The book is academic but focused, an essay rather than a survey. Its description of how people become indoctrinated, and later distance themselves from the moral consequences of their actions, is convincing with regard to German soldiers but also applicable in many other circumstances, too.

Contributes Nothing To Understanding Hitler's Army

This work contributes no new information and aims to diminish our understanding of the people of the Third Reich by attempting to reduce all who served, as volunteers or conscripts, to a caricature of a Super-Nazi. At times, the author makes strong assertions without providing any supporting evidence whatsoever. On other occasions he cherry picks from works I'm familiar with, while ignoring information in the work that doesn't support his thesis. Further, he offers up evidence that undermines his own arguments at times. The author also appears to be unfamiliar with Hitler's well documented distrust of the Heer, which in part fueled the expansion of the Waffen–SS as a competitor to, and likely replacement of the Heer. The author also seems unfamiliar with the atrocities committed by the Soviets before, during, and after the WWII. While the awful track record of the Soviets doesn't make the Third Reich any less evil, it does undermine many of his arguments and most certainly provides context. Overall, the author has an axe to grind, and this book doesn't contribute anything to the study of WWII.