Indeed, many historians see in these figures the explanation for Allied victory. Yet this, according to Overy, is a fallacy. Here was a field of contest where the Nazis might have been expected to prevail. His invasion of the USSR in June deprived the Soviets of everything from air and mechanized forces to aluminum, manganese, and grain.
Yet against every expectation, the Russians were able to recover. How they did so must be counted among the most remarkable achievements, and certainly the greatest puzzle, of the war. Extreme scarcity dictated the efficient use of resources, and central planning, however ill-suited to peacetime, proved well-suited for war.
Soviet success was especially manifest in the development of new weaponry, where a premium was placed on simplicity of design, standardization of parts, and ease of maintenance, all of which proved crucial. Standing above everything else, however, was the Herculean effort of the Soviet workforce. The rest of the job seems to have been done by raw coercion:.
Large sections of the workforce were placed under military law Absenteeism and lateness were treated like desertion.
Repeated offenses meant the labor camp, though the conditions of everyday life were so drear for most workers that life in the camps and outside them became increasingly difficult to distinguish. Though the Nazis well understood the connection between economic and military might, they displayed an ideological antipathy toward mass production, preferring instead the solid German virtues of individualized craftsmanship and technical sophistication.
Initially this conferred an edge, but as time wore on, problems began to show. Under pressure from above, German arms manufacturers came out with an incredible array of models with few interchangeable parts, nightmares to maintain in the field.
Later, after the initiative passed to the Allied side, Hitler pursued costly technologies that promised last-minute salvation, at the expense of replenishing stocks of weapons that had already proved their worth.
All the while, the German system was burdened by inefficiencies of every kind: poor coordination between industry and the military; an intrusive, arthritic, top-heavy bureaucracy; an inability fully to exploit available resources.
The German economy, writes Overy,. Please enter recipient e-mail address es. The E-mail Address es you entered is are not in a valid format.
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Preview this item Preview this item. Germany controls almost the entire resources of continental Europe and is poised to move into the Middle East. Japan has wiped out the western colonial presence in East Asia in a couple of months and is threatening northern India and Australia. The Soviet Union has lost the heart of its industry, and the United States is not yet armed. Democracy has had its day.
It was not. In Richard Overy's incisive analysis, we see exactly how the Allies regained military superiority and why they were able to do it. Overy offers a brilliant analysis of the decisive campaigns: the war at sea, the crucial battles on the eastern front, the air war, and the vast amphibious assault on Europe.
Overy also analyzes the superior control of resources by the Allies, the combat effectiveness of Allied and Axis troops, the leadership of the two sides, and the moral contrasts between them. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances.
Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad , the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. Already have an account? Log in. Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials. Sign Up.
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