The Devil's Virtuosos - German Generals at War 1940-5

New English Library 1977

Here Downing presents the decisive European campaigns through the eyes of those German generals who directly influenced the planning, direction and outcome of those battles. Foremost among these generals are three men: Guderian, the man who forged the panzer force and led it through Poland, Frenace and the gates of Moscow; Manstein, the master strategist who planned the French campaign; Rommel, the bold panzer commander who won laurels in France and fame in Africa, yet ended his career tragically trying to defeat the Allies in Normandy, and Hitler in Berlin. Downing shows how these generals, and such other as von Kluge, Model, von Rundstedt, and von Bock, were doomed as new battlefronts opened against them. The battle against the slow, but relentless, Soviet tide; the battle against the overwhelming weight of Anglo-American forces in the West; the spirit-sapping battle against their own Fuhrer, who cast aside 300 years of military tradition to favour his megalomania...