In the final year of the Second World War, as fierce defensive battles spread across German soil, the country was swept by a wave of inter-ethnic violence. Bastiaan Willems offers the first study of the influence and behaviour of the Wehrmacht on its own soil. He focuses on the German units that fought in East Prussia and its capital, Königsberg. He shows that the Wehrmacht's retreat after three years of brutal fighting on the Eastern Front contributed significantly to the wave of violence that swept across the country immediately before defeat. Soldiers who returned with a mindset developed on the Eastern Front shaped the immediate environment of the area of operations and Germany as a whole. Willems shows how the norms of the Wehrmacht as an army in retreat influenced behaviour patterns on the home front and argues that their presence increased the propensity for violence in Germany.
Author
Willems, Bastiaan
Title
Gewalt und Untergang
Details
400 pages.
State
new
Subtitle
Die Wehrmacht auf deutschem Boden 1944–1945
Schöningh Postfach 2540 33055 Paderborn Deutschland
