Legacy Lecture - June 16, 2010

The 1942 campaigning season ended in disaster for the German Wehrmacht, with twin and nearly simultaneous defeats at Stalingrad and El Alamein. Analysts have usually assigned responsibility for the catastrophe to the amateurish strategy of Adolf Hitler, or to miscalculations on the part of the German General Staff, or to various mistakes by the field commanders at critical junctures. But what if we have misconstrued the true causes of the catastrophe? What if, in fact, the Wehrmacht failed in 1942 not because of fundamental problems within the classic "German way of war," a unique combination of doctrines, attitudes, and assumptions whose roots lay deep in the history of Prussia and Germany?

In "Death of the Wehrmacht," military historian Dr. Robert Citino offers not only a detailed analysis of the German campaigns in the Soviet Union and North Africa, but also ties them into the traditional pattern of German operations extending back hundreds of years.

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