Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945 by Michael R. Beschloss ISBN: 0-684-81027-1 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.46 (79 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Morgenthau Plan
Comment: "The Conquerors" by Michael Beschloss.
As so many of my fellow Amazon reviewers have noted, this book ought to be entitled, "The Morgenthau Plan". The celebrated Historian, Michael Beschloss, has produced a well-written volume documenting the in-fighting of the Roosevelt Administration on this plan for dealing with Germany after the war was won. The events after the cessation of hostilities show that the Morgenthau Plan was really implemented.
Mr. Beschloss , as with so many American historians, has neglected, or at least, minimized reporting what happened to the eastern part of Germany. In the west, Allied bombing had destroyed most of the German industry, In the east, the Red Army did the same. Towards the end, Adolph Hitler issued orders to destroy everything in the path of the on-coming Soviets. Some fanatical German units did just that, while others ignored the Fuhrer's orders. Thus, in May 1945, Germany was fundamentally devoid of industry, with the only untouched areas being small farming towns and villages.
The Soviets then forced Germans to leave East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania, and, in turn, forced the Poles west to these now unoccupied lands. This has been called the greatest forced migration in history. Beschloss briefly mentions this on page 258, where he reports that Stalin "... insisted that giving German land to Poland should be no problem because no Germans were in the region." The result was a de facto implementation of the Morgenthau Plan: the reduction of Germany into an agricultural nation, struggling to feed its people. It seems that it was not until the 1949 Berlin Blockade and the subsequent Berlin Airlift that Americans, British and French began the re-vitalization of German industry and the re-birth of the German nation. Self-interest? Or Christianity and Kindness"? (p.105). One has to wonder if Stalin had been more subtle or more surreptitiously clever, if the Iron Curtain would have reached west to the Rhine and Germany would have disappeared. Five stars for excellent writing; three stars for addressing a different subject in a somewhat incomplete fashion: four stars average.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not Bad, Nice Book, Not 5 Stars.
Comment: As a reader one tries to pick and choose books and learn something as they read. The problem with the WW II books now, such as this book, is that it is all or mostly secondary sources. These sources are old documents, tapes, films, and literally hundreds if not thousands of other books on the subject. Plus we are talking about old stuff, that is now pretty well forgotten and the original authors are for the most part dead. We cannot go back and talk to people to see if indeed these are the proper conclusions that are more accurate or would have changed anything in the way the war was run. I suspect not.
The book on the surface is well done. It is well researched and nicely organized and presented. It has some good photographs. But I remember as a child in the fifties of seeing and reading series after series of WWII books such as Churchill's own series and others. These were being written by the living participants.
Now we have more books with "fresh" material. I think it is a nice book of moderate length and nice photos and lots of tidbits of information. But it is just one more book in a long series of post war analysis. Churchill I recently read has 67 biographies in print. For that reason I think it merits just 3 or 4 stars.
Three stars.
Recommendation: neutral
Jack in Toronto
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent reading - falls little short in some areas....
Comment: Outside of a very misleading title, this book proves to be an indepth study on the conception, consideration and ultimate rejection of Morgenthau Plan. The plan was considered very controversial because it called for Germany to be stripped of all industries and reduced to an agricultural state. In hindsight of course, the plan can be considered to vastly short sighted and un-American in nature, almost guranteeing a very vengeful Germany somewhere in the future. But during the latter part of the World War II, Morgenthau Plan had its supporters and it was considered as a serious plan. This book proves to be one of the few books that actually looked behind the Morgenthau Plan. It also take a good look at Franklin Roosevelt's declining ablity to lead our nation in the time of war and how he ignored the destruction of the Jews in Europe. I think I read this in one of the earlier reveiws but I also wish that there was a section on how our nation went from something like a Morgenthau Plan to the Marshall Plan. Story of that transformation would have been a good addition to the book.
 |
Title: Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan ISBN: 0375760520 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
 |
Title: An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson ISBN: 0805062882 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 02 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
 |
Title: Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile ISBN: 0871138549 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
 |
Title: Benjamin Franklin : An American Life by Walter Isaacson ISBN: 0684807610 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
 |
Title: An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek ISBN: 0316172383 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
