Erich von Manstein
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
La première biographie, fondée sur des archives inédites, de l'homme qui a balayé l'armée française en 1940.
Le maréchal von Manstein fut le maître tacticien de Hitler, l'homme de la guerre éclair et des coups de génie offensifs. Fondée sur des archives inexplorées, cette biographie critique fait la lumière sur l'un des chefs les plus importants de l'armée allemande et montre le rôle de premier plan qu'il a joué dans les guerres en Pologne, en France et en Union soviétique.
Surtout, le cas Manstein éclaire les rouages de l'alliance entre la Wehrmacht et Hitler. A travers lui se profile ainsi le destin de ses pairs, ces officiers qui ont servi le Führer jusqu'à la fin, pensant accomplir un devoir patriotique.
Benoît Lemay est spécialiste d'histoire militaire et de l'Allemagne. Il est notamment l'auteur d'une biographie d'Erwin Rommel (Perrin).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lemay, well regarded in France as a military historian, offers a well-researched, convincingly reasoned analysis of a general widely considered one of WWII's great commanders, whose memoir is regarded as a classic. Lemay depicts Manstein, who served Hitler to the end, as a master strategist and an inspired general, "the most accomplished product of the Prussian military caste of his time." His talent and achievements gained the respect of his enemies. Hitler himself feared Manstein's independent spirit and strong character. Yet Manstein never addressed the wider aspects of the war he fought and the regime he served; he insisted on restricting himself to military matters, and attributed Germany's defeat to Hitler's incompetent meddling. He insisted the army remained "honorable and upright." So Lemay does a service in carefully compiling, from documents and testimony at Nuremberg, evidence of Manstein's participation in the extermination of the Jews in Ukraine and Crimea. Manstein considered the battlefield "a sort of autonomous territory," separate from politics. In this way, Lemay concludes, he made himself "an obedient instrument in a criminal enterprise." 16 pages of illus.
