Will the Real Heinz Guderian Please Stand Up?
587706
This succinct summation of Heinz Guderian's career is a deliciously iconoclastic account of the man who was once viewed as the "inventor" of blitzkrieg.  Over the past thirty years scholars have questioned this interpretation piecemeal.  Hart summarizes and synthesizes this literature, bringing it together in one convenient place.

Guderian in Hart's formulation was one of a group of officers associated with the development of the German armored force in the 1920s and 1930s.  He was very much a junior partner in this effort--his chief contribution being a flair for publicity and self promotion.  (In the Cold War he used this latter skill to write more influential innovators out of his memoirs--and largely out of the conventional historical wisdom.)  In the 1939 and 1940 campaigns argues Hart, Guderian exhibited a genuine skill in offensive tactics--when his opponents were technologically overmatched--but he had little sense of the operational or strategic context of his actions.  Most of all, he profited from being in the right place at the right time.  In the Russian campaign of 1941, he demonstrated that he "was simply not a very effective defensive commander."  (Page 79.)  Hitler was quite right to relieve him when he proved unwilling to conduct a positional defense.  Given the state of the German Army in the winter of 1941-1942, any other course was an invitation to disaster.

Guderian was, if anything, a survivor.  Hart's account of his maneuvering to hold a high position in any successor government to the Hitler regime while at the same time covering his tracks if the coup attempt failed is a masterpiece of historical reconstruction.  The author is equally successful in stripping away Guderian's various evasions of his knowledge of and complicity in Nazi mass murder.

In Hart, Guderian has obtained the biographer he has long deserved.  Guderian:  Panzer Pioneer or Myth Maker is an outstanding entry in Potomac Books' Military Profile series edited by Denis Showalter.

  Edgar F. Raines, Jr.
419023
The writer understands Ingersoll. You will never read a biography with a better capacity to convey exactly who we are talking about. I read this in school in the 1950s and experienced tangible delight at the writer's capacity to present his subject warts and all. It is hard to do anything but repeat this. It is the key to the book. Just read it. Like a few other great reads it is lost to us until it gets on Kindle. I assume that will happen. When it does joy will spread. Were he alive today he would say the same things and leave the world scratching its head. Agnosticism never had a better friend.
1077438
Atlantic Monthly used to (and maybe still does) have a short column on unlikely, but true, meetings of historically significant figures. Frequently there would be some irony about the circumstances or the juxtaposition of the individuals and their images or personalities. Hercules in New York is a perfect, previously unrecognized joinup of two great Arnolds of American entertainment, Schwarzenegger and Stang. Ironically, at the time this was made, the diminutive and irritating Arnold Stang was the better known of the two, based on his television, commercial and cartoon voiceover work. Needless to say, the situations reversed over the next ... years, and in recent years Mr. Stang has been reduced to more voiceovers and occasional bit parts. Still, during his prime he cut a memorable swath playing the standard role of an ineffectual, undersized, asexual, wimpish, nasal voiced New Yorker, who nonetheless had an indefatigable drive as the foil for a main character who was more forceful, but less intelligent. It's a shame that today Arnold Stang isn't as well remembered as the individual who had second billing under the stage name of Arnold Strong. Both men in their own way have left an indelible mark on campy American entertainment.
4085588
Don Richardson should be applauded for daring to speak the truth.  I have read enough of the Koran and the Hadith's to know personally that what he has written is the truth.
I am only sorry to see that he had the book endorsed by C.Peter Wagner, normally I would avoid any book that was endorced by him, but in this instance I think that Don Richardson is innocent and unknowing.
2219502
We've seen him many times shining a bright white light in the face of his battered, starved, and barely conscious prisoners, this stereotype of the wicked Nazi interrogator. But this is a fiction for propoganda purposes. Hans Scharff was the real thing, no torture, no bright lights, only treating his prisoners with the utmost respect and humanity. In fact, when he emigrated from Germany to the United States, it was his former prisoners who sponsored his entry into the U.S. and subsequent citizenship. Yet this respect for the enemy is precisely the key which also made him one of the most successful of German interrogators. He gives details of information which he got from prisoners who firmly claimed that they never told him anything. One photo in the book shows Scharff standing talking to Gen. James Doolittle, leader of the first raid on Tokyo and the Eighth Air Force's strategic bombing of Germany, and Gen. Curtis LeMay, father of the Strategic Air Command, at a reception. This photo shows the respect with which Scharff is held since the publication of the first edition of this book in the 1970s, especially when Scharff was only the equivalent of a Private First Class in the Luftwaffe! When the first edition of this book was published, it became the unofficial textbook for the Army Interrogation school at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He is arguably the brightest star in the heaven of prisoner-of-war interrogators.
This book also has a dark side, however, starkly contrasted with the shining career of Scharff. It includes a stereotype-shattering expose of how the U.S. and British Armies mistreated German prisoners after the surrender, literally allowing thousands of them to die of starvation and exposure by not declaring them to be prisoners of war and thus not subject to Geneva Convention standards of care. Because of this misuse of the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. and British Armies didn't have to feed them or give them shelter. They wouldn't even allow the disarmed Germans to go home, opting to hold them instead for months in open-air enclosures that became death camps. While Axis POWs in the U.S. were treated well, the postwar treatment of the Germans in Europe ranks with Andersonville, Georgia, and Alton, Illinois, as black stains on U.S. history. Scharff somehow survived this nightmare treatment and his story is one of the triumph of human dignity in the face of astonishing organized evil.
This book is a must for anyone interested in military intelligence or the treatment of prisoners of war in general.
1819276
John Giduck has already been proven (not here say, not conjecture, not opinion)to be a stolen valor fraud. The man has made numerous flat out lies about his exploits in the SF community and when he was called out on it, he tried (unsuccessfully) to sue 9 members of an internet blog for "Defamation". LOL! Hard to call fact-checking "defamation"!

Bottom line: Do not support ANYONE who has profited off lies about their service. Just thinking of all the REAL warriors who served with me in the Marines who lost their lives and hearing a guy like Giduck put himself in their community of battle-tested warriors is vomit-inducing. If you ever meet this turdball, punch him in the face. Don't fill his pocket.
4894517
A quick bio of Finkelstein, an outspoken Jew with bones to pick in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and an overview of the troubles spawned by his controversial stances. He's a rare voice in the sense that his opinions place him at-odds with his religious homeland, decrying the lack of a Palestinian state and brow-beating the Israeli government for their part in allegedly whitewashing the conflict. It should come as no surprise that such a vocal, incendiary stance has made him all manner of powerful enemies, and his sharp, confrontational personal nature does him no further favors in that respect. Finkelstein at his best is intriguing, an engaging speaker with a fiery streak and the credentials, both personal and scholastic, to back him up against any opponent. Sadly, he also seems doomed to a fate of self-contradiction. He often employs the very same methods in his own tricky public speaking engagements that he vehemently decries in the opposition, even if this documentary does try its very best to clip and trim around such moments. It's just one side of a very complicated debate, and while he does make some convincing points that refute the official story from the United States and Israel, it can be difficult to accept his story and make a judgment without an equally eloquent counterpoint in play.
4627002
Ridicule and satire have always been some of the most potent psychological weapons against authoritarianism.  Authoritarian leaders have no sense of humor.  Have you noticed that "the donald" never laughs?  Churchill understood the power of satire - he routinely referred to Hitler as "Herr Schicklgruber", calling Hitler by his true family name, i.e. the surname of his paternal grandmother because his father had been born out of wedlock. Volker Ullrich, author of the latest biography of Hitler, notes that a salute of "Heil Schicklgruber" would have elicited nothing but laughter. So it is sobering to consider that history was so devastatingly transformed because a brother of Hitler's father's stepfather changed the family surname to "Hiedler" and Hitler's father's birth status to "legitimate" simply to shield his estate from inheritance taxes (permutations in spelling sent "Hiedler" to "Hitler").  When we contemplate the change of "the donald's" family name from "Strumpf" to "Trump" we see a similar historic catastrophe with the transformation of an inelegant name into a global brand name that made billions for the Trump family and provided the springboard for propelling "the donald" into the White House.  Charlie Chaplin understood better than anyone the role that ridicule and satire could play in bearing witness to  these historic calamities and getting under the thin skin of authoritarian and demagogic leaders, and he aimed The Great Dictator at Hitler, the nemesis for his times.  We can only hope that similar artistic geniuses will direct their arts against the growing demagogic and neo-facist threats to our times:  i.e. "the donald" and aspiring nationalist-populist leaders of other Western nations.
4003089
I have read many books with this generals name in it, but this is the first time reading about him personally. After reading I came to the conclusion that this general must rank as one of the most successful generals in the German army during WW2. His duties are mostly covered in this book when he is a commander of a panzer group and later the groups become panzer armies. His conduct of mobile warfare is correct and his much discussion over bad strategy is also correct. After reading the reader can come to the conclusion of many faults in this military conflict to conquer Russian. You can only ask you're military to do so much, the false belief in a quick victory only falls on hope. Any person skilled in military tactics does not base such an invasion on hope. A must read
3932058
Like other reviewers, I was was eager to read Walter Kirn's memoir of his friendship with impostor Christian Gerhartsreiter after hearing him interviewed on Fresh Air. The story of Gerhartsreiter's serial impostures and uncanny ability to dupe a certain class of wealthy Americans is a fascinating one, and I was intrigued. Kirn's book, however, is not really about Gerhartsreiter; it's about himself, his fecklessness, his neuroses, and his own shame at being taken in. If you'd rather learn more about Gerhartsreiter's history, read Mark Seal's The Man in the Rockefeller Suit.
3091902
This book raises very serious, credible charges that call into question John Kerry's very fitness to be dog catcher, let alone President.  It's all well and good for diehard Kerry supporters to write off 260 Swift Boat veterans as liars, but unless and until they can establish this conclusively, this man should not be trusted with his finger anywhere near the button.  Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard to keep an accused criminal out of prison; it's not a standard we as a society can afford to apply to presidential candidates.  The Swift Vets have made their case; now it's up to Kerry to rebut it or withdraw from the race while there's still time for someone else to take over.

The book notes on several occasions that many of the most serious charges can be either corroborated or debunked, as it were, by John F. Kerry signing Standard Form 180.  If he won't do that, he doesn't deserve your vote.
4547339
I never really heard of him before Bert the Conqueror . His stand up wasn't asfunny as I was expecting.
140846
Origen, one of the Church Fathers, stated that even Satan could be saved at the end of time, such be the power of God's grace. If freewill is residual, this is possible on paper. And if the Fallen Star of the Morning has got any sort of grip on the play-book of the Apocalypse, it's in his own interests to do so. That being said, there's one individual who is beyond the reach of redemption. No, it's not Alfred Brendel's hair-stylist or Maximianno Cobra. It can only be Shura Gehrman, founder of Nimbus and practitioner of self-nepotism.

Here, accompanied by many a whoop, ululation and guttural shriek, he puts Dichterliebe to the sword - and he does so with an efficiency that eclipses Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria, and any number of updates from the Twentieth Century.

Where does one start? His "highly idiosyncratic" German which bears no resemblance whatsoever to the texts? His satanic ability to sing through his nose and other apertures? The abject lack of tonal allure? Consider his salute to Stolze's Mime in "Ich grolle nicht"; I played it at volume; our pets, Big Oscar the Factory-Fitted Male Labrador and Ice the Samoyed, howled in response; pretty soon, the other dogs in the neighbourhood joined the chorus as if a lupine presence was in their midst. Elsewhere - and I say this as nicely as I can - I wonder whether Gehrman was emptying "his bilge tank" when he recorded "Allnchtlich im Traume"; some wider trauma is occurring at the time and I blame his Beef Vindaloo Surprise from the night before.

As if to plough salt into the ruins of Carthage, Gehrman obliterates Brahms' Four Serious Songs and select lieder of Schubert as the most gruesome of epilogues. Seasoned in tragedy though they be, no undertaker could weather Opus 121. Here, "The Trout" should be renamed "The Carp from Lake Chernobyl". Again, do not play "Death and the Maiden" at volume: your neighbours will summon the constabulary. To add insult to injury, this Nimbus issue is graced with a photograph of Uncle Shura at his most concupiscent. Roll over Barry White!

Come Judgement Day, neither Heaven nor Hell will want to house this songbird of sandpaper. Much to the consternation of theologians, there could be a place for Limbo in the scheme of things where "Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome" can ring forth until Hell turns Methodist in dust and ashes.
215810
An excellent little polemic from the king of controversy. Hitchens has been called a traitor to the left, and not simply for his defense of the `war' in Afghanistan, but this should not discourage devoted leftists from reading his vitriol. Here he rakes Kissinger the way that he raked Clinton in `No One Left To Lie To' but with more hard evidence and less vicious innuendo. Indeed, there is no doubt that there is enough here to indict the infamous exponent of real politick and if half of what Hitchens suggests is true, enough to convict the little hatchet man as well. Needless to say, it's hard to believe it isn't true, would Kissinger hesitate to assassinate a man he considered a threat to the entrenched business interests he worshiped? It seems unlikely. OBEY
3224178
Allen Yuan would not compromise his beliefs--even when Billy and Mrs. Graham tried to get him to do so.  He stood firm--yes, he was tortured, his wife and children suffered, but I'm sure he received heavenly applause when called home.  How willing are we to "stand up" for Christ and not deny Him?  We may have to prepare ourselves to be ready to do the same thing in this nation some day.
4909910
He writes like he speaks...true!  Many may appear to see him as far right.  I see him as right, period.  Most of the people who call him crazy are not just radical left but Marxist.  Since when did the Democatic Party become Communistic.  This book will help true Americans how to vote.  I, personally, will seek out conservatives with a patriotic and constitutional view.  Hopefully, more of you will run for office. At least Dr. Savage has the courage to stand up and be counted.  I guess it's easier to be a writer than a true politician.  After you read this book, if it speaks not just to you but for you, maybe you will have the courage to run for office or seek out others who are running and vote for them.  How else can all our voices be heard?  Let this book be your bible on your journey into politics and help get our country back!!!
4764176
Billy Bishop has been thoroughly cussed and dis-cussed by Great War aero historians for decades. Much of the controversy attending his reputation concerns not only his questionable Victoria Cross action in June 1917, but how few of his victory claims are substantiated by German records.

Enter Peter Kilduff, one of the elder statesmen of Great War aviation history and arguably its leading biographer. Among his 15 previous books are studies of Manfred von Richthofen, Hermann Goring, Rudolf Berthold, and Carl Degelow.

Kilduffs study of the leading British Empire fighter ace is marked by a willingness to examine the subject broadly and objectively. His bibliography and footnotes cover twenty pages, replete with passages from Bishops correspondence and published works; other biographies; and especially official British and German documents.

However, Bish began his wartime service as a cavalryman before becoming an aerial observer and proceeding to pilot training. The author provides a detailed account of that phase of the nascent aces time in France in 1915-16.

While Kilduff clearly admires his subject, the author maintains a proper historical approach, noting both Bishops strengths and weaknesses. Clearly Bishop was driven to succeed, constantly measuring himself against his rivals (other British aces plus French and German heroes), and equally clearly coveting the highest decorations available. Bishops revelations to his fiancee and wife paint himself as an intensely ambitious young man, age 23 and 24 at the height of his combat career.

Kilduff thoroughly examines Bishops victory claims by meticulously sorting through British and German records. Of the aces 72 credited victories, 10 are positively identified, 11 possibly match German losses, and the balance have no equivalent records or enemy documents are incomplete. The airfield that Bishop reputedly attacked on June 2, 1917, remains unidentified, and the three planes he claimed shot down cannot be verified. Nonetheless, he received the only VC ever awarded in violation of the requirement for witnesses to the action. That fact remains a permanent blot of Bishops credibility.

Yet, as Kilduff, demonstrates, Bishop was a tireless, aggressive combatant. He consistently outflew everyone in both of his fighter squadronsNo. 60 as a flight leader and No. 85 as commanding officer.

Peter Kilduff has done a superb job in slicing through the fog and controversy of nearly a century to produce a readable, objective account of Billy Bishopthe lone hunter.