FROM IMPERIAL ARMY TO BUNDESWEHR: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE ROLE OF THE MILITARY IN GERMAN HISTORY Willensmenschen: über deutsche Offiziere. Edited by Ursula Breymayer, Bernd Ulrich and Karin Wieland. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999. Pp. 239. ISBN 3-596-14438-8. DM 28.80. Die anderen Soldaten: Wehrkraftzersetzung, Gehorsamsverweigerung und Fahnenflucht im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Edited by Norbert Haase and Gerhard Paul. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995. Pp. 240. ISBN 3-596-12769-6. DM 19.90. Das Nationalkomitee ‘Freies Deutschland’ und der Bund Deutscher Offiziere. Edited by Gerd R. Ueberschär. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995. Pp. 304. ISBN 3-596-12633-9. DM 24.90.

Abstract

Twentieth-century Germany's (military) history has been the subject of heated, sometimes acrimonious controversies in the Federal Republic. In recent years, historians and the German public have been engaged, for example, in debates over the relative merit of different kinds of German resistance against National Socialism, and over the place of deserters in German history of the Second World War. Such soul-searching has culminated in angry debates over the role of the Wehrmacht in crimes against humanity which followed in the wake of the exhibition ‘Verbrechen der Wehrmacht’ (crimes of the Wehrmacht) in Austria and Germany. The books under consideration here all have a contribution to make to our understanding of this troubled and contested past, and in particular to the question of the role of the military in German history.