Reddit reviews Lost Victories: The War Memoirs of Hitler's Most Brilliant General

When it gets warm the snow and ice melt and roads and fields become hard to use. The winter is actually easier to prepare and execute an offensive. The spring is terrible, but great for defending the conquered territory.

Manstein, in his book "lost victories" fought the Soviets in exactly the same weather and in exactly the same places. He talks about it extensively. For anyone interested in the militairy paramaters in this conflict, this is very interesting reading.

Additionally: Leclerc tanks may be one of the best tanks in the world. That's quite a powerful addition to Polish defence. Surely, an expensive one without a doubt.

Tigers in the Mud written by Otto Carius, a Tiger commander during WWII -- still sells like hotcakes today. Written by a man who described Himmler as his friend. Let it sink in.

Lost Victories Manstein's memoirs, a hot pile of dump that consists of excuse-making and blame-deflecting. Still a hot read, though most know its flaws now.

Franz fucking Halder helped the US Army form its history of WWII.

There's a load more, but I'm not here to shill (today at least AYYY).

The claim that history is written by the victors is especially bullshit in the immediate post-war era; first off the US Army did not want to be 'defeated by victory' and spent an ample amount of time studying the enemy methods and documents - this put a lot of German ideas in the air during the discussions and formation of historiography. More importantly, the 'Iron Curtain' fell across Europe shortly after the end of WWII which meant that for 50-odd years we had minimal to nonexistant exposure to Soviet sources about their own war effort. It meant that, for lack of sources, we had to rely on German primary and secondary studies of their Eastern Front. They had a complete monopoly on how we could view the Russian front of WWII. These effects are only slowly unraveling now, and we're starting to see some real improvements to the historiography on that subject. However, much of Russia's war documents remain classified, unlike the Germans (total defeat means total disclosure) so its going to be a long, uphill battle to get all the facts out.

Never before, to my knowledge, had a defeated enemy been allowed to be so vocal on the events of the war as he saw it.

No. Often it is written by the losers.

https://www.amazon.de/Lost-Victories-Brilliant-Military-Classics/dp/0760320543/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&keywords=lost+victories&qid=1570352411&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.de/Erinnerungen-Albert-Speer/dp/3548367321/ref=sr_1_5?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&keywords=albert+speer&qid=1570352378&sr=8-5

https://www.amazon.de/Panzer-Battles-F-Von-Mellenthin/dp/1862274592/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&keywords=franz+von+mellenthin&qid=1570352399&sr=8-2-fkmr0

And yes, this was a war against evil. It is as close to a black-and-white conflict as it gets. Their atrocities can't even compare.

For a well paced German perspective on the battle for Poland, France and Russia, check out Von Mamstein's memoirs. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0760320543?pc_redir=1404151296&robot_redir=1

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Victories-Memoirs-Hitlers-Brilliant/dp/0760320543
Very good book in my opinion, FM Erich von Manstein was Hitler's greatest strategist