More than 60 years after their utter defeat & surrender, the Nazi army, navy & air force are still remembered as the best organized, best trained, best equipped & most formidable fighting forces of their day. The same can be said of the massive German army that battled under Kaiser Wilhelm a generation earlier. Led by brilliant generals & backed by state-of-the-art munitions industries, these military organizations struck terror in the hearts of enemies & allies alike. So, why did they lose? In this account of the failed German war machine, military historian Kenneth Macksey reveals that Germany's catastrophic failures had little to do with the random fortunes of war, but were the inevitable result of its military structure, leadership & history. Its great strengths—inspired generals & strategists, the innovative development of military forces, & the skill & tenacity of its fighting men—were repeatedly undermined by short-term war policies, arrogance & a tendency to believe its own propaganda, & the politicization of military staffs. These flaws, problematic even in Germany's 19th century victories, became fatal when combined with 20th century dreams of world dominion. Complete with campaign maps, command-structure charts & lists of major German military leaders, Why the Germans Lose at War combines military & political analysis with a cautionary tale for any nation seeking world rule thru force alone. Macksey is author of Guderian: Panzer General, Rommel: Campaigns & Battles, & the "alternate history" Invasion: The German Invasion of England. July 1940.
Author
British author and historian who specialized in military history and military biography, particularly of the Second World War. Macksey was commissioned in the Royal Armoured Corps and served during the Second World War (earning the Military Cross under the command of Percy Hobart). Macksey later wrote the (authoritative) biography of Hobart.Macksey gained a permanent commission in 1946, was transferred to the Royal Tank Regiment in 1947, reached the rank of major in 1957 and retired from the Army in 1968. Amongst many other books, Macksey wrote two volumes of alternate history, one, entitled Invasion, dealt with a successful invasion of England by Germany in 1940 and the other describing a NATO–Warsaw Pact clash in the late 1980s. The latter book was done under contract to the Canadian Forces and focuses on the Canadian role in such a conflict. He was an editor and contributor to Greenhill's Alternate Decisions series since 1995. In Macksey's Guderian – Panzer General, he refuted the view of historian Sir Basil Liddell-Hart regarding Hart's influence on the development of German Tank Theory in the years leading up to 1939.
