Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich

In Hitler's Army, Bartov focuses on the titanic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union--where the vast majority of German troops fought--to show how the savagery of war reshaped the army in Hitler's image. Both brutalized and brutalizing, these soldiers needed to see their bitter sacrifices as noble patriotism and to justify their own atrocities by seeing their victims as subhuman. In the unprecedented ferocity and catastrophic losses of the Eastrn front, he writes, soldiers embraced the idea that the war was a defense of civilization against Jewish/Bolshevik barbarism, a war of racial survival to be waged at all costs. Bartov descibes the incredible scale and destruction of the invasion of Russia in horrific detail. Even in the first months--often depicted as a time of easy victories--undermanned and ill-equipped Geman units were stretched to the breaking point by vast distances and bitter Soviet resistance. Facing scarce supplies and enormous casualties, the average soldier sank to ta a primitive level of existence, re-experiencing the trench warfare of World War I under the most extreme weather conditions imaginable; the fighting itself was savage, and massacrs of prisoners were common. Troops looted food and supplies from civilians with wild abandon; they mercilessly wiped out villages suspected of aiding partisans. Incredible losses led to recruits being thrown together in units that once had been filled with men from the same communities, making Nazi ideology even more important as a binding force. And they were further brutalized by a military justice system that executed almost 15,000 German soldiers during the war. Bartov goes on to explore letters, diaries, military reports, and other sources, showing how widespread Hitler's views became among common fighting men--men who grew up, he reminds us, under the Nazi regime. In the end, they truly became Hitler's army.

In six years of warfare, the vast majority of German men passed through the Wehrmacht and almost every family had a relative who fought in the East. Bartov's powerful new account of how deeply Nazi ideology penetrated the army sheds new light on how deeply it penetrated the nation. Hitler's Army makes an important correction not merely to the historical record but to how we see the world today.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
4 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

Poorly researched, Flawed Methodology, Sweeping generalizations, , 2006-12-04
It seems like Bartov decided upon the results of his research first, then cherry-picked whatever sources he could find to "demonstrate" that the Wehrmacht became "nazified". He makes sweeping generalisations based upon flimsy evidence and poor logic, then expands upon the results to make even more flawed conclusions.
For an excellent critique, see

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6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

unconvincing and too long, 2006-05-26
The book is actually rather short, less than 200 pages. But the book might have been better received by me if it were an article. First off, Bartov includes too many sources and excerpts most of which demonstrate the same point, over and over. Additionally most of the excerpts were not necessarily of exception quality, which meant the reader reads account after account of the same type of entries about ideology or the horror of war. At one point, it was just better to read only one excerpt and skip the rest.

Bartov also just simply doesn't convince me of his thesis. In the last three chapters, there were so many excerpts I simply forgot what he was trying to prove. And when he did go back to his ideas, he would suddenly make, in my opinion, great leaps of logic. After a few excepts he might say something like, that demonstrated that the soldiers were completely indoctrinated in Nazi ideology. Well, I'm not so convinced because even though they were fed propaganda, who is to say they didn't already have their predispositions and prejudices against "jewish bolschevism," before joining the army, and more importantly, before Hitler even came to power? He also concludes at the end that the Germans removed themselves from hitler and made themselves victims and that, so-to-speak, "others" committed the crimes of WWII, whether it be on the east front or Holocaust. Regardless of whether or not that's true, the conclusion came seemingly out of nowhere and I have a hard time believing his statement, because he doesn't explain it. He doesn't explain how they remove themselves, etc.

Lastly, this is probably just a pet peeve, but I hate how random german words pop up in excerpts and in the text that aren't translated, but others are. He talks about an author having heard a veteran in a "german Kneipe," but didn't bother translating it to bar. Or in my translated texts, he leaves some german phrases in brackets. I just find it redundant and at the very least, inconsistent.

The first chapter, however, is a rather good description of "demodernization on the front," and worth reading. The rest of it is rather, mediocre.


7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

The worst book I ever read about the Wehrmacht, 2006-03-03
Bartovs dubious method to prove that the German soldiers were influenced by Nazi-Ideology by using letters which were edited by the german Ministry of Propaganda (!!!!), isn't a serious scientific method. He selects his sources with view to his wished findings and ignores many other, more scientific editions of letters of German soldiers, because they would contradict his theories.
In some cases he has interesting ideas, but he can't prove them by sources. In general he simplifies to much and doesn't try to get a more differentiated view.
There are much better books which fulfil scientific claims, like the books of Wolfram Wette, Harald Welzer, Hannes Heer and Gerd Ueberschär - but they aren't translated up to now. Maybe "The War behind the Eastern Front" from Alexander Hill is an alternative.


1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Interesting if at times bland, 2006-02-19
Bartov's book focuses on the German Army fighting on the Eastern Front. Bartov challenges the previous, although outdated, thought that the German military was apolitical and a wholly professional fighting force. The author points out that the Army was eventually molded in Hitler's image, with the army eventually seeing the war as a fight to defend German civilization from Jews and Bolsheviks. Although I don't agree with every little detail of the book, it is very interesting. The only downfall is that Bartov does tend to repeat himself and that the book can be dry at times. Still, though, it is worth a read.


10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

Absorbing and Thoughtful Book On Eastern Front!, 2002-09-26
One of the most troubling and horrific aspects of the four-year long Eastern campaign begun in June 1941 by the Germans is the effect it had on their soldiers, who were pounded mercilessly by the evolving circumstances of the battle month after month along a thousand mile front. When that front gradually turned into a quicksilver panorama of different conflicts in quick succession over a variety of terrain, against an ever-changing cast of millions of Russian soldiers, the war became a living hell for the foot soldier of the Wehrmacht.

In this excellent exposition by Harvard fellow Bartov, the focus remains on the nature of the blood-thirsty struggle between the forces of the Wehrmacht on the one hand, and their seemingly indefatiguable Soviet opponents on the other. From the beginning the Germans were horrified by the fighting ferocity of their foes, who would fight literally until they were dead, who seldom surrendered, and who seemed propelled by an energy and life-force quite unlike anything the Germans had witnessed up to that point. They would fight until the ammunition was exhausted, and then fight on with fixed bayonets, with swords, and with knives, hand to hand, until they were all dead.

Of course, the Germans were no strangers to savage warfare, and had been forged in the crucible of prior conflicts into a rugged hardiness that made them formidable foes indeed. Yet they were singularly unprepared for the energy and determination the Russians showed them at every turn. The experience was quite educational, and made the Germans even more savage in their own execution of the war. Given the long chain for logistics support and the elusive nature of the much-hoped for collapse of the Soviet Army and a subsequent capitulation by the communist regime, the average German foot soldier found himself forced to commit his own series of personal day to day atrocities just to survive in the harsh and unforgiving winter conditions of rural, agrarian Russia.

This tome is an explorations of the depths of depravity and savage circumstances the German soldier found himself subjected to, and how this experience molded him more and more into the shape of the Hitlerian conception of the Eastern war as a war for the survival of the Aryan race against the sub-human Slavic hordes. Seen in this way, the German soldier fought for the survival not of himself and his comrades, but for the survival of the German race as well. Given the extraordinary set of existential circumstances present, it is not hard to understand how Hitler's world view and his racist ideas eventually became so widespread and so fervently believed among the German troops along the Eastern front. Stripped of their original comrades, and thrown together into a constantly changing set of organizations with an ever-changing cast of individual players, 0ne found oneself more and more hypnotized by the facile rhetoric and actions of the Third Reich. This is an absorbing and thought-provoking book, and one I am sure you will take pleasure in reading. Enjoy!

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