War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941, by Geoffrey Megargee

Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Pp. xvi, 175. Illus., maps, append., notes, biblio., index. $19.95 paper. ISBN:0742544826.

Combining evidence from untapped German documents and the wealth of scholarship on the Eastern Front, Geoffrey Megargee, of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, provides a concise and quite comprehensive look at the German campaign against Russia , from the initial planning through the invasion of June 1941 and to the end of that year. 

In the process, he makes it clear that from the start, regardless of what they said or wrote later, all senior German military commanders were cognizant of the genocidal intentions of Hitler and the Nazi Party, offering little or no objection, and that many of them cooperated willingly in the program.  The book looks at events both at the front and behind it, providing detailed, grim evidence directly from German sources. 

War of Annihilation is an essential work for anyone with an interest in the Second World War.

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