{"title":"Edward B Westermann","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"drunk-on-genocide-book-edward-b-westermann-9781501770159","title":"Drunk on Genocide","description":"In Drunk on Genocide, Edward B. Westermann reveals how, over the course of the Third Reich, scenes involving alcohol consumption and revelry among the SS and police became a routine part of rituals of humiliation in the camps, ghettos, and killing fields of Eastern Europe.    Westermann draws on a vast range of newly unearthed material to explore how alcohol consumption served as a literal and metaphorical lubricant for mass murder. It facilitated \"performative masculinity,\" expressly linked to physical or sexual violence. Such inebriated exhibitions extended from meetings of top Nazi officials to the rank and file, celebrating at the grave sites of their victims. Westermann argues that, contrary to the common misconception of the SS and police as stone-cold killers, they were, in fact, intoxicated with the act of murder itself.   Drunk on Genocide highlights the intersections of masculinity, drinking ritual, sexual violence, and mass murder to expose the role of alcohol and celebratory ritual in the Nazi genocide of European Jews. Its surprising and disturbing findings offer a new perspective on the mindset, motivation, and mentality of killers as they prepared for, and participated in, mass extermination.   Published in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745876943121,"sku":"NGR9781501770159","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51031210590481,"sku":"NIN9781501770159","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1501770152.jpg?v=1757416290"},{"product_id":"flak-book-edward-b-westermann-9780700614202","title":"Flak","description":"Long the neglected stepchild in studies of World War II air campaigns, German anti-aircraft units have been frequently dismissed by historians as ineffective weapons that wasted valuable resources. Edward Westermann disagrees with that view and makes a convincing case for the contributions made by the range of German anti-aircraft defenses.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49787417297169,"sku":"CIN0700614206G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50961675419921,"sku":"GOR006349809","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51694352990481,"sku":"CIN0700614206VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0700614206.jpg?v=1761387731"},{"product_id":"drunk-on-genocide-book-edward-b-westermann-9781501754197","title":"Drunk on Genocide","description":"In Drunk on Genocide, Edward B. Westermann reveals how, over the course of the Third Reich, scenes involving alcohol consumption and revelry among the SS and police became a routine part of rituals of humiliation in the camps, ghettos, and killing fields of Eastern Europe.    Westermann draws on a vast range of newly unearthed material to explore how alcohol consumption served as a literal and metaphorical lubricant for mass murder. It facilitated \"performative masculinity,\" expressly linked to physical or sexual violence. Such inebriated exhibitions extended from meetings of top Nazi officials to the rank and file, celebrating at the grave sites of their victims. Westermann argues that, contrary to the common misconception of the SS and police as stone-cold killers, they were, in fact, intoxicated with the act of murder itself.    Drunk on Genocide highlights the intersections of masculinity, drinking ritual, sexual violence, and mass murder to expose the role of alcohol and celebratory ritual in the Nazi genocide of European Jews. Its surprising and disturbing findings offer a new perspective on the mindset, motivation, and mentality of killers as they prepared for, and participated in, mass extermination.   Published in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51031129981201,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51031132733713,"sku":"NIN9781501754197","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/150175419X.jpg?v=1757413517"},{"product_id":"limits-of-soviet-airpower-book-edward-b-westermann-9781288369607","title":"The Limits of Soviet Airpower","description":"This manuscript analyzes the failure of Soviet air and ground forces to defeat the Afghan mujahideen during the nine-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In pursuit of this objective, Soviet military strategy underwent a process of increasing radicalization that eventually resulted in a sanctioned policy of terror by Soviet air and land forces. During this period, airpower played a critical role in this campaign of terror by providing the platforms for punitive bombardment, chemical attack, aerial mining, troop insertion, and fire support. The ability of a relatively ill-equipped and technologically inferior opponent to force the eventual withdrawal of one of the world's most vaunted military powers has broader implications for contemporary political and military leaders. Soviet military operations against the mujahideen in Afghanistan, from December 1979 until the withdrawal of the Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces in February 1989, provide an instructive case study for evaluating the efficacy of airpower as an instrument of coercion. The Afghanistan example offers an excellent historical case for measuring the inherent limitations of airpower as a coercive instrument in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51222142451985,"sku":"NIN9781288369607","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1288369603.jpg?v=1751369196"},{"product_id":"hitler-s-ostkrieg-and-the-indian-wars-book-edward-b-westermann-9780806164670","title":"Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars","description":"As he prepared to wage his war of annihilation on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler repeatedly drew parallels between the Nazi quest for Lebensraum in Eastern Europe and the US's westward expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny. Edward Westermann examines the validity, and value, of this claim in this volume.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52129777942801,"sku":"NLS9780806164670","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780806164670.jpg?v=1767349759"},{"product_id":"hitler-s-ostkrieg-and-the-indian-wars-book-edward-b-westermann-9780806154336","title":"Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars","description":"As he prepared to wage his war of annihilation on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler repeatedly drew parallels between the Nazi quest for Lebensraum and the United States's westward expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny. Edward Westermann examines the validity, and value, of this claim in this study.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52130970140945,"sku":"NLS9780806154336","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780806154336.jpg?v=1767355425"},{"product_id":"hitler-s-police-battalions-book-edward-b-westermann-9780700617241","title":"Hitler's Police Battalions","description":"When the German Wehrmacht swarmed across Eastern Europe, an elite corps followed close at its heels. Along with the SS and Gestapo, the Ordnungspolizei, or Uniformed Police, played a central role in Nazi genocide that until now has been generally neglected by historians of the war.  Beginning with the invasion of Poland, the Uniformed Police were charged with following the army to curb resistance, pacify the countryside, patrol Jewish ghettos, and generally maintain order in the conquered territories. Edward Westermann examines how this force emerged as a primary instrument of annihilation, responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of the Third Reich’s political and racial enemies. In Hitler’s Police Battalions he reveals how the institutional mindset of these “ordinary policemen” allowed them to commit atrocities without a second thought.  Westermann reveals initiatives pursued before the war by Heinrich Himmler and Kurt Daluege to create a culture within the existing police forces that fostered anti-Semitism and anti-Communism as institutional norms. Challenging prevailing interpretations of German culture, he draws on extensive archival research—including the testimony of former policemen—to illuminate this transformation.  Purged of dissidents, indoctrinated to idolize Hitler, and trained in military combat, these police battalions repeatedly conducted actions against Jews, Slavs, gypsies, asocials, and other groups on their own initiative, even when they had the choice not to. In addition to documenting these atrocities, Westermann examines cooperation between the Ordnungspolizei and the SS and Gestapo, and the close relationship between police and Wehrmacht in the conduct of the anti-partisan campaign.  Throughout, Westermann stresses the importance of ideological indoctrination within specific groups. It was the organizational culture of the Uniformed Police, he maintains, and not German culture in general that led these men to commit genocide. Hitler’s Police Battalions provides the most complete and comprehensive study to date of this neglected branch of Himmler’s SS and Police empire and adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Holocaust and the war on the Eastern front.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52584630059281,"sku":"NLS9780700617241","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780700617241.jpg?v=1763482970"},{"product_id":"limits-of-soviet-airpower-book-edward-b-westermann-9781025136561","title":"The Limits of Soviet Airpower","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52745678160145,"sku":"NIN9781025136561","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781025136561.jpg?v=1763513647"},{"product_id":"flak-book-edward-b-westermann-9780700611362","title":"Flak","description":"Air raid sirens wail, searchlight beams flash across the sky, and the night is aflame with tracer fire and aerial explosions, as Allied bombers and German anti-aircraft units duel in the thundering darkness. Such \"cinematic\" scenes, played out with increasing frequency as World War II ground to a close, were more than mere stock material for movie melodramas. As Edward Westermann reveals, they point to a key but largely unappreciated aspect of the German war effort that has yet to get its full due. German flak or anti-aircraft units have been frequently dismissed by American, British and German historians (and by veterans of the European air war) as ineffective weapons that wasted valuable material and personnel resources desperately needed elsewhere by the Third Reich. Westermann emphatically disagrees with that view and makes a case for the significant contributions made by the entire range of German anti-aircraft defences. During the Allied air campaigns against the Third Reich, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped upon the German homeland, killing nearly 300,000 civilians, wounding another 780,000 and destroying more than 3,500,000 industrial and residential structures. Not surprisingly, that aerial Armageddon has inspired countless studies of both the victorious Allied bombing offensive and the ultimately doomed Luftwaffe defence of its own skies. By contrast, flak units have virtually been ignored, despite the fact that they employed more than a million men and women, were responsible for more than half of all Allied aircraft losses, forced Allied bombers to fly far above high-accuracy altitudes, and thus allowed Germany to hold out for longer than it might have otherwise. Westermann's study aims to shed new light on every facet of the development and organization of this vital defence arm, including its artillery, radar, searchlight, barrage balloon, decoy sites and command components. Highlighting the convergence of technology, strategy, doctrine, politics and economics, \"Flak\" also provides revealing insights into German strategic thought, Hitler's obsession with micromanaging the war, and the lives of the members of the flak units themselves, including the large number of women, factory workers, and even POWs who participated.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53462456008977,"sku":"GOR014933479","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780700611362.jpg?v=1777182505"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-edward-b-westermann.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}