Das Reich: Amazon.ca: James Lucas: Books

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Lucas, a prolific British writer of popular military history, proposes to tell the story of the Reich's 2nd SS Panzer Division by relying heavily on personal accounts and an unofficial divisional archive. The book substantiates the familiar datum that the elite division of the Waffen SS were both skilled soldiers and formidable warriors. But Lucas fails to develop the forces behind this behavior. He eschews serious discussion of recruitment, training and, above all, ideology. He attempts to justify this by stressing the division's military role, but the Waffen-SS were not "soldiers like all the rest." They were instead shock troops of an ideological war. By ignoring this dimension of his subject, Lucas gives us Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. A history of this kind need not focus entirely on the atrocities committed by the Waffen-SS. But a courageous, fair-minded treatment of the role of Nazi ideology in shaping the 2nd SS Panzer Division as a military instrument would have done much to make the book something other than a one-sided, misleading apologia for its subject. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Book Description

The 2nd SS Division was an elite, highly trained fighting force that saw action in some of World War II's bloodiest battles. Especially in the Eastern front, these often included close-quarter, hand-to-hand combat. Starting with the organization and recruitment of the division and following it throughout the war, the story of this evil but powerful force unfolds through reminiscences by many of the unit's men, along with photographs and other memorabilia.

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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

3.2 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)

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2.0 out of 5 stars History without context, April 5 2003

By

michael d thornley (White Rock, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Das Reich (Paperback)

I have recently finished this book, and I must echo the others in their criticism of its inability to answer any difficult questions. I was also put off by spelling mistakes, poor grammar, and bad maps. (The incessant use of "gain touch" when "gain contact" was the intended words were especially irritating.) It succeeded in its goal of being a history of the "Military Role" of 'Das Reich,' but I found it was just that - a chronological order of some of the engagements 'Das Reich' fought in. History without context to the greater conflict surrounding the division.

--Mike

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3.0 out of 5 stars To Judge Evil, One Must First Label It as Evil, Jan 20 2003

By

Martin Asiner (jersey city, nj United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Das Reich (Paperback)

The fighting arm of the SS, the Waffen SS, were really no more than a microcosm of the Nazi state itself. Under Adolf Hitler, the entire military, political, economic, and philosophical underpinning of his warped National Socialistic viewpoint was dedicated to world conquest and racial cleansing. The regular German Army units, the Wehrmacht, were given the majority of the responsibility for the first, but Hitler assigned the second to his more trusted arm, the Waffen SS. In DAS REICH, James Lucas chronicles the rise and fall of one of Hitler's most infamous units, the 2nd SS, known as 'Das Reich.' Since the end of the war, historians have had some moral and ethical difficulties in evaluating and judging the phenomenon that was an inextricable part of the Nazi machinery that led to the deaths of millions of innocent non-combatants. Lucas addresses this difficulty in his preface as he notes: "To present an objective history of an SS division attracted violent criticism because the general public accepted, without question, that the whole SS organization was criminal and, thus by inference, each man who had served in it was a felon." Not only does Lucas attack the view that the public ought to evaluate the Waffen SS as a military collection of felons, he defends it on the grounds of its fighting prowess. Lucas notes that 'the physical, mental, and moral standards were set so high that only a minority of those who volunteered were accepted.' It is difficult for the reader to accept such indirect praise without a numbing sense of disbelief. If the moral bar for each potential SS recruit were so high, then I would like to know what scale Lucas used to establish who got in and who did not. Reichsfuhrer of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, made it crystal clear that the entire apparatus of the SS was set to match the racial theories of Hitler. Any recruit who did not see eye to eye with that would not have been given a chance to prove his combat readiness in the first place.

'Das Reich' was actually quite similar to other well-known SS regiments: 'Leibstandardt,' 'Totenkampf,' and 'Germania.' No one questions, and I certainly do not contest that any Waffen SS division was not a formidable fighting force. For Hitler, and presumably for Lucas as well, such prowess was in and of itself quite sufficient to justify its existence and excuse its excesses during the Second World War. Such excesses can easily be buried under a mountain of charts, interviews, and statistics that inevitably accompany any major battle. In Lucas' first chapter, 'The Campaign in Poland,' he presents a side of the campaign that might have been written by Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The attacking SS forces are described as heroically 'exposing themselve to a Polish fire which struck them as soon as they began their uphill advance.' What emerges from this account is a story that is only partly told. Nowhere in this book, does Lucas address the troubling and thoroughly documented evidence that all arms of the SS were involved in the genocide that we now call the Holocaust. Lucas' ommissions are breathtaking: the Blitzkrieg, the camps, the bloody slaughters in Poland and Russia, the Malmedy Massacre in France. To a new generation that sees such a blackbooted organization as 'Das Reich' only in the glowing terms that Lucas presents, then the generation following that generation may retrod down a bitter path that ought never have been visited in the first place.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Unfortunate Silence, Nov 27 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Das Reich (Paperback)

While I enjoyed Lucas' portrayal of SS training and military conquests, he intentionally leaves out definitive aspects of this divisions history. While the reader is enlightened with every imaginable detail of triumph and bravery, he is silent on "The Malmedy Massacre" as well as any other atrocity this force undertook. A short paragraph entails that "all divisions, no matter what their origin, undertook atrocities, and I shall not mention them here." Makes one question the validity of this book, and scoff at the apparent propaganda contained within. I wouldn't recommend this unless you have a thorough understanding of this portion of history, as it will intentionally paint a biased picture concerning "Das Reich."

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Most recent customer reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, but uncritical
A divisional history straight through from pre-war mobilisation to surrender in 1945. My reading of the book falls some way between the conclusions of the first two reviewers. Read more

Published on July 21 2002 by MR C G C TEVENDALE

3.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, but uncritical
A divisional history straight through from pre-war mobilisation to surrender in 1945. My reading of the book falls some way between the conclusions of the first two reviewers. Read more

Published on July 21 2002 by MR C G C TEVENDALE