Defeat in the West

4.2/5 ( ratings)

"The best and most vivid account of the German collapse." Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Sunday Times

“Ambitiously enough this volume was begun with a threefold object — to tell the story of the defeat of the German Wehrmacht in the West, to suggest some of the causes that brought about that defeat, and finally to show how men, both great and small, react to the overwhelming, psychological experience of defeat itself.”

Milton Shulman’s Defeat in the West is a detailed and thorough account of the reasons behind Germany’s loss of World War 2.

Among these reasons, Shulman firmly places the responsibility for the magnitude of lost lives at the feet of Adolf Hitler. A combination of the Fuhrer’s military ineptness, his refusal to take advice and his unique position of power made victory in WWII much less likely for Germany.

Shulman also gives an account of the major military mistakes made by the German Army — beginning a war with Russia on the eastern front, declaring war on the U.S., and the decisive losses in North Africa.

Defeat in the West is an important addition to WWII military history and a must-read for those interested in the subject.

“An evaluation of the causes of German defeat, analyzed from interrogations of senior German officers, and a pre-D-day study of the German army, by an officer of the Intelligence Staff of the First Canadian Army.” Kirkus Reviews

"His account of the strange relations between Hitler and the German General Staff is most revealing." The Canadian Historical Review

"The sources that he has utilized are impressive. They consist essentially of Anglo-American intelligence summaries, which often incorporated captured German documents, of the published records of the Nuremberg Trial, and of his own and other interrogations of German officers." Saturday Review

Milton Shulman was a Canadian author, film and theatre critic. He joined the Canadian Army in 1944 as a major and by the war's end he was an intelligence officer with the First Canadian Army. He interviewed many of the captured German generals in the following months and years including Gerd von Rundstedt and Kurt Meyer. As a result of these interviews he wrote the classic Second World War military history Defeat in the West.