Kenneth Macksey - The Hitler Options: Alternate Decisions of World War II

The Hitler Options

A Greenhill Book

Greenhill
Books

First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Greenhill Books, Lionel Leventhal Limited
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This paperback edition published in 2014 by Frontline Books

an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
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Each chapter its author, 1995
The collected work and maps Lionel Leventhal Ltd, 1995

The right of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN: 978-1-84832-780-1
PDF ISBN: 978-1-47384-246-5
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-47384-247-2
PRC ISBN: 978-1-47384-248-9

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Contents

KENNETH MACKSEY

BRYAN PERRETT

JAMES LUCAS

PETER G. TSOURAS

STEPHEN HOWARTH

GENERAL SIR WILLIAM JACKSON

JOHN H. GILL

DR. ALFRED PRICE

CHARLES MESSENGER

MAJOR TIM KILVERT-JONES

List of Illustrations and Maps

Illustrations

Maps

Contributors

JOHN H. GILL holds degrees from Middlebury College and The George Washington University. A lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, he is assigned to the Pentagon and lives in Virginia. He is the author of With Eagles to Glory: Napoleon and His German Allies in the 1809 Campaign, as well as numerous articles in British and American journals.

STEPHEN HOWARTH is a retired officer of the Royal Naval Reserve and author of several books on naval, maritime and general history. These include Morning Glory: A History of the Imperial Japanese Navy 18951945; August 39: The Last Four Weeks of Peace; To Shining Sea: A History of the United States Navy 17751991; and (as joint editor with Derek Law, and contributor) The Battle of the Atlantic 19391945: The 50th Anniversary International Naval Conference. With his late father, the historian David Howarth, he co-wrote Nelson: The Immortal Memory. He also writes articles, reviews and obituaries for a wide variety of periodicals. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Historical Society.

GENERAL SIR WILLIAM JACKSON served the Crown for fifty years. He was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1937, and during the War saw action in Norway, North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Malaya. His last appointment in the Army was as Quartermaster-General in four star rank. He then went to Gibraltar as governor and C-in-C in 1978, and on his return in 1982 he joined the Cabinet Office Historical Section, writing the last three volumes of the British Official History of the Mediterranean Campaigns. The final volume was published in 1987, when he retired. So far he has written nearly twenty books, mainly on military history, including Overlord: Normandy 1944 in the Imperial War Museum Strategy Series.

MAJOR TIM KILVERT-JONES joined his Regiment (The Royal Welch Fusiliers) in Germany in 1982. He went on to serve in Northern Ireland, Britain and the Middle East, before attending a weapons staff course at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham in 1989 followed by Staff College, Camberley in 1990. He was posted in December 1990 to Headquarters 3rd Armored Division BAOR, and in November 1992 he returned to the United Kingdom and his Regiment to command a Rifle Company in Northern Ireland, Tidworth and Canada.

JAMES LUCAS fought as an infantryman in the Tunisian and the Italian campaigns of World War Two before going on to serve in Austria in the Army of Occupation. After demobilization he worked in the Foreign Office and then the University of London, before joining the staff of the Imperial War Museum in 1960. On retiring in 1986 he became a full-time author and has had more than thirty books published. He has also contributed to military journals, and has led several battlefield tours in Western Europe. For many years he was Secretary of the British Section of the Confederation Europene des Anciens Combattants.

KENNETH MACKSEY, the editor of this book, served in the Royal Tank Regiment from 1941 to 1967. He is now known internationally as a military historian, his 40 books including Invasion: The German Invasion of England, July 1940; Guderian: Panzer General; and The Penguin Encyclopedia of Modem Warfare.

CHARLES MESSENGER served as a Regular Officer in the Royal Tank Regiment for 21 years and subsequently for a further 13 years in the Territorial Army. He is both a military historian and defense analyst, and the author of numerous books on Second World War topics. These include The Art of Blitzkrieg: Bomber Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive, 19391945; World War Two Chronological Atlas; and biographies of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt and SS General Sepp Dietrich. He has recently written a hisotry of the British Infantry, For Love of Regiment, and a review of twentieth-century warfare, The Century of Warfare, based on an international TV/video series of that name for which he was the scriptwriter and historical advisor.

BRYAN PERRETT served as an officer in the royal Tank Regiment and is now a military historian. He has contributed to numerous military journals, and was defense correspondent for an English newspaper during the Falklands and Gulf Wars. His books include Desert Warfare; A History of Blitzkrieg; Knights of the Black Cross: Hitlers Panzerwaffe and its Leaders; Last Stand!Famous Battles against the odds; At All Costs!Stories of Impossible Victories; and Seize and Hold: Master Strokes of the Battlefield.

DR. ALFRED PRICE served in the Royal Air Force as an aircrew officer, and, in a flying career spanning fifteen years, specialized in electronic warfare and air fighting tactics. In 1974 he left the Service to become a full-time author and has published more than 40 books and over a hundred magazine articles. Several of his books have become standard reference works on their respective subjects including Instruments of Darkness on the history of electronic warfare, Aircraft versus Submarines on the history of airborne anti-submarine warfare, The Hardest Day on the Battle of Britain, and The Spitfire Story. With U.S. writer Jeffrey Ethell he co-authored World War II Fighting Jets, One Day in a Long War on the air war over North Vietnam, and Air War South Atlantic on the Falklands conflict. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

PETER G. TSOURAS served on active duty in the U.S. Army in Germany, and is now a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. As analyst at the U.S. Army Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center, Washington, D.C., he specializes in twentieth-century European history and its interpretation. He is the author of Disaster at D-Day: The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944;