Review by Choice Review
The Wehrmacht's complicity in Hitler's racial war of annihilation in the east is no longer disputed, but the motivations that prompted complicity certainly are. In this nuanced analysis of German counterinsurgency operations in the Balkans, 1941-43, Shepherd (Glasgow Caledonian Univ., Scotland) eschews the facile explanation that Nazi ideology and indoctrination explain the genocidal conduct of German soldiers in WW II. Instead, Shepherd concludes that a multitude of diverse and disparate forces interacted, leading mid-level German commanders to demand, and their soldiers to wage, campaigns of genocide and terror in war-torn Yugoslavia. German commanders were indeed radicalized and brutalized under the Nazi regime's tutelage, but their actions were also governed by specific social, cultural, and institutional influences that were magnified by the harsh conditions, insoluble ethnic rivalries, and ruthless enemy they encountered. Influenced by his previous work on German anti-partisan operations in the Soviet Union, Shepherd mines the appropriate primary sources and cites the most recent scholarship for this latest effort. If his apologetic qualifications regarding the extant sources create doubts for some readers, these will be quickly dispelled by his adept handling of one of the most vexing issues confronting scholars of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. D. R. Snyder Austin Peay State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
