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IN his book Germany, Hitler, and World War II, Gerhard Weinberg accurately pointed out that historians have typically focused upon German strategy in the war's early phases, but have neglected it after 1943 in favor of examining Allied planning and operations. The prevailing view is that everyone, including most of the Third Reich's leadership, recognized that the war had been militarily decided by this point and that German defeat was inevitable. Therefore, particularly after the sucess of the Allied invasion in Normandy, Nazi Germany is viewed as having had no real, coherent strategy, only a series of desperate and disjointed improvisations aimed at delaying defeat for no real purpose. Weinberg persuasively argues that such a view is inaccurate and that the Reich's leaders continued to believe that the war could yet be won. He compellingly addresses Nazi plans for victory through the summer of 1944 and suggests that even after that late date, the Nazi hierarchy continued to expect to turn the tide of the war.1
A number of other recent works suggest that Weinberg's argument is correct. Some address specific campaigns, chronicling the bitter, if sometimes sporadic and unpredictable, resistance which Allied forces continued to encounter well into April 1945.2 Others dissect the views which led Hitler, most of his influential lieutenants, and some average Germans to favor continuing the pursuit of victory no matter the cost.3 Other accounts, some of which are unpublished, explore key aspects of Nazi strategy in 1944-45, and reveal that continued German resistance, when viewed from the ideological perspective of the Reich's leaders, was not merely the result of habit, spite, the Allied call for unconditional surrender, or a desire to fulfill some Wagnerian fantasy. Indeed, many of the Third Reich's leaders continued to hope, plan, and work to reverse the course of the war, and during the fall of 1944 began implementing a broad and coherent strategy towards this end.4 This strategy was heavily influenced by National Socialist ideological preconceptions, and as a result of being based on such wild inaccuracies, it bore little real chance of success. Nonetheless, as Weinberg argues, the actions of the Third Reich in its final year of existence are much more consistent and coherent, both within themselves and with earlier German actions,...