Kesselring: German Master Strategist of the Second World War (Greenhill Military Paperbacks)

Rating:
Summary: great General, mediocre biography
Review: This book is back in print! Greenhill books is publishing it. This book is better than Macksey's Guderian and it even seems that Macksey believes that Kesselring was the superior strategist compared to Guderian. You always new that the Field Marshal was one of the top German generals based on the German's defensive efforts in Italy and now you can finally know this amazing man. Macksey points out that Kesselring's lack of publicity was usually due to his modesty and unwillingness to "play the German propaganda machine" as Rommel did through out his career. From World War I, the rise of the Luftwaffe, the battle of Britain, Barbarossa, and finally the Mediterranean front, Kesselring's genius and mistakes are covered in detail. In the end you realize that Kesselring stood near the top of Germany's World War II generals. Macksey is brings Kesselring alive in his book and by the end of the book you may discover what I did -- empathy for this amazing man.

Rating:
Summary: The first and only accurate biography of this master strateg
Review: This book is back in print! Greenhill books is publishing it. This book is better than Macksey's Guderian and it even seems that Macksey believes that Kesselring was the superior strategist compared to Guderian. You always new that the Field Marshal was one of the top German generals based on the German's defensive efforts in Italy and now you can finally know this amazing man. Macksey points out that Kesselring's lack of publicity was usually due to his modesty and unwillingness to "play the German propaganda machine" as Rommel did through out his career. From World War I, the rise of the Luftwaffe, the battle of Britain, Barbarossa, and finally the Mediterranean front, Kesselring's genius and mistakes are covered in detail. In the end you realize that Kesselring stood near the top of Germany's World War II generals. Macksey is brings Kesselring alive in his book and by the end of the book you may discover what I did -- empathy for this amazing man.

Rating:
Summary: great General, mediocre biography
Review: This isn't a very well written book; it is positively fawning of Kesselring and occasionally unfair his foes (the slighting of Rommel is relentless.) Curiously, after finishing it, I wondered if Kesselring can really be termed a strategist at all in the classical sense. Throughout Kesselring's expertise is proven at the operational level, but I could find only one example of Kesselring's decisionmaking or views impacting effecting strategy -- the fighting in North Africa after El Alamein/Torch. Kesselring is portraited as consistently urging a fight for Tunisia, as opposed to the depressed Rommel, who counsels withdrawal to the mainland. Kesselring wins the argument, and the result is one of Germany's most catastrophic defeats, and certainly its most preventable -- the surrender of 345,000 battle-hardened men, irreplacable tanks and mountains of equipment stores at Tunis. In hindsight it seems unarguable that Kesselring's 'defend Tunisia' viewpoint (which crammed in resources Hitler denied Rommel previosly and desperately needed on the Eastern Front) was disaster strategically despite his operational successes there, yet Macksey never addresses this phenominal blunder, one would assume because Kesselring's advice was clearly wrong.

We are constantly told by the author how brilliant Kesselring was but he doesn't produce many compelling examples to show it. One example is laughable -- Kesselring is praised because he forbid planes to fly with defective bombs that were exploding in mid-air (would only average commanders have allowed flights to continue?!?!?) While Kesselring is portrayed as diplomatic (rare among Hitler's generals), common sense, an optimist who made do with the resources he had, steady in crisis, sound in judgement, and a quite capable handler of troops, the fact remains that he had the easiest task of any of the Third Reich's commanders in the last two years of the war -- defend the mountainous Italian peninsula (so narrow that his flank couldn't be threatened) against a minimal allied force.

I looked forward to the book's last chapter on Kesselring's controversial postwar trial with anticipation but the specific issues of guilt in the charges are never clearly explained. As with the rest of the book, the author's favorable view of his subject in this section is dominant at the expense of even informing the reader, much less being able to inform the reader without bias.