Fegelein's Horsemen and Genocidal Warfare: The SS Cavalry Brigade in the Soviet Union

ISBN-13: 9781137456311 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 261 str.

Henning Pieper

Opis

Fegelein's Horsemen and Genocidal Warfare explores the deployment of the SS Cavalry Brigade in 1941-2, with a special focus on the development of its 'dual role'. The brigade became a pacemaker of the Holocaust in Belorussia during the summer of 1941, and fought against the Red Army in the region between Toropets and Rzhev, a focal point of the eastern front, between December, 1941 and June, 1942. SS cavalrymen underwent a continuous brutalisation which saw them commit acts of mass violence with thousands of victims, a development only comparable to that of the Einsatzgruppen and battalions of the order police. Going beyond a unit history, Henning Pieper analyses the role and behavior of the brigade's personnel and places it within the context of research on perpetrators and the operational history of the Waffen-SS. Thus, military history, Holocaust research, and perpetrator history are combined in this interdisciplinary approach.

Recenzje

"Fegelein's Horsemen and Genocidal Warfare offers the first detailed study in English of the SS Cavalry Brigade as both an instrument of genocide and a combat unit in the occupied Soviet lands. ... Pieper's thoughtful and well-argued book relies on a thorough examination of archival sources. There is much to admire in this detailed, though brief study-a significant contribution to the literature on the Holocaust and the Waffen-SS." (Paul J. Wilson, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 31 (5), 2017)

"The book is fundamentally a study of what Pieper calls the SS Cavalry Brigade's 'dual role' as both a political paramilitary force with ideological goals and as a conventional military unit. ... a detailed account of a Waffen SS unit with a complex history and a penetrating study of how this unit carried out numerous atrocities. ... Pieper has produced a fascinating book of value to anyone studying the Holocaust, the SS or the Eastern Front. Highly recommended." (Jonny Briggs, The Second World War Military Operations Research Group, secondworldwaroperationsresearchgroup.wordpress.com, December, 2015)

Spis treści

Introduction 1. Elite sportsmen: The Pre-War SS-Reiterstandarten 2. Brutal Occupation: The SS Cavalry in Poland 3. The SS Cavalry Brigade and Operation 'Barbarossa' 4. Mass Violence in the Pripet Marshes 5. Partisan Warfare in the Soviet Union 6. The Winter Battle West of Moscow, 1941 - 1942 Conclusion

O autorze

Henning Pieper was educated at the Universities of Freiburg, Germany, Nottingham and Sheffield, UK. His research focuses on the Waffen-SS and Germany's difficult process of coming to terms with the Nazi past.