This book examines the effect the Verbotzeit had on the leadership structure and on the consequent position of the party within the volkisch movement. Looking primarily at Bavaria and North Germany it examines the failed attempts that were made to prevent Hitler from filling the leadership void within both the NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers' Party) and the volkisch movement.

The Cossacks who wore German uniforms saw their service not as treason to the motherland, but as an episode in the revolution of 1917, part of an ongoing struggle against Moscow and against Communism. A Wehrmacht needing men and an SS hungry for power reinterpreted or ignored Hitler's racist ideology to form entire divisions of Cossack volunteers. German offices developed relationships to their Cossacks similar to those in the French and British colonial armies. The Cossacks responded by fighting effectively and reliably on the Russian Front and in the Balkans. Their reward was forced...

Influenced by what Clausewitz termed the 'remarkable trinity' the government, the military and the people - Jablonsky studies the interaction between Churchill, the British people and the army during the Second World War.