Jackboot; A History of the German Soldier

New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1995. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Format is approximately 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches. xviii, 237, [1] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Sources. Index. John Laffin (21 September 1922-23 September 2000) was an Australian military historian. In 1941 he enlisted as a Private into the 2nd Australian Imperial Force, subsequently being commissioned as an officer and going on to see active service in the New Guinea campaign in World War II. After the war, Laffin worked for a number of newspapers and magazines and began his own feature service and editing unit. In the early 1960s, he began writing military histories, which after a few years sold well enough to allow him to earn a living as a professional military historian and writer, as well as intermittent pieces of journalism in the field. Laffin was a prodigious author, producing works regularly for publication on a range of modern military history subjects, ranging from conflicts in the Middle East, the Falklands War, and World War II, but the central subject that he returned to repeatedly was the British experience of World War I. In the field of World War I history he castigated the British Army High Command's conduct of military operations in the war as being profligate with the lives of its soldiers. Laffin was the instigator behind the creation of the Australian Corps Memorial Park, at Le Hamel, France, dedicated to the Australian troops who served on the Western Front in World War I. He also founded the Families & Friends of the 1st Australian Imperial Force, a society dedicated to maintaining the historical and cultural memory of the men of Australia's primary expeditionary force that fought in WWI Traces the influences which have shaped the character of the German army from the time of Frederick the Great to the end of World War II. The author sets out to reestablish the reputation for which the German soldier was once renowned, and which was distorted by Nazi atrocities. John Laffin believed that for too long the image of the German soldier has been distorted by the political crimes and atrocities of the Nazis. It is time that the ordinary German soldier was given his due. Such is the aim of "Jackboot," which traces the background and influences that have shaped the character of the German soldier from the time of Frederick the Great to the end of World War II. "Every German," declares Laffin, "is a born soldier. He breathes war, he is imbued with it, he glorifies it. He has the virus quality of aggression and fortitude in his blood." These and other qualities, such as manliness, courage and an unfailing response to discipline, even his arrogance, are based on a military tradition that owes its origin to Frederick the Great. For he was the man who made Prussia into a strong military nation, who trained and built up a powerful army without equal in Europe. He was also the man Hitler most wanted to be like. The ability of Frederick's army to recover and hit back in the face of tremendous odds is one of the chief qualities inherited by the German army and one which, as at Amiens in 1918 and the Ardennes in 1945, has been demonstrated time and again.