Giziowski, Richard. The Enigma of General Blaskowitz. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1997.

532 pages
ISBN 0-7818-0503-1

Acknowledgments; Introduction; photos; maps; notes; sources; index.

Appendices: Epilogue I: War Criminal; Epilogue II: Blaskowitz's Death; Document NO-3011

I received yet another book about yet another German general with a certain amount of trepidation, as books about German generals have become something of a cottage industry these days.

This one, however, proved to be a judicious, scholarly inquiry into a little-known figure who seems to have held strongly to his religious and moral beliefs and to have died under very mysterious circumstances.

Johannes Albrecht Blaskowitz was born in 1883 and served throughout World War I in the trenches of the Western Front. He remained in the army during the post-war years and rose to command the German forces that moved into the rump of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. He was, however, not highly regarded by Hitler, and was only given command of Eighth Army in the invasion of Poland due to the intervention of high-ranking officers at the Fuehrer's headquarters. It was Blaskowitz's army that suffered from a Polish counterattack on September 9th through the 11th which nearly broke through the extended German flank. After the position was stabilized and reinforced, Blaskowitz went on to command the bombardment and assault on Warsaw.

Afterwards, as most of the German army and its senior officers were quickly transferred to the French border, Blaskowitz assumed command of Oberost, the High Command East. It was during his tenure commanding Oberost that Blaskowitz incurred Hitler's wrath and became a marked man.

Blaskowitz was an obedient soldier who along with most of the German officer corps acquiesced in Hitler's rise and assumption of dictatorial power. He followed orders in occupying Czechoslovakia and was grateful to receive an army command for the invasion of Poland. But he was a temperate, religious man, and he did not abide the brutal activities of the Gestapo and SS in Poland under the orders of Nazi civilian authorities and outside his command. In February 1940 the General posted a detailed report to Hitler enumerating the many instances of SS atrocities in the conquered territory. The memo was a political hot potato that did not finally receive Keitel's signature for further action until the end of April.

At the beginning of May Blaskowitz reported to the Western Front to assume command of Ninth Army. Within a few days he was relieved on Hitler's order, deemed "loathsome" and "intolerable", and transferred to the pool of unassigned officers.

Still, he retained friends in Berlin and was eventually appointed to command occupying forces in France, rising finally to command Army Group G.

At the end of the war he was arrested along with the other leading generals of the defeated Reich and, after serving as part of the team preparing a military history of the vanquished for the victors, was indicted for war crimes. The charge? Passing on to subordinate commanders, as required by the Fuehrer under threat of court martial, the "Commando Order" demanding immediate execution without trial of all enemy commandos, including those in uniform. According to the author, both Blaskowitz and his immediate superior, Rundstedt, attempted to subvert the order, but eventually had no choice but to pass it down the chain of command. Of the indictment, Telford Taylor, Chief Prosecutor, is quoted as later writing:

The evidence against him [Blaskowitz] was not voluminous. I should add that, in later years when I started to write books on the German Army, I learned a good deal more about him and it is an open question in my mind, whether, if I had known everything I came to know later, I would have included him in the indictment. I really can't say whether I would have or not. It certainly would have made me look very closely at what evidence we had, but there was that evidence...and that was why he was put into the indictment.

In February 1948, eight years after insisting that his report on SS atrocities in Poland by passed upwards to Hitler, Blaskowitz died in prison just as his trial was opening. The death was officially considered a suicide, but there is some evidence that he was murdered by SS trustees in the prison who feared that his testimony would result in further indictments of their SS brethren.

Professor Giziowksi has done a fine job with this well-documented tale of General Blaskowitz. Recommended.

Available from mail order booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Hippocrene Books. Published in the UK by Leo Cooper.

Thanks to Hippocrene for providing this review copy.