Sale: Strategy and Tactics Press – Briefing Room

Born in 1875 and commissioned into the infantry in 1892, Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt came from the Prussian aristocracy and was a model officer. A graduate of the prestigious Kriegsakademie (War Academy), he served as a staff officer on both the eastern and western fronts, and he rose to the rank of chief of staff of a corps during the First World War. He was twice recommended for the Pour Le Mérite, Prussia’s highest decoration.

After the war he was retained in the Reichswehr, the armed forces of the Weimar Republic, where he’d attained the rank of lieutenant general by the time Hitler came to power in 1933. Though he constantly disparaged the Fuehrer privately, von Rundstedt displayed unwavering support and loyalty to him in the professional sense and, indeed, came to be considered by the dictator as being one of his most trustworthy generals.

Read the Full Article in WW 42

• Battle of Shanghai, 1937: The huge urban battle that began the 2nd Sino-Japanese War.
• Von Rundstedt in Normandy: An analysis and evaluation of the role played by this aging German field marshal in the 1944 Normandy campaign.
• The German Anti-Partisan War: Analysis of the massive anti-partisan warfare operations carried on by the Germans’ Army Group South in the Ukraine, 1941-44.
• Food as Strategy: Analysis of the significance of food in the formation of the combatant nations’ grand strategies.

Take me to World at War!