Mungo Melvin | |
---|---|
Born | 1955 |
Allegiance | ![]() |
Service/ | ![]() |
Years of service | 1975–2011 |
Rank | Major-General |
Commands held | UK Support Command (Germany) |
Awards | Companion of the Order of the Bath Officer of the Order of the British Empire |
Major-General Robert Adam Mungo Simpson Melvin (born 1955) CB OBE is a retired British Army officer, and a noted military historian. He is best known for his biography of German field marshal Erich von Manstein. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Intelligence and Terrorism Studies . [1]
Educated at Daniel Stewart's College in Edinburgh, the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, Downing College, Cambridge and the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Hamburg, Melvin was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1975. [2] He became Director, Land Warfare in June 2002, Director of Operational Capability at the Ministry of Defence in 2004 and General Officer Commanding United Kingdom Support Command (Germany) in 2006. [3] He went on to be Chief Army Instructor at the Royal College of Defence Studies in 2009 before retiring in 2011. [3]
In 2009 he appeared as an expert witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia. [4] He is an associate senior fellow of the Royal United Services Institute. [5]
During his Army service in Germany, Melvin learned German and developed an interest in German military history. The product of this was his 2010 biography of Erich von Manstein. [6] Manstein is widely regarded as the most gifted German commander of World War II, but he was also a convicted war criminal who never acknowledged his own or the German Army's responsibility for the crimes committed on the Eastern Front while he held major commands there. Melvin's conclusion was that Manstein was a product of his age, his class, his education and his own stubborn personality, all of which blinded him to the ethical conflict between his duty as a German officer to obey the orders of the legitimate government, and the increasingly criminal nature of the Nazi regime. [7]
Reviews of Melvin's book concentrated on this question. Alexander Rose in The New York Times referred to "Mungo Melvin’s authoritative and splendidly comprehensive biography" but criticized what he saw as Melvin's narrow focus on military matters. [8] Tom Nagorski in The Wall Street Journal found fault with Melvin's concentration on detailed descriptions of Manstein's work as a military commander. [9]
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Franz Ritter Halder was a German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942. During World War II, he directed the planning and implementation of Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Halder became instrumental in the radicalisation of warfare on the Eastern Front. He had his staff draft both the Commissar Order and the Barbarossa Decree that allowed German soldiers to execute Soviet citizens for any reason without fear of later prosecution, leading to numerous war crimes and atrocities during the campaign. After the war, he had a decisive role in the development of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.
Walther Heinrich Alfred Hermann von Brauchitsch was a German field marshal and the Commander-in-Chief (Oberbefehlshaber) of the German Army during World War II. Born into an aristocratic military family, he entered army service in 1901. During World War I, he served with distinction on the corps-level and division-level staff on the Western Front.
Henning Hermann Karl Robert von Tresckow was a German military officer with the rank of major general in the German Army who helped organize German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassinate Hitler on 13 March 1943 and drafted the Valkyrie plan for a coup against the German government. He was described by the Gestapo as the "prime mover" behind the plot of 20 July 1944 to assassinate Hitler. He committed suicide at Królowy Most on the Eastern Front upon learning of the plot's failure.
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Arthur Schmidt was an officer in the German military from 1914 to 1943. He attained the rank of Generalleutnant during World War II, and is best known for his role as the Sixth Army's chief of staff in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–43, during the final stages of which he became its de facto commander, playing a large role in executing Hitler's order that it stand firm despite being encircled by the Red Army. He was a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union for twelve years, and was released following West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer's visit to Moscow in 1955.
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