Career
Citino has held academic postings at the University of North Texas,Lake Erie College,Eastern Michigan University,United States Military Academy at West Point,and the United States Army War College. [5]
He is a fellow of the Barsanti Military History Center,a trustee of the Society for Military History,and a consultant for the White House staff. He has also appeared as a consultant on the History Channel. [6]
He currently chairs the Historical Advisory Subcommittee of the Department of the Army.
Wehrmacht history
Throughout his career Citino has advocated changing the current nomenclature of German military tactics. Although he uses the word Blitzkrieg on the cover of his books,he has always espoused the view that it should be called by its proper German military term,Bewegungskrieg,or manoeuvre warfare. Citino has taught courses on Nazi Germany and American military history,including Korea,Vietnam,and the Cold War.
On March 15,2013,Citino was awarded the 2013 Distinguished Book Award by the Society for Military History for his work The Wehrmacht Retreats:Fighting a Lost War,1943. The book explores German losses in key campaigns in 1943—losses which would eventually lead to an erosion of the German military's strategic advantage. It is his second Distinguished Book Award;he previously received one in 2004 for his book Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm. [7] Citino was a visiting professor at the United States Army War College in Carlisle,Pennsylvania for the 2013–14 academic school year. [8]
Blitzkrieg is a word used to describe a combined arms surprise attack using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations; together with artillery, air assault, and close air support; with intent to break through the opponent's lines of defense, dislocate the defenders, unbalance the enemies by making it difficult to respond to the continuously changing front, and defeat them in a decisive Vernichtungsschlacht: a battle of annihilation.
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was a German general during World War II who, after the war, became a successful memoirist. An early pioneer and advocate of the "blitzkrieg" approach, he played a central role in the development of the panzer division concept. In 1936, he became the Inspector of Motorized Troops.
Operation Bagration was the codename for the 1944 Soviet Byelorussian strategic offensive operation, a military campaign fought between 22 June and 19 August 1944 in Soviet Byelorussia in the Eastern Front of World War II, just over two weeks after the start of Operation Overlord in the west. It was during this operation that Nazi Germany was forced to fight simultaneously on two major fronts for the first time since the war began. The Soviet Union destroyed 28 of 34 divisions of Army Group Centre and completely shattered the German front line. The overall engagement is the largest defeat in German military history, with around 450,000 German casualties, while 300,000 other German soldiers were cut off in the Courland Pocket.
Franz 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.
Friedrich von Mellenthin was a German general during World War II. A participant in most of the major campaigns of the war, he became known afterwards for his memoirs Panzer Battles, first published in 1956 and reprinted several times since then.
Panzer Battles is the English language title of Friedrich von Mellenthin's memoirs of his service as a staff officer in the Panzerwaffe of the German Army during World War II.
The Society for Military History is a United States–based international organization of scholars who research, write, and teach military history of all time periods and places. It includes naval history, air power history, and studies of technology, ideas, and homefronts. It publishes the quarterly refereed The Journal of Military History.
The Royal Prussian Army served as the army of the Kingdom of Prussia. It became vital to the development of Prussia as a European power.
The German Army was the land forces component of the Wehrmacht, the regular armed forces of Nazi Germany, from 1935 until it effectively ceased to exist in 1945 and then was formally dissolved in August 1946. During World War II, a total of about 13.6 million soldiers served in the German Army. Army personnel were made up of volunteers and conscripts.
The New York Military Affairs Symposium (NYMAS), is an independent, not for profit educational body dedicated to the preservation and furthering of military history in New York City
The Wehrmacht were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe. The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted.
Verlorene Siege is the personal narrative of Erich von Manstein, a German field marshal during World War II. The book was first published in West Germany in 1955, then in Spain in 1956. Its English translation was published in 1958 for distribution in the UK and the US.
Geoffrey P. Megargee was an American historian and author who specialized in World War II military history and the history of the Holocaust. He served as the project director and editor-in-chief for the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Megargee's work on the German High Command won the 2001 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History.
Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe is a 2006 book by the British author and researcher Philip W. Blood. It discusses the evolution of German rear security policies during World War II, from Partisanenkrieg to Bandenbekämpfung, leading to mass crimes against humanity and genocide.
The Paul Birdsall Prize is an biennial prize given to a historian by the American Historical Association.
Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. is an American author and military historian who specializes in the German war effort during World War II and the Confederate war effort during the American Civil War. He is the author of more than 40 books and has collaborated with other historians such as Gene Mueller.
Ben H. Shepherd is a British historian and author who specialises in German military history of World War II. He has authored several books on the German Army of 1935–1945. Shepherd holds the position of reader in history at the Glasgow Caledonian University.
The LIV Army Corps was a Wehrmacht army corps during World War II. It was formed in June 1941. After February 1944, it was upgraded to a command equivalent in rank but not in name to an army, something that the Wehrmacht dubbed an army detachment. It operated under the following names:
The battle of the Mons pocket was an engagement fought between Allied and German forces during late August and early September 1944. It formed part of the final stages of the rapid Allied advance across France and Belgium. During the battle United States Army forces, assisted by the Belgian Resistance, encircled a large number of retreating German Army and Waffen-SS troops near the town of Mons in Belgium. The German forces were disorganised and unable to counter the Allied forces. Around 3,500 Germans were killed and 25,000 made prisoners of war. Allied casualties were light.
