The Memoirs of .Field-Marshal Kesselring. (William Kimber. 25s.) The Memoirs
of .Field-Marshal Kesselring. (William Kimber. 25s.)
KESSELIUNG commanded the German air fleet which attacked England in 1940 and supported Army Group Centre in Russia in. 1941. From 1942 to early 1945 he was Commander-in-Chief of Italo-German forces in the African and Italian theaties. During the last months of the war he became C.-in-C. West and at the end was Com- mander of all German forcei in Southern Germany. Condemned to death as a war criminal in 1947 he was released from Werl prison as an act of clemency in 1952. These memoirs were written in prison and are therefore almost entirely undocumented. Kesselring, whose talents were primarily those of a superb administrator, regrets nothing save defeat, generally admires Hitler, and refers to the war years as " a good piece of German history." Neverthe- less his book contains some interesting passages about the Italian collapse and, later, about the German one. His cool and unenthusiastic appraisal of Rommel both as a man and as a soldier is also of note in view of the somewhat exaggerated adulation which has recently been bestowed upon the Desert General by various British writers. Readers who appreciate surprises will be interested to know that, according to Kessel- ring, the Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain and would have done even better had not the RAF refused to fight. The style of the translation is stodgy, which is doubtless a faithful rendering of the original. The maps are inadequate both in quantity and quality.
C. F. 0.
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