Percy Ernst Schramm (1894-1970), one of Germany's most distinguished historians, was author of over two dozen books and scores of articles. He became a professor at Goettingen University in 1929, the year of publication of his Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio, a landmark study in the interpretation of medieval political symbolism and ideology, a field on which he concentrated throughout the 1930s. An English translation of one of his works from this period, A History of the English Coronation, was published in 1937 by Oxford University Press. During the Second World War, Schramm was ordered to Hitler's headquarters as War Diary Officer of the High Command of the German Armed Forces, a position that afforded him unique insight into the dictator's military leadership and his frequently bitter conflicts with his generals. Having disobeyed the order to destroy the war diary at the end of the war, he was able to publish it in four volumes in the 1960s, together with a detailed introductory essay on Hitler as a military leader. In 1963 he also published a scholarly edition of Hitler's table talks with an extensive introductory essay on Hitler the man. English translations of these two essays appeared in 1971 in a volume entitled Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader that was reprinted in 1999.
Donald S. Detwiler, who earned his doctorate cum laude at Goettingen University under Professor Schramm, is professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois at Carbondale, past Chairman of the World War Two Studies Association, and past president of the Association for the Bibliography of History. His publications include Hitler, Franco und Gibraltar (1962), Germany: A Short History (1976, 3rd ed., 1999), the documentary collection World War II German Military Studies (24 vols., 1979), and, with Ilse E. Detwiler, an annotated bibliography, West Germany: The Federal Republic of Germany (1987).
