German History English

In 1943, Edda Mussolini, daughter of the fascist dictator, gave her father and Hitler an extraordinary ultimatum – release her husband, Italy’s former foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, from prison, or risk her leaking her husband’s incendiary diaries to the press. Instead, Hitler and Mussolini vowed to do everything in their power to destroy the diaries – even if it meant killing Edda. They ordered Hilde Beetz, a German spy, to seduce Ciano in prison in order to learn the diaries’ location.

One of the last major stories on the Third Reich that remains largely untold is that of the extraordinary wave of suicides, carried out not just by much of the Nazi leadership, but by thousands of ordinary Germans, in the Second World War's closing period. Some of these were provoked by terror in the face of advancing Soviet troops or by personal guilt, but many could not be explained in such relatively straightforward terms.

Playing cricket in Germany in the 1930s was not always as...fraught. But it certainly had its moments. German Cricket, the second monograph in the James D. Coldham series, covers the fraught, the arcane, and the frankly bizarre aspects of the history of the game in Germany drawing on a wealth of research.

Of all the steppe peoples in the medieval period, perhaps none were more important to European history than the Magyars. Like the Huns and Avars before them and the Cumans and Mongols after them, the Magyars burst into Europe as a destructive, unstoppable horde, taking whatever they wanted and leaving a steady stream of misery in their wake.

"French, Flemish, English and German Towns" is a section of Lynn Thorndike’s History of Medieval Europe. In the late Middle Ages, new towns arose due to increased trade. In the north, there were Champagne, Bruges, Cambrai, and Utrecht. In England, local fairs gave rise to Winchester, Stourbridge, and Walsingham. In Germany, new towns sprung up in three regions: the Rhine Valley; southern Germany, and the northern coast where Bremen, Hamburg, and Lubeck were established.

Baron Johann de Kalb: The Life and Legacy of the German Major General Who Fought in the American Revolution profiles one of the Revolutionary War’s most famous soldiers. You will learn about de Kalb like never before.

"German Kingdoms in the West" is part of Lynn Thorndike’s History of Medieval Europe. The section discusses the kingdoms that arose in Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The kingdoms were those of the Franks, Burgundians, the Visigoths in the Iberian peninsula, the Vandals in Africa and Sicily, and the Lombards in Italy.

It is the plain matter-of-fact story of Belgian life under German rule. People might forget that, besides the 150,000 to 200,000 heroes who are now waging war for Belgium on the Western front, there are 7,500,000 heroes who are suffering for Belgium behind the German lines, in the close prison of guarded frontiers, cut off from the whole world, separated alike from those who are fighting for their deliverance and from those who have sought refuge abroad.

Im Februar wird Malta erkundet und es gibt einen Streifzug durch die bewegte Geschichte der sonnenverwöhnten mediterranen Inselgruppe...

Die Themse ist der berühmteste und wichtigste Fluss Großbritanniens. In Ausgabe 7/2021 von Spotlight Audio begeben Sie sich auf eine Reise durch seine unglaubliche Geschichte. Nelson Mandela liebte das Gedicht Invictus von William Ernest Henley. Hören Sie sich Invictus in der Poetry Corner an und Sie werden verstehen, warum. Testen Sie im Sprachteil Ihren Wortschatz rund um das Thema Umwelt und Umweltschutz. Englisch lernen mit Spotlight Audio.