Germany World War Ii

After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's diaries - only to discover that he had been a Nazi. The diaries show Api, a doctor in Berlin, trying to help the wounded in bunkers without water or light. Living in the ruins, he himself was near collapse. As Robinson retraces Api's steps half a century later, she tries to come up with answers to why he joined the Nazi party and reflect on German guilt while also remembering the happiest years of her childhood with him.

Most discussions of German resistance during World War II end here, with the failed July 20 plot and the subsequent execution of its leaders. And yet this was far from the last act of disobedience carried out against the Nazi regime, as Randall Hansen reveals in his fascinating new book.

Senator Thomas Dodd began his career in public service as a prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials. His son, Senator Christopher Dodd, recently discovered his mother's collection of letters his father wrote during that time. Through his father, Chris Dodd learned not only the scope of the Holocaust but also the importance of the rule of law.

Scientists have always kept secrets. But rarely in history have scientific secrets been as vital as they were during World War II. In the midst of planning the Manhattan Project, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services created a secret offshoot - the Alsos Mission - meant to gather intelligence on and sabotage if necessary, scientific research by the Axis powers. What resulted was a plot worthy of the finest thriller, full of spies, sabotage and murder.

Thomas Harding kannte seinen Großonkel Hanns Alexander als einen freundlichen Mann mit viel Familiensinn, der ein bürgerliches Leben als Bankangestellter in London geführt hatte, sich für die Synagoge engagierte und gerne Witze machte. Seine jüdische Familie stammte aus Berlin und war in den 1930er-Jahren in letzter Minute nach England ins Exil entkommen. Das wussten alle. Ansonsten wurde über den Krieg nicht gesprochen. Erst nach dem Tod von Hanns Alexander erfuhr Harding, dass er ein Nazijäger gewesen war.

Albert Kesselring holds a strange place in the history of World War II. A commander in the Luftwaffe, he is remembered as much for the skill with which he oversaw the German armies as for his mastery of the air fleets. Called "Uncle Albert" by many of his men and "Smiling Albert" by the Allies, he was widely respected by men on both sides of the war and loved by many of his troops, yet he was responsible for massacres in occupied Italy for which he was condemned to death during the post-war trials.

At the close of World War I, Hitler was an impoverished young artist who scrapped by through selling souvenir paintings, but within a few years, his powerful oratory brought him to the forefront of the Nazi party in Munich and helped make the party much more popular. A smattering of followers in the hundreds quickly became a party of thousands. At the head of it all was a man whose fiery orations denounced Jews, communists, and other "traitors" for bringing upon the German nation the Treaty of Versailles, which had led to hyperinflation and a wrecked economy.

Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was one of the most respected commanders and theoreticians of World War II. An innovative tank commander, he was a pioneer of German Blitzkrieg tactics and therefore a hugely influential figure in the way the war was fought. Guderian's profile was not always what might have been expected for a man of his abilities and influence, due to the shape of his career.

After the last shots of World War II were fired and the process of rebuilding Germany and Europe began, the Western Allies and the Soviet Union each tried to obtain the services of the Third Reich's leading scientists, especially those involved in rocketry, missile technology, and aerospace research. Naturally, this was a delicate affair due to the fact many of the German scientists were not only active Nazis, but had helped the Nazi war machine terrorize the world.

An insightful historical account, Democrat and Diplomat exposes the dark underbelly of 1930s Germany and explores the terrible burden of those who realized the horror that was to come. Dodd was the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937, arriving in Berlin with his wife and daughter just as Hitler assumed the chancellorship. An unlikely candidate for the job - and not President Roosevelt's first choice - Dodd quickly came to realize that the situation in Germany was far grimmer than was understood in America.

During World War II, Heinz Drossel saved Soviet prisoners of war and several Jews, including Marianne Hirschfeld. Again and again, he wasn't afraid to risk his own life when others' safety was at risk. Nearly all of Hirschfeld's family members were murdered by Nazis; she survived in hiding - and met Heinz again by coincidence after the war was over. They married in 1946. At that time, starting over was difficult. In the judicial service, Drossel witnessed Nazis continuing with their careers....

Georg Elser was just an ordinary working-class citizen living in Munich, Germany. He was employed as a carpenter and had spent some time working in a watch factory. That all changed when he took it upon himself, without telling his family or friends, to single-handedly attempt to assassinate the most powerful man in all of Germany: the Führer, Adolph Hitler.

In Double Crossed, historian Matthew Avery Sutton tells the extraordinary story of the entwined roles of spy-craft and faith in a world at war. Missionaries, priests, and rabbis, acutely aware of how their actions seemingly conflicted with their spiritual calling, carried out covert operations, bombings, and assassinations within the centers of global religious power, including Mecca, the Vatican, and Palestine.

Major General Sid Shachnow was ten-years-old when he escaped the notorious Kovno concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Lithuania. Later, he traveled to post-war Germany, and he earned a living as a courier for his mother's black market business. His family eventually came to America where he struggled to get an education, held down three jobs, and courted the girl of his dreams, whom he would marry and raise four daughters with.

Richard Bessel, history professor at the University of York, specializes in the social and political history of Nazi Germany. In four compelling essays, he forcefully argues that racism made war inevitable. The Third Reich, led by "[A] band of political gangsters", came to power with a deep ideological commitment to war and racism. As the driving force behind the economics, social policy, and propaganda of Germany, racial hatred was the catalyst that plunged Europe into war.

When Iris moves to the Czech Republic to explore her heritage, she knows she might not be accepted because she's half German, but she has no inkling she’s about to become embroiled in a plot to retake the borderlands. Tree farm owner Mikuláš is finally ready to put the past behind him. Dancing to old Bohemian folk tunes with Iris gives them both a chance to grow. But when his friends and neighbors start to die, their homes snatched up, hectare by hectare, Mikuláš knows he has to fight to save his land – and his life. A stream with a clump of plum tart iris growing on its banks. It ...

In 1923, 34-year-old Adolf Hitler was languishing in prison after leading an unsuccessful putsch to overthrow the German government. Within a decade he was German chancellor, one of the most powerful men in Europe. How did he do it? Had Hitler been a regular politician, Wilson argues, he would have vanished without trace after his prison experience. He was not, however, a regular politician but rather a conjurer, seeing politics not as the art of the possible but as the art of the impossible.

On June 14, 1940, German tanks rolled into Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. Most citizens adapted and many even allied themselves with the new fascist leadership. Yet others refused to capitulate; in answer to the ruthless violence, shortages, and curfews imposed by the Nazis, a resistance arose. Among this shadow army were Jews, immigrants, communists, workers, writers, police officers, shop owners, including many young people in their teens and 20s.

When the Italian dictator Mussolini saw that Hitler was conquering Europe, he decided that he too would have a share of the plunder. He declared war on the Allies, vowed to control the Mediterranean, and with his 300,000 troops stationed in Libya, take Egypt and the Suez Canal. But he knew that this could not be accomplished while the strategic island of Malta remained in Allied hands. For the next two years Malta and its people suffered for almost continuous bombardment, but never gave in.

The bitter Battle of Stalingrad on the Eastern Front was the turning point of World War II. The relentless and unstoppable German advances that had seen the panzers sweep hundreds of miles into Russia was finally brought to a halt. The elite German Sixth Army was first fought to a standstill, then surrounded and forced to surrender.