Showing titles in Germany

In the autumn of 1938, Europe believed in the promise of peace. But only a year later, the fateful decisions of just a few men had again led Europe to a massive world war. Drawing on contemporary diaries, memoirs, and newspapers, as well as recorded interviews, 1939 is a narrative account of what the coming of the Second World War felt like to those who lived through it.

Auf den Punkt: 2000 Jahre deutsche Geschichte! Überzeugend und souverän führt James Hawes von den alten Römern bis in die Gegenwart. Eine große Tour durch die Jahrhunderte, die in einer leidenschaftlichen Hommage an die Bundesrepublik endet. Der Sieg gegen die Römer im Teutoburger Wald, die barbarische Grausamkeit des Dreißigjährigen Kriegs, der Aufstieg des militaristischen Preußens im 18. Jahrhundert - wie Blitzlichter scheinen diese historischen Ereignisse in James Hawes' fulminantem Parforceritt durch die deutsche Geschichte auf.

The chilling and little-known story of Adolf Hitler's eight-year march to the pinnacle of German politics. On the night of January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler leaned out of a spotlit window of the Reich chancellery in Berlin, bursting with joy. The moment seemed unbelievable, even to Hitler. After an...

In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 1918-19, the conservative government of Bavaria identified Jews with left-wing radicalism. Munich became a hotbed of right-wing extremism, with synagogues under attack and Jews physically assaulted in the streets. It was here that Adolf Hitler established the Nazi movement and developed his anti-Semitic ideas. Michael Brenner provides a gripping account of how Bavaria's capital city became the testing ground for Nazism and the Final Solution.

The untold story of the real, extraordinary people who inspired Christopher Isherwood's characters in Cabaret, the landmark Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film, and the vibrant Bohemia that escaped from Berlin or endured under the Nazi regime Even diehard fans of the movie remain unaware...

For nearly a century, historians have depicted Germany as a rabidly nationalist land, born in a sea of aggression. Not so, says Helmut Walser Smith, who, in this groundbreaking 500-year history, challenges traditional perceptions of Germany's conflicted past, revealing a nation far more thematically complicated than 20th-century historians have imagined. 

Set against the backdrop of the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s, this compelling audiobook provides the first comprehensive history of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, notorious for the abduction of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists and the hostages' tragic deaths after a botched rescue mission by the German police. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources from the time, eminent historian David Clay Large explores the 1972 festival in all its ramifications.

For fans of the Netflix series The Crown, a meticulously researched historical tour de force about the secret ties among Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, the Duke of Windsor, and Adolf Hitler before, during, and after World War II. Andrew Morton tells the story of the feckless Edward...

Friedrich Reck might seem an unlikely rebel against Nazism. Not just a conservative but a rock-ribbed reactionary, he played the part of a landed gentleman, deplored democracy, and rejected the modern world outright. To Reck, the Nazis were ruthless revolutionaries in Gothic drag, and helpless as he was to counter the spell they had cast on the German people, he felt compelled to record the corruptions of their rule.

Warum die BRD nicht ohne die DDR zu verstehen ist – und umgekehrt. Ursula Weidenfeld legt eine Geschichte des doppelten Deutschland vor, wie sie so noch nicht geschrieben wurde. Bisher gibt es, zumindest in der westdeutschen Erinnerung, die Bundesrepublik (oder ganz einfach: »Deutschland«) und daneben die DDR, üblicherweise als der »zweite deutsche Staat« bezeichnet. Deren Geschichte wird immer von hinten erzählt, vom Ende her – das ist die übliche Strafe für gescheiterte Staaten.

An unprecedented, page-turning narrative of the Nazi rise to power, the Holocaust, and Hitler’s post-invasion plans for Russia told through the recently discovered lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg – Hitler’s ‘philosopher’ and architect of Nazi ideology. Only recently discovered by former...

After Nuremberg is about the fleeting nature of American punishment for German war criminals convicted at the twelve Nuremberg trials of 1946-1949. Because of repeated American grants of clemency and parole, ninety-seven of the 142 Germans convicted at the Nuremberg trials, many of them major offenders, regained their freedom years, sometimes decades, ahead of schedule. High-ranking Nazi plunderers, kidnappers, slave laborers, and mass murderers all walked free by 1958.

The Making of Martin Luther takes a provocative look at the intellectual emergence of one of the most original and influential minds of the 16th century. Richard Rex traces how, in a concentrated burst of creative energy in the few years surrounding his excommunication by Pope Leo X in 1521, this lecturer at an obscure German university developed a startling new interpretation of the Christian faith that brought to an end the dominance of the Catholic Church in Europe.

This book describes the often overlooked World War II campaign for Norway - a complex series of battles in which Hitler out-gambled Churchill in order to secure a vital resource lifeline for the Third Reich. After Hitler conquered Poland and was still fine-tuning his plans against France, the British began to exert control of the coastline of neutral Norway, an action that threatened to cut off Germany’s iron-ore conduit to Sweden and outflank from the start its hegemony on the Continent.

In the wake of World War II, the European continent was devastated, and the conflict left the Soviet Union and the United States as uncontested superpowers. This ushered in over 45 years of the Cold War, and a political alignment of Western democracies against the Communist Soviet bloc that produced conflicts pitting allies on each sides fighting, even as the American and Soviet militaries never engaged each other. Though it never got “hot”, the Cold War was a tense era until the dissolution of the USSR, and nothing symbolized the split more than the Berlin Wall.

History has focused on Hitler's use of charisma and terror, asserting that the dictator made few concessions to maintain power. Nathan Stoltzfus, the award-winning author of Resistance of Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Germany, challenges this notion, assessing the surprisingly frequent tactical compromises Hitler made in order to preempt hostility and win the German people's complete fealty.

On January 24, 1915, a German naval force commanded by Admiral Franz von Hipper conducted a raid on British fishing fleets in the area of the Dogger Banks. The force was engaged by a British force, which had been alerted by a decoded radio intercept. The ensuing battle would prove to be the largest and longest surface engagement until the Battle of Jutland the following summer.

The dramatic story of Jagdverband 44, the squadron of aces founded by leading Luftwaffe pilot Adolf Galland equipped with the new Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter. Jagdverband (JV) 44 was formed as a result of conflict and dissent within the Luftwaffe's high command. Assembling a small group of disillusioned and weary Luftwaffe fighter aces and flying instructors, Galland moved his unit, JV 44, to Munich, from where it operated the Me 262 against USAAF aircraft bombing targets in Austria and southern Germany.

With a total of 40 victories, Oswald Boelcke was Germany's first ace in World War I-and a century later he remains a towering figure in the history of air warfare, renowned for his character, inspirational leadership, organizational genius, development of air-to-air tactics, and impact on aerial doctrine. Paving the way for modern air forces across the world with his pioneering strategies, Boelcke had a dramatic effect on his contemporaries. The famed Red Baron's mentor, instructor, squadron commander, and friend, he exerted a tremendous influence upon the German air force.

Die Geschichte einer Flucht aus der DDR im Sommer 1989, eingerahmt in die historischen Ereignisse von damals. Halle Neustadt, 27. Januar 1989 (Deutsche Demokratische Republik). Ganz leise bewege ich mich mitten in der Nacht vom Flur aus durch das Wohnzimmer in Richtung Balkon. Bloß nicht meine Eltern aufwecken. Nur schnell 2 Flaschen Bier holen und wieder raus aus der Wohnung. Auf dem Rückweg im Wohnzimmer klingelt plötzlich das Telefon. Samstag Nacht, 2 Uhr morgens. Nach kurzem zögern gehe ich ran damit das laute klingeln niemanden aufweckt. “Hallo?” frage ich in die Stille.