Showing titles in Germany

On 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The following day, his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, also killed himself, and the crumbling Third Reich passed to Admiral Karl Dönitz. The Nazis' position seemed hopeless. Yet remarkably, the war in the rest of Europe went on for another 10 days. After Hitler looks at these days as a narrative day-by-day countdown but also as a broader global history of a European war that had seen some of the most savage battles in history.

Nazi Germany didn’t start with tanks, camps, or war. It began with political chaos, inflation, and a nation hunting “enemies within.” Hitler was voted in, welcomed, and normalized long before dictatorship was obvious. He promised to make Germany “great” again. If you’ve ever wondered why millions backed Hitler, why people watched Jewish neighbors disappear and stayed silent, why propaganda and strongman politics keep returning, or how a democracy can die quietly through fear, division, and a leader promising to fix everything, this audiobook tells the story clearly from start to finish.

Arnold Döring was just twenty-three years old when he flew his first mission against the Soviet Union on June 21, 1941. On that day he started writing his diary. His account not only describe the technical aspects and the difficulties posed by weather and terrain, but are also filled with...

This is the remarkable story of a German soldier who fought throughout World War II, rising from conscript private to captain of a heavy weapons company on the Eastern Front. >William Lubbeck, age 19, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August 1939. As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire during the 1940 invasion of France. The following spring his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in Operation Barbarossa.

The German Revolution of November 1918 is nowadays largely forgotten outside Germany. It is generally regarded as a failure even by those who have heard of it, a missed opportunity that paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and the catastrophe to come. Robert Gerwarth argues here that to view the German Revolution in this way is a serious misjudgment. Not only did it bring down the authoritarian monarchy of the Hohenzollern, it also brought into being the first ever German democracy in an amazingly bloodless way.

Juni 1940: Hitlers Wehrmacht hat Frankreich besiegt. Die Gestapo fahndet nach Heinrich Mann und Lion Feuchtwanger, nach Hannah Arendt, Franz Werfel und unzähligen anderen, die in Frankreich seit 1933 Asyl gefunden haben. Sie alle müssen fliehen und geraten schließlich nach Marseille, um von dort einen Weg in die Freiheit zu suchen. Derweil riskiert der Amerikaner Varian Fry sein Leben, um die Verfolgten außer Landes zu schmuggeln. Szenisch dicht erzählt Uwe Wittstock die aufwühlende Geschichte ihrer Flucht unter tödlichen Gefahren, von unfassbarem Mut und größter Verzweiflung, von trotziger Hoffnung und Mitmenschlichkeit in düsterer Zeit.

Drogen im Dritten Reich: Norman Ohler geht den Tätern von damals buchstäblich unter die Haut und schaut direkt in ihre Blutbahnen hinein. Arisch rein ging es darin nicht zu, sondern chemisch deutsch – und ziemlich toxisch. Wo die Ideologie für Fanatismus und "Endsieg" nicht mehr ausreichte, wurde hemmungslos nachgeholfen. Als Deutschland 1940 Frankreich überfiel, standen die Soldaten der Wehrmacht unter 35 Millionen Dosierungen Pervitin. Das Präparat – heute als Crystal Meth bekannt – machte den Blitzkrieg erst möglich.

In seinem brillanten neuen Hörbuch nimmt Bestsellerautor Christopher Clark uns mit auf eine Zeitreise ins frühe 19. Jahrhundert und in eine Welt voller Intrigen und Verrat, die zwei lutherischen Predigern in Königsberg zum Verhängnis wurde: Königsberg, die ehemalige Hauptstadt der preußischen Provinz Ostpreußen, galt schon immer als eher verschlafener Ort, bekannt vor allem als einstige Residenz von Immanuel Kant. Doch in den späten 1830er-Jahren war das Städtchen plötzlich in aller Munde – allerdings aus den falschen Gründen.

Glanz und Mythos einerseits, Schande und Schreckbild andererseits. Mit dem Namen Preußen verbinden sich gegensätzliche Assoziationen und eine Reihe von Klischees, so etwa Graf Mirabeaus Ausspruch: "Andere Staaten haben eine Armee; in Preußen hat die Armee einen Staat." Für Golo Mann jedoch wurde es Preußens Funktion, "seine unvorhersagbare, ungewollt, vom Eigensinn der Geschichte ihm zugespielte Chance und Aufgabe, der deutschen Nation ihre moderne Form zu geben".

This audiobook will transport you to the late 19th century, allowing you to “witness” one of the seminal moments of modern history. You’ll learn what events preceded the confrontation between the waning old European power of France and the up-and-coming Prussian state, and how a war led to the unification of Germany into an empire. Through this guide, you’ll find out how significant the famous “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck was in preparing the ground for a conflict, and how his political genius allowed Prussia to spearhead the German union.

‘An intimate, insightful portrait of an extraordinarily private leader’ WALTER ISAACSON From the bestselling author of Enemies of the People An intimate and deeply researched account of the extraordinary rise and political brilliance of the most powerful – and elusive – woman in the...

First published in 1968, Weimar Culture is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distinguished career. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book brilliantly traces the rise of the artistic, literary, and musical culture that bloomed ever so briefly in the 1920s amid the chaos of Germany's tenuous post-World War I democracy, and crashed violently in the wake of Hitler's rise to power.

In 1991, acting on a tip from a local fisherman, two scuba divers discovered a sunken German U-boat–complete with its crew of 60 men–not too far off the New Jersey coast. The divers, realizing the momentousness of their discovery, began probing the mystery. Over the next six years, they...

The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 to end all traffic between the city’s two halves: the democratic west and the communist east. The iconic symbol of a divided Europe, the Wall became a focus of western political pressure on East Germany; as Ronald Reagan’s famously said in a 1987 speech in Berlin, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Brought to you by Penguin. This gripping book dramatizes the extraordinarily compressed and terrifying period between the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war on the United States. These five days transformed much of the world and have shaped our own...

It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. Punk rock was a life-changing discovery: in an authoritarian state where the future was preordained, punk, with its rejection of society and DIY approach to building a new one, planted the seeds for revolution.

A true Cold War espionage thriller set around the ultra-secret Berlin Tunnel - where British officer George Blake must run a high-stakes double cross to maintain his cover. The ultra-secret "Berlin Tunnel" was dug in the mid-1950s from the American sector in southwest Berlin and ran nearly a...

In the cold morning of June 6, 1944, thousands of German soldiers were in position from Port en Bessin eastward past Colleville on the Normandy coast, aware that a massive invasion force was heading straight for them, although according to Allied Intelligence, they shouldn't have been there. The presence of 352 Division meant that the number of defenders was literally double the number expected - and on the best fortified of all the invasion beaches. What makes this account of the bloody struggle unique is that it is told from the German standpoint, using firsthand testimony....

The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography: “I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions.” He was referring to Germany in 1923, a “year of lunacy,” defined by hyperinflation, violence, a political system on the verge of collapse, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and separatist movements threatening to rip apart the German nation. Bestselling author Volker Ullrich presents a riveting chronicle of one of the most difficult years any modern democracy has ever faced.

Whilst the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet, restricted for much of the period after 1919 by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, was relatively small in comparison to the Royal Navy, it did possess a number of highly potent battleships and other capital vessels that could - and did - pose a major threat to British interests in the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. Amongst the most powerful were the two battleships - the Bismarck and the Tirpitz.