Showing titles in Germany

The Weimar Republic has become a byword for a failed, tragic, political experiment. The official period of its existence, 1919-1933, marked the inter-war years in Germany and their related uncertainty, chaos and the state’s ultimate collapse. Historians have found the roots of Nazism embedded in the Weimar years and that in the final analysis, Weimar politicians voluntarily handed over power to the man who wrought destruction on an epic scale, Adolf Hitler.

That a Jew living in Nazi Berlin survived the Holocaust at all is surprising. That he was a homosexual and a teenage leader in the resistance and yet survived is amazing. But that he endured the ongoing horror with an open heart, with love and without vitriol, and has written about it so beautifully is truly miraculous. This is Gad Beck's story.

Sommer 1945: Nichts ist mehr, wie es war: In den vier Monaten von Mai bis September 1945 bricht die alte Welt zusammen, und eine neue tut sich auf ...

Imagine a society with no unemployment, zero inflation, free healthcare and education, free childcare, virtually no serious crime, and where women and men are treated with absolute equality. Such a society has existed: in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), popularly known as East 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.

An unprecedented examination of the ways in which the uninhibited urban sexuality, sexual experimentation, and medical advances of pre-Weimar Berlin created and molded our modern understanding of sexual orientation and gay identity. Known already in the 1850s for the friendly company of its...

In 1940, the German sons and daughters of infamous Nazi dignitaries Himmler, Göring, Hess, Frank, Bormann, Speer, and Mengele were children of privilege at four, five, or ten years old, surrounded by affectionate, all-powerful parents. Although innocent and unaware of what was happening at the time, they eventually discovered the extent of their father's occupations:

After the successful amphibious invasion on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies began racing east toward Germany and liberating France along the way. The Allies had landed along a 50 mile stretch of French coast, and despite suffering 8,000 casualties on D-Day, over 100,000 still began the march across the western portion of the continent. By the end of August 1944, the German army in France was shattered, with 200,000 killed or wounded and a further 200,000 captured.

Following the end of the First World War, Poland was wedged uncomfortably between the two dominant nations of Germany and the Soviet Union. Poland was obliged to plot and negotiate to try and prevent them from realizing their ambitions to eviscerate the country. As well as bitter ethnic battles between Germany and Poland for the political control of Upper Silesia, there were also the burning ambitions of Weimar Germany, and later Nazi Germany, to reclaim lands incorporated into the new state of Poland at Versailles.

Tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog planden krijgsgevangen gemaakte geallieerde officieren een reeks gedurfde ontsnappingen uit kamp Colditz, een grimmig gotisch kasteel dat in nazi-Duitsland als gevangenis werd gebruikt. Colditz gold destijds als behoorlijk escape-proof: het was een vesting met dikke kasteelmuren, een gesloten binnenplaats, gelegen op een rots, met meer bewakers dan gevangenen en de politie en de bevolking van de dorpen eromheen waren alert op ontsnappers. Kortom: je kon er niet makkelijk weg.

This is the story of Germany after the Nazis, a time when two separate states rose from the ashes to face each other across the Iron Curtain. Meanwhile, the people struggled to come to terms with both the physical and psychological impact of defeat, as well as guilt for the monstrous acts that had been committed under Hitler's regime.

Dealing with the Italians was one thing, but the British faced an entirely different monster in North Africa when Erwin Rommel, a German general who had gained much fame for his role in the invasions of Poland and France, was sent to North Africa in February 1941. For the next two years, the Allies would face off against the legendary Desert Fox and his Afrika Korps. This audiobook chronicles one of World War II’s most famous fighting units.

The story of the Nazi hierarch who saved his own life at the Nuremberg trial. Despite his direct responsibility for the death of millions of slave workers and prisoners of war, Albert Speer miraculously avoided the hanging sentence that his Nazi colleagues on trial in Nuremberg did receive. Albert Speer was the only Nazi who showed any kind of repentance and accepted shared responsibility for the atrocities committed during the Nazi regime. Speer was sentenced to "only" 20 years in prison in Spandau prison, a sentence that he served in its entirety until the last day.

In 1832, 17-year-old Otto von Bismarck had just entered university and was already rejecting the republican indoctrination of his grade school years. Unlike so many of his day who had championed representative government, Bismarck longed for the glory of a nation he believed would only be found under a single, strong leader. Though his early university days showed him he would be isolated by this thinking, he strongly believed not only in the ideal of a national German state, but in its possibility.

When the ashes had settled after World War II and the Allies convened an international war crimes trial in Nuremberg, a psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, and a psychologist, Gustave Gilbert, tried to fathom the psychology of the Nazi leaders using extensive psychiatric interviews, IQ tests, and Rorschach inkblot tests. Never before or since has there been such a detailed study of governmental leaders who orchestrated mass killings.

Um die Nazi-Verbrechen zu dokumentieren, führte der ehemalige Lagerhäftling Hermann Langbein bereits sechs Jahre nach der Befreiung des Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz zahlreiche Interviews mit anderen Überlebenden. Detailliert berichten die Zeitzeugen vom Aufbau des Lagers, von Selektionen, der Arbeit der Lagerärzte, der Vernichtung in Gaskammern, von Krematorien und dem Schicksal inhaftierter Kinder.

Tens of millions died during World War II as the warring powers raced to create the best fighter planes, tanks, and guns, and eventually that race extended to bombs which carried enough power to destroy civilization itself. While the war raged in Europe and the Pacific, a dream team of Nobel Laureates was working on the Manhattan Project, a program kept so secret that Vice President Harry Truman didn’t know about it until he took the presidency after FDR’s death in April 1945.

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They are never the whole story. Exploring seven old towns, from Frankfurt and Prague to Vilnius in Lithuania, Marek Kohn examines how they have been used since the Second World War to conceal political tensions and reinforce certain versions of history.

The codebreakers at Bletchley Park have been immortalised in films such as The Imitation Game and Enigma, but the Germans were also breaking Allied ciphers. The Third Reich Is Listening is the comprehensive account of the successes, failures and science of Germany's codebreaking and signals intelligence operations from 1935 to 1945. This fast-moving blend of modern history and popular science is told through colourful personal accounts of the Germans at the heart of the story.

In Warsaw: A City at War 1939–45, historians Prit Buttar and Lottie Taylor bring to light the unparalleled experience of a city caught between two invading powers, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and the resilience of its citizens. From the tragic Ghetto Uprising to the heroic city-wide revolt, Warsaw's resistance was fierce as it faced the systematic attempt to erase it from the map. This fascinating history illuminates how Warsaw's centuries-old fight for identity shaped the course of its wartime experience. Yet the heart of the city – its people – refused to surrender.