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Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields
by Wendy LowerNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST. A revelatory history of the role of German women in the Holocaust, not only as plunderers and direct witnesses, but as actual killers on the Eastern Front during World War II.Lower, drawing on twenty years of archival research and fieldwork, presents startling evidence that these women were more than “desk murderers” or comforters of murderous German men: they went on “shopping sprees” and romantic outings to the Jewish ghettos; they were present at killing-field picnics, not only providing refreshment but also shooting Jews. And Lower uncovers the stories of SS wives with children of their own whose brutality is as chilling as any in history.Hitler’s Furies challenges our deepest beliefs: women can be as brutal as men, and the evidence can be hidden for seventy years.“Disquieting . . . Earlier books about the Holocaust have offered up poster girls of brutality and atrocity . . . [Lower’s] insight is to track more mundane lives, and to argue for a vastly wider complicity.” — New York Times“An unsettling but significant contribution to our understanding of how nationalism, and specifically conceptions of loyalty, are normalized, reinforced, and regulated.” — Los Angeles Review of Books“Compelling . . . Lower brings to the forefront an unexplored aspect of the Holocaust.” — Washington Post
Hitler's Gateway to the Atlantic: German Naval Bases in France, 1940–1945
by Lars Hellwinkel&“An excellent book&” that examines the role that the French Atlantic ports played for the Kriegsmarine during the Second World War (Warship Annual). When the Wehrmacht overran France in May and June of 1940, the German navy&’s dream of access to the Atlantic was realized, and Brest, Lorient, St. Nazaire, La Pallice and Bordeaux were converted into naval bases for surface, U-boat and auxiliary cruiser operations, though it is only the heavily fortified U-boat bunkers that have received any attention to date. The book describes the extent to which the French, both locally and at the level of the Vichy Government, cooperated with the German authorities in occupied France to convert the existing ports, and explains how the 45,000 workers of the Todt Organization built the monumental bunkers and other facilities. This fascinating narrative of the German occupation is balanced by the story of the vicious British maritime-air campaign that was commenced immediately following the fall of France, and which was far more effective than has been previously suggested. The German attempt to turn Brittany into a vast bastion area after the Normandy landings is a further aspect which is covered in detail for the first time. Employing new research from both German and French sources, this is a highly readable account with many previously unpublished images. &“Many people like to visit the &‘battlefields&’ and grounds (called &‘battlefield tourism&’) of World War 2 and this volume will greatly assist any such expedition as it devotes an entire chapter to the present-day condition of many structures . . . superb.&”—Military Archive Research
Hitler's Gauls: The History of the 33rd Waffen-SS Division Charlemagne
by Jonathan TriggThe divisions of the Waffen-SS were among the elite of Hitler’s armies in the Second World War. But alongside the Germans in the Waffen-SS fought an astonishingly high number of volunteers from other countries. By the end of the Second World War these foreign volunteers comprised half of all Hitler’s Waffen-SS, and filled the ranks of over twenty-four of the nominal thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions. So during the most brutal war that mankind has ever known, hundreds of thousands of men flocked to fight for a country that was not theirs, and for a cause that was one of the most monstrous and barbaric in history. Who were these men, and why did they fight? Hitler’s Gauls is an in-depth examination of one of these legions of foreign volunteers, the Charlemagne division, who were recruited entirely from conquered France. The men in Charlemagne, often motivated by an extreme anti-communist zeal, fought hard on the Eastern Front including battles of near annihilation in the snows of Pomerania and the final stand in the ruins of Berlin. This definitive history, illustrated with rare photographs, explores the background, training, key figures and full combat record of one of Hitler’s lesser known foreign units of the Second World War.
Hitler's Generals (Essay Index Reprint Ser.)
by W. E. HartHitler's Generals, first published in 1944, is an insider's look at 9 important German military leaders of World War II: 6 in the army, 2 in the navy, and one a head of the air force (Luftwaffe). Included are profiles of: Colonel General Baron Werner von Fritsch, Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, and Admiral Erich Raeder. Author W. E. Hart had personal knowledge of the men or of their close associates during his time as an officer in the German Army (Reichswehr) before escaping Nazi-controlled Germany and joining the British Army. His critiques of Rommel and von Rundstedt are especially insightful in describing these general's strengths and weaknesses. Included are 8 pages of photographs.
Hitler's Generals in America: Nazi POWs and Allied Military Intelligence
by Derek R. MallettThe WWII historian offers &“provocative analysis&” of the US military&’s evolving relationship with German officers held on American soil (Robert D. Billinger Jr., author of Nazi POWs in the Tar Heel State). In Hitler&’s Generals in America, Derek R. Mallett examines the relationship between American officials and the Wehrmacht general officers they held as prisoners of war in the United States between 1943 and 1946. While the British pampered the German officers in their custody in order to obtain intelligence, Americans did not share the same sense of class privilege, and refused any special treatment to German prisoners of any rank. By the end of the war, however, the United States had begun to envision itself as a world power rather than one of several allies providing aid during wartime. Mallett demonstrates how a growing admiration for the German officers&’ prowess and military traditions, coupled with postwar anxiety about Soviet intentions, drove Washington to collaborate with many Wehrmacht general officers. Drawing on newly available sources, this intriguing book shows how Americans undertook the complex process of reconceptualizing Germans—even Nazi generals—as allies against what they perceived as their new enemy, the Soviet Union.
Hitler's Geographies: The Spatialities of the Third Reich
by Claudio Minca Paolo GiaccariaLebensraum: the entitlement of "legitimate" Germans to living space. Entfernung: the expulsion of "undesirables" to create empty space for German resettlement. During his thirteen years leading Germany, Hitler developed and made use of a number of powerful geostrategical concepts such as these in order to justify his imperialist expansion, exploitation, and genocide. As his twisted manifestation of spatial theory grew in Nazi ideology, it created a new and violent relationship between people and space in Germany and beyond. With Hitler's Geographies, editors Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca examine the variety of ways in which spatial theory evolved and was translated into real-world action under the Third Reich. They have gathered an outstanding collection by leading scholars, presenting key concepts and figures as well exploring the undeniable link between biopolitical power and spatial expansion and exclusion.
Hitler's Gift to France
by Robert Miller Georges PoissonIn the dead of the winter of 1940, Hitler decided to return from its burial place in Vienna the ashes of Napoleon II, known as the "Aiglon," the only son of the emperor Napoleon. The gesture was intended to win the support of the French people, but only managed to precipitate a political crisis at Vichy, where Marshal Pétain ordered the pro-German Deputy Prime Minister Pierre Laval arrested. Based on new research and previously unknown documents, the author, historian Georges Poisson, at last sheds light on an incident most historians--including Robert O. Paxton--have been at a loss to explain.
Hitler's Gift: The True Story of the Scientists Expelled by the Nazi Regime
by David Pyke Jean MedawarBetween 1901 and 1932, Germany won a third of all the Nobel Prizes for science. With Hitler's rise to power and the introduction of racial laws, starting with the exclusion of all Jews from state institutions, Jewish professors were forced to leave their jobs, which closed the door on Germany's fifty-year record of world supremacy in science. Of these more than 1,500 refugees, fifteen went on to win Nobel Prizes, several co-discovered penicillin--and more of them became the driving force behind the atomic bomb project.In this revelatory book, Jean Medawar and David Pyke tell countless gripping individual stories of emigration, rescue, and escape, including those of Albert Einstein, Fritz Haber, Leo Szilard, and many others. Much of this material was collected through interviews with more than twenty of the surviving refugee scholars, so as to document for history the steps taken after Hitler's policy was enacted. As one refugee scholar wrote, "Far from destroying the spirit of German scholarship, the Nazis had spread it all over the world. Only Germany was to be the loser."Hitler's Gift is the story of the men who were forced from their homeland and went on to revolutionize many of the scientific practices that we rely on today. Experience firsthand the stories of these geniuses, and learn not only how their deportation affected them, but how it bettered the world that we live in today.
Hitler's Girl: The British Aristocracy and the Third Reich on the Eve of WWII
by Lauren YoungA timely, riveting book that presents for the first time an alternative history of 1930s Britain, revealing how prominent fascist sympathizers nearly succeeded in overturning British democracy—using the past as a road map to navigate the complexities of today’s turn toward authoritarianism.Hitler’s Girl is a groundbreaking history that reveals how, in the 1930s, authoritarianism nearly took hold in Great Britain as it did in Italy and Germany. Drawing on recently declassified intelligence files, Lauren Young details the pervasiveness of Nazi sympathies among the British aristocracy, as significant factions of the upper class methodically pursued an actively pro-German agenda. She reveals how these aristocrats formed a murky Fifth Column to Nazi Germany, which depended on the complacence and complicity of the English to topple its proud and long-standing democratic tradition—and very nearly succeeded.As she highlights the parallels to our similarly treacherous time, Young exposes the involvement of secret organizations like the Right Club, which counted the Duke of Wellington among its influential members; the Cliveden Set, which ran a shadow foreign policy in support of Hitler; and the shocking four-year affair between socialite Unity Mitford and Adolf Hitler.Eye-opening and instructive, Hitler’s Girl re-evaluates 1930s England to help us understand our own vulnerabilities and poses urgent questions we must face to protect our freedom. At what point does complacency become complicity, posing real risk to the democratic norms that we take for granted? Will democracy again succeed—and will it require a similarly cataclysmic event like World War II to ensure its survival? Will we, in our own defining moment, stand up for democratic values—or will we succumb to political extremism?
Hitler's Girls: Doves Amongst Eagles
by Tim HeathThe &“frank, tragic, bittersweet, brutal, emotional&” true story of the Third Reich&’s so-called she-devils of the League of German Girls (Gerry Van Tonder, author of Berlin Blockade). They were ten to eighteen years old: German girls who volunteered for the war effort, and were indoctrinated into the Nazi youth organizations, Jungmädelbund and Bund Deutcscher Mädel. At first they were schooled in a very narrow education: how to cook, clean, excel at sports, birth babies, and raise them. But when Hitler called, they were trained, militarized, and exploited for the ultimate goal of the Third Reich. From the prosperous beginnings of the League of German Girls in 1933 to the cataclysmic defeat of 1945, Hitler&’s Girls is an insightful, disturbing, and revealing exploration of their specific roles: what was expected of them, and how they delivered, as defined by the Nazi state. Were they unwitting pawns or willing accessories to genocide? Historian Tim Heath searches for the answers and provides a definitive voice for this unique, and until now, unheard generation of German females. &“An essential account of the women who served Hitler during his years of power. Stunning photographs but a chilling narrative, in view of what they were required to do.&” —Books Monthly
Hitler's Gladiator: The Life and Wars of Panzer Army Commander Sepp Dietrich
by Charles MessengerA charismatic yet notorious character, Sepp Dietrich the man is impossible to separate from Sepp Dietrich the General, who was awarded twenty-four different honors during his service to the Nazi party and was known for his devotion to his men as he led them through some of the fiercest fighting in the war. In this extensively researched book, historian Charles Messenger attempts to discover the truth about this sparsely documented man, painting a vivid picture of the aggressive war and politics under the Third Reich. From Dietrich’s humble upbringing and his eventual rise to General, to his dissatisfaction with Hitler’s leadership and the trials he faced after the war, Dietrich remains a mysterious figure in history.
Hitler's Gold: The Nazi Loot and How it was Laundered and Lost
by Norman RidleyThe whereabouts and disposal of the Nazi's remaining stolen gold has led to numerous investigations and countless conspiracy theories. Norman Ridley uncovers many of the mysteries surrounding this continuing search for the missing millions. War is a costly business and in 1939, Germany was almost broke with its economy overheating and heading for runaway inflation. Hitler needed hard foreign currency to pay for his war machine and the only way he could get this was by selling gold that he looted from the national banks of Austria, Czechoslovakia and all the countries that were occupied after September 1939. Another source of gold was the theft of personal gold especially from the Jews, most grotesquely, the haul of dental gold which came out of the concentration camps. No neutral country would accept Reichsmarks so the gold had to be laundered through Swiss banks. The story of Swiss complicity in German war crimes is still a subject of controversy, and lawsuits. There are also questions about the parts played by other countries, particularly Portugal, in laundering stolen gold for the Nazis. The Vatican’s dealings with Hitler have often been seen as ambiguous and this book investigates the Holy See’s role in helping ship Nazi gold to South America, and how that gold might have been used to re-create the German Reich. After the war a commission was set up to recover as much gold as possible and restore it to those from whom it was stolen. This, of course, was beset by huge problems especially with regards to gold that was looted from Holocaust victims. Enormous quantities of gold and other treasures were hidden in a mine at Merkers in Thuringia which was found by the US 3rd Army in 1945, but much gold remains unaccounted for, and attempts are still ongoing to uncover supposed hidden caches, the most recent in Poland where four tons are believed to have been found by the Silesian Bridge Foundation in May of 2022. The whereabouts and disposal of the remaining stolen gold has led to numerous investigations and countless conspiracy theories. In Hitler’s Gold the author analyzes these and uncovers many of the mysteries surrounding this continuing search for the missing millions.
Hitler's Gray Wolves: U-Boats in the Indian Ocean
by Lawrence PatersonNext to nothing has been written about the U-boat war in the Indian Ocean. This is the story of a forgotten campaign. The battle began in August 1943, when a German submarine arrived in the Malaysian harbor of Georgetown. In total, nearly forty U-boats were assigned to penetrate the Indian Ocean, serving alongside troops of the occupying Imperial Japanese forces. The Japanese allowed U-boats to use Malaysia as an operational station. From that base, they mixed with Japanese forces on a hitherto unseen scale: a move which spread the U-boat war throughout the vast Indian Ocean and into the Pacific. Success in this theater of war held a real chance to swing the tide of battle in North Africa in favor of Rommel, but the Germans essentially did too little too late. The joint action also gave U-boats the opportunity to penetrate the Pacific Ocean for the first time, attacking shipping off the Australian coast and hunting off New Zealand. Plans were even afoot for an assault on American supply lines. The cooperation' also brought into stark relief the fundamental differences of German and Japanese war aims. After the crews of Italian supply submarines joined the Germans and Japanese, relations between the fighting men of the three main Axis powers were often brutal and almost constantly turbulent. Stories of U-boats laden with gold and treasure stem almost exclusively from boats destined to and returning from Japanese-controlled Malaysia, laden with material exchanged between the two major partners of the Triple Axis Alliance.
Hitler's Greatest Defeat: The German Collapse, 1944
by Paul AdairHow the Nazis lost the war1944 was a year of trial for the German Army. While the Allies were preparing to invade the Third Reich from the west, Stalin was set on a massive offensive to liberate the last remaining areas of Soviet territory still held by the Germans. Hitler was determined to hold fast. His muddled strategic thinking nullified the undoubted operational ability of his generals, and disaster was the inevitable result.This book is a gripping analysis of the Soviet campaign to capture Byelorussia, the German attempts to counter it, and the final, terrible collapse of Army Group Centre, inflicting even greater losses on the Germans than their earlier defeat at Stalingrad. It was a catastrophe of unbelievable proportions: 28 of 34 divisions, over 300,000 men, were lost. Hitler’s war effort was doomed and broken.An unputdownable history perfect for readers of Antony Beevor or James Holland.
Hitler's Grey Wolves: U-Boats in the Indian Ocean
by Lawrence PatersonVery little has been written about the U-boat war in the Indian Ocean, where almost forty German submarines were assigned to operate from the Malaysian port of Georgetown alongside troops of the occupying Imperial Japanese forces. From that base they sailed across the vast Indian Ocean and into the Pacific. Success in this theatre of war could very possibly have swung the tide of battle in North Africa in favour of Rommel, and the joint operations with the Japanese allowed the Germans to penetrate the Pacific Ocean for the first time, attacking shipping off the Australian coast and hunting off New Zealand. Plans were even made to attack US supply lines.Hitlers Grey Wolves is the story of this forgotten campaign, bringing it vividly to life through Lawrence Patersons incisive analysis, eyewitness testimony and an extensive collection of contemporary photographs.Very little has been written about the U-boat war in the Indian Ocean, where almost forty German submarines were assigned to operate from the Malaysian port of Georgetown alongside troops of the occupying Imperial Japanese forces. From that base they sailed across the vast Indian Ocean and into the Pacific.
Hitler's Gulf War: The Fight for Iraq 1941
by Barrie G. JamesThis military history of the Iraqi revolt in WWII, told from the point of view of the men who were there, is &“a fantastic and enjoyable book&” (Col. Tim Collins, OBE). In the spring of 1941, on an airfield fifty-five miles from Baghdad, a group of RAF airmen and soldiers were outnumbered by the better equipped Iraqi forces—soldiers who were aided by the Germans and Italians. After thirty days, this battle resulted in the first real defeat of the Axis powers in World War II. Hitler&’s Gulf War presents the story of the Iraqi revolt from the perspectives of the British, Iraqi, and Germans who were involved in the battle. Along with the group at the airfield, historian Barrie G. James examines the small relief column of cavalry, infantry, and Bedouins who traveled across a five-hundred-mile unmapped desert to support the RAF. With Germany&’s successes in Greece and the Western Desert in 1941, a British defeat here would have changed the course of World War II. Hitler&’s Gulf War traces how the battle destroyed Axis aspirations in the Middle East and also set the scene for Iraq&’s future relations with the West.
Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich
by Robert GerwarthA chilling biography of the head of Nazi Germany&’s terror apparatus, a key player in the Third Reich whose full story has never before been told. Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the twentieth century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany. He shouldered a major share of responsibility for some of the worst Nazi atrocities, and up to his assassination in Prague in 1942, he was widely seen as one of the most dangerous men in Nazi Germany. Yet Heydrich has received remarkably modest attention in the extensive literature of the Third Reich. Robert Gerwarth weaves together little-known stories of Heydrich's private life with his deeds as head of the Nazi Reich Security Main Office. Fully exploring Heydrich's progression from a privileged middle-class youth to a rapacious mass murderer, Gerwarth sheds new light on the complexity of Heydrich's adult character, his motivations, the incremental steps that led to unimaginable atrocities, and the consequences of his murderous efforts toward re-creating the entire ethnic makeup of Europe. &“This admirable biography makes plausible what actually happened and makes human what we might prefer to dismiss as monstrous.&”—Timothy Snyder, Wall Street Journal &“[A] probing biography…. Gerwarth&’s fine study shows in chilling detail how genocide emerged from the practicalities of implementing a demented belief system.&”—Publishers Weekly &“A thoroughly documented, scholarly, and eminently readable account of this mass murderer.&”—The New Republic
Hitler's Hangmen: The Secret German Plot to Kill Churchill, December 1944
by Brian LettThis WWII history exposes a shocking episode of treason among the highest levels of British leadership in a conspiracy with Nazi High Command. At the outbreak of the Second World War, a number of Fascist groups were active in Britain, all plotting to overthrow the British government. When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, he had the leaders of these groups arrested, including Member of Parliament Archibald Ramsey. When these men were released years later, they were just as determined to install a fascist government in Britain—and all the more embittered toward Churchill. In the autumn of 1944, Adolf Hitler&’s military gains were eroding across the map. In a desperate plan to avoid total defeat, he sought the simultaneous assassination of both Churchill and Eisenhower. This was the opportunity Ramsay and his cohorts had been waiting for. They planned a massive outbreak of British POW camps, the seizure of tanks and armored vehicles, and an advance on London. Ramsey himself would be perfectly placed to aid the coup—within yards of his greatest enemy, Winston Churchill, in the House of Commons. This is the incredible, disturbing story of how close British Fascists came to impacting the outcome of the Second World War. It is also a comprehensive investigation into the Break Out Plot as it unfolded across Britain: how it came to fruition and how it was quashed, its repercussions and the many little-known stories of escape and recapture which took place throughout the country.
Hitler's Hangmen: The Secret German Plot to Kill Churchill, December 1944
by Brian LettThis WWII history exposes a shocking episode of treason among the highest levels of British leadership in a conspiracy with Nazi High Command. At the outbreak of the Second World War, a number of Fascist groups were active in Britain, all plotting to overthrow the British government. When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, he had the leaders of these groups arrested, including Member of Parliament Archibald Ramsey. When these men were released years later, they were just as determined to install a fascist government in Britain—and all the more embittered toward Churchill. In the autumn of 1944, Adolf Hitler&’s military gains were eroding across the map. In a desperate plan to avoid total defeat, he sought the simultaneous assassination of both Churchill and Eisenhower. This was the opportunity Ramsay and his cohorts had been waiting for. They planned a massive outbreak of British POW camps, the seizure of tanks and armored vehicles, and an advance on London. Ramsey himself would be perfectly placed to aid the coup—within yards of his greatest enemy, Winston Churchill, in the House of Commons. This is the incredible, disturbing story of how close British Fascists came to impacting the outcome of the Second World War. It is also a comprehensive investigation into the Break Out Plot as it unfolded across Britain: how it came to fruition and how it was quashed, its repercussions and the many little-known stories of escape and recapture which took place throughout the country.
Hitler's Headquarters, 1939–1945: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives (Images of War)
by Ian BaxterAs well as being pathological about his security, Hitler believed only he could successfully oversee the Third Reichs operations. Thus he divided his time between his numerous HQs spread across his empire. We gain an insight into the atmosphere of fear and boredom, interspersed with outbursts of rage often against his generals that existed in these extraordinary installations. The book also reveals the extent of the engineering and building effort required to produce this chain of reinforced bunkers, which were constructed by huge labor forces of The Todt Organization. The book concludes with Hitlers final days in Chancellery bunker as the Russians advanced on Berlin.
Hitler's Heavy Tiger Tank Battalions, 1942–1945 (Images of War)
by Ian BaxterThe heavy tanks and other armored vehicles of WWII Germany come vividly to life in this informative volume of detailed wartime photos.With rare, often unpublished photographs and enlightening captions, Hitler’s Heavy Tiger Tank Battalions provides a superb record of the Wehrmacht’s Schwere Panzerableilung. In addition to the Tiger I and II heavy tanks, these battalions were equipped with Panzer III medium tanks; Flakpanzer IV self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, halftrack special purpose vehicles, Kettenkrad gun tractors, and Berge Panther armored recovery vehicles.Between 1942 and 1945, heavy tank battalions saw action on the Eastern Front, Italy and North West Europe before being pushed back to Berlin for the final defensive battles. This volume features graphic photographs and descriptions of vehicles on operations in all these theatres. Modelers and equipment buffs in particular will find this Images of War book extremely useful and fascinating.
Hitler's Henchmen: Nazi Executioners and How They Escaped Justice After WWII
by Helmut OrtnerHelmut Ortner reveals a staggering history of perpetrators, victims and bystanders in Hitler’s Germany. He explores the shocking evidence of a merciless era – and of the shameful omissions of post-war German justice. Johann Reichhart was a state-appointed judicial executioner in Bavaria from 1924 until the end of the war in Europe. During the Nazi era, he executed numerous people who were sentenced to death for resisting National Socialism, including many of those involved in the 20 July 1944 bomb plot on Adolf Hitler. As a member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, the SS organisation responsible for administering the concentration and extermination camps, Arnold Strippel served at a number of locations during his rise to the rank of SS-Obersturmführer. These included Natzweiler-Struthof, Buchenwald, Majdanek, Ravensbrück and Neuengamme, where he was responsible for murdering the victims of a series of tuberculosis medical experiments. Like Reichhart, Erich Schwinge was also involved in the legal sphere during the Third Reich. A German military lawyer, in 1931 he became a professor of law and, from 1936, wrote the legal commentary on German military criminal law that was decisive during the Nazi era. Aside from the part they played in Hitler’s regime, these three men all had one further thing in common – they survived the war and restarted their careers in Adenauer’s Federal Republic of Germany. In Hitler’s Henchmen, Helmut Ortner uncovers the full stories of Reichhart, Strippel, Schwinge and others like them, Nazi perpetrators who enjoyed post-war careers as judges, university professors, doctors and politicians. Had they been gutless cogs in the machinery of the Nazi state, or ideologized persecutors? Ortner reveals that it was not only their Nazi pasts that were forgotten, but how the suffering of the victims, including resistance fighters such as Georg Elser and Maurice Becaud, and their relatives was suppressed and ignored.
Hitler's Holocaust
by Guido KnoppNo crime in the twentieth century has so deeply shocked mankind as the Holocaust. And none has so stubbornly resisted every attempt to explain it. More than six million people were murdered, and countless more endured horrific suffering. Guido Knopp's disturbing account is the most complete history of teh Holocaust to date. It reveals the appalling truth using the most recent historical research, including minutes of daily briefings by Joseph Goebbels, private papers of the SS Einsatzgruppen in charge of mass murder, and East German State Security documents detailing the deportation of Jews. The book relives the agony of the victims and investigations the motive of the perpetrators. Survivors talk for the first time about their horrifying torture and their eventual escape from Nazi persecution. The persecutors now at last confront the atrocities they committed. This is not an attempt to rewrite the history of the Holocaust, but a searing account of the greatest crime of the twentieth century - if not of all time - using the latest research on the subject.
Hitler's Holy Relics
by Sidney KirkpatrickFrom Paris to Stalingrad, the Nazis systematically plundered all manner of art and antiquities. But the first and most valuable treasures they looted were the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. In Hitler's Holy Relics, bestselling author Sidney Kirkpatrick tells the riveting and never-before-told true story of how an American college professor turned Army sleuth recovered these cherished symbols of Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich before they could become a rallying point in the creation of a Fourth and equally unholy Reich.Anticipating the Allied invasion of Nazi Germany, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler had ordered a top-secret bunker carved deep into the bedrock beneath Nürnberg castle. Inside the well-guarded chamber was a specially constructed vault that held the plundered treasures Hitler valued the most: the Spear of Destiny (reputed to have been used to pierce Christ's side while he was on the cross) and the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, ancient artifacts steeped in medieval mysticism and coveted by world rulers from Charlemagne to Napoleon. But as Allied bombers rained devastation upon Nürnberg and the U.S. Seventh Army prepared to invade the city Hitler called "the soul of the Nazi Party," five of the most precious relics, all central to the coronation ceremony of a would-be Holy Roman Emperor, vanished from the vault. Who took them? And why? The mystery remained unsolved for months after the war's end, until the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, ordered Lieutenant Walter Horn, a German-born art historian on leave from U.C. Berkeley, to hunt down the missing treasures.To accomplish his mission, Horn must revisit the now-rubble-strewn landscape of his youth and delve into the ancient legends and arcane mysticism surrounding the antiquities that Hitler had looted in his quest for world domination. Horn searches for clues in the burnt remains of Himmler's private castle and follows the trail of neo-Nazi "Teutonic Knights" charged with protecting a vast hidden fortune in plundered gold and other treasure. Along the way, Horn has to confront his own demons: how members of his family and former academic colleagues subverted scholarly research to help legitimize Hitler's theories of Aryan supremacy and the Master Race. What Horn discovers on his investigative odyssey is so explosive that his final report will remain secret for decades. Drawing on unpublished interrogation and intelligence reports, as well as on diaries, letters, journals, and interviews in the United States and Germany, Kirkpatrick tells this riveting and disturbing story with cinematic detail and reveals-- for the first time--how a failed Vienna art student, obsessed with the occult and dreams of his own grandeur, nearly succeeded in creating a Holy Reich rooted in a twisted reinvention of medieval and Church history.
Hitler's Home Front: Memoirs of a Hitler Youth
by Don A Gregory Wilhelm R GehlenA &“candid and revealing memoir shows a normal boy and a family at war and in its aftermath, determined to do what it took to survive . . . fascinating&” (The Great War). When Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came into power in 1933, he promised the downtrodden, demoralized, and economically broken people of Germany a new beginning and a strong future. Millions flocked to his message, including a corps of young people called the Hitlerjugend—the Hitler Youth. By 1942 Hitler had transformed Germany into a juggernaut of war that swept over Europe and threatened to conquer the world. It was in that year that a nine-year-old Wilhelm Reinhard Gehlen, took the &‘Jungvolk&’ oath, vowing to give his life for Hitler. This is the story of Wilhelm Gehlen&’s childhood in Nazi Germany during World War II and the awful circumstances which he and his friends and family had to endure during and following the war. Including a handful of recipes and descriptions of the strange and sometimes disgusting food that nevertheless kept people alive, this book sheds light on the truly awful conditions and the twisted, mistaken devotion held by members of the Hitler Youth—that it was their duty to do everything possible to save the Thousand Year Reich.