Best of
European-History

1964

Russia at War: 1941-1945


Alexander Werth - 1964
    Himself an eyewitness to the shattering historical drama he vividly records, Werth offers an intensely detailed chronicle of the events that exceeded in savagery and hatred any other on Russian soil. From the hardships of the citizenry to the sweep of massive military operations to the corridors of diplomacy, this modern classic captures every aspect of the grim but heroic Soviet-German war that turned Russia into the most powerful nation in the Old World.

Medieval Civilization 400-1500


Jacques Le Goff - 1964
    Jacques Le Goff has written a book which will not only be read by generations of students and historians, but which will delight and inform all those interested in the history of medieval Europe. Part one, Historical Evolution, is a narrative account of the entire period, from the barbarian settlement of Roman Europe in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries to the war-torn crises of Christian Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.Part two, Medieval Civilization, is analytical, concerned with the origins of early medieval ideas of culture and religion, the constraints of time and space in a pre-industrial world and the reconstruction of the lives and sensibilities of the people during this long period. Medieval Civilization combines the narrative and descriptive power characteristic of Anglo-Saxon scholarship with the sensitivity and insight of the French historical tradition.

Feudal Society, Volume 1


Marc Bloch - 1964
    Bloch dared to do this and was successful; therein lies the enduring achievement of Feudal Society."—Charles Garside, Yale Review

Escape from Hell: The True Story of the Auschwitz Protocol


Alfréd Wetzler - 1964
    His escape from Auschwitz, and the report he helped compile, telling for the first time the truth about the camp as a place of mass murder, led directly to saving the lives of 120,000 Jews#58; the Jews of Budapest who were about to be deported to their deaths. No other single act in the Second World War saved so many Jews from the fate that Hitler and the SS had determined for them. This book tells Wetzler's story." middot; Sir Martin Gilbertbrbr"Wetzler is a master at evoking the universe of Auschwitz, and especially, his and Vrba's harrowing flight to Slovakia. The day-by-day account of the tremendous difficulties the pair faced after the Nazis had called off their search of the camp and its surroundings is both riveting and heart wrenching. [...] Shining vibrantly through the pages of the memoir are the tenacity and valor of two young men, who sought to inform the world about the greatest outrage ever committed by humans against their fellow humans." middot; [From Introduction by Dr Robert Rozett]brbrTogether with another young Slovak Jew, both of them deported in 1942, the author succeeded in escaping from the notorious death camp in the spring of 1944. There were some very few successful escapes from Auschwitz during the war, but it was these two who smuggled out the damning evidence - a ground plan of the camp, constructional details of the gas chambers and crematoriums and, most convincingly, a label from a canister of Cyclone gas. The present book is cast in the form of a novel to allow factual information not personally collected by the two fugitives, but provided for them by a handful of reliable friends, to be included. Nothing,however, has been invented. It is a shocking account of Nazi genocide and of the inhuman conditions in the camp, but equally shocking is the initial disbelief the fugitive's revelations met with after their return.brbrEwald Osers has translated over 150 books and received many translation prizes and honours.

The Avenue


R.F. Delderfield - 1964
    And all the hopes, dreams and lives of the people on the Avenue are forged to a fighting force to defend all that they hold dear."

Paris in the Terror


Stanley Loomis - 1964
    Charlotte Corday...Danton...Mme Roland...Robespierre...Camille Desmoulins...Fouche.The murder of Marat: July 1793The trail of Danton: April 1794The end of Robespierre: July 1794BibliographyIndex

The Golden Bees: The Story of the Bonapartes


Theo Aronson - 1964
     This book is a domestic chronicle of the incredible Bonaparte family, a greedy, amorous, quarrelsome and hot-blooded Corsican clan who provided nineteenth-century Europe — and America — not only with two French emperors, but also with a dazzling assortment of pretenders and parvenus, statesmen and eccentrics, great ladies and adventuresses. Plumped on to the thrones of Europe by the career of Napoleon I, who probably took better care of his family than any conqueror in history, the Bonapartes survived the wreck of the two empires they ruled, buzzing around the honeypots of the continent with all the persistence of the imperial bees of Napoleon's crest. This is a personal history, not a political one. It is the family, with its eccentricities, vulgarities and fascinations manifesting themselves in generation after generation, which holds the centre of the stage. The great political, economic and military events of the time are heard dimly as 'noises off'. Napoleon I himself appears as son, brother, husband, father and above all as founder of a dynasty, rather than as a great public figure. But about the family, its feuds, its treacheries, its love affairs, its moments of greatness and of human tragedy, Mr Aronson seems to have missed not one good story, from the squabbles of Napoleon's rebellious sisters over the carrying of Josephine's train, to Hitler's remarkable deal with Petain for the return of the body of the Duke of Reichstadt to his father's tomb in the Invalides. Mr Aronson paints his family portrait with a wealth of detail based on many years of research with historical documents and original records, letters, memoirs and family diaries — for, in the end, no one seems to have been able to tell quite such a lurid tale about a Bonaparte as another Bonaparte.

Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945


John Wheeler-Bennett - 1964
    Wheeler-Bennett tells the story of how the German Army, having survived the disaster of 1918, proceeded to dominate the political life of the German Republic, exercising a virtually paramount degree of power and influence by its very withdrawal from the active arena of politics: and of how, when later it was mistaken enough to play politics instead of controlling them, it began a descent which only ended in abject defeat - militarily, politically and spiritually. The author reveals the extent of the responsibility of the Army for bringing the Nazi regime to power, for tolerating the infamies of that regime once it had attained power, and for not taking the measures - at a time when only the Army could have taken them - to remove it from power. In this second edition a new foreword by Professor Richard Overy sets Wheeler-Bennett's classic text in a modern context.

A Knight and His Weapons


Ewart Oakeshott - 1964
    This accessible, lively, and informative book explores many facets of the medieval world of weaponry. Did you know, for instance, that in the fifteenth century "fight books" with drawings guided knights in the proper use of weapons? That the average medieval warrior became a full-fledged fighter by the time he was fifteen years old? Or that armor made by a master could, by modern standards, cost the price of a Rolls Royce?

Prince Eugen of Savoy: A Biography


Nicholas Henderson - 1964
    Soldier of 30 campaigns and the survivor of fourteen wounds, Prince Eugen fought against the French with Marlborough in a glorious brotherhood that Winston Churchill praised in glowing terms as without peer.

Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic


Andreas Dorpalen - 1964
    He examines in detail Hindenburg's role during the fateful days when Hitler was forcing his way to the top, scheming to overthrow the republic of which President Hindenburg eventually appointed him chancellor.

Adventure in the Wilderness: The American Journals of Antoine de Bougainville


Louis Antoine de Bougainville - 1964
    

Origins of Modern Europe, 1660-1789


James Llewelyn White - 1964