Best of
Germany

1965

The Adventures of the Black Hand Gang


Hans Jürgen Press - 1965
    Four mysteries are solved by a group of children known as the Black Hand Gang.

Life in a Jewish Family: Her Unfinished Autobiographical Account


Edith Stein - 1965
    One By Edith Stein, translated by Josephine Koeppel, OCD. Edith Stein's autobiography, with map and 11 pages of photos. This initial volume of the Collected Works offers, for the first time in English, Edith Stein's unabridged autobiography depicting herself as a child and a young adult. Her text breaks abruptly because the Gestapo arrested and deported her to Auschwitz in 1942. Edith Stein is one of the most significant German women of our century. At the age of twenty-five she became the first assistant to the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. She was much in demand as a writer-lecturer after her conversion from atheism to Catholicism. Later, as a Carmelite nun, she maintained her intellectual pursuits, until she died along with so many other Jewish people in the Holocaust. By making this story available in English, the Institute of Carmelite Studies provides an eye-witness account of persons and activities on the scene at the time when psychology and philosophy became separate disciplines. A preface, foreword, and afterword to Edith's text brings out many background details of the rich story she has left us. "A splendid translation, filled with a deep understanding of Edith Stein." - Cistercian Studies

The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922-1945


William Sheridan Allen - 1965
    Beginning at the end of the Weimar Republic, Allen examines the entire period of the Nazi Revolution within a single locality.Tackling one of the 20th century's greatest dilemmas, Allen demonstrates how this dictatorship subtly surmounted democracy and how the Nazi seizure of power encroached from below. Relying upon legal records and interviews with primary sources, Allen dissects Northeim, Germany with microscopic precision to depict the transformation of a sleepy town to a Nazi stronghold. In this cogent analysis, Allen argues that Hitler rose to power primarily through democratic tactics that incited localized support rather than through violent means.Allen's detailed, analysis has indisputably become a classic. Revised on the basis of newly discovered Nazi documents, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945 continues to significantly contribute to the understanding of this prominent political and moral dispute of the 1900s.

The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology


Fritz Stern - 1965
    By analyzing the thought and influence of three leading critics of modern Germany, this study will demonstrate the dangers and dilemmas of a particular type of cultural despair. Lagarde, Langbein, and Moeller van den Bruck-their active lives spanning the years from the middle of the past century to the threshold of Hitler's Third Reich-attacked, often incisively and justly, the deficiencies of German culture and the German spirit. But they were more than the critics of Germany's cultural crisis; they were its symptoms and victims as well. Unable to endure the ills which they diagnosed and which they had experienced in their own lives, they sought to become prophets who would point the way to a national rebirth. Hence, they propounded all manner of reforms, ruthless and idealistic, nationalistic and utopian. It was this leap from despair to utopia across all existing reality that gave their thought its fantastic quality.

The Case Of Richard Sorge


Frederick William Dampier Deakin - 1965
    Two quotes illustrate this. The 1st is by Larry Collins, 'Richard Sorge's brilliant espionage work saved Stalin & the Soviet Union from defeat in the fall of 1941, probably prevented a Nazi victory in WWII & thereby assured the dimensions of the world we live in today.' The 2nd is by Frederick Forsyth, 'The spies in history who can say from their graves, the information I supplied to my masters, for better or worse, altered the history of our planet, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Richard Sorge was in that group.' Masquerading as a Nazi journalist, Richard Sorge worked undetected as head of a Red Army spy ring until he was arrested & executed in Japan during the WWII. Such an astonishing story as his is bound to attract attention but not only was this the 1st book to offer an authoritative account, it has, in many ways, not least in the quality of its writing, never been superseded. The authors rejected legend & found facts that were even stranger. They provide an account as reliable as it's enthralling of possibly the most successful spy who ever operated; a man who for eight years transmitted from Japan a continuous stream of valuable information, often derived from the highest quarters, culminating in precise advance information of Hitler's invasion of Russia, of Japan's decision not to attack Russia in '41 & of the near certainty of war against America that October or November instead. Jointly written books sometimes jar, but not this one. The authors had complementary skills, F.W. Deakin being an authority on 20th-century European history & G.R. Storry no less of an authority on 20th-century Japan. Together they do justice to 'the man whom I regard as the most formidable spy in history,'--Ian Fleming (edited)

The G. I. Journal of Sergeant Giles


Henry E. Giles - 1965
    

Diary of a Nightmare: Berlin 1942-1945


Ursula von Kardorff - 1965
    Several of her friends were involved in the 20 July plot to kill Hitler.