It was also one of the war's bloodiest and most pivotal battles, whose outcome would shape international politics for decades to come.Cornelius Ryan's compelling account of this final battle is a story of brutal extremes, of stunning military triumph alongside the stark conditions that the civilians of Berlin experienced in the face of the Allied assault. As always, Ryan delves beneath the military and political forces that were dictating events to explore the more immediate imperatives of survival, where, as the author describes it, “to eat had become more important than to love, to burrow more dignified than to fight, to exist more militarily correct than to win.”It is the story of ordinary people, both soldiers and civilians, caught up in the despair, frustration, and terror of defeat. It is history at its best, a masterful illumination of the effects of war on the lives of individuals, and one of the enduring works on World War II.

    To reconstruct the tumultuous hundred days between Yalta and the fall of Berlin, John Toland traveled more than 100,000 miles in twenty-one countries and interviewed more than six hundred people—from Hitler’s personal chauffeur to Generals von Manteuffel, Wenck, and Heinrici; from underground leaders to diplomats; from top Allied field commanders to brave young GIs. Toland adeptly weaves together these interviews using research from thousands of primary sources. When it was first published, The Last 100 Days made history, revealing after-action reports, staff journals, and top-secret messages and personal documents previously unavailable to historians. Since that time, it has come to be regarded as one of the greatest historical narratives of the twentieth century.

    Tow ferocious, excruciating years later, his forces met a final devastating defeat in the frozen streets of Stalingrad. Now this entire campaign has been recreated so accurately and vividly by the author of The Foxes of the Desert that you can hear its noise, feel its exhaustion, gasp at the blunders on both sides, follow every movement of the great armies.

    It was the beginning of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, one of the most brutal campaigns in the history of warfare. Four years later, the victorious Red Army has suffered a loss of seven million lives. Alan Clark's incisive analysis succeeds in explaining how a fighting force that in one two-month period lost two million men was nevertheless able to rally to defeat the Wehrmacht. The Barbarossa campaign included some of the greatest episodes in military history: the futile attack on Moscow in the winter of 1941-42, the siege of Stalingrad, the great Russian offensive beginning in 1944 that would lead the Red Army to the historic meeting with the Americans at the Elbe and on to victory in Berlin.Barbarossa is a classic of miltary history. This paperback edition contains a new preface by the author.

    Swearing eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler, it infiltrated every aspect of German life and was responsible for the deaths of millions. This gripping history recounts the strange and, at times, absurd true story of Hitler's SS. It exposes an organization that was not directed by some devilishly efficient system but was the product of accident, inevitability, and the random convergence of criminals, social climbers, and romantics. Above all, this eye-opening book describes in fascinating detail the chaotic political conditions that allowed the SS-despite rivalries and bizarre conditions-to assume and exercise unaccountable power.

    He intended it, prepared for it, chose the moment for launching it, planned its course, and, on several occasions between 1939 and 1942, claimed to have won it. Although the aims he sought to achieve were old nationalist aspirations, the fact that the policy and strategy for their realization were imposed so completely by Hitler meant that if victory had come, it would have been very much a personal triumph: the ultimate failure was thus a personal one too. This book presents all of Hitler's directives, from preparations for the invasion of Poland (31 August 1939) to his last desperate order to his troops on the Eastern Front (15 April 1945), whom he urges to choke the Bolshevik assault 'in a bath of blood'. They provide a fascinating insight into Hitler's mind and how he interpreted and reacted to events as they unfolded. The book also has detailed notes which link the Fuhrer's orders and explain the consequences of his directives and how the Allies responded to them.

    Warning signs of the terror to come was being felt by increasing numbers of people. Among them was a young woman of great courage & insight. Charlotte Beradt recorded & collected people's dreams about the Nazi government's domination of their lives; dreams telling of the painful political realities of the emerging Nazi State. In his essay at the conclusion of the volume, published in 1966, Bruno Bettelheim remarked it was a shocking experience reading this book of dreams & seeing how effectively the Nazis murdered sleep, "forcing its enemies to dream dreams that showed that resistance was impossible & safety lay only in compliance. The Third Reich of dreams: how it beganPrivate lives remodeled: "life without walls"Bureaucratic fairy tales: "nothing gives me pleasure anymore"The everyday world by night: "so that I'll not even understand myself" The non-hero: "& say not a word" The chorus: "there's not a thing one can do" When doctrines come alive: the dark in the Reich of the blondThose who act: "you've just got to want to" Disguised wishes: "destination heil Hitler" Undisguised wishes: "this one we want" And the dreams of Jews: "I make room for trash if need be"An Essay by Bruno BettelheimIndex

    Twenty years after the end of the war, this was the first time that the German people were confronted with the horrific details of the Holocaust executed by 'ordinary men' still living in their midst.The trial sent Krüger back to his childhood in the 1930s, in an attempt to understand 'how it really was, that incomprehensible time'. He had grown up in a Berlin suburb, among a community of decent, lower-middle-class homeowners. This was not the world of torch-lit processions and endless ranks of marching SA men. Here, people lived ordinary, non-political lives, believed in God and obeyed the law, but were gradually seduced and intoxicated by the promises of Nazism. He had been, Krüger realised, 'the typical child of innocuous Germans who were never Nazis, and without whom the Nazis would never have been able to do their work'.This world of respectability, order and duty began to crumble when tragedy struck. Krüger's older sister decided to take her own life, leaving the parents struggling to come to terms with the inexplicable. The author's teenage rebellion, his desire to escape the stifling conformity of family life, made him join an anti-Nazi resistance group. He narrowly escaped imprisonment only to be sent to war as Hitler embarked on the conquest of Europe. Step by step, a family that had fallen under the spell of Nazism was being destroyed by it.Written in accomplished prose of lingering beauty, The Broken House is a moving coming-of-age story that provides an unforgettable portrait of life under the Nazis. Yet the book's themes also chime with our own times - how the promise of an 'era of greatness' by a populist leader intoxicates an entire nation, how thin is the veneer of civilisation, and what makes one person a collaborator and another a resister.

    Selected Poems is a recommended translation by the Poetry Book Society. It includes poems from collections published during the past thirty years, with a large selection from The Sinking of the Titanic, his last British collection. For George Szirtes, writing in The New Statesman, it was a dramatic and philosophical statement of compulsive power...our emotions and our reason are driven along together as in the best of Brecht. The author uses satire, wit, political imagination, and lyric gusto to overcome the Nazi past and to maintain his reputation as one of Germany's greatest cultural essayists and political thinkers. -- Choice.

    Selections from newspapers, novellas, plays, and diaries as well as the public pronouncements of Nazi leaders, churchmen, and professors describe National Socialism in practice and explore what it meant for the average German.By recapturing the texture of culture and thought under the Third Reich, Mosse’s work still resonates today—as a document of everyday life in one of history’s darkest eras and as a living memory that reminds us never to forget.

    In addition to their vital involvement with the military, political, religious, and matrimonial affairs of Western Europe for six hundred years, the Habsburgs excelled in their penchants for art and music, for literature and architecture, for philosophy and scientific investigation for the princely sports of hunting and falconing, for wit, wine, food, dancing, and affairs of the heart. They were collectors of crowns, palaces, jewels and zoos.Throughout the fantastic range of their exploits, they never ceased to be a family, bound together by ties of affection, tradition, and respect as strong as their blood lines. In the most desperate straits, they turned unerringly to each other. Down their long history runs a strain of gallantry, the quality of noblesse oblige, a taste for the splendid gesture, which set the Habsburgs apart.In this multi-biography, based on the impeccable scholarship that renders the chronicle historically accurate, Dorothy Gies McGuigan presents a warm and winning picture of the Habsburgs as human beings - noble, fallible, wise and foolish.