In less than three weeks, Hitler achieved the most extraordinary military triumph of modern times: Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium had been overrun; the French army was about to collapse; and the entire British Expeditionary Force, which had been sent across the Channel to help stop the Germans, was trapped against the sea at Dunkirk. Unless they could be rescued, Britain would be left without an army. ‘Dunkirk’ is the first book to present an overview of those awful days and show the effect the battle on the beaches was having on the rest of the world. It is also the day-by-day story of a great escape, of the transformation of a massive defeat into what would ultimately prove a disaster for Germany. “Norman Gelb demonstrates in Dunkirk how productive it is to focus on an individual operation or battle … Dunkirk is both a good adventure read and an instructive case study yielding modern lessons.” — JOHN LEHMAN, Former Secretary of the Navy, The Wall Street Journal “Norman Gelb finds fresh angles … Dunkirk stands as an exemplar of the perils of vacillation and the possibilities of action.” — The New York Times Book Review “Mr. Gelb has excavated beneath surface events, delved into political and psychological factors, and produced an intelligent, fast-moving narrative.” — PROFESSOR ARNOLD AGES, Baltimore Sun — “Vivid and comprehensive … Absorbing … Sets a high standard for other reconstructions” — Kirkus Reviews NORMAN GELB was born in New York and is the author of seven highly acclaimed books, including The Berlin Wall, Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain, and Less Than Glory. He was, for many years, correspondent for the Mutual Broadcasting System, first in Berlin and then in London. He is currently the London correspondent for New Leader magazine. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    It picks up where A Legacy leaves off, leading us from the Kaiser's Germany into the wider Europe of the 1920s and the limbo between world wars. The narrator, Billi, tells the story of her apprenticeship to life, and of her many teachers: her father, a pleasure-loving German baron; her brilliant, beautiful, erratic English mother; and later, on the Mediterranean coast of France, the Huxleys, Aldous and Maria.

    It covers areas previously left unexplored: the German Infantry's tactical heritage, the squad's evolution as a tactical unit, the use of new weapons for close combat, the role of the elite assault units in the development of new tactics, and detailed descriptions of offensive battles that provided the inspiration and testing ground for this new way of fighting. Both a historical investigation and a standard of excellence in infantry tactics, Stormtroop Tactics is required reading for professional military officers and historians as well as enthusiasts.Contrary to previous studies, Stormtroop Tactics proposes that the German Infantry adaption to modern warfare was not a straightforward process resulting from the top down intervention of reformers but instead a bottom up phenomenon. It was an accumulation of improvisations and ways of dealing with pressing situations that were later sewn together to form what we now call Blitzkrieg. Focusing on action at the company, platoon, and squad level, Stormtroop Tactics provides a detailed description of the evolution of German defensive tactics during World War I--tactics that were the direct forbears of those used in World War II.

    

    Enhanced by his deep understanding of other Western European nations, Norbert Elias's incisive analyses of nationalism, violence, and the breakdown of civilization will be an indispensable resource for those interested in modern European history and sociology and in European studies.

    But her diary, kept from 1900 to her death in 1945, and her brief essays and letters express, as well as explain, much of the spirit, wisdom, and internal struggle which was eventually transmuted into her art.

    In this book, Maimon seeks to further the revolution in philosophy wrought by Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by establishing a new foundation for transcendental philosophy in the idea of difference. Kant judged Maimon to be his most profound critic, and the Essay went on to have a decisive influence on the course of post-Kantian German Idealism. A more recent admirer was Gilles Deleuze who drew on Maimon's Essay in constructing his own philosophy of difference. This long-overdue translation makes Maimon's brilliant analysis and criticism of Kant's philosophy accessible to an English readership for the first time. The text includes a comprehensive introduction, a glossary, translators' notes, a bibliography of writings on Maimon and an index. It also includes translations of correspondence between Maimon and Kant and a letter Maimon wrote to a Berlin journal clarifying the philosophical position of the essay, all of which bring the book's context alive for the modern reader.

     Just eleven years after the Wright brothers' first flight, the Royal Flying Corps set off for France, and every aspect of air-fighting had to be discovered for the first time. At the start of the First World War, the flying machine was hardly taken seriously; it was an odd, accident-prone diversion for the rich and the obsessed. Four years later when the war had ended, such had been the pace of development that almost the entire range of modern aircraft types had evolved: from fighters to bombers, from ground attack to reconnaissance. ‘The First Great Air War’ is the full, fascinating account of how a handful of men, British, French, German and Italian, young, with a love of flying and adventure, went to war. Of how tactics, planes and attitudes developed from the amateur to the professional. It is the story of air aces and individual courage, of technical innovation and the coming of age of air power. ‘A valuable history of the air war that began it all … by an ex-flyer of the Second World War who has a genuine feeling for the feats of his predecessors’ - THE BIRMINGHAM POST ‘His sympathy with the fighting man (and woman) shines out of every page’ - LIVERPOOL DAILY POST Richard Townsend Bickers volunteered for the RAF on the outbreak of the second world war and served, with a Permanent Commission, for eighteen years. He wrote a range of military fiction and non-fiction books, including ‘Torpedo Attack’, ‘My Enemy Came Nigh’, ‘Bombing Run’, ‘Fighters Up’ and ‘Summer of No Surrender’.

    It examines the manner in which the development of bureaucratic and participatory institutions changed the character and capacities of governments throughout German Europe; the economic expansion in which the productivity of both agriculture and manufacturing increased, commercial activity intensified, and urban growth was encouraged; and the rising culture of print, which sustained new developments in literature, philosophy, and scholarship, and helped transform the rules and procedures of everyday life. These developments, it is argued, led to an erosion of the traditional values and institutions, and played an important part in the transformation of German politics, society, and culture. Rather than viewing the development of a Prussian-led Nation State as natural or inevitable, the book emphasizes alternative forces of unity and division which existed up until the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.

    In world War II, over the course of more than two years of continuous combat in Europe, this Texas sharecropper's son entered the ranks of the immortals who can claim a sustained series of hard-to-believe (but thoroughly documented) exploits on the bloody battlegrounds of Sicily, Anzio, France, and Germany. For his heroic achievements, which left some 240 German soldiers dead, Murphy received the most medals ever awarded to an American soldier, including the Congressional Medal of Honor. When the portrait of this freckled, baby-faced foot soldier appeared on the cover of Life magazine, Audie Murphy became the living symbol of America's desire for its sons to return, unravaged, from the war. After the war, Murphy went on to launch a long and surprisingly durable career as a screen actor, starring in such films as The Red Badge of Courage, The Quiet American, his autobiographical war movie To Hell and Back, and a long series of Westerns (where he was inevitably cast as 'the Kid'). But just beneath the surface of his life lay a numbness, a delayed stress relieved only by bouts of womanizing, nocturnal adventures, reckless gambling, and dangerous practical jokes. Murphy would survive into the Vietnam era as an anachronism of sorts, whose baroque schemes for financial salvation plunged him into the American political and criminal netherworld - a hero badly out of time. Don Graham tells the story of this emblematic American life in vivid detail, with a rich appreciation for the ironies and multiple meanings to be found there, and with awe at the combat heroics of this 'fugitive from the law of averages.' Audie Murphy's grave is the most visited one in Arlington national Cemetery, save JFK's, even today; No Name on the Bullet explains why this is so to a whole new generation of Americans

    80 photos, 2 maps.

    J. Liebling’s coverage of the Second World War for the New Yorker gives us a fresh and unexpected view of the war—stories told in the words of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who fought it, the civilians who endured it, and the correspondents who covered it. The hero of the title story is a private in the Ninth Army division known as Mollie, short for Molotov, so called by his fellow G.I.s because of his radical views and Russian origins. Mollie was famous for his outlandish dress (long blonde hair, riding boots, feathered beret, field glasses, and red cape), his disregard for army discipline, his knack for acquiring prized souvenirs, his tales of being a Broadway big shot, and his absolute fearlessness in battle. Killed in combat on Good Friday, 1943, Mollie (real name: Karl Warner) was awarded the Silver Star posthumously. Intrigued by the legend and fascinated by the man behind it, Liebling searched out Mollie’s old New York haunts and associates and found behind the layers of myth a cocky former busboy from Hell’s Kitchen who loved the good life.Other stories take Liebling through air battles in Tunisia, across the channel with the D-Day invasion fleet, and through a liberated Paris celebrating de Gaulle and freedom. Liebling’s war was a vast human-interest story, told with a heart for the feelings of the people involved and the deepest respect for those who played their parts with heroism, however small or ordinary the stage.

    Until now unavailable or existing only in fragmentary form, the lectures represent a major portion of Nietzsche's achievement. Included are an extensive editors' introduction on the background of Nietzsche's understanding of rhetoric, and critical notes identifying his sources and independent contributions.

    Altogether some 300 cartoons, in color and black and white, have been skillfully blended to produce a unique record of World War II.

    Through her narrative she resurrects spectres that still haunt her life: her mother, who wandered into a river and never returned; her violent, domineering father; and the chaos of post-war Germany. Born in 1945 to Russian parents, she and her family had fled from the famine zone of the war-ravaged Ukraine and ended up in Germany. Always an outsider, the girl's perspective on the tyranny of society and of language, and on the adolescent's desperate need to belong is clear-eyed, moving and unspoiled by self-pity. As the post-war West German economic miracle gains momentum and the culture of America - 1950s nylon blouses and blue jeans - infiltrates her provincial town, her status as an alien becomes increasingly oppressive. A testament to the human ability to survive, Once I Lived is the story of a child's life moved by the forces of the twentieth century. It perfectly captures the essence of the outsider in a country that is becoming increasingly intolerant of aliens.

    In the normal course of things, that assignment would not have been viewed as particularly noteworthy. But conditions in Europe in 1946 were anything but normal, and what became known as his "emergency mission" there would go down in Church annals as one of the most distinctive, demanding, unusual missions in this dispensation. President Benson had been uniquely prepared for this mission. He brought to the assignment years of experience in Washington, D. C., where he had worked at the highest levels of government. He had excellent organizational skills and stamina exceeding that of many men, was a prodigious worker, and possessed deep faith in the overriding power of the Lord Jesus Christ. President Benson went to Europe, leaving his family behind; and for eleven months while, under the Lord's direction, he performed miracles in behalf of Saints an ocean away, Sister Benson did the same in Salt Lake City as she kept their family of six children on an even keel and mustered the energy and time to give her husband as much support as she could from a distance. Though separated by many miles, their relationship sustained each other. The Bensons' letters to and from each other and their journal entries, as well as other official accounts of that period, tell the story of that adventurous but trying year. They also reveal the depth of their convictions to the Lord as well as their devotion to each other. In microcosm, they represent the essence of Ezra Taft and Flora Benson. A Labor of Love: The 1946 European Mission of Ezra Taft Benson is a story about love-the love of a husband and wife for the Lord and for each other, the love of the Saints for their brothers and sisters an ocean away, the love of the Brethren for one of their colleagues away on a demanding assignment, and the love of the Lord for his people.

    Unlike most European sovereigns of his generation, Wilhelm was no mere figurehead, and his imprint on imperial Germany was profound. In this book and a second volume, historian Lamar Cecil provides the first comprehensive biography of one of modern history's most powerful--and most misunderstood--rulers. Wilhelm II: Prince and Emperor, 1859-1900 concentrates on Wilhelm's youth. As Cecil shows, the future ruler's Anglo-German genealogy, his education, and his subsequent service as an officer in the Prussian army proved to be unfortunate legacies in shaping Wilhelm's behavior and ideas. Throughout his thirty-year reign, Wilhelm's connection with his subjects was tenuous. He surrounded himself with a small coterie of persons drawn from the government, the military, and elite society, most of whom were valued not for their ability but for their loyalty to the crown. They, in turn, contrived to keep Wilhelm isolated from outside influences, learned to be accomplished in catering to his prejudices, and strengthened his conviction that the government should be composed only of those who agreed with him. The day-to-day conduct of Germany's affairs was left in the hands of these loyal followers, for the Kaiser himself did not at all enjoy work. Rejoicing instead in pageantry and the superficial trappings of authority, he was particular about what he did and what he read, eliminating anything that was unpleasant, difficult, or tedious. He never learned to listen, to reason, or to make decisions in a sound, informed manner; he was customarily inclined to act solely on the basis of his personal feelings.Many people believed him to be mad. Even courtiers who admired Wilhelm recognized that he was responsible for the diplomatic embarrassment in which Germany found itself by 1914 and that the Kaiser's maladroit behavior endangered the prestige of the Hohenzollern crown. His is the story of a bizarre and incapable sovereign who never doubted that he possessed both genius and divine inspiration.Originally published in 1989.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

    How can Hitler and the Holocaust, how can the complicity and shame of the average German be narrated and visualized? How can Auschwitz be reconstructed? Anton Kaes argues that a major shift in German attitudes occurred in the mid-1970s--a shift best illustrated in films of the New German Cinema, which have focused less on guilt and atonement than on personal memory and yearning for national identity.To support his claim, Kaes devotes a chapter to each of five complex and celebrated films of the modern German era: Hans Jurgen Syberberg's Hitler, a Film from Germany, a provocative restaging of German history in postmodern tableaux; The Marriage of Maria Braun, the personal and political reflection on postwar Germany with which Rainer Werner Fassbinder first caught the attention of American and European audiences; Helma Sanders-Brahms's feminist and autobiographical film Germany, Pale Mother, relating the unexplored role of German women during and after the war; Alexander Kluge's The Patriot, a self-reflexive collage of verbal and visual quotations from the entire course of the German past; and, finally, Edgar Reitz's Heimat, a 16-hour epic rendering of German history from 1918 to the present from the perspective of everyday life in the provinces.Despite radical differences in style and form, these films are all concerned with memory, representation, and the dialogue between past and present Kaes draws from a variety of disciplines, interweaving textual interpretation, cultural history, and current theory to create a dynamic approach to highly complex and multi-voiced films. His book will engage readers interested in postwar German history, politics, and culture; in film and media studies; and in the interplay of history, memory, and film.

    Dispatches from the ultimate war correspondent of World War II

    The stories people made up about their deeds helped to explain the mysteries of the real world – the rising and setting of the sun, the changing seasons, the dumb beasts.They fought with giants and dragons. They were loved by princesses, outwitted by witches and saved by their friends. They took on impossible tasks, accepted every challenge and unwittingly undertook any honourable mission. Their adventures took them to every corner of the known world.They were the bravest and most chivalrous men – Lancelot and the knights of the round table, who paid allegiance to King Arthur, and Roland and the knights at the court of Charlemagne. Their deeds are legendary, but there is little doubt that they are based on historical fact.

    Black Tom, the huge depot loaded with ammunitions destined for the Allies to use against the Central Powers, had been blown up. With terrifying suddenness, the Great War raging overseas had suddenly come to America. Witcover provides irrefutable evidence that German saboteurs were the perpetrators.

    Unjacketed.

    Within the mountain of horrifying evidence, Barbie is only at the center. Morgan's narrative revolves around the entire wartime experience. Photographs and maps.r.