In 'Destined to Witness', Hans Massaquoi has crafted a beautifully rendered memoir -- an astonishing true tale of how he came of age as a black child in Nazi Germany. The son of a prominent African and a German nurse, Hans remained behind with his mother when Hitler came to power, due to concerns about his fragile health, after his father returned to Liberia. Like other German boys, Hans went to school; like other German boys, he swiftly fell under the Führer's spell. So he was crushed to learn that, as a black child, he was ineligible for the Hitler Youth. His path to a secondary education and an eventual profession was blocked. He now lived in fear that, at any moment, he might hear the Gestapo banging on the door -- or Allied bombs falling on his home. Ironic, moving, and deeply human, Massaquoi's account of this lonely struggle for survival brims with courage and intelligence.

    Whether freshly caught Matjes from the North, or original Swabian Maultaschen, this book’s authentic recipes, covering the full range of regional and national specialties, and its wealth of background information, can stir the heart of even the most culinary-spoiled reader. Take a look at just how hearty, sophisticated, or sweet German cuisine can be.

    Revered by his followers as the new David, the charismatic young leader pronounced the northern German city of Muenster a new Zion and crowned himself king. He expropriated all private property, took sixteen wives (supposedly emulating the biblical patriarchs), and in a deadly reign of terror, executed all who opposed him. As the long siege of Muenster resulted in starvation, thousands fled Jan's deadly kingdom while others waited behind the double walls and moats for the apocalyptic final attack by the Prince-Bishop's hired armies, supported by all the rulers of Europe.With the sudden rise to power of a compelling personality and the resulting violent threat to ordered society, Jan van Leyden's distant story strangely echoes the many tragedies of the twentieth century. More than just a fascinating human drama from the past, The Tailor-King also offers insight into our own troubled times.

    A powerful and beautiful book told first-hand by Otto, a German-born teddy bear who is separated from his Jewish owner, lives through World War II, and is reunited with his original owner 50 years later.

    Going well beyond all previous accounts, David Glantz and Jonathan House now offer the definitive work on arguably the greatest battle of World War II. Drawing on both German and Soviet sources, Glantz and House separate myth from fact to show what really happened at Kursk and how it affected the outcome of the war. Their access to newly released Soviet archival material adds unprecedented detail to what is known about this legendary conflict, enabling them to reconstruct events from both perspectives and describe combat down to the tactical level. The Battle of Kursk takes readers behind Soviet lines for the first time to discover what the Red Army knew about the plans for Hitler's offensive (Operation Citadel), relive tank warfare and hand-to-hand combat, and learn how the tide of battle turned. Its vivid portrayals of fighting in all critical sectors place the famous tank battle in its proper context. Prokhorovka here is not a well-organized set piece but a confused series of engagements and hasty attacks, with each side committing its forces piecemeal. Glantz and House's fresh interpretations demolish many of the myths that suggest Hitler might have triumphed if Operation Citadel had been conducted differently. Their account is the first to provide accurate figures of combat strengths and losses, and it includes 32 maps that clarify troop and tank movements. Shrouded in obscurity and speculation for more than half a century, the Battle of Kursk finally gets its due in this dramatic retelling of the confrontation that marked the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front and brought Hitler's blitzkrieg to a crashing halt.

    But when war suddenly breaks out as her family is crossing the Atlantic, they realize returning to the United States isn’t an option. They arrive in Berlin as enemy aliens.Eleanor tries to maintain her American identity as she feels herself pulled into the turbulent life roiling around her. She and her brother are enrolled in German schools and in Hitler’s Youth (a requirement). She fervently hopes for an Allied victory, yet for years she must try to survive the Allied bombs shattering her neighborhood. Her family faces separations, bombings, hunger, the final fierce battle for Berlin, the Russian invasion, and the terrors of Soviet occupancy.This compelling story is heart-racing at times and immerses readers in a first-hand account of Nazi Germany, surviving World War II as a civilian, and immigration.

    He brilliantly conveys what it was like to be facing death, day after day, night after night, with never a bed to sleep in nor a hot meal to go home to. This is warfare in the raw ' brutal, yet humorous, immensely tragic, but sadly, all true.

    The numbers were almost unimaginable—between 12,000,000 and 14,000,000 civilians, most of them women and children—and the losses horrifying—at least 500,000 people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, while locked in trains en route, or after arriving in Germany exhausted, malnourished, and homeless. This book is the first in any language to tell the full story of this immense man-made catastrophe.Based mainly on archival records of the countries that carried out the forced migrations and of the international humanitarian organizations that tried but failed to prevent the disastrous results, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War is an authoritative and objective account. It examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the expulsions were conceived, planned, and executed and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The book is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing," and it may also be the most significant untold story of the Second World War.

    In this extraordinary Marxist analysis, Donny Gluckstein take issue with such arguments, demonstrating that at the height of an economic crisis in one of the most advanced countries in the world, it was the Nazis’ commitment to annihilating the gains of working-class organizations that made their political platform attractive to the German ruling class.Though anti-Semitism was at the center of Nazi ideology, it was not enough to propel the party to popularity; the Nazis were a minor, politically irrelevant force until the collapse of the German economy. Only then did their promise of relief from the hardships of the Depression pave the way for fascism's wider appeal and ultimate rise to power. Yet this rise did not go unchallenged. Gluckstein also provides an analysis of working-class resistance to the Nazis.As the global economy careens into a new period of crisis, far-right and explicitly fascist parties are gaining ground across Europe. The urgency of preventing a resurgence of fascism in the twenty-first century makes it more necessary than ever to understand the political and social context of the Nazis’ ascent to power in Germany.

    A personal memoir chronicling an American woman's intense year in Germany studying with the great dressage master Walter Christensen.

    In 1945 he escaped with a Vatican passport and fled to South America. In May 1960 the Israelis located and kidnapped Eichmann from Argentina, and brought him to trial in Israel, where he was convicted and hanged, his remains cremated and scattered. For nearly a year prior to his trial Eichmann was interrogated by Captain Avner W. Less, a German Jew whose father and numerous relatives perished in Nazi concentration camps. Eichmann Interrogated is a superbly edited condensation of their 275-hour exchange, representing ten percent of the 3,564-page total. Amid his lies, distortions, evasions, half-truths, and startling admissions, Eichmann fully acknowledges the reality of the Holocaust while attempting to minimize his central role in its execution. As his life from traveling salesman to mass murderer unfolds, Eichmann's defense becomes a chilling self-indictment and a warning of Evil's often unassuming visage.

    This book shows how this important division provided critical access over the Rhine in the face of enormous resistance.

    This book is perfect for students, researchers, history buffs, and anyone curious about the people, places, and events of the last century.

    Distinct historical records, languages and immigration patterns create unique challenges for beginners researching relatives with different origins.The "Discovering your Ancestors" series provides clear, step-by-step instruction aimed at making this task easier. Each of these books starts by teaching the basics of sound genealogical research, then provides time-saving strategies for researching a particular ethnic group. There are tips on locating records both here and abroad, deciphering original documents, planning a research trip, and putting an ancestor's records in historical context.

    Sebald completed this controversial book before his death in December 2001. On the Natural History of Destruction is his harrowing and precise investigation of one of the least examined silences of our time. In it, the novelist examines the devastation of German cities by Allied bombardment and the reasons for the astonishing absence of this unprecedented trauma from German history and culture. This historical void is in part a repression of things -- such as the death by fire of the city of Hamburg at the hands of the RAF -- too terrible to bear. But rather than record the crises about them, writers sought to retrospectively justify their actions under the Nazis. For Sebald, this is an example of deliberate cultural amnesia. His analysis of its effects in and outside Germany has already provoked angry painful debate. Sebald's novels are rooted in meticulous observation. His essays are novelistic. They include his childhood recollections of the war that spurred his horror at the collective amnesia around him. There are moments of black humor and, throughout, the sensitivity of his intelligence. This book is a study of suffering and forgetting, of the morality hidden in artistic decisions, and of both compromised and genuine heroics.

    It is an insider's view of the effect the wars had on ordinary Germans. As a native German, the author takes us from her youth through the much-staged rise & fall of Hitler & his Nazi Party, World War II & the devastating postwar years, up to the Berlin Wall. Through her you will experience the air raids & intense bombing of Berlin, the ever-present hunger, the Soviet invasion & other day-to-day struggles. Yet she also entertains the reader with her witty style & the many jokes about the Third Reich. Her stories demonstrate that war unites as much as it divides and that history is embedded in the lives of individuals, not in textbooks. And throughout, the human spirit prevails since Laughter Wasn't Rationed.

    Assigned at various times to the Third, Seventh and Ninth armies, the Black Panthers fought major engagements in six European countries and participated in four major Allied campaigns, inflicting heavy casualties on the German army and capturing or destroying thousands of weapons, despite severe weather, difficult terrain, heavily fortified enemy positions, extreme shortages of replacement personnel and equipment, and an overall casualty rate approaching 50 percent. Richly illustrated and containing many interviews with surviving members of the 761st, this work gives long overdue recognition to the unit whose motto was Come Out Fighting. It recounts the events that in 1978--33 years after the end of World War II--led to the 761st Tank Battalion's receiving a Presidential Unit Citation, the highest honor a unit can receive. Also described are the efforts that resulted, in 1997--53 years after giving his life on the battlefield--in the Medal of Honor being posthumously awarded to Sergeant Ruben Rivers.

    This is a collection of his shorter works. "Death in Venice", later filmed by Lucion Visconti starring Dirk Bogarde, was published in 1911. It is a poetic meditation on art and beauty, where the dying composer Aschenbach (modelled on Gustav Mahler) becomes fixated by the young boy Tadzio. The other stories are: "Tonio Kroger"; the collection entitled "Tristan"; "The Blood of the Walsungs"; "Mario the Magician"; and "The Tables of the Law". A number of essays are also included.

    Ulinka Rublack draws on court records to examine the lives of shrewd cutpurses, quarreling artisan wives, and soldiers' concubines, and explores women's experiences of communities and courtship, marriage, the family, and the law.

    Perhaps at his greatest as a poet, he was the author of numerous exceptionally fine lyric poems, ballads, and elegies.This convenient dual-language edition, spanning a wide range of styles, forms, and moods, allows readers to savor a rich selection of the poet's verse in the original German — from "An den Sclaf" ("To Sleep"), written when he was 18, to his last great poem, "Vermächtnis" ("Legacy"), written when he was 80. Several poems from the 1819 volume West-östlicher Divan (Occidental-Oriental Divan) are presented. Excellent line-for-line English translations on facing pages accompany such masterworks as "Prometheus," typical of the Sturm and Drang (storm and stress) period; "Rastlose Liebe" ("Restless Love") and "An den Mond" ("To the Moon"), lyric pieces of intense beauty; and the narrative ballads "Der Fischer" ("The Fisherman") and "Erlkönig" ("Elf King"). Included among the 96 other works are these poems: "Auf dem See" ("On the Lake"); "Zigeunerlied" ("Gypsy Song"); "Jägers Abendlied" ("Huntsman's Evening Song"); "Grenzen der Menschheit" ("Limitations of Humanity"); "Der Zauberiehrling" ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice"); and "An Werther" ("To Werther").For this edition, translator Stanley Appelbaum has provided an informative introduction and a commentary on each poem, which will prove invaluable to students, teachers, and general readers.

    Thietmar is arguably the most important witness to the early history of Poland, and his detailed descriptions of Slavic folklore are the earliest on record. He offers striking portraits of his contemporaries, revealing opinions from politics to women's fashion.

    We meet the difficult, even unsavory private man: hypochondriac and nervous, narcissistic and vainglorious, isolated and greedy for love, shy and often ungenerous. But we are also introduced to a man who lived an eventful life, was capable of great kindness, loved dogs, doted on his daughters, and listened to Jack Benny.We experience Mann's tragedy as the quintessential German forced by the rise of National Socialism first into inner exile and then into real exile in Switzerland, Princeton, and California. His letters from this time reveal the torment that exile represented for a writer whose work, indeed whose very self, was inextricably bound up with the German language.The book provides fresh and sometimes startling insights into both famous and little-known episodes in Mann's life and into his writing--the only realm in which he ever felt free. It shows how love, death, religion, and politics were not merely themes in Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and other works, but were woven into the fabric of his existence and preoccupied him unrelentingly. It also teases out what is known about what Mann considered his celibate homoeroticism and what others have labeled closeted homosexuality. In particular, we learn about his affection for the young man who inspired the character of Tadzio in Death in Venice. And, against the unfocused accusations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled at Mann, the book examines in human detail his relationships with Jewish writers, friends, and family members.This is the richest available portrait of Thomas Mann as man and writer--the place to start for anyone wanting to know anything about his life, work, or times.

    There are only a few buildings which illustrate antique beauty and mystical charm like Casa Malaparte. In this book, Karl Lagerfeld has photographed this most elegiac of structures. Lagerfeld worked for five days in November 1997 to produce these photographs of architecture and nature. He used a special technique to reproduce his pictures -- Polaroid transfers on a particular paper. The results are stunning. The first part of the book shows the perfect integration of the house into the environment, and the second part documents the interior decoration and furniture of the house.

    Book contains 385 detailed photos and illustrations. Projects include: hard wax modeling, soft wax modeling, modeling with gemstones, and many other techniques. This new edition includes two new chapters: Casting processes & Rubber Mold Making, and Processing & Finishing After Casting.

    Considering the great influence textbooks have as interpreters of history, politics and culture to future generations of citizens, it is no surprise that they generate considerable controversy.

    He invited a group of artists to respond to Walser's writing. A Little Ramble is a result of that collaboration.The artists have chosen stories by Robert Walser as well as excerpts from Walks with Robert Walser, conversations with the writer recorded by his guardian Carl Seelig. Much of this material appears in English for the first time. Accompanying these pieces are over fifty color artworks created specifically for this project, a preface by Donald Young, and an afterword by Lynne Cooke.

    In this thought-provoking book, Paul Mendes-Flohr explores through the prism of Rosenzweig’s image how German Jews have understood and contended with their twofold spiritual patrimony. He deepens the discussion to consider also how the German-Jewish experience bears upon the general modern experience of living with multiple cultural identities.German Jews assimilated the cultural values of Germany but were not themselves assimilated into German society, Mendes-Flohr contends. Yet, by virtue of their adoption of values sponsored by enlightened German discourse, they were no longer unambiguously Jewish. The author discusses how their identity and cultural loyalty became fractured and how German Jews—like other Jews and indeed like all denizens of the modern world—were obliged to confront the challenges of living with plural identities and cultural affiliations.

    Craig, distinguished historian of Germany, examines German politics and culture from the 18th century to the present. Topics range from the political history of Germany from 1770 to 1866, Bismarck, Emperor William II, Germany and the First World War, Thomas Mann, and the architects Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Gottfried Semper. He considers the Third Reich -- its political history, major figures, foreign policy and the coming of the war, and varieties of resistance to Nazism before and during the war. He also considers Jews in Germany in the 19th century, the Rothschilds, and the years of persecution as described by Victor Klemperer. He documents the remarkable rebirth of German democracy after 1945, including the cultural history and political significance of Berlin, and Germans' continuing struggle with the past.

    These were major preoccupations of male writers as they came to terms with or reacted against the decline of patriarchal authority. The book identifies five leitmotifs which serve to characterize the period between 1880 and 1930: the "double", the "other" (narcissus and Salome), the nationalization of Narcissus, Kampf or male bondage, and after patriarchy. Again and again one sees how men attempted to define themselves against what they imagined as "femininity", not merely outside but also within their selves, and further how men sought to overcome or find a socially acceptable expression for their narcissistic, homosexual and even sadomasochist libido.

    She never dreamed her youthful research would be the start of a distinguished publishing career and that her life would be the basis for the 1990 Academy Award-nominated film The Nasty Girl.She had lived in Passau, Germany, her entire life, yet she was unaware that the father of Heinrich Himmler had once been a professor at the college-preparatory high school she attended or that Adolf Hitler and other prominent Nazi party members had grown up just across the Danube River in Austria. Since Rosmus had no knowledge of these and other Nazi affiliations and activities in her hometown, she embarked on her essay project confident that the Passau citizenry would be proud of her findings. Rosmus had no inkling she had just begun what would become a lifelong effort to uncover Passau's buried complicity in the crimes of the Nazi state - an effort that would bring overwhelming gratitude from the international Jewish community but contempt and ostracism from the people whom she had known all her life. about her fateful decision to expose her hometown's Nazi past.In this volume Rosmus recounts her determination after years of persecution, threats and physical attacks to immigrate to the United States. Despite the praise she had earned around the world, officials and citizens of Passau continued to obstruct her work. In this memoir, Rosmus relives her turmoil over whether to stay in Passau or to leave; describes the more open-minded world she found in Washington D.C.; and discusses how she has been able to carry on her research from the United States.

    The twelve years, from 1933 to 1945, when Adolf Hitler was dictator of Nazi Germany stand out as one of the most remarkable periods in the history of the twentieth century. In many books on this subject, the personality of Hitler is so dominant that significant political, social, economic and international developments often retreat into the background. In this book Frank McDonough explains the dramatic history of the Nazi period within a wider context. By isolating key problem areas within current historical debates and by including a selection of primary source documents.

    America and Russia were both willing to live with the status quo in Europe. What then could have generated the kind of conflict that might have led to a nuclear holocaust? This is the great puzzle of the Cold War, and in this book, the product of nearly twenty years of work, Trachtenberg tries to solve it.The answer, he says, has to do with the German question, especially with the German nuclear question. These issues lay at the heart of the Cold War, and a relatively stable peace took shape only when they were resolved. The book develops this argument by telling a story--a complex story involving many issues of detail, but focusing always on the central question of how a stable international system came into being during the Cold War period. A Constructed Peace will be of interest not just to students of the Cold War, but to people concerned with the problem of war and peace, and in particular with the question of how a stable international order can be constructed, even in our own day.

    They highlight the role of trans-national forces and their interaction with local conditions. This collection combines an account of the impact of secular-religious strife, at the level of high politics, with case studies that elucidate the meaning of culture war for specific regions and communities.

    It challenges both the Russian cult of the Great Patriotic Struggle and the distorted Western version created during the Cold War, arguing that the clash was caused by the struggle for the mastery of Europe.

    

    Author Jay Hatheway, who during the 1970s was stationed at Flint Kaserne, Bavaria, the former SS-Junkerschule Tolz, includes extensive references to original source material on the underlying SS principles of blood, soil, and struggle as they were formalized in SS ideology. In support of his intricate linkages between ideology and its realized form, Hatheway has obtained over 90 previously unpublished photos of the SS officer training academy Tolz. More than a series of buildings, the structure of the Junkerschule was itself a metaphor for the subset of Nazi ideology that was developed by Himmler, Darre and others to create a racially pure vanguard to lead Germany on its path toward Teutonic regeneration.