Yet a series of mistakes and setbacks, including the Battle of the Bulge, drastically altered this timetable and led to eight more months of brutal fighting. With Armageddon, the eminent military historian Max Hastings gives us memorable accounts of the great battles and captures their human impact on soldiers and civilians. He tells the story of both the Eastern and Western Fronts, raising provocative questions and offering vivid portraits of the great leaders. This rousing and revelatory chronicle brings to life the crucial final months of the twentieth century’s greatest global conflict.

    Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.

    Their lethal regimes murdered millions and fought a massive, deadly war. Yet their dictatorships took shape within formal constitutional structures and drew the support of the German and Russian people. In the first major historical work to analyze the two dictatorships together in depth, Richard Overy gives us an absorbing study of Hitler and Stalin, ranging from their private and public selves, their ascents to power and consolidation of absolute rule, to their waging of massive war and creation of far-flung empires of camps and prisons. The Nazi extermination camps and the vast Soviet Gulag represent the two dictatorships in their most inhuman form. Overy shows us the human and historical roots of these evils.

    This is the most complete missal ever produced in the English language. We have included everything and have produced a missal that is affordable while being of the highest durability.The Roman Catholic Daily Missal will become your life-long liturgical companion —at Church, at home, and on the road.All new typesetting —not a photographic reproduction: clear and crisp type. According to the 1962 juxta typica (typical edition) of the Missale Romanum.

    on Tuesday 13 February 1945, Dresden's air-raid sirens sounded as they had done many times during the Second World War. But this time was different. By the next morning, more than 4,500 tons of high explosives and incendiary devices had been dropped on the unprotected city.At least 25,000 inhabitants died in the terrifying firestorm and thirteen square miles of the city's historic centre, including incalculable quantities of treasure and works of art, lay in ruins. In this portrait of the city, its people, and its still-controversial destruction, Frederick Taylor has drawn on archives and sources only accessible since the fall of the East German regime, and talked to Allied aircrew and survivors, from members of the German armed services and refugees fleeing the Russian advance to ordinary citizens of Dresden.

    M. Dent edition of 1997.Aiming in his translation for "an English haunted and affected by the strangeness of the original," David Constantine offers a wealth of Heinrich von Kleist's key writings in this collection, the most ambitious of its kind.

    He dabbled in all the mysteries of his time: the heavenly bodies, sound amplification, museology, botany, Asian languages, the pyramids of Egypt—almost anything incompletely understood. Kircher coined the term electromagnetism, printed Sanskrit for the first time in a Western book, and built a famous museum collection. His wild, beautifully illustrated books are sometimes visionary, frequently wrong, and yet compelling documents in the history of ideas. They are being rediscovered in our own time. This volume contains new essays on Kircher and his world by leading historians and historians of science, including Stephen Jay Gould, Ingrid Rowland, Anthony Grafton, Daniel Stoltzenberg, Paula Findlen, and Barbara Stafford.

    These programmes were designed to eliminate all persons with disabilities who threatened the health and purity of the German race. This text explores the development and workings of this process.

    They marked the establishment of Prussian hegemony in central Europe, the creation of the Bismarckian Reich in 1871, and, as a by-product, the reduction of Habsburg influence and the collapse of Napoleon III's Second Empire. Showalter gives a full account of the international context as well as of the wars themselves and their consequences.

    More than 10,000 members of the Division were then taken into five years of captivity.Leading military historian, Saul David, draws upon over 100 interviews with survivors, unit war diaries, personal letters and journals, as well as official documents and reports, tracing the dramatic story of the Highland Division. He charts the Highland Division’s journey from their arrival in France, through the excitement of patrol operations and its magnificent defensive battles on the Somme and the Bresle, to their final, desperate stand.'After Dunkirk' is a stunning piece of work that will fascinate anyone interested in the Second World War.

    He was just, he says, one of the many rank and file pilots fighting for his country and not for the Fuhrer. But his wartime career makes for fascinating and highly informative reading on an aspect of the 1939-45 war not often covered in the English language; primarily that of the campaign against the Soviet Union.Norbert started flying during high school on gliders and joined the German Air Force as volunteer and officer cadet, one of the midwar-generation of Luftwaffe fighter pilots. He began operations with JG54 on the eastern (Leningrad) front in March 1943; initially he flew Messerschmitt Bf 109s before transitioning to the Focke-Wulf FW 190. After a year s fighting, he was ordered back to Germany as a flight instructor to oppose the bomber streams of the AAF and RAF. Returning to Russia at the end of 1944, he became a Staffel CO and claimed many aircraft shot down. In April 1945 he converted to the first jet fighter, the Me 262, in south Germany, and flew his last missions with this aircraft. Also serving with JV44 (whose CO was Adolf Galland), Norbert Hannig finished the war with 42 victories from more than 200 missions. Many and varied were his experiences in action against the rejuvenated Soviet Air Force in the east, and the powerful western Allies over the homeland during the final chaotic months of hostilities, which culminated in his captivity.John Weal s skillful translation ensures that the fluid descriptive style of the author is preserved. Thankfully, also, Norbert was a keen photographer who shot a profusion of images, all previously unpublished, many of which appear in this important book."

    In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thousands of women confessed to being witches—of making pacts with the Devil, causing babies to sicken, and killing animals and crops—and were put to death. This book is a gripping account of the pursuit, interrogation, torture, and burning of witches during this period and beyond. Drawing on hundreds of original trial transcripts and other rare sources in four areas of Southern Germany, where most of the witches were executed, Lyndal Roper paints a vivid picture of their lives, families, and tribulations. She also explores the psychology of witch-hunting, explaining why it was mostly older women that were the victims of witch crazes, why they confessed to crimes, and how the depiction of witches in art and literature has influenced the characterization of elderly women in our own culture.

    Nye Jr. is one of the few academics to have served at the very highest levels of US government. This volume collects together many of his key writings for the first time as well as new material, and an important concluding essay which examines the relevance of international relations in practical policymaking.This book addresses:* America's post-Cold War role in international affairs* the ethics of foreign policy* the information revolution* terrorism.

    That man was Fritz Kolbe, who had decided to betray his country after years of opposing Nazism. While Dulles was skeptical, Kolbe's information was such that he eventually admitted, "No single diplomat abroad, of whatever rank, could have got his hands on so much information as did this man; he was one of my most valuable agents during World War II." Using recently declassified materials at the U.S. National Archives and Kolbe's personal papers, Lucas Delattre has produced a work of remarkable scholarship that moves with the swift pace of a Le Carré thriller.

    The first part considers the whole concept of Germanic antiquity and the way in which it has been approached, examines classical writings about Germanic origins and the earliest Germanic tribes, and looks at the two great influences on the early Germanic world: the confrontation with the Roman Empire and the displacement of Germanic religion by Christianity. A chapter on orality -- the earliest stage of all literature -- provides a bridge to the earliest Germanic writings. The second part of the book is devoted to written Germanic -- rather than German -- materials, with a series of chapters looking first at the Runic inscriptions, then at Gothic, the first Germanic language to find its way onto parchment (in Ulfilas's Bible translation). The topic turns finally to what we now understand as literature, with general surveys of the three great areas of early Germanic literature: Old Norse, Old English, and Old High and Low German. A final chapter is devoted to the Old Saxon Heliand.Contributors: T. M. Andersson, Heinrich Beck, Graeme Dunphy, Klaus Duwel, G. Ronald Murphy, Adrian Murdoch, Brian Murdoch, Rudolf Simek, Herwig Wolfram.Brian Murdoch and Malcolm Read both teach in the German Department of the University of Stirling in Scotland.

    A story of extraordinary strength and honesty...an insight into daily living inside Nazi Germany for those forced to fly before they had wings of courage.

    Using numerous everyday examples, it demystifies German pronouns and prepositions and provides dozens of skill-building exercises in a variety of formats, including fill-in-the-blanks, sentence rewrites, and translations.

    Dix's work is distinguished by its treatment of war subject matter, emerging in images of destruction, disfigurement, and maiming of the human body that offer an apocalyptic vision of the world. An introduction to biographical details including Dix's participation in the Great War and the evolution of his artistic vision is provided.

    Catherine Malabou, one of France's most inventive contemporary philosophers, explores this topic in the writings of Heidegger through the themes of metamorphosis, migration, exchange, and modification, finding and articulating a radical theory of ontico-ontological transformability. The Heidegger Change sketches the implications of this theory for a wide range of issues of central concern to the humanities--capitalism, the gift, ethics, suffering, the biological, technology, imagination, and time. Not since the writings of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas has the work of Heidegger been the subject of such inventive interpretation and original theory in its own right.

    Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times is a carefully drawn account of how townspeople went about their lives and reacted to events during the Nazi era. Andrew Stuart Bergerson argues that ordinary Germans did in fact make Germany and Europe more fascist, more racist, and more modern during the 1930s, but they disguised their involvement behind a pre-existing veil of normalcy.Bergerson details a way of being, believing, and behaving by which "ordinary Germans" imagined their powerlessness and absence of responsibility even as they collaborated in the Nazi revolution. He builds his story on research that includes anecdotes of everyday life collected systematically from newspapers, literature, photography, personal documents, public records, and especially extensive interviews with a representative sample of residents born between 1900 and 1930.The book considers the actual customs and experiences of friendship and neighborliness in a German town before, during, and after the Third Reich. By analyzing the customs of conviviality in interwar Hildesheim, and the culture of normalcy these customs invoked, Bergerson aims to help us better understand how ordinary Germans transformed "neighbors" into "Jews" or "Aryans."

    When Hitler's war machine began to collapse, the race was on to snatch these secrets before the Soviet Red Army found them.The last battle of World War II, then, was not for military victory but for the technology of the Third Reich. In American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets, Wolfgang W. E. Samuel assembles from official Air Force records and survivors' interviews the largely untold stories of the disarmament of the once mighty Luftwaffe and of Operation Lusty--the hunt for Nazi technologies.In April 1945 American armies were on the brink of winning their greatest military victory, yet America's technological backwardness was shocking when measured against that of the retreating enemy. Senior officers, including the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold, knew all too well the seemingly overwhelming victory was less than it appeared. There was just too much luck involved in its outcome.Two intrepid American Army Air Forces colonels set out to regain America's technological edge. One, Harold E. Watson, went after the German jets; the other, Donald L. Putt, went after the Nazis' intellectual capital--their world-class scientists.With the help of German and American pilots, Watson brought the jets to America; Putt persevered as well and succeeded in bringing the German scientists to the Army Air Forces' aircraft test and evaluation center at Wright Field. A young P-38 fighter pilot, Lloyd Wenzel, a Texan of German descent, then turned these enemy aliens into productive American citizens--men who built the rockets that took America to the moon, conquered the sound barrier, and laid the foundation for America's civil and military aviation of the future.American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets details the contest won, a triumph that shaped America's victories in the Cold War.

    The Stained Glass of Washington National Cathedral

    Using cigarettes obtained from the Red Cross, Spinelli bribed a camp guard to procure a Voitlander camera and film. Life behind Barbed Wire features photographs Spinelli took during his time in prison camp. Of the more than one thousand photographs Spinelli risked his life to take, more than one hundred appear in this book. The remarkable photographs, enhanced by Lewis H. Carlson's explanatory text, feature prisoners trading with the guards' combating ticks, lice, and other vermin, preparing meager rations on ingenious cooking contraptions, fighting off boredom by playing baseball, soccer, and football, putting on musical and dramatic theatre presentations, and worshiping in a chapel the prisoners themselves built. These snapshots give us a window on camp life, where catastrophe was normal and normalcy was often catastrophic. In addition, there are dramatic shots of liberation from Stalag IIIA, where Spinelli and some thirty-eight thousand other Allied prisoners had been moved during the final months of the war. Mounted as a traveling exhibit by the National Prisoner of War Museum in Andersonville, Georgia, 92 of these photographs are currently on display at the Italian American Museum in New York City.

    He examines the 1948 West German economic reforms that dismantled the Nazi command economy and ushered in the fabled economic miracle of the 1950s. By abandoning Nazi era economic controls, the West Germans discarded a pre-1945 economic and industrial culture.

    Analyzing more than 70 films made in the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, East and West Germany, France, Italy, the United States, and Israel from 1920 to the 1990s, noted historian Omer Bartov argues that depictions of the "Jew" in film have been fed by, or have reacted to, certain stereotypical depictions of Jews arising from age-old prejudices. These images, in turn, both reflected public attitudes and helped to shape them. He points to Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ as one of the most recent examples of the phenomenon. In trenchant discussions of individual films, Bartov develops four basic cinematic representations of the "Jew" as perpetrator (especially in antisemitic films), as victim (especially in films about the Holocaust), as hero (especially in films about the state of Israel), and as anti-hero (especially in films about the Arab-Israeli conflict).This absorbing book reveals the ways in which powerful images remained deeply embedded in the creative imagination, even as the circumstances that originally engendered them underwent profound changes. Bartov concludes that some of the fundamental prejudices about Jews, which predate cinema, persisted in cinematic depictions throughout the 20th century, although they have been reinterpreted according to changing political regimes, ideologies, and tastes. Covering a range of traditions and periods, The "Jew" in Cinema provides original and provocative interpretations that often contradict conventional views. Placing cinematic representations of the "Jew" within their historical context, Bartov demonstrates the powerful political, social, and cultural impact of these images on popular attitudes.The Helen and Martin Schwartz Lectures in Jewish Studies

    

    In this study, George S. Williamson examines the factors that gave rise to this distinct and profound longing for myth. In doing so, he demonstrates the entanglement of aesthetic and philosophical ambitions in Germany with some of the major religious conflicts of the nineteenth century.Through readings of key intellectuals ranging from Herder and Schelling to Wagner and Nietzsche, Williamson highlights three crucial factors in the emergence of the German engagement with myth: the tradition of Philhellenist neohumanism, a critique of contemporary aesthetic and public life as dominated by private interests, and a rejection of the Bible by many Protestant scholars as the product of a foreign, "Oriental" culture. According to Williamson, the discourse on myth in Germany remained bound up with problems of Protestant theology and confessional conflict through the nineteenth century and beyond.A compelling adventure in intellectual history, this study uncovers the foundations of Germany's fascination with myth and its enduring cultural legacy.

    Within monastic orders, the Observant movement was one such effort to reform religious houses, sparked by the widespread fear that these houses had strayed too far from their original calling. In Convent Chronicles, Anne Winston-Allen offers a rare inside look at the Observant reform movement from the women's point of view.Although we know a great deal about the men who inhabited Observant religious houses, we know very little about their female counterparts--even though women outnumbered men in many places. Often what we do know about women comes to us through the filter of men's accounts. Recovering long-overlooked writings by women in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Winston-Allen surveys the extraordinary literary and scribal activities in German- and Dutch-speaking religious communities in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the Low Countries. While previous studies have relied on records left by male activists, these women's narratives offer an alternative perspective that challenges traditional views of women's role and agency. Women were, in fact, active participants in the religious conversations that dominated the day.With its rich depiction of women as transmitters of culture, Convent Chronicles will be invaluable to scholars as well as to graduate and undergraduate students interested in the history of women's monasticism and religious writing.

    Principal themes explored are the consort's formal and informal power, her religious role, and her cultural patronage. Courts surveyed include those of France, Spain, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, the Imperial court at Vienna, and three German electorates linked to monarchies: Brandenburg-Prussia, Saxony-Poland and Hanover (Great Britain). The fourteen contributing authors include distinguished scholars and researchers from Britain, the U.S. and the continent.

    Peter Hayes traces the extent of the corporation's involvement in these and other Nazi war crimes, including the Aryanization of Jewish-owned property and the exploitation of forced labor, and delineates the motivations for such conduct.

    Then Heinrich, Duke of Saxony and Thuringia, meets the virtuous Countess Matilda of Westphalia. Reluctant to wed at first, Matilda slowly grows to love her charismatic and courageous husband who dreams of one day uniting Germany and becoming king. But as Heinrich's attentions turn again and again to waging war upon the enemy Magyars and growing ever more powerful, turmoil plagues him and he is charged with treason. With a death sentence upon his head, Heinrich fights back until a twist of fate helps him realize his ultimate dream. The turbulent clashes and the personal destinies of the people caught in this medieval tale are magnificently interwoven in this sweeping novel of power and passion, loyalty and lies. Amidst bloody wars, scheming dukes, towns under siege, and virtuous women, Heinrich and Matilda conquer the world of their times. History and fiction combine to bring to life this tangled, tempestuous era.

    Its extremes in geography, climate, and history have given rise to a population that values honesty, self-sufficiency, and harmony. Swedes are a rights-driven, modern, and tech-savvy people who also retain a deep respect for their own cultural legacy. A good background knowledge of the beliefs and values that make up the Swedish way of life will prove invaluable for anyone hoping to do more than just scratch the surface.Culture Smart! Sweden offers insights into the lives and personalities of the Swedes today, along with tips on socializing, communication, and how to make the most of your time there.Have a richer and more meaningful experience abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on history, values, attitudes, and traditions will help you to better understand your hosts, while tips on etiquette and communicating will help you to navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.

    Today it stands as a legacy to its founder and creator, Duncan Phillips. Art Beyond Isms was published to accompany a major travelling exhibition and features over 60 of the most important European works from the Collection.Phillips primarily collected work by French and American artists, and the collection's holdings include work by leading impressionist, post-impressionist, abstract and abstract expressionist artists, as well as works by earlier artists. The focus of the book is mainly 19th and 20th century French paintings, including Renoir's The Luncheon of the Boating Party, as well as five important paintings by C�zanne and Monet.Among the non-French artists, van Gogh, Picasso, Kokoscha, Klee and Modigliani are represented and important proto-modern works by such artists as Constable, El Greco and Goya are also included. The beautifully represented works are shown individually and in groups accompanied by engaging narrative entries.

    Mastering German Vocabulary explains how to use over 2,200 common German words correctly, using example sentences in German with English translations.In order to aid quick consultation, all German and English words are listed in separate indexes. The book is designed for all upper secondary and tertiary students of German and complements Routledge's grammar, dictionary and vocabulary building textbooks. It is a practical companion for anyone serious about perfecting their German.

    Germanic cosmogony, as represented in such precise images as a worldtree, provides a context for an analysis of specific metaphors for the workings of fate as woven or spun by such figures as the Norns - the Norse goddesses of destiny. Employing both philosophical and mythic-linguistic considerations, this book also offers new insights into the persistence of a residual paganism in the understanding of fate following the Christian conversion. Anthony Winterboume is an independent scholar.

    In vivid prose, Benjamin Hett examines daily movement through the Berlin criminal courts and the lawyers, judges, jurors, thieves, pimps, and murderers who inhabited this world.Drawing on previously untapped sources, including court records, pamphlet literature, and pulp novels, Hett examines how the law reflected the broader urban culture and politics of a rapidly changing city. In this book, German criminal law looks very different from conventional narratives of a rigid, static system with authoritarian continuities traceable from Bismarck to Hitler. From the murder trial of Anna and Hermann Heinze in 1891 to the surprising treatment of the notorious Captain of Koepenick in 1906, Hett illuminates a transformation in the criminal justice system that unleashed a culture war fought over issues of permissiveness versus discipline, the boundaries of public discussion of crime and sexuality, and the role of gender in the courts.Trained in both the law and history, Hett offers a uniquely valuable perspective on the dynamic intersections of law and society, and presents an impressive new view of early twentieth-century German history.

    Dividing his discussions into two sections, one on psychopathology and the other on psychotherapy, Dr. Otto Kernberg examines borderline personality disorder, narcissism, sexual inhibition, transference and countertransference, suicidal behaviour, and eating disorders. In each chapter he integrates the ideas of European and Latin American psychoanalytic thinkers, bringing them to the attention of English-speaking readers. This book includes a selection of recently published journal articles. Their collection into one volume makes readily available Dr. Kernberg's present thinking on an important subject.

    A brilliant study by France’s foremost historian of the period that details the reasons behind France’s lack of response to Hitler’s Germany during the 1930s and the slide toward war.

    Few Germans were willing to take risks, and others began to oppose the Third Reich only when the end was in sight. However, despite the threat of prison, concentration camp, or death, there were many diverse groups from the academic, military, and spiritual sectors of society that challenged the Reich's harsh, unjust policies. This book represents the spectrum of these forms of resistance and illustrates the courage of those who dared to confront the Nazi government.

    The survival of Malta against determined Axis assaults enabled the Allies to cripple supplies to Rommel's Afrika Korps, while building up their own land, air and sea forces. The entry of America to the war in December 1941 had allowed the allies to co-ordinate a grand strategy for the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern theatre. In October 1942, after careful preparation and a massive artillery bombardment, General Montgomery launched the Eighth Army against the Afrika Korps in the Battle of El Alamein, while in November, 'Operation Torch' the Anglo-American amphibious landings in French -ruled North Africa, scored an almost bloodless success and proved a dry run for D-Day in 1944. Squeezed between the Allied nutcrackers to the west and east, the Germans offered stubborn resistance in the Tunisia campaign of 1943, at the battles of Kasserine Pass and the Mareth Line, but after suffering severe casualties, the Allies broke through and the Axis forces in North Africa surrendered in May 1943. The text is supported by 12 appendices, 40 maps and diagrams and 44 photographs.

    This new series delves deep into the thrilling world of espionage, introducing history's most notorious spies, taking a close look at the gadgets of today's secret agents, and much more. Don't miss the chance to peer into this secret world!

    Petrakis and Cecil L. Eubanks

    It calls oneself a “showcase for consumer culture of GDR” (p.13) and so there are much more photos than texts. Nevertheless you learn something about the history of East German Design because Ralf E. Ulrich deals in the introduction of the book with it. He copies the lines of the development of GDR design from the beginning of the GDR in 1949 till the “Wende” in 1989. By all changings in the consumer culture of East Germany it is important to note that the design was always driven by ideology, general social developments and the socialist planned economy. With a greater focus on export markets in the 1960ies it happened yet that on the one hand some design concepts from international products were adapted. On the other hand some GDR products were sold on West German market, too. You could find the marking “Made in GDR” on IKEA pendant lamps made in Halle, Privileg typewriters supplied by the mail order company Quelle and hairdryers.

    However, it was not until the late nineteenth century that it reemerged as a novel modernist method. The comic-grotesque can best be characterized by what it does to boundaries, transgressing, merging, overflowing and collapsing them. This volume, which accompanies an exhibition at Neue Galerie New York, begins with Arnold Bocklin's comic-grotesque pictorial compositions. It brings together a dazzling array of artists--including Paul Klee, Max Klinger, Alfred Kubin, Emil Nolde, and Max Ernst--who, inspired by his example, forged a unique aesthetic with enormous consequences for modern German art. Essays consider the connection between the visual arts and the rise of cabaret culture and satirical journals. In addition, the authors examine the legacy of the comic-grotesque in relationship to the denunciation of Bocklin's art around 1905 and its eventual reemergence around 1919 in the work of the Dadaists. With over 100 full-color plates and dozens of black-and-white illustrations, this striking collection traces the evolution of a largely ignored, but immensely influential movement in modern art.

    He then became closely involved in anthrax experiments which still today render the Scottish island of Guinard uninhabitable before playing a full role in the Normandy Campaign and the conquest of Germany. After a period in Burma, he was sent to Korea, where in bitter fighting against hordes of Chinese and North Korean troops he was extremely lucky to escape with his life: many of his comrades tragically did not.

    Fossils are cluses to our planet's mysterious past. This book is filled with facts and photographs.

    In 1939, just before the outbreak of war, the Poles shared their knowledge with French and British intelligence services. This led to the powerful British decoding operation at Bletchley Park, which supplied vital intelligence known as Ultra to the allied forces. Yet, only recently have the Polish codebreakers received international recognition. This text offers a concise, up-to-date history of the Enigma decryption in Poland and the use of this achievement in Poland and England.

    Son of Philip the Handsome and Juana, Queen of Castile, who was regarded as insane, by the age of nineteen he was the most powerful monarch in Europe. In this, the first biography for many years, Harald Kleinschmidt draws on the latest research to portray Charles V in the light of his upbringing and dynastic relations, and against a background of turmoil and unprecedented European expansion. Coming to power as a very young man, Charles V held high aims and ideals about exercising control over the greatest number of territories ever accumulated by a European ruler. As the defender of Catholic Christendom, he attempted to achieve both the cultural and religious unity of Europe and European world rule. His struggles against Lutheranism were initially successful, but the harsh measures he took against his Protestant prisoners provoked an uprising that forced him to grant Protestantism legal recognition. Likewise, although Charles V substantially extended Spanish dominions in the New World through the conquest of Mexico by Cortes in 1519-21 and of Peru by Pizarro ten years later, the demands of ruling his vast European realm ultimately overwhelmed him. Disillusioned by the seeming impossibility of achieving peace in Europe, in 1555 Charles renounced his imperial crown in favour of his brother Ferdinand. Shortly afterwards, he resigned his kingdoms of Spain, the Netherlands and the Spanish Americas to his son Philip and retired to live in seclusion near the monastery of San Geronimo de Yuste. Legend has it that his ghost continues to advise the Spanish monarchs.