But what did the German people think of the war? And what had they actually thought about the rise of the Nazi party? William Russell, a young US diplomat who worked in the American Embassy in Berlin, explains in detail his experiences of Germany in the early phases of the war from August 1939 through to April 1940. By asking questions to his friends, colleagues and people who he passed on the streets, Russell uncovered the state of minds of normal Germans, what they were thinking, doing and saying through the course of 1939 and 1940. Drawing evidence from a variety of sources, including newspapers, the radio, recently published books, as well as the jokes and gossip that circulated on the streets of the German capital, Russell is able to demonstrate how not all Germans were card-waving Nazis, but how the vast majority were politically apathetic, nervous of the future and often outwardly critical of the Nazi regime. Russell explains how many Germans laughed at figures such as Joseph Goebbels and Herman Goering when they were in privacy of their own houses. Although written in only second year of the war it is clear that Russell and many of his friends are aware of the impending horrors that the war will cause and he tries desperately throughout the book to do his best for those who would suffer the most at the hands of the Nazi regime. Berlin Embassy is the classic account of Germany and its people in the first year of the Second World War. “The small things that happen to the small people- as reported by a man in a small job in the American embassy in Berlin, who managed to get the man in the street to talk frankly.” Kirkus Reviews “Exciting reading … A very fine book.” William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany William Russell was an author and journalist who after completing his education had worked in the Berlin Embassy during 1939 and 1940. After he left Germany he joined the U.S. Army and served two years as an Order of Battle Specialist in the Intelligence Branch in England. He passed away in 2000. His book Berlin Embassy was first published in 1941.

    Written by Germany’s foremost diplomatic historian of the early twentieth century, this work maps out all the numerous times that Adolf Hitler made unconditional offers of peace to all the nations of Europe—and how the major anti-German belligerents, France and Britain, turned down these offers each and every time.The author lists all of Hitler’s offers in detail, complete with quotes, starting with his first offer of May 17, 1933, his second offer of December 18, 1933, his third offer of May 21, 1935, his fourth offer of March 31, 1936, his fifth offer of September 30, 1938, his sixth offer of December 6, 1938, his seventh offer of late 1939 to Poland to settle the Danzig Corridor issue peacefully, and finally, his offer of world peace on October 6, 1939, just over a month after Britain and France had declared war on Germany for invading Poland on September 1 (but not on the Soviet Union, which also invaded Poland on September 17).