Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America


Annie Jacobsen - 2014
    government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich’s scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis’ once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler’s scientists and their families to the United States.Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War?Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich’s ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century.In this definitive, controversial look at one of America’s most strategic, and disturbing, government programs, Jacobsen shows just how dark government can get in the name of national security.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin


Erik Larson - 2011
    Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the New Germany, she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition.Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Goring and the expectedly charming—yet wholly sinister—Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

The Saboteur of Auschwitz: The Inspiring True Story of a British Soldier Held Prisoner in Auschwitz


Colin Rushton - 1998
    The Germans gave it another name, now synonymous with mankind’s darkest hours. They called it Auschwitz. Forced to do hard labour, starved and savagely beaten, Arthur thought his life would end in Auschwitz. Determined to go down fighting, he sabotaged Nazi industrial work, risked his life to alleviate the suffering of the Jewish prisoners and aided a partisan group planning a mass break-out. This shocking true story sheds new light on the operations at the camp, exposes a hierarchy of prisoner treatment by the SS and presents the largely unknown story of the military POWs held there.

Elizabethans: How Modern Britain Was Forged


Andrew Marr - 2020
    Marcus Rashford. Jan Morris. Diana Dors. Bob Geldof. David Olusoga. Elizabeth David. Zaha Hadid. Frank Crichlow. Quentin Crisp. Dusty Springfield. Captain Tom.Who made modern Britain the country it is today? How do we sum up the kind of people we are? What does it mean to be the new Elizabethans?In this wonderfully told history, spanning back to when Queen Elizabeth became queen in 1953, Andrew Marr traces the people who have made Britain the country it is today. From the activists to the artists, the sports heroes to the innovators, these people pushed us forward, changed the conversation, encouraged us to eat better, to sing, think and to protest. They got things done. How will our generation be remembered in a hundred years’ time? And when you look back at Britain’s toughest moments in the past seventy years, what do you learn about its people and its values?In brilliantly entertaining style and with unexpected insights into some of our sung and unsung heroes, Andrew Marr offers up a first draft of the history we are all living. This is our story as the new Elizabethans – the story of how 1950s Britain evolved into the diverse country we live in today. In short, it is the history of modern Britain.

Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich


Omer Bartov - 1991
    Bartov focuses on the barbaric struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union--where the vast majority of German troops fought--to show how the savagery of war reshaped the army into Hitler's image.

Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz


Lucette Matalon Lagnado - 1991
    In this remarkable narrative, the life of Auschwitz's Angel of Death is told in counterpoint to the lives of the survivors, who until now have kept silent about their heinous death-camp ordeals.

Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany


Hans J. Massaquoi - 1999
    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.

Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute


Jonathan Mayo - 2015
    All over the country, people are on the move- concentration camp survivors, Allied PoWs, escaping Nazis- and the civilian population is running out of food. The man who orchestrated this nightmare is in his bunker beneath the capital, saying his farewells. This is the gripping story of Hitler's final hours, as seen through the eyes of those who were with him in the bunker; those fighting in the streets of Germany; and those pacing the corridors of power in Washington, London and Moscow.30th April 1945 was a day that millions had dreamed of, and millions had died for.

The Cost of Courage


Charles Kaiser - 2015
    His sisters carried on the fight without him until the end of the war. André survived three concentration camps and later became a prominent French politician who devoted the rest of his life to reconciliation of France and Germany. His parents and oldest brother were arrested and shipped off on the last train from Paris to Germany before the liberation, and died in the camps. Since then, silence has been the Boulloches’s answer to dealing with the unbearable. This is the first time the family has cooperated with an author to recount their extraordinary ordeal.

The American People in World War II: Freedom from Fear, Part Two


David M. Kennedy - 2003
    Exploiting Germany's own economic burdens, Hitler reached out to the disaffected, turning their aimless discontent into loyal support for his Nazi Party. In Asia, Japan harbored imperial ambitions of itsown. The same generation of Americans who battled the Depression eventually had to shoulder arms in another conflict that wreaked worldwide destruction, ushered in the nuclear age, and forever changed their way of life and their country's relationship to the rest of the world.The American People in World War II--the second installment of Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear--explains how the nation agonized over its role in the conflict, how it fought the war, why the United States emerged victorious, and why the consequences of victory were sometimessweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on the millions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears and face battle as best theycould. The American People in World War II is a gripping narrative and an invaluable analysis of the trials and victories through which modern America was formed.

Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial


Joseph E. Persico - 1994
    Using new sources--ground-breaking research in the papers of the Nuremberg prison psychiatrist and commandant, the letters and journals of the prisoners, and accounts of the judges and prosecutors as they struggled through each day making compromises and steeling their convictions--Joseph Persico retells the story of Nuremberg, combining sweeping history with psychological insight. Here are brilliant, chilling portraits of the Nazi warlords and riveting descriptions of the tensions between law and vengeance, between East and West, and of the friction already present in the early stages of the Cold War.

Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-Creation of World War II Through the Eyes and Minds of Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin


Simon Berthon - 2006
    While their nations fought battles with weapons, the four warlords of the twentieth century fought a war of the mind. Structured along the lines of a cinematic thriller, rapidly cutting from one man to the next, the book takes us blow by blow as they try to outthink and outfight each other. These encounters are told on a day-by-day, even hour-by-hour basis, affording unparalleled insights into parallel actions. Though there have been many single, and some dual, biographies, no previous book has put these four great figures together in this exciting and popularly appealing way. Moving from Whitehall and Washington to the Wolf's Lair and the Kremlin, Warlords documents the psychological battles among the leaders and shows how their thoughts and actions changed history.

What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany


Eric A. Johnson - 2005
    Combining the expertise of Eric A. Johnson, an American historian, and Karl-Heinz Reuband, a German sociologist, What We Knew is the most startling oral history yet of everyday life in theThird Reich.

Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age


Modris Eksteins - 1989
    Recognizing that The Great War was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole, author Modris Eksteins examines the lives of ordinary people, works of modern literature, and pivotal historical events to redefine the way we look at our past and toward our future.

A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France


Caroline Moorehead - 2011
    They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled "V" for victory on the walls of her lycée; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers.Eventually, the Gestapo hunted down 230 of these women and imprisoned them in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and loved ones, these disparate individuals turned to one another, their common experience conquering divisions of age, education, profession, and class, as they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie.In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only forty-nine would return to France.A Train in Winter draws on interviews with these women and their families; German, French, and Polish archives; and documents held by World War II resistance organizations to uncover a dark chapter of history that offers an inspiring portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and survival—and of the remarkable, enduring power of female friendship.