Book picks similar to
The Nuremberg Ss-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945-1958: Atrocity, Law, and History by Hilary Earl
history
holocaust
non-fiction
third-reich
Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account
Miklós Nyiszli - 1946
A Jew and a medical doctor, the prisoner Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared death for a grimmer fate: to perform "scientific research" on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the man who became known as the infamous "Angel of Death" - Dr. Josef Mengele. Nyiszli was named Mengele's personal research pathologist. In that capactity he also served as physician to the Sonderkommando, the Jewish prisoners who worked exclusively in the crematoriums and were routinely executed after four months. Miraculously, Nyiszli survived to give this horrifying and sobering account.
Against the Odds: Survival on the Russian Front 1944-1945
John Stieber - 1995
Caught there by the outbreak of the Second World War, he was unable to return to his parents for seven years. In due course, he was called to serve in an anti-aircraft battery and in the National Labour Service. Just after his eighteenth birthday, he was sent to the Russian Front with the elite Paratrooper and Tank Division, Hermann Göring. He lived through an amazing series of events, escaping death many times and was one of the few survivors of his division when the war ended. In this narrative of his early life, John Stieber describes how he went from a carefree childhood through increasing hardships, until every day of his life became a challenge for survival.
Hitler's Thirty Days to Power: January 1933
Henry Ashby Turner Jr. - 1996
Providing vivid portraits of the main players of the drama of January 1933, and using newly available documents, Turner masterfully recreates the bewildering circumstances surrounding Hitler’s unexpected appointment as chancellor of Germany. The result is a work that Booklist calls “first rate … a gripping, foreboding narrative.”
Nuremberg: The Reckoning
William F. Buckley Jr. - 2002
He hears the stories of the infamous Nazi killers and war makers, who face prosecutors determined to bring them to justice, and encounters the towering figures of twentieth-century legal, political, and military history, among them Justice Robert Jackson, Albert Speer, Hermann Goering, and the dark, untried shadow of Adolf Hitler. As the trial unfolds, Sebastian must come to terms with his family legacy and national identity. With his renowned authority and audacity, William F. Buckley Jr. creates a riveting thriller, taking the reader through unforgettable scenes of treachery and vengeance, love and hatred, and the struggle for justice found in a hangman's noose.
The Lost Life of Eva Braun
Angela Lambert - 2006
She has been dismissed as a racist, feathered-headed shop girl, yet sixty-two years after her death her name is still instantly recognizable.She left her convent school at the age of seventeen and met Hitler a few months later. She became his mistress before she was twenty. How did unsophisticated little Fraulein Braun, twenty-three years his junior, hold the most powerful man in Europe in an exclusive sexual relationship that lasted from 1932 until their joint suicide? Were they really lovers, and what were the background influences and psychological tensions of the middle-class Catholic girl from Munich who shared his intimate life? How can her ordinariness and apparent decency be reconciled with an unshakeable loyalty to the monster she loved?She left almost no personal material or documents but her private diary and photograph albums show that her life with Hitler, far from being a luxurious sinecure, caused her emotional torture. His chauffeur called her "the unhappiest woman in Germany." The Fuhrer humiliated her in public while the top Nazis' wives, living in his privileged enclave on a Bavarian mountainside, despised her. Yet Albert Speer said: "She has been much maligned. She was very shy, modest. A man's woman: gay, gentle, and kind; incredibly undemanding . . . a restful sort of girl. And her love for Hitler---as she proved in the end---was beyond question."Eva loved the Fuhrer, not for his power, nor because, thanks to him, she lived in luxury. His material gifts were nothing compared with the one thing she really wanted: his child. She remained invisible and unknown, a nonperson. They were never seen in public together and she never saw him alone except in the bedroom, yet their long relationship was a sort of marriage.Angela Lambert reveals a woman the world never knew until the last twenty-four hours of her life. In the small hours of April 29, 1945, as Allied troops raced to capture Berlin and the bunker below the Reichskanzlei where the defeated Nazi leaders were hiding, Eva Braun finally achieved her life's ambition by becoming Hitler's wife. Next day they both swallowed cyanide and died instantly. She was young, healthy, and thirty-three years old. Based on detailed new research, this is an authoritative biography, only the second life of Eva written in English.
World War 2: Stories Of The Schutzstaffel: True Accounts Of Hitler’s Personal Bodyguards (World War 2, German War, World War 2 History, Irma Grese, Auschwitz, Waffen SS Book 1)
Cyrus J. Zachary - 2016
Not only was he hated by the whole world, even some of his own military commanders didn’t like him. Most leaders around the world rely on one, maybe two bodyguards to keep them safe. Even the President of the United States today has only one or two teams of security personnel; while there may be many men and women who take turns to protect their leader, the numbers are not as big as you would expect it to be. We will look at the origins of a number of bodies, such as the ‘Sturmabteilung’ or the SA, the Schutzstaffel (the SS) and the many other sub-sections of the SS such as the FBK, the LSSAH, etc., all of which were tasked with protecting Hitler. From the background, we will move on to individual accounts of men who served on these teams – they were Hitler’s personal bodyguards and some stayed with him until the very end. Humanity’s depraved nature came to fore with these men; despite having a master who was truly mad and ravenous for blood, they served him loyally. Was it because they were also as depraved as he was? Or were they afraid for their lives and did what they had to, to survive? We can only wonder... ===>>> Download this book today! <<<===
On Hitler's Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood
Irmgard A. Hunt - 2005
The very model of blond Aryan "purity," Irmgard sat on the Führer's knee for photographers, witnessed with excitement the comings and goings of all manner of famous personages, and with the blindness of a child accepted the Nazi doctrine that most of her family and everyone around her so eagerly embraced. Here, in a picture-postcard world untouched by the war and seemingly unblemished by the horrors Germany's master had wrought, she accepted the lies of her teachers and church and civic leaders, joined the Hitler Youth at age ten, and joyfully sang the songs extolling the virtues of National Socialism.But before the end -- when she and other children would be forced to cower in terror in dank bomb shelters and wartime deprivations would take a harrowing toll -- Irmgard's doubts about the "truths" she had been force-fed increased, fueled by the few brave souls who had not accepted Hitler and his abominations. After the fall of the brutal dictatorship and the suicide of its mad architect, many of her neighbors and loved ones still clung to their beliefs, prejudices, denial, and unacknowledged guilt. Irmgard, often feeling lonely in her quest, was determined to face the truth of her country's criminal past and to bear the responsibility for an almost unbearable reality that most of her elders were determined to forget. She resolved even then that the lessons of her youth would guide her actions and steel her commitment to defend the freedoms and democratic values that had been so easily dismissed by the German people.Provocative and astonishing, Irmgard A. Hunt's On Hitler's Mountain offers a unique, gripping, and vitally important first-person perspective on a tumultuous era in modern history, as viewed through the eyes of a child -- a candid and fascinating document, free of rationalization and whitewash, that chronicles the devastating moral collapse of a civilized nation.
Americans in Paris: Life and Death under Nazi Occupation 1940-1944
Charles Glass - 2009
They had refused or been unable to leave for many different reasons; their actions during the course of the German occupation would prove to be just as varied. Glass interweaves the experiences of some of the individuals who belonged to this unique colony of American expatriates living in Paris. Among the stories highlighted are those of Charles Bedaux, an American millionaire determined to carry on with his business affairs as usual; Sylvia Beach, owner of the famous English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company; Clara Longworth de Chambrun, patroness of the American Library in Paris and distantly related to FDR; and Dr. Sumner Jackson, the American Hospital’s chief surgeon. These fascinating tales reflect the complicated network of choices—passive compromise, outright collaboration, patient retreat, and active resistance—that existed for Americans caught in the German web.
Arrival of Eagles: Luftwaffe Landings in Britain 1939–1945
Andy Saunders - 2014
Some had got lost, others were brought by defectors; some were lured through electronic countermeasures by the RAF, others brought down in unusual combat circumstances. All manner of types appeared He111, Go145, Me110, Ju88, Me109 F and G, FW190, Do217 and all were of great interest to the RAF. In some cases aircraft were repaired and test flown, betraying vital and invaluable information. Distinguished author Andy Saunders examines a selection of such fascinating cases and draws upon his own research, interviews, official reports and eyewitness accounts to bring alive these truly unusual accounts, all richly illustrated with contemporary photographs."
Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944
Norman Cameron - 1953
This book documents those conversations where Hitler talked freely of his aims, his early life, and his plans for world conquest.
Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944
Max Hastings - 1981
With Allied forces suddenly on European ground, the division—Das Reich —was called up to counter the invasion. Its march northward to the shores of Normandy, 15,000 men strong, would become infamous as a tale of unparalleled brutality in World War II.Das Reich is Sir Max Hastings’s narrative of the atrocities committed by the 2nd SS Panzer Division during June of 1944: first, the execution of 99 French civilians in the village of Tulle on June 9; and second, the massacre of 642 more in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10. Throughout the book, Hastings expertly shifts perspective between French resistance fighters, the British Secret Service (who helped coordinate the French resistance from afar and on the ground), and the German soldiers themselves. With its rare, unbiased approach to the ruthlessness of World War II, Das Reich explores the fragile moral fabric of wartime mentality.
The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II
Jan Jarboe Russell - 2015
From 1942 to 1948, trains delivered more than 10,000 civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas, a small desert town at the southern tip of Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, Italian immigrants and their American-born children. The only family internment camp during World War II, Crystal City was the center of a government prisoner exchange program called "quiet passage." During the course of the war, hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City, including their American-born children, were exchanged for other more important Americans - diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, physicians, and missionaries - behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany. Focusing her story on two American-born teenage girls who were interned, author Jan Jarboe Russell uncovers the details of their years spent in the camp; the struggles of their fathers; their families; subsequent journeys to war-devastated Germany and Japan; and their years-long attempt to survive and return to the United States, transformed from incarcerated enemies to American loyalists. Their stories of day-to-day life at the camp, from the ten-foot high security fence to the armed guards, daily roll call, and censored mail, have never been told. Combining big-picture World War II history with a little-known event in American history that has long been kept quiet, "The Train to Crystal City" reveals the war-time hysteria against the Japanese and Germans in America, the secrets of FDR's tactics to rescue high-profile POWs in Germany and Japan, and how the definition of American citizenship changed under the pressure of war.
Born Survivors
Wendy Holden - 2015
Rachel is sent to Auschwitz, unaware that her husband has been shot. Priska and her husband travel there together, but are immediately separated. Also at Auschwitz, Anka hopes in vain to be reunited with her husband. With the rest of their families gassed, these young wives are determined to hold on to all they have left—their lives, and those of their unborn babies. Having concealed their condition from infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, they are forced to work and almost starved to death, living in daily fear of their pregnancies being detected by the SS. In April 1945, as the Allies close in, the inmates are sent to Mauthausen concentration camp on a hellish seventeen-day train journey. On the seventieth anniversary of Mauthausen’s liberation from the Nazis by American soldiers, renowned biographer Wendy Holden recounts this extraordinary story of three children united by their mothers’ unbelievable—yet ultimately successful—fight for survival.
Magda Goebbels
Anja Klabunde - 1999
Magda Goebbels (1901-1945) is arguably the most contradictory and the most intriguing among them. What made a beautiful and intelligent woman go from being deeply in love with the ardent Zionist leader Victor Chaim Arlosoroff to marrying Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda and a ferocious anti-Semite? Indeed, in the eyes of many people she was the 'First Lady' of the Reich, owing to Hitler's lifelong attachment to her. How could the devoted mother of six, the poster-child of family values during the Third Reich, turn into Medea and poison these six children? Anja Klabunde's thoroughly researched and remarkable biography for the first time brings together these stunning facts.
Henry: A Polish Swimmer's True Story of Friendship from Auschwitz to America
Katrina Shawver - 2017
Couched in the interview style of Tuesdays with Morrie, Henry relates in his own voice a life as a champion swimmer, interrupted by three years imprisoned in Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a Polish political prisoner. With a pragmatic gallows humor, and sense of hope, he showed the author how to truly live for today, preferably with a shot of good Polish vodka. Henry's path of resiliency and power of connection are as relevant today, as they were in World War II.Henry reminds us that no single class of people was safe from Hitler's reach or imprisonment, and no country suffered more under Hitler and Stalin than Poland. This bridge to history and view of the Holocaust through Polish eyes is supported by extensive research, and features more than 70 original photos and rare German documents. Ultimately, Henry is the story a strong young man, who survives by his wits, humor, friends, and a healthy dose of luck. This book is for the discerning adult looking for an intelligent read that examines World War II, the Holocaust, and the true meaning of friendship then and now.