Book picks similar to
Hitler and His Secret Partners by James Pool
history
non-fiction
germany
biography
Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
Alan Bullock - 1952
Here in an abridged edition.
The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War
William Manchester - 1968
William Manchester's account of the rise and fall of the Krupp dynasty is history as it should be written, alive with all its terrifying power.
The Nuremberg Trial
Ann Tusa - 1984
Using a variety of resources, the Tusas are able to thoroughly layout new information from the trial. This was the closure for many to World War II, and it was one of the greatest judicial accomplishements. The Tusas provide a clear history of the events and fresh insight to what happened during the trial.
The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men
Eric Lichtblau - 2014
They had little trouble getting in. With scant scrutiny, many gained entry on their own as self-styled war "refugees," their pasts easily disguised and their war crimes soon forgotten. But some had help and protection from the U.S. government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler's minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. For the first time, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story not only of the Nazi scientists brought to America, but of the German spies and con men who followed them and lived for decades as ordinary citizens. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. But even then, American intelligence agencies secretly worked to protect a number of their prized spies from exposure. Today, a few Nazis still remain on our soil. Investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau, relying on a trove of newly discovered documents and scores of interviews with participants in this little-known chapter of postwar history, tells the shocking and shameful story of how America became a safe haven for Hitler's men.
Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Destructive Impact on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy
Christopher Simpson - 1988
As the Soviets consolidated power in Eastern Europe, the CIA scrambled to gain the upper hand against new enemies worldwide. To this end, senior officials at the CIA, National Security Council, and other elements of the emerging US national security state turned to thousands of former Nazis, Waffen Secret Service, and Nazi collaborators for propaganda, psychological warfare, and military operations. Many new recruits were clearly responsible for the deaths of countless innocents as part of Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution,” yet were whitewashed and claimed to be valuable intelligence assets. Unrepentant mass murderers were secretly accepted into the American fold, their crimes forgotten and forgiven with the willing complicity of the US government.Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the US government’s extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson’s book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.
The Lions of Carentan: Fallschirmjager Regiment 6, 1943-1945
Volker Griesser - 2011
One of the formations they encountered was a similarly elite group of paratroopers, who instead of dropping from the skies fought on the defensive, giving their Allied counterparts a tremendous challenge in achieving their objectives.This is the complete wartime history of one of the largest German paratrooper regiments, 6th Fallschirmjäger, from its initial formation in the spring of 1943 to its last day at the end of the war. With numerous firsthand accounts from key members, reporting on their experiences, they describe the events of 1943-45 vividly and without compromise.These accounts reveal previously unknown details about important operations in Italy, Russia, on the Normandy Front, Belgium, Holland, the last German Parachute drop in the Ardennes, and the final battle to the end in Germany.With over 220 original photographs, many from private collections and never before published, this book fully illustrates the men, their uniforms, equipment and weapons. Also included is an appendix with maps, battle calendar, staffing plans, a list of field and post-MOB-numbers, and the Knight's Cross recipients of the regiment. Having earned the respect of the Allied forces who fought against it during World War II, this work will inform current readers of the full record of Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6, and why the Allied advance into German-held Europe was so painstaking to achieve.
Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945
Catherine Merridale - 2005
They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty years have passed since their epic triumph, but the heart and mind of Ivan -- as the ordinary Russian soldier was called -- remain a mystery. We know something about hoe the soldiers died, but nearly nothing about how they lived, how they saw the world, or why they fought.Drawing on previously closed military and secret police archives, interviews with veterans, and private letters and diaries, Catherine Merridale presents the first comprehensive history of the Soviet Union Army rank and file. She follows the soldiers from the shock of the German invasion to their costly triumph in Stalingrad, where life expectancy was often a mere twenty-four hours. Through the soldiers' eyes, we witness their victorious arrival in Berlin, where their rage and suffering exact an awful toll, and accompany them as they return home full of hope, only to be denied the new life they had been fighting to secure.A tour de force of original research and a gripping history, Ivan's War reveals the singular mixture of courage, patriotism, anger, and fear that made it possible for these underfed, badly led troops to defeat the Nazi army. In the process Merridale restores to history the invisible millions who sacrificed the most to win the war.
Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice
Gerald Steinacher - 2008
But "Odessa" was nothing more than a myth. Now, in Nazis on the Run, historian Gerald Steinacher provides the true story of how the Nazis escaped their fate.Steinacher not only reveals how Nazi war criminals escaped from justice at the end of the Second World War, fleeing through the Tyrolean Alps to Italian seaports, but he also highlights the key roles played by the Red Cross, the Vatican, and the Secret Services of the major powers. The book takes a hard look at the International Committee of the Red Cross, proving that identification papers issued by the Red Cross made it possible for thousands of Nazis, war criminals, and collaborators - including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengale - to slip through the hands of justice and to find refuge in North and South America, Spain, and the Near East. Steinacher underscores the importance of the South Tyrol as a "ratline" from Germany to Italy and also reveals that many figures in the Catholic Church - sometimes knowingly, other times unwittingly - were involved in large-scale Nazi smuggling, often driven by the fear of an imminent communist takeover of Italy. Finally, the book documents how the Counter Intelligence Corps (the predecessor to the CIA) recruited former SS men to advise U.S. intelligence agencies and smuggled them out of Soviet-occupied areas of Austria and Eastern Europe into Italy and on to South America.Based on extensive research in newly opened archives, Nazis on the Run is the first book to provide a complete picture of this little-known story of justice denied.
Panzers on the Vistula: Retreat and Rout in East Prussia 1945
Hans Schäufler - 2010
The Coming of the Third Reich
Richard J. Evans - 2003
Its political culture was less authoritarian than Russia's and less anti-Semitic than France's; representative institutions were thriving, and competing political parties and elections were a central part of life. How then can we explain the fact that in little more than a generation this stable modern country would be in the hands of a violent, racist, extremist political movement that would lead it and all of Europe into utter moral, physical, and cultural ruin?There is no story in twentieth-century history more important to understand, and Richard Evans has written the definitive account for our time. A masterful synthesis of a vast body of scholarly work integrated with important new research and interpretations, Evans's history restores drama and contingency to the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, even as he shows how ready Germany was by the early 1930s for such a takeover to occur. With many people angry and embittered by military defeat and economic ruin; a state undermined by a civil service, an army, and a law enforcement system deeply alienated from the democratic order introduced in 1918; beset by the growing extremism of voters prey to panic about the increasing popularity of communism; home to a tiny but quite successful Jewish community subject to widespread suspicion and resentment, Germany proved to be fertile ground for Nazism's ideology of hatred.The first book of what will ultimately be a complete three-volume history of Nazi Germany, The Coming of the Third Reich is a masterwork of the historian's art and the book by which all others on this subject will be judged.
Auschwitz
Laurence Rees - 2005
Yet its story is not fully known. In Auschwitz, Laurence Rees reveals new insights from more than 100 original interviews with Auschwitz survivors and Nazi perpetrators who speak on the record for the first time. Their testimonies provide a portrait of the inner workings of the camp in unrivalled detail—from the techniques of mass murder, to the politics and gossip mill that turned between guards and prisoners, to the on-camp brothel in which the lines between those guards and prisoners became surprisingly blurred.Rees examines the strategic decisions that led the Nazi leadership to prescribe Auschwitz as its primary site for the extinction of Europe's Jews—their "Final Solution." He concludes that many of the horrors that were perpetrated in Auschwitz were driven not just by ideological inevitability but as a "practical" response to a war in the East that had begun to go wrong for Germany. A terrible immoral pragmatism characterizes many of the decisions that determined what happened at Auschwitz. Thus the story of the camp becomes a morality tale, too, in which evil is shown to proceed in a series of deft, almost noiseless incremental steps until it produces the overwhelming horror of the industrial scale slaughter that was inflicted in the gas chambers of Auschwitz
The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis
Simon Goodman - 2015
And that’s almost all he knew about them—his father rarely spoke of their family history or heritage. But when he passed away, and Simon received his father’s old papers, a story began to emerge.The Gutmanns, as they were known then, rose from a small Bohemian hamlet to become one of Germany’s most powerful banking families. They also amassed a magnificent, world-class art collection that included works by Degas, Renoir, Botticelli, Guardi, and many, many others. But the Nazi regime snatched from them everything they had worked to build: their remarkable art, their immense wealth, their prominent social standing, and their very lives.Simon grew up in London with little knowledge of his father’s efforts to recover their family’s prized possessions. It was only after his father’s death that Simon began to piece together the clues about the Gutmanns’ stolen legacy and the Nazi looting machine. He learned much of the collection had gone to Hitler and Hermann Goering; other works had been smuggled through Switzerland, sold and resold to collectors and dealers, with many works now in famous museums. More still had been recovered by Allied forces only to be stolen again by heartless bureaucrats—European governments quietly absorbed thousands of works of art into their own collections. Through painstaking detective work across two continents, Simon has been able to prove that many works belonged to his family, and successfully secure their return.With the help of his family, Simon initiated the first Nazi looting case to be settled in the United States. They also brought about the first major restitution in The Netherlands since the post-war era.Goodman’s dramatic story, told with great heart, reveals a rich family history almost obliterated by the Nazis. It is not only the account of a twenty-year long detective hunt for family treasure, but an unforgettable tale of redemption and restoration.
Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe
Mark Mazower - 2008
Control of this vast territory was meant to provide the basis for Germany's rise to unquestioned world power. Eastern Europe was to be the Reich's Wild West, transformed by massacre and colonial settlement. Western Europe was to provide the economic resources that would knit an authoritarian and racially cleansed continent together. But the brutality and short-sightedness of Nazi politics lost what German arms had won and brought their equally rapid downfall.Time and again, the speed of the Germans' victories caught them unprepared for the economic or psychological intricacies of running such a far-flung dominion. Politically impoverished, they had no idea how to rule the millions of people they suddenly controlled, except by bludgeon.Mazower forces us to set aside the timeworn notion that the Nazis' worldview was their own invention. Their desire for land and their racist attitudes toward Slavs and other nationalities emerged from ideas that had driven their Prussian forebears into Poland and beyond. They also drew inspiration on imperial expansion from the Americans and especially the British, whose empire they idolized. Their signal innovation was to exploit Europe's peoples and resources much as the British or French had done in India and Africa. Crushed and disheartened, many of the peoples they conquered collaborated with them to a degree that we have largely forgotten. Ultimately, the Third Reich would be beaten as much by its own hand as by the enemy.Throughout this book are fascinating, chilling glimpses of the world that might have been. Russians, Poles, and other ethnic groups would have been slaughtered or enslaved. Germans would have been settled upon now empty lands as far east as the Black Sea—the new "Greater Germany". Europe's treasuries would have been sacked, its great cities impoverished and recast as dormitories for forced laborers when they were not deliberately demolished. As dire as all this sounds, it was merely the planned extension of what actually happened in Europe under Nazi rule as recounted in this authoritative, absorbing book.
1924: The Year That Made Hitler
Peter Ross Range - 2016
Before Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, there was 1924. This was the year of Hitler's final transformation into the self-proclaimed savior and infallible leader who would interpret and distort Germany's historical traditions to support his vision for the Third Reich. Everything that would come -- the rallies and riots, the single-minded deployment of a catastrophically evil idea -- all of it crystallized in one defining year. 1924 was the year that Hitler spent locked away from society, in prison and surrounded by co-conspirators of the failed Beer Hall Putsch. It was a year of deep reading and intensive writing, a year of courtroom speeches and a treason trial, a year of slowly walking gravel paths and spouting ideology while working feverishly on the book that became his manifesto: Mein Kampf. Until now, no one has fully examined this single and pivotal period of Hitler's life. In 1924, Peter Ross Range richly depicts the stories and scenes of a year vital to understanding the man and the brutality he wrought in a war that changed the world forever.
Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power
Andrew Nagorski - 2012
By tapping a rich vein of personal testimonies, Hitlerland offers a gripping narrative full of surprising twists—and a startlingly fresh perspective on this heavily dissected era.Some of the Americans in Weimar and then Hitler’s Germany were merely casual observers, others deliberately blind; a few were Nazi apologists. But most slowly began to understand the horror of what was unfolding, even when they found it difficult to grasp the breadth of the catastrophe. Among the journalists, William Shirer, Edgar Mowrer, and Dorothy Thompson were increasingly alarmed. Consul General George Messersmith stood out among the American diplomats because of his passion and courage. Truman Smith, the first American official to meet Hitler, was an astute political observer and a remarkably resourceful military attaché. Historian William Dodd, whom FDR tapped as ambassador in Hitler’s Berlin, left disillusioned; his daughter Martha scandalized the embassy with her procession of lovers from her initial infatuation with Nazis she took up with. She ended as a Soviet spy.On the scene were George Kennan, who would become famous as the architect of containment; Richard Helms, who rose to the top of the CIA; Howard K. Smith, who would one day coanchor the ABC Evening News. The list of prominent visitors included writers Sinclair Lewis and Thomas Wolfe, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, the great athlete Jesse Owens, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, and black sociologist and historian W.E.B. Dubois. Observing Hitler and his movement up close, the most perceptive of these Americans helped their reluctant countrymen begin to understand the nature of Nazi Germany as it ruthlessly eliminated political opponents, instilled hatred of Jews and anyone deemed a member of an inferior race, and readied its military and its people for a war for global domination. They helped prepare Americans for the years of struggle ahead.