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.

    This book documents those conversations where Hitler talked freely of his aims, his early life, and his plans for world conquest.

    Is it permissible to laugh at Hitler? This is a question that is often debated in Germany today, where, in light of the dimension of the horrors committed in the name of its citizens, many people have difficulty taking a satiric look at the Third Reich. And whenever some do, accusations arise that they are downplaying or trivializing the Holocaust. But there is a long history of jokes about the Nazis. In this groundbreaking volume, Rudolph Herzog shows that the image of the “ridiculous Führer” was by no means a post-war invention: In the early years of Nazi rule many Germans poked fun at Hitler and other high officials. It’s a fascinating and frightening history: from the suppression of the anti-Nazi cabaret scene of the 1930s, to jokes about Hitler and the Nazis told during WWII, to the collections of “whispered jokes” that were published in the immediate aftermath of the war, to the horrific accounts of Germans who were imprisoned and executed for telling jokes about Hitler and other Nazis. Significantly, the jokes collected here also show that not all Germans were hypnotized by Nazi propaganda—or unaware of Hitler’s concentration camps, which were also the subject of jokes during the war. In collecting these quips, Herzog pushes back against the argument, advanced in aftermath of World War II, that people were unaware of Hitler’s demonic maneuvering. The truth, Herzog writes, is more troubling: Germans knew much about the actions of their government, joked about it occasionally . . . and failed to act.

    B&W photos.

    The existing social culture was manipulated and subverted as the German people had their ethical values and their thoughts about politics, history and daily life recast in a new language. This Notebook, originally called LTI (Lingua Tertii Imperii)-the abbreviation itself a parody of Nazified language-was written out of Klemperer's conviction that the language of the Third Reich helped to create its culture. As Klemperer writes: "it isn't only Nazi actions that have to vanish, but also the Nazi cast of mind, the typical Nazi way of thinking, and its breeding ground: the language of Nazism." This brilliant, entertaining, profound, and ultimately saddening and horrifying book is one of the great twentieth-century studies of language and of its engagement with history.

     The victories won by British arms in the years which followed that great deliverance have made men forget those soldiers – the first of the many – upon whom it fell to withstand the shock of Hitler’s great attack. It is now fitting that these men and their Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gort, should be worthily remembered, and their story fully told, from those first landings in France, in the autumn of 1939, until the climax of Dunkirk. The authors, both professional writers, themselves served as officers with the B.E.F., and have recaptured the gallantry and comradeship of that little force. The result is a moving story of courage and devotion in the face of odds which no other British Force has ever been called upon to face. It is chivalrous to admire a gallant enemy, and of that chivalry we have lately seen much. Justice demands that the courage and devotion of our own fighting men be no less clearly recognised. There were no medals for the B.E.F., hardly even today the laurels of memory. They were soldiers, doing a soldier’s job against odds which no British Force had ever been called upon to face, and which, it is to be hoped, no British Force will ever face again. What were they then, the men of that small Expeditionary Force, a mere army in one of the groups of French armies? How did they spend the months of what has been called the “twilight war”, and how, when the shock of battle came at last, did they withstand the blow? Dunkirk tells the true story of those brave men who fought to save the lives of so many. With the 2017 movie release of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk now is the time to remember the real history of the battle in the words of those who experienced it. Lt. Colonel Ewan Butler and Major J. Selby Bradford M.B.E., M.C. served in France as young officers during the last months of 1939 and the first five of 1940 with that small British Expeditionary force commanded by Lord Gort, which first faced the full might of Nazi Germany. Dunkirk was first published in 1950 under the title Keep The Memory Green. It was used as inspiration for the 1958 film, Dunkirk, starring Richard Attenborough.

    Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival material, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units to the camps to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion."Hitler's Willing Executioners is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the...literature on the Holocaust."--New York Review of Books"The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity."--Philadelphia Inquirer

    By the fall of 1941, these plans had shifted from expulsion to systematic and total mass murder of all Jews within the Nazi grasp. The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis ever written of what took place during this crucial period—of how, precisely, the Nazis’ racial policies evolved from persecution and “ethnic cleansing” to the Final Solution of the Holocaust.Focusing on the months between the German conquest of Poland in September 1939–which brought nearly two million additional Jews under Nazi control—and the beginning of the deportation of Jews to the death camps in the spring of 1942, Christopher R. Browning describes how Poland became a laboratory for experiments in racial policies, from expulsion and decimation to ghettoization and exploitation under local occupation authorities. He reveals how the subsequent attack on the Soviet Union opened the door for an immense radicalization of Nazi Jewish policy—and marked the beginning of the Final Solution. Meticulously documenting the process that led to this fatal development, Browning shows that Adolf Hitler was the key decision-maker throughout, approving major escalations in Nazi persecution of the Jews at victory-induced moments of euphoria. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this groundbreaking work provides an essential chapter in the history of the Holocaust.

    The story of how Hitler seized control in Germany during his ruthless quest for world domination.

    Swearing eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler, it infiltrated every aspect of German life and was responsible for the deaths of millions. This gripping history recounts the strange and, at times, absurd true story of Hitler's SS. It exposes an organization that was not directed by some devilishly efficient system but was the product of accident, inevitability, and the random convergence of criminals, social climbers, and romantics. Above all, this eye-opening book describes in fascinating detail the chaotic political conditions that allowed the SS-despite rivalries and bizarre conditions-to assume and exercise unaccountable power.

    It led to a global panic, brought down the international monetary system, and turned a worldwide recession into a prolonged depression. The German crisis also contributed decisively to the rise of Hitler. Soon after the crisis, the Nazi Party became the largest party of the country which paved the way for Hitler's eventual seizure of power in 1933.The reason for the financial collapse was Germany's large pile of foreign debt denominated in gold currency which condemned the government to cut spending, raise taxes, and lower wages in the middle of a worldwide recession. As the political resistance to this austerity policy grew, the German government began to question its debt obligations, prompting foreign investors to panic and sell their German assets. The resulting currency crisis led to the failure of the already weakened banking system and a partial sovereign default.Hitler managed to profit from the crisis, because he had been the most vocal critic of the reparation regime. As the financial system collapsed, his populist attacks against foreign creditors and the alleged complicity of the German government resonated more than ever with the electorate. Sadly enough, Germany's creditors hesitated too long to take the wind out of Hitler's sails by offering debt relief.In 1931, Tobias Straumann reveals the story of the fatal crisis, demonstrating how a debt trap contributed to the rapid financial and political collapse of a European country, and to the rise of the Nazi Party.

    Reporters from as far away as Argentina and Australia flocked to Munich for the sensational, four-week spectacle. By the end, Hitler would transform a fiasco into a stunning victory for the fledgling Nazi Party. The first book in English on the subject, The Trial of Adolf Hitler draws on never-before-published sources to re-create in riveting detail a haunting failure of justice with catastrophic consequences.

    For, in Born Guilty, Peter Sichrovsky has confronted head-on the issue of war guilt at the most personal level: he has talked to the children (and grandchildren) of former Nazi war criminals in order to find out how they have dealt with this burden of "inherited guilt."What did they really know about their parents' wartime activities, and how did they find out? More deeply, how did they react as suspicions hardened into certain knowledge--with rejection, "understanding," or confusion? And how will they transmit this knowledge to their own children?Peter Sichrovsky, a distinguished Austrian journalist, whose widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land sensitively portrayed the lives of the children of Jewish victims living in Germany and Austria today, here turns his attention to the children of the perpetrators. His penetrating and often moving interviews with the sons and daughters of Nazis, some famous, some not, convey perhaps as never before the painful struggle to accept and come to terms with the terrible burden of their parents' guilt.

    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.

    Newly-edited corrected version. Danzig is a gripping historical novel in the grand tradition. It has generated rave reviews (90% 4 and 5 stars) for its authenticity and its realistic portrayal of high pressure diplomatic clashes between Hitler and Western nations in the 1930s. The story encompasses fast-paced events in Geneva, Berlin, Warsaw and London, as well as Danzig itself, capturing the drama of unfolding crisis that engulfed Europe on what we now know was the path to war. * "A smartly written, engrossing read. * “Channeling the best of Alan Furst, Danzig, is a must read for the any lover of well written historical fiction. * “Mr. Walker's descriptions made this reader feel as if she were in the middle of the historic drama. The novel builds in intensity until the dramatic ending. It's a terrific read.” * “Danzig is a must read for any lover of riveting historical fiction dealing with Hitler’s rise. Walker makes the saga of the city and the Polish Corridor come alive. The tensions of the time are vividly described in human terms, making for gripping reading.” * “Danzig is an amazing book, putting the reader in the middle of pre WW II in Europe. The time and scene were painted in detail and to perfection. The characters were presented in such a way I felt I knew them and worried for them throughout.” * “Superb historical fiction; good story, good atmospherics. Danzig is a sophisticated journey into European power politics during a time of high drama. I think it bears comparison to the best authors in the popular interwar historical fiction genre and I rate it a very successful effort.” * “The author does a great job of making the reader feel what it was like to be in the center of pre-WWII Europe, with Germany flouting the Treaty of Versailles, England following an ill-fated policy of appeasement and the League of Nations powerless and ineffective in dealing with Hitler and his aggression. For anyone interested in WWII history, especially the lead-up to the war and the dysfunction among the European Allies, this is a great read! The website www.authorwilliamwalker.com offers a link to Amazon Kindle as well as a synopsis, photos and more information.