Winner of the 1990 Christopher Award. 11 halftones; 2 line drawings.

    This announcement has rekindled interest in the claim made by Joseph Stalin, maintained to the end of his life, that Hitler got away. The truth is that no one saw Hitler and Eva Braun die in the bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945. No photographs were taken to document claims Hitler and Evan Braun committed suicide. Hitler’s body was never recovered. No definitive physical evidence exists proving Hitler died in the bunker in Berlin.Dr. Jerome Corsi explores the historical possibility that Hitler escaped Nazi Germany at the end of World War II. FBI and CIA records maintained at the National Archives indicate that the US government took seriously reports at the end of World War II that Hitler had escaped to Argentina. More recent evidence suggests Hitler may have fled to Indonesia, where he married and worked at a hospital in Sumbawa. Even the chief of the US trial counsel at Nuremburg, Thomas J. Dodd, was quoted as saying, �No one for sure can say Adolf Hitler is dead.”Putting massive amounts of evidence and research under a critical eye, Dr. Corsi shows that perhaps modern history’s most tantalizing question has yet to be definitively answered: Did Hitler escaped Nazi Germany at the end of World War II to plot revenge and to plan the rise of the Fourth Reich?

    

    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.

     A story of combat and captivity – of courage, deception, and survival – FOR ALL IT WAS WORTH provides piercing insights into the indoctrination of the German people into Nazi ideology, and addresses the issues facing German World War II veterans. The author was born in Dresden in 1924 - the year Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was published. Growing up during the pre-War Nazi years, he joined the Hitler Jugend. Following harsh basic training, he was sent to the Eastern Front where he saw combat near Kursk. Captured by the Russians, he escaped and was transferred to the Italian Campaign. With his acquired knowledge of Italian and local conditions, he volunteered for the special forces Division Brandenburg, where he was trained in sabotage and intelligence gathering, operating behind enemy lines and wreaking havoc with the enemy's command, communication and logistical structures. Arriving on leave in Dresden during the February 1945 firebombing, he recounts the terrible aftermath (including the extrication and burial of his father from the ruins of Dresdner Bank) of one of the most devastating and controversial attacks of the Second World War. Following his return to Italy, and the subsequent capitulation of German forces, he was detained as a PoW in Northern Italy for almost two years. Battle-hardened and disillusioned, he used all his clandestine and organisational skills to initiate successful Black Market operations, while working as an interpreter for the British Army. Imprisoned in Austria as an escapee, he finally returned to a shattered Germany in 1947, where he elected to remain illegally in the US zone of Occupation. What follows is a gripping story of survival, and an insight into the hardships and privations facing the German people, leading to the Wiederaufbau. Much more than a military narrative, the author presents a candid view into the mind and soul of the German people. FOR ALL IT WAS WORTH is an account of Hitler’s Germany and its consequences – and is a remarkable document of value to post-War generations, as well as historians and students of World War II.

    Battling in freezing conditions, at its lowest -52℃, the descriptions of the privations are vivid and terrifying. With no winter clothes they resorted to using those taken from Soviet corpses.In 1942, fighting near Oriel, however, his battalion suffered heavy losses and was disbanded. Ill with frostbitten legs, Rehfeldt was treated in hospital and once recovered was dispatched to the Front.Following various battles (Werch, Bolchov) his battalion again suffered heavy losses and it merged. In agony from severe frostbite to his legs, Rehfeldt defied the odds and astonished his surgeon when he walked again. He was promoted from Gunner to Trained Private Soldier in 1942, and to Corporal for bravery in the field in 1943.He was awarded numerous honors including the Wound Badge and the Infantry Assault Badge.On 3 May 1945 he was captured by US Forces and held as POW for one month in a camp at Waschow before internment in Holstein from where he was released in July 1945 after agreeing to work on the land. In December 1945 he began studying veterinary medicine: his future career.This astonishing account of a man who kept bouncing back from near death is a testament to the author’s determination and sheer strength of spirit.

    In the first decade of the century, as a brilliant young Vatican lawyer, Pacelli helped shape a new ideology of unprecedented papal power in Germany. In 1933 Hitler became his negotiating partner, an agreement was arranged that granted religious and financial payments to the Catholic Church in exchange for their withdrawal from social and political privillage, ensuring the rise of Nazism.

    He called it Ravensbrück, and during the years that followed thousands of people died there after enduring brutal forms of torture. All were women. There are a handful of studies and memoirs that reference Ravensbrück, but until now no one has written a full account of this atrocity, perhaps due to the mostly masculine narrative of war, or perhaps because it lacks the Jewish context of most mainstream Holocaust history. Ninety percent of Ravensbrück's prisoners were not Jewish. Rather, they were political prisoners, Resistance fighters, lesbians, prostitutes, even the sister of New York's Mayor LaGuardia. In a perverse twist, most of the guards were women themselves. Sarah Helm's groundbreaking work sheds much-needed light on an aspect of World War II that has remained in the shadows for decades. Using research into German and newly opened Russian archives, as well as interviews with survivors, Helm has produced a landmark achievement that weaves together various accounts, allowing us to follow characters on both sides of the prisoner/guard divide. Chilling, compelling, and deeply unsettling, Ravensbrück is essential reading for anyone concerned with Nazi history.

    fighter pilot, who after his escapades of shooting down German troops in France found himself shot down by them in turn, thence to begin an even greater adventure.Ted Fahrenwald was a 22-year-old daredevil pilot in the famed 352nd Fighter Group when he bailed out of his burning P-51 Mustang two days after D-Day on his 100th mission. Parachuting into the farmlands of Normandy, he was immediately picked up by the local Maquis, the guerrilla branch of the French Resistance. His rudimentary French, wily and gregarious personality, and backwoods skills allowed him to quickly make fast friends of these unruly outlaws, and he spent the next several months carousing and raiding with their band. But determined to rejoin his squadron, Ted left his new comrades to hike through the fields and forests of the most heavily occupied areas of northern France toward the Channel coast, and the advancing Allied liberation armies. Captured by the Wehrmacht, however, interrogated as a spy, and interned in a POW camp, the author made a daring escape just before his deportation to Germany. Nothing diminished Ted’s talent for spotting the ironic humor in even the most aggravating or dangerous situations, nor his penchant for extracting his own improvised and sometimes hilarious version of justice. The author recorded his swashbuckling adventures at age 24, after his discharge and return to the States. Afterward he went into business and never again put pen to paper. But his immediate reminiscence of his wartime experience—recently found—reveal a literary talent that is rare. At once a suspenseful page-turner and an outrageously witty tale of daring and friendship, this book brings to life the daily intrigues of the multiple sides of World War II.

    Their parents taught them to embrace both their Japanese heritage and the ways of their American homeland. They faced bigotry, yet they believed in their bright futures as American citizens. But within days of Pearl Harbor, the FBI was ransacking their houses and locking up their fathers. And within months many would themselves be living behind barbed wire.Facing the Mountain is an unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe. Based on Daniel James Brown's extensive interviews with the families of the protagonists as well as deep archival research, it portrays the kaleidoscopic journey of four Japanese-American families and their sons, who volunteered for 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible.But this is more than a war story. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to shutter the businesses, surrender their homes, and submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Woven throughout is the chronicle of a brave young man, one of a cadre of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best--striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring.

    Soldier, parliamentarian, Prime Minister, orator, painter, writer, husband, and leader all of these facets combine to make Churchill one of the most complex and fascinating personalities in history. In Churchill, Johnson applies a wide lens and an unconventional approach to illuminate the various phases of Churchill s career. From his adventures as a young cavalry officer in the service of the Empire to his role as an elder statesman prophesying the advent of the Cold War, Johnson shows how Churchill s immense adaptability combined with his natural pugnacity to make him a formidable leader for the better part of a century. Johnson s narration of Churchill s many triumphs and setbacks, rich with anecdote and quotation, illustrates the man s humor, resilience, courage, and eccentricity as no other biography before. Winston Churchill s hold on contemporary readers has never slackened, and Paul Johnson s lively, concise biography will appeal to historians and general nonfiction readers alike."

    This country house was home to Britain's most brilliant mathematical brains, like Alan Turing, and the scene of immense advances in technology—indeed, the birth of modern computing. The military codes deciphered there were instrumental in turning both the Battle of the Atlantic and the war in North Africa. But, though plenty has been written about the scientists and the codebreaking, fictional and non-fiction—from Robert Harris and Ian McEwan to Andrew Hodges' biography of Turing—what of the thousands of men and women who lived and worked there during the war? The first history for the general reader of life at Bletchley Park, this is also an amazing compendium of memories from people now in their eighties of skating on the frozen lake in the grounds (a depressed Angus Wilson, the novelist, once threw himself in), of a youthful Roy Jenkins—useless at codebreaking, of the high jinks at nearby accommodation hostels, and of the implacable secrecy that meant girlfriend and boyfriend working in adjacent huts knew nothing about each other's work.

    In his new book, destined to be a classic, Patrick Bishop examines the high point of its existence – the Second World War, when the Air Force saved the nation from defeat then led the advance to victory.A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERAir warfare was a terrible novelty of the modern age, requiring a new military outlook. From the beginning, the RAF’s identity set it apart from the traditional services. It was innovative, flexible and comparatively meritocratic, advancing the quasi-revolutionary idea that competence was more important than background.The Air Force went into the war with inadequate machines, training and tactics, and the early phase was littered with setbacks and debacles. Then, in the summer of 1940, in full view of the population, Fighter Command won one of the decisive battles of the struggle. Thereafter the RAF was gilded with an aura of success that never tarnished, going on to make a vital contribution to Allied victory in all theatres.Drawing from diaries, letters, memoirs, and interviews, Air Force Blue captures the nature of combat in the skies over the corrugated wastes of the Atlantic, the sands of the Western Desert and the jungles of Burma. It also brings to life the intensely lived dramas, romances, friendships and fun that were as important a part of the experience as the fighting.Air Force Blue portrays the spirit of the RAF – its heart and soul – during its finest hours. It is essential reading for the millions in Britain and the Commonwealth whose loved ones served, and for anyone who wants to understand the Second World War.

    Ricks, a dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, whose farsighted vision and inspired action preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike.Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930s—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then acting on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north.It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930s, democracy was discredited in many circles and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini men we could do business with, if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom—that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted.In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940s to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks' masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin.

    Odette Sansom decides to follow in her war hero father’s footsteps by becoming an SOE agent to aid Britain and her beloved homeland, France. Five failed attempts and one plane crash later, she finally lands in occupied France to begin her mission. It is here that she meets her commanding officer Captain Peter Churchill.As they successfully complete mission after mission, Peter and Odette fall in love. All the while, they are being hunted by the cunning German secret police sergeant, Hugo Bleicher, who finally succeeds in capturing them. They are sent to Paris’s Fresnes prison, and from there to concentration camps in Germany where they are starved, beaten, and tortured. But in the face of despair, they never give up hope, their love for each other, or the whereabouts of their colleagues.In Code Name: Lise, Larry Loftis paints a portrait of true courage, patriotism, and love—of two incredibly heroic people who endured unimaginable horrors and degradations. He seamlessly weaves together the touching romance between Odette and Peter and the thrilling cat and mouse game between them and Sergeant Bleicher.