Nazism and War


Richard Bessel - 2004
    What was unprecedented, however, was not simply the war’s scale, but its causes. Unlike previous territorial or political clashes, the war launched by Nazi Germany was an ideological one, waged to wipe entire peoples and cultures from the face of the earth.In Nazism and War, Richard Bessel, one of the preeminent authorities on the social and political history of modern Germany, demonstrates how racial hatred was the driving force behind–and not a by-product of–Nazism. War was the anvil on which Hitler’s worldview was forged; to him, war was “the most memorable period of my life,” and “all the past fell away into oblivion.” German National Socialism was born in war, emerging triumphant over a country deeply scarred by defeat and eager to reclaim its greatness and to punish those who had usurped it. As a political philosophy, Nazism glorified struggle and conflict, viewing them as the purpose of a nation and a measure of its overall condition. As a political movement and state system, Nazism made its ideology real, plunging the European continent into a war of annihilation and a sea of blood. Nazism–inseparable from war–destroyed the old Europe, and thus helped to create the world in which we live.Incisive, authoritative, and immensely readable, this is an incendiary and forcefully argued work of scholarship that will rank with the most influential historical analyses of our time.From the Hardcover edition.

Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece


Three Initiates - 1912
    This concise guide offers a modern interpretation of the doctrine, distilling its teachings with seven compelling principles that can be applied to self-development in daily life.

Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz


Thomas Harding - 2013
    In the aftermath of the Second Word War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. As Kommandant of Auschwitz, Höss not only oversaw the murder of more than one million men, women, and children; he was the man who perfected Hitler’s program of mass extermination. Höss is on the run across a continent in ruins, the one man whose testimony can ensure justice at Nuremberg. Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss’s capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day. Moving from the Middle Eastern campaigns of the First World War to bohemian Berlin in the 1920s to the horror of the concentration camps and the trials in Belsen and Nuremberg, it tells the story of two German men- one Jewish, one Catholic- whose lives diverged, and intersected, in an astonishing way.

The Decline of the West


Oswald Spengler - 1918
    In all its various editions, it has sold nearly 100,000 copies. A twentieth-century Cassandra, Oswald Spengler thoroughly probed the origin and "fate" of our civilization, and the result can be (and has been) read as a prophesy of the Nazi regime. His challenging views have led to harsh criticism over the years, but the knowledge and eloquence that went into his sweeping study of Western culture have kept The Decline of the West alive. As the face of Germany and Europe as a whole continues to change each day, The Decline of the West cannot be ignored. The abridgment, prepared by the German scholar Helmut Werner, with the blessing of the Spengler estate, consists of selections from the original (translated into English by Charles Francis Atkinson) linked by explanatory passages which have been put into English by Arthur Helps. H. Stuart Hughes has written a new introduction for this edition. In this engrossing and highly controversial philosophy of history, Spengler describes how we have entered into a centuries-long "world-historical" phase comparable to late antiquity. Guided by the philosophies of Goethe and Nietzsche, he rejects linear progression, and instead presents a world view based on the cyclical rise and decline of civilizations. He argues that a culture blossoms from the soil of a definable landscape and dies when it has exhausted all of its possibilities. Despite Spengler's reputation today as an extreme pessimist, The Decline of the West remains essential reading for anyone interested in the history of civilization.

Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer


Bettina Stangneth - 2011
    Though once widely known by nicknames such as “Manager of the Holocaust,” in 1961 he was able to portray himself, from the defendant’s box in Jerusalem, as an overworked bureaucrat following orders—no more, he said, than “just a small cog in Adolf Hitler’s extermination machine.” How was this carefully crafted obfuscation possible? How did a central architect of the Final Solution manage to disappear? And what had he done with his time while in hiding? Bettina Stangneth, the first to comprehensively analyze more than 1,300 pages of Eichmann’s own recently discovered written notes— as well as seventy-three extensive audio reel recordings of a crowded Nazi salon held weekly during the 1950s in a popular district of Buenos Aires—draws a chilling portrait, not of a reclusive, taciturn war criminal on the run, but of a highly skilled social manipulator with an inexhaustible ability to reinvent himself,  an unrepentant murderer eager for acolytes with whom to discuss past glories while vigorously planning future goals with other like-minded fugitives. A work that continues to garner immense international attention and acclaim, Eichmann Before Jerusalem maps out the astonishing links between innumerable past Nazis—from ace Luftwaffe pilots to SS henchmen—both in exile and in Germany, and reconstructs in detail the postwar life of one of the Holocaust’s principal organizers as no other book has done

The Myth of German Villainy


Benton L. Bradberry - 2012
    During both wars, fantastic atrocity stories were invented by Allied propaganda to create hatred of the German people for the purpose of bringing public opinion around to support the wars. The "Holocaust" propaganda which emerged after World War II further solidified this image of Germany as history's ultimate villain. But how true is this "official" story? Was Germany really history's ultimate villain? In this book, the author paints a different picture. He explains that Germany was not the perpetrator of World War I nor World War II, but instead, was the victim of Allied aggression in both wars. The instability wrought by World War I made the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia possible, which brought world Communism into existence. Hitler and Germany recognized world Communism, with its base in the Soviet Union, as an existential threat to Western, Christian Civilization, and he dedicated himself and Germany to a death struggle against it. Far from being the disturber of European peace, Germany served as a bulwark which prevented Communist revolution from sweeping over Europe. The pity was that the United States and Britain did not see Communist Russia in the same light, ultimately with disastrous consequences for Western Civilization. The author believes that Britain and the United States joined the wrong side in the war.

Final Entries 1945: The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels


Joseph Goebbels - 1977
    Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda kept a diary throughout his time as a member of the Nazi Party and this covers the period of the last weeks of WW2 from February-April, 1945. Edited, Introduced and annotated by Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, this is a remarkable account from within of the crumbling of the Nazi empire by its arch-apologist.

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.

The Trial of Adolf Hitler: The Beer Hall Putsch and the Rise of Nazi Germany


David King - 2017
    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.

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.

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.

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.

Reflections on Violence


Georges Sorel - 1908
    Sorel was a civil servant who fervently believed that only the clearest and most brutal expression of class war could effect lasting social change. This, his most important work, is a passionate outcry for the socialist overthrow of society.Reflections on Violence first appeared as a series of articles in Le Mouvement Socialiste in 1906; it appeared in book form two years later, and translations extended its influence around the world. Sorel addresses the factors underlying revolutionary movements and examines the roles of violence (the revolutionary denial of the existing social order) and force (the state's power of coercion). He further explores sources of political power, the weapons of revolutions — the insurrection and the general strike — and the significant role of "myths" in recruiting and motivating potential revolutionaries.

The Young Hitler I Knew


August Kubizek - 1973
    This book tells the story of their extraordinary friendship, and gives fascinating insight into Hitler's character during these formative years.

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.