Breakout at Stalingrad


Heinrich Gerlach - 2016
    The original version of the classic novel of the epic World War II battle, confiscated by the Russian secret services in 1949, and now rediscovered in the Russian archives.

A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France


Caroline Moorehead - 2011
    They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled "V" for victory on the walls of her lycée; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers.Eventually, the Gestapo hunted down 230 of these women and imprisoned them in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and loved ones, these disparate individuals turned to one another, their common experience conquering divisions of age, education, profession, and class, as they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie.In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only forty-nine would return to France.A Train in Winter draws on interviews with these women and their families; German, French, and Polish archives; and documents held by World War II resistance organizations to uncover a dark chapter of history that offers an inspiring portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and survival—and of the remarkable, enduring power of female friendship.

A Man Called Intrepid


William Stevenson - 1976
    NBC News calls it, "A historical document of major significance." The focus is on Sir William Stephenson, Britain's urbane spy chief who inspired James Bond.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin


Erik Larson - 2011
    Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the New Germany, she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition.Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Goring and the expectedly charming—yet wholly sinister—Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII


Jack El-Hai - 2013
    The suitcases contained all manner of paraphernalia: medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear, a hot water bottle, and the equivalent of 1 million in cash. Hidden in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate: potassium cyanide. Joining Göring in the detention center were the elite of the captured Nazi regime—Grand Admiral Dönitz; armed forces commander Wilhelm Keitel and his deputy Alfred Jodl; the mentally unstable Robert Ley; the suicidal Hans Frank; the pornographic propagandist Julius Streicher—fifty-two senior Nazis in all, of whom the dominant figure was Göring.To ensure that the villainous captives were fit for trial at Nuremberg, the US army sent an ambitious army psychiatrist, Captain Douglas M. Kelley, to supervise their mental well-being during their detention. Kelley realized he was being offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime: to discover a distinguishing trait among these arch-criminals that would mark them as psychologically different from the rest of humanity. So began a remarkable relationship between Kelley and his captors, told here for the first time with unique access to Kelley's long-hidden papers and medical records.Kelley's was a hazardous quest, dangerous because against all his expectations he began to appreciate and understand some of the Nazi captives, none more so than the former Reichsmarshall, Hermann Göring. Evil had its charms.

Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling


Mark S. Smith - 2010
    Hershl Sperling was one of them. He escaped. Why then, 50 years later, did he jump to his death from a bridge in Scotland? The answer lies in a long-forgotten, published account of the Treblinka death camp, written by Hershl Sperling himself in the months after liberation, discovered in his briefcase after his suicide, and reproduced here for the first time. Including previously unpublished photographs, this book traces the life of a man who survived five concentration camps, and details what he had to do to achieve this. Hershl's story, from his childhood in a small Polish town to the bridge in faraway Scotland, is testament to the lasting torment of those very few who survived the Nazis' most efficient and gruesome death factory. The author personally follows in his subject's footsteps from Klobuck, to Treblinka, to Glasgow.

In the Mouth of the Wolf


Rose Zar - 1983
    Her father urged her to save herself by hiding "in the mouth of the wolf"--or within the enemy itself. She managed to obtain false papers, secretly changing her identity and surviving the Holocaust as maid and nanny for a Nazi SS colonel.

Women of the Third Reich


Anna Maria Sigmund - 1998
    Many women in German high society were fascinated by Adolf Hitler and helped him to achieve political power, while women like filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl were fueling Hitler's propaganda machine. The private lives of Hitler's assistants' wives are also explored-revealing Magda Goebbels's complicity in the murder of her six children in 1945, Carin and Emmy Gring's relations with their morphine-addicted husbands, and the knowledge that Margaret Himmler had of her husband's actions as leader of the SS.

Until We Meet Again: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Holocaust


Michael Korenblit - 1983
    A small town in Poland. Two Jewish families flee to hiding places, hoping to evade deportation by the Nazis. At the last moment, 17-year old Manya makes the heart wrenching decision to leave her family and join her sweetheart, Meyer, also 17, with his family. For three long years, Manya and Meyer endure the loss of their parents and siblings, separation from each other, and the horror of concentration camps, including Aushwitz-but are helped at key points by courageous Polish Catholics and are constantly sustained by their faith and their love for each other. Co-authored by the couple's son Michael, this absorbing and suspenseful narrative reads like a novel, yet tells a true story of love and horror, sacrifice and courage, with a conclusion that is truly miraculous.

Survivor: Auschwitz, the Death March and my Fight for Freedom


Sam Pivnik - 2012
    Sam Pivnik survived the two ghettoes set up in his home town of Bedzin and six months working on the processing ramp at Auschwitz, where prisoners were either taken away for entry to the camp or gassing.After this harrowing experience, he was sent to work at the brutal Furstengrube mining camp. He could have died on the 'Death March' that took him west as the Third Reich collapsed, and he managed to swim to safety when the Royal Air Force mistakenly sank the prison ship Cap Arcona in 1945.On 14 occasions he should have been killed, yet now in his 80s, Sam tells the story of his life, a tale of survival against the most extraordinary odds.

Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka


Richard Glazar - 1994
    In economical prose, Glazar weaves a description of Treblinka and its operations into his evocation of himself and his fellow prisoners as denizens of an underworld. Glazar gives us compelling images of these horrors in a tone that remains thoughtful but sober, affecting but simple.

Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor: Icek Kuperberg


Icek Kuperberg - 2000
    Interned in various work and death camps, Icek had to use his guile and wits to simply stay alive. That he persevered despite tremendous horrors and obstacles, testifies to his strong will to survive.

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland


Jan Tomasz Gross - 2000
    In this shocking and compelling study, historian Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts as well as physical evidence into a comprehensive reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but hidden to history. Revealing wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism, Gross's investigation sheds light on how Jedwabne's Jews came to be murdered-not by faceless Nazis, but by people who knew them well.

The Voyage


Roberta Kagan - 2014
    Louis, a German ship leaving Hamburg on its way to Cuba. Four of the five were Jewish.  There was much joy and excitement on the dock because the passengers who boarded that ship believed that they were the lucky ones. Hitler himself had promised them  safety in Cuba far away from Nazi Germany and the murderous Third Reich. But, unbeknownst to the poor souls who began their journey to Cuba that day, they were about to embark upon a voyage of danger. The path of the MS St. Louis would take them on a dark and terrifying roller coaster ride. They would discover that all of their dreams had been built on Nazi treachery, secrets, and lies. As their lives hung in the balance each one of those five strangers would be put to the test. However, the voyage that began on that bright spring afternoon was only the beginning of the story .As the ship navigated her way through the ocean  events would occur, secrets would be withheld, and friendships  would be forged that would bind these five people together for rest of their lives.

Children to a Degree: Growing Up Under the Third Reich: Book 1


Horst Christian - 2013
     Karl Veth, the oldest of three children, was born in Berlin, Germany in 1930. By the time he was old enough to start school and begin his education, Hitler had already established a firm death-grip on the country. Children were fed a steady diet of Nazi propaganda and were often encouraged to turn on their family and friends but contrary to popular belief, not all of them bought into it. Karl is an intelligent young boy who strives to excel in his studies, but he questions everything. Dangerous questions during a time when people are closely monitored. Karl’s father and grandfather are not blind followers and they have their own opinions about Hitler and his regime. The lessons they teach Karl often contradict what he is taught in school, yet they also inspire him to think on his own and form his own opinions. German law mandates that all children must become members of the Hitler Youth and at the age of 10, Karl enters the Jungvolk, the junior branch of the Hitler Youth. He must wade through the propaganda and everything he is taught to decide for himself what is right and what it wrong. Little does he know at the time, but many of his grandfather’s predictions about the future of the Third Reich will eventually come to pass. The lessons he learns now and the opinions he forms will determine his fate in dangerous times ahead. Children To A Degree is the first book in a four-book series. Karl's incredible story continues in: Loyal To A Degree Trust To A Degree Partners To A Degree