Concentrating purely on the role of German girls in Hitler's Third Reich, we learn of their home lives, schooling, exploitation and eventual militarization from firsthand accounts of women who were indoctrinated into the Jung Madel and Bund Deutscher Mädel as young girls. From the prosperous beginnings of 1933 to the cataclysmic defeat of 1945, this insightful book examines in detail their specific roles as defined by the Nazi state. Few historical literary works have gone as deep to find the truth, the conscience and the regret, and in this sense 'Hitler's Girls' is a unique work unlike any other yet published. Written in an attempt to provide a definitive voice for this unheard generation of German females, it will leave the reader to decide for themselves whether or not the girls were the obedient accessories to genocide, and it will lead many readers to question many aspects of what they have previously thought about the role of girls and young women in Hitler's Third Reich. This is their story.

    As arts editor for one of Vienna's principal newspapers, Moriz Scheyer knew many of the city's foremost artists, and was an important literary journalist. With the advent of the Nazis he was forced from both job and home. In 1943, in hiding in France, Scheyer began drafting what was to become this book. Tracing events from the Anschluss in Vienna, through life in Paris and unoccupied France, including a period in a French concentration camp, contact with the Resistance, and clandestine life in a convent caring for mentally disabled women, he gives an extraordinarily vivid account of the events and experience of persecution. After Scheyer's death in 1949, his stepson, disliking the book's anti-German rhetoric, destroyed the manuscript. Or thought he did. Recently, a carbon copy was found in the family's attic by P.N. Singer, Scheyer's step-grandson, who has translated and provided an epilogue.

    Among them was a little boy named Wolfgang Samuel, who left his home with his mother and sister and ended up in war-torn Strasbourg before being forced farther west into a disease-ridden refugee camp. German Boy is the vivid, true story of their fight for survival as the tables of power turned and, for reasons Wolfgang was too young to understand, his broken family suffered arbitrary arrest, rape, hunger, and constant fear. Because his father was off fighting the war as a Luftwaffe officer, young Wolfgang was forced to become the head of his household, scavenging for provisions and scraps with which to feed his family. Despite his best efforts, his mother still found herself forced to do the unthinkable to survive, and her sacrifices became Wolfgang's worst nightmares. Somehow, with the resilience only children can muster, he maintained his youth and innocence in little ways–making friends with other young refugees, playing games with shrapnel, delighting in the planes flown by the Americans and the candies the GIs brought. In the end, the Samuels begin life anew in America, and Wolfgang eventually goes on to a thirty-year career in the U.S. Air Force.Bringing fresh insight to the dark history of Nazi Germany and the horror left in its wake, German Boy records the valuable recollections of an innocent's incredible journey."I think German Boy has all the qualities of greatness. I love the book." -- from the Foreword by Stephen Ambrose

    They share their pain, anger, and compassion as they take us into the world of their parents and try to sort out the impact of the war on their own lives.Echoing many of the themes Hegi explored in Stones from the River, this powerful and provocative oral history is the first book to capture the long-silent voices of post-war German Americans stifled by the legacy of their homeland.

    Miraculously, the men were able to bring the sub back to the surface, only to be captured by the Japanese.No Ordinary Joes tells the harrowing story of four of the Grenadier’s crew: Bob Palmer of Medford, Oregon; Chuck Vervalin of Dundee, New York; Tim McCoy of Dallas, Texas; and Gordy Cox of Yakima, Washington. All were enlistees from families that struggled through the Great Depression. The lure of service and duty to country were not their primary motivations—they were more compelled by the promise of a job that provided “three hots and a cot” and a steady paycheck. On the day they were captured, all four were still teenagers.Together, the men faced unimaginable brutality at the hands of their captors in a prisoner of war camp. With no training in how to respond in the face of relentless interrogations and with less than a cup of rice per day for sustenance, each man created his own strategy for survival. When the liberation finally came, all four anticipated a triumphant homecoming to waiting families, loved ones, and wives, but instead were forced to find a new kind of strength as they struggled to resume their lives in a world that had given them up for dead, and with the aftershocks of an experience that haunted and colored the rest of their days. Author Larry Colton brings the lives of these four “ordinary” heroes into brilliant focus. Theirs is a story of tragedy and courage, romance and war, loss and endurance, failure and redemption. With a scope both panoramic and disarmingly intimate, No Ordinary Joes is a powerful look at the atrocities of war, the reality of its aftermath, and the restorative power of love.

    Kapitanleutnant Jochen Mohr commanded his German submarine and navigated it through the treacherous waters of one of the most destructive, savage wars the world has known.

    Army Air Forces Sergeant Anthony J. Marchione bled to death in the clear, bright sky above Tokyo. A month shy of his twentieth birthday, Tony Marchione died like so many before him in World War II—quietly, cradled in the arms of a buddy who was powerless to prevent his death. Though heartbreaking for his family, Marchione’s death would have been no more notable than any other had he not had the dubious distinction of being the last American killed in World War II combat.An aerial gunner who had already survived several combat missions, Marchione's death was the tragic culmination of an intertwined series of events. The plane that carried him that day was a trouble-plagued American heavy bomber known as the B-32 Dominator, which would prove a failed competitor to the famed B-29 Superfortress. And on the ground below, a palace revolt was brewing and a small number of die-hard Japanese fighter pilots decided to fight on, refusing to accept defeat.Based on official American and Japanese histories, personal memoirs, and the author’s exclusive interviews with many of the story’s key participants, Last to Die is a rousing tale of air combat, bravery, cowardice, hubris, and determination, all set during the turbulent and confusing final days of World War II.

    As a boy from a very poor neighborhood in Warsaw, he can't run away when Polish kids attack the Jews, because his legs are weak. So he learns to use his fists, his head and other weapons to defend himself and his brothers.When the family moves to Paris in 1929, everyone finds work and life improves slowly. Moshe, now Maurice, is a leather worker and a young husband. At a Jewish sports club, he takes up boxing, and becomes an amateur flyweight. But the war comes to Paris, and by 1942, the French police round up foreign Jews and the Germans deport them by the hundreds every day. They send Maurice to the death camp at Auschwitz.In the camp, SS officers sense Maurice's strength. They command him to box against a dying prisoner. Now Maurice is faced with an impossible moral dilemma: kill the prisoner or be killed by the SS for refusing to obey them. Or will he find a way out?Translated from French by award-winning author Jean-Jacques Greif, The Fighter isn't simply another book about the Holocaust. It is a book about a hero who discovers the death-defying power of his own humanity.

    But when her husband was called up for military service, Nancy felt she had just as much of a duty to fight for freedom. By 1943, her fearless undercover work even in the face of personal tragedy had earned her a place on the Gestapo’s ‘most wanted’ list.Mixing armed combat with a taste for high living, Nancy frustrated the Nazis at every turn—whether she was smuggling food and messages as part of the underground Resistance or being parachuted into the heart of the war to lead a 7,000-strong band of Resistance fighters.The extraordinary courage of this unequalled woman changed the course of the war, and Russell Braddon’s vividly realised biography brings her incredible story to life.Revised edition: This edition of Nancy Wake includes editorial revisions.

    The couple had worked in China as members of a tight community of foreign correspondents with close ties to Chinese leaders; if captured by invading Japanese troops, they were certain to be executed. Racing to the docks just before midnight, they barely escaped on a freighter—the beginning of a tumultuous journey that would take them from one island outpost to another. While keeping ahead of the approaching Japanese, Mel and Annalee covered the harrowing war in the Pacific Theater—two of only a handful of valiant and dedicated journalists reporting from the region.Supported by deep historical research, extensive interviews, and the Jacobys’ personal letters, Bill Lascher recreates the Jacobys’ thrilling odyssey and their love affair with the East Asia and one another. Bringing to light their compelling personal stories and their professional life together, Eve of a Hundred Midnights is a tale of an unquenchable thirst for adventure, of daring reportage at great personal risk, and of an enduring romance that blossomed in the shadow of war.

    Petersburg for accompanying her husband Alexander on shooting and riding trips and for being outstandingly accurate with her gun. She was the daughter of a high-ranking Russian diplomat, and the mother of three young sons, destined to join the social and intellectual elite of imperial Russia. The Revolution of 1917 changed the course of these lives. By December 1918 her husband was dead, her children separated from her by the closing of the frontiers, and her own life was in danger. This is her account of how she faced these traumatic events, revealing the courage and determination she had shown in earlier times that helped her endure hunger, imprisonment, and loneliness. Her reunion with her sons in 1921 makes the months of danger and deprivation worthwhile. Illustrated with original family photographs this account will interest the serious academic and general reader alike.