These two factors combine to make The Gathering Storm a unique work. The first volume of Churchill's memoirs, this selection is broken into two parts. The first, From War to War, consists of Churchill's critical observations on the settlement of World War I and its place in the causes of the Second World War. The second volume contains letters and memoranda from the British government--of which Churchill was part--as the country plunged unprepared into war. This stands as the best of history: written as it was made, by the man who made it.

    The "unwritten" final chapter of "Anne Frank: Diary Of A Young Girl" tells the story of the time between Anne Frank's arrest and her death through the testimony of six Jewish women who survived the hell from which Anne Frank never returned.

    He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship.Benjamin Carter Hett is a leading scholar of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.

    By the time the war ended in May 1945, he was indicted for 'mass murder'. Hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the Poles and the British, as well as groups of Jews, Wächter went on the run. He spent three years hiding in the Austrian Alps, assisted by his wife Charlotte, before making his way to Rome where he was helped by a Vatican bishop. He remained there for three months. While preparing to travel to Argentina on the 'ratline' he died unexpectedly, in July 1949, a few days after spending a weekend with an 'old comrade'.In The Ratline Philippe Sands offers a unique account of the daily life of a senior Nazi and fugitive, and of his wife. Drawing on a remarkable archive of family letters and diaries, he unveils a fascinating insight into life before and during the war, on the run, in Rome, and into the Cold War. Eventually the door is unlocked to a mystery that haunts Wächter's youngest son, who continues to believe his father was a good man - what happened to Otto Wächter, and how did he die?

    Popularly depicted as a central part of an all-powerful "'Big Brother" Nazi totalitarian police state, its primary aim was to hunt down "the enemies of the people." Drawing on a detailed examination of previously unpublished Gestapo case files, this book relates the fascinating, vivid, and disturbing stories of a cross-section of ordinary and extraordinary people who opposed the Nazi regime. It also tells the equally disturbing stories of their friends, neighbors, and sometimes relatives drawn into the Gestapo's web of intrigue, either as informers or as staff. The book reveals, too, the cold-blooded and efficient methods of the Gestapo officers. This book argues that while it lacked the manpower and resources to spy on everyone, ultimately relying on tip-offs from the general public, the Gestapo was still a strong instrument of Nazi terror. It ruthlessly and efficiently targeted its officers against clearly defined political and racial "enemies of the people."

    Not since The Diary of Anne Frank has a young voice so vividly expressed the capacity for humanity and heroism in the face of Nazi brutality.

    One's first steps are always small: I had begun by hiding food under a fence."Through this intimate and compelling memoir, we are witness to the growth of a hero. Irene Gut was just a girl when the war began: seventeen, a Polish patriot, a student nurse, a good Catholic girl. As the war progressed, the soldiers of two countries stripped her of all she loved -- her family, her home, her innocence -- but the degradations only strengthened her will.She began to fight back. Irene was forced to work for the German Army, but her blond hair, her blue eyes, and her youth bought her the relatively safe job of waitress in an officers' dining room. She would use this Aryan mask as both a shield and a sword: She picked up snatches of conversation along with the Nazis' dirty dishes and passed the information to Jews in the ghetto. She raided the German Warenhaus for food and blankets. She smuggled people from the work camp into the forest. And, when she was made the housekeeper of a Nazi major, she successfully hid twelve Jews in the basement of his home until the Germans' defeat.This young woman was determined to deliver her friends from evil. It was as simple and as impossible as that.

    She has been dismissed as a racist, feathered-headed shop girl, yet sixty-two years after her death her name is still instantly recognizable.She left her convent school at the age of seventeen and met Hitler a few months later. She became his mistress before she was twenty. How did unsophisticated little Fraulein Braun, twenty-three years his junior, hold the most powerful man in Europe in an exclusive sexual relationship that lasted from 1932 until their joint suicide? Were they really lovers, and what were the background influences and psychological tensions of the middle-class Catholic girl from Munich who shared his intimate life? How can her ordinariness and apparent decency be reconciled with an unshakeable loyalty to the monster she loved?She left almost no personal material or documents but her private diary and photograph albums show that her life with Hitler, far from being a luxurious sinecure, caused her emotional torture. His chauffeur called her "the unhappiest woman in Germany." The Fuhrer humiliated her in public while the top Nazis' wives, living in his privileged enclave on a Bavarian mountainside, despised her. Yet Albert Speer said: "She has been much maligned. She was very shy, modest. A man's woman: gay, gentle, and kind; incredibly undemanding . . . a restful sort of girl. And her love for Hitler---as she proved in the end---was beyond question."Eva loved the Fuhrer, not for his power, nor because, thanks to him, she lived in luxury. His material gifts were nothing compared with the one thing she really wanted: his child. She remained invisible and unknown, a nonperson. They were never seen in public together and she never saw him alone except in the bedroom, yet their long relationship was a sort of marriage.Angela Lambert reveals a woman the world never knew until the last twenty-four hours of her life. In the small hours of April 29, 1945, as Allied troops raced to capture Berlin and the bunker below the Reichskanzlei where the defeated Nazi leaders were hiding, Eva Braun finally achieved her life's ambition by becoming Hitler's wife. Next day they both swallowed cyanide and died instantly. She was young, healthy, and thirty-three years old. Based on detailed new research, this is an authoritative biography, only the second life of Eva written in English.

    In 1942 they made it onto the last boat to escape France before the Germans sealed its harbors. Then, barred from entering the United States, they lived in Cuba for almost two years before emigrating to New York. This sweeping account of one family’s escape from the turmoil of war-torn Europe hangs upon the intimate and deeply personal story of Maitland’s mother’s passionate romance with a Catholic Frenchman. Separated by war and her family’s disapproval, the young lovers—Janine and Roland—lose each other for fifty years. It is a testimony to both Maitland’s investigative skills and her devotion to her mother that she successfully traced the lost Roland and was able to reunite him with Janine. Unlike so many stories of love during wartime, theirs has a happy ending.

    In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion and prisoners eat, work and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes. Published in Poland after the Second World War, these stories constitute a masterwork of world literature.

    The secret diaries of a twenty-three-year-old White Russian princess who worked in the German Foreign Office from 1940 to 1944 and then as a nurse, these pages give us a unique picture of wartime life in that sector of German society from which the 20th of July Plot -- the conspiracy to kill Hitler -- was born.Includes index.

    How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years?In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of primary source materials—personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence—to answer this question. He offers an unprecedented portrait of wartime Germany, bringing the hopes and expectations of the German people—from infantrymen and tank commanders on the Eastern front to civilians on the home front—to vivid life. While most historians identify the German defeat at Stalingrad as the moment when the average German citizen turned against the war effort, Stargardt demonstrates that the Wehrmacht in fact retained the staunch support of the patriotic German populace until the bitter end.Astonishing in its breadth and humanity, The German War is a groundbreaking new interpretation of what drove the Germans to fight—and keep fighting—for a lost cause.

    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

    Now they tell their stories in a book that is the living legacy of what Schindler did and what the human spirit can endure and overcome.Through their own words and more than 100 personal photographs, we learn the truth of their experiences with Schindler, their incredible stories of day-to-day survival, and their ultimate triumph of rebuilding lives, reclaiming family, and recording their memories for future generations. They range in age from late fifties to nearly ninety. Some emerged from the Holocaust as the lone remnants of their families; others, miraculously, survived with parents, siblings, and children. Their current lifestyles are equally varied: a multi-millionaire New Jersey developer; a Cleveland tailor who works out of his basement; a retired New York cafe violinist; a Baltimore fabric-store owner; a Pittsburgh cantor; a Los Angeles high school shop teacher; a world-famous Manhattan commercial photographer. Some remain committed, observant Jews; others have drifted far from religious ritual and belief. Some cling to the past; others have spent a lifetime trying to forget. Some seem to take pleasure in every breath; others seem forever burdened by sorrow.What they have in common is this: Oskar Schindler gave each a second chance at life. Now we learn what they did with that precious gift.

    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.