Showing results for "life-" in Germany

Using his own experiences, log books, and correspondence with other U-boat crewmen, Hans Goebeler offers rich and personal details about what life was like in the German Navy under Hitler. Since his first and last posting was to U-505, Goebeler's perspective of the crew, commanders, and war patrols paints a vivid and complete portrait unlike any other to come out of the Kriegsmarine. He witnessed it all, from deadly sabotage efforts that almost sunk the boat to the tragic suicide of the only U-boat commander who took his life during World War II.

Germany, 1945: a country in ruins. Cities have been reduced to rubble and more than half of the population are where they do not belong or do not want to be. How can a functioning society ever emerge from this chaos? In bombed-out Berlin, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, journalist and member of the Nazi resistance, warms herself by a makeshift stove and records in her diary how a frenzy of expectation and industriousness grips the city.

The battle of Stalingrad was the turning point of World War II. The German capture of the city, their encirclement by Soviet forces shortly afterwards, and the hard-fought but futile attempts to relieve them, saw bitter attritional fighting and extremes of human misery inflicted on both sides. In this title, a renowned expert on warfare on the Eastern Front reveals the often-overlooked German counteroffensive post-Stalingrad, and how it prevented the whole Axis front line from collapsing.

In 1940, the German sons and daughters of infamous Nazi dignitaries Himmler, Göring, Hess, Frank, Bormann, Speer, and Mengele were children of privilege at four, five, or 10 years old, surrounded by affectionate, all-powerful parents. Although innocent and unaware of what was happening at the time, they eventually discovered the extent of their fathers' occupations: These men were leaders of the Third Reich and would later be convicted as monstrous war criminals.

In this gripping memoir by the chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials, Richard Sonnenfeldt recounts a remarkable life. By age 22 he had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp, when he was appointed chief interpreter for the American prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials.

During his service, he spent pretrial time with Hermann Göering as well as other top Nazi leaders.

Arthur Schopenhauer's "The Wisdom of Life" is a compelling exploration into the nature of happiness and fulfillment. Written by a renowned 19th-century philosopher, this work delves into human desires and motivations, offering a unique perspective on finding meaning in life.

Berlin tells the story of the city as seen through the eyes not of its rulers, but of those who walked its streets. In this magisterial biography of a city and its inhabitants, best-selling historian Sinclair McKay sheds new light on well-known characters—from idealistic scientist Albert Einstein to Nazi architect Albert Speer—and draws on never-before-seen first-person accounts to introduce us to people of all walks of Berlin life.

Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi genocide claimed the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people diagnosed with psychiatric illness or cognitive deficiencies. Not until the 1980s would these murders, as well as the coercive sterilizations of some four hundred thousand others classified as “feeble-minded,” be officially acknowledged as crimes at all. The Question of Unworthy Life charts this history from its origins in prewar debates about the value of disabled lives to our continuing efforts to unlearn eugenic thinking today.

Germany was a deeply divided nation when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. As the shadow of the swastika lengthened, its citizens quickly came to realize that the Nazis' brutal programme was not optional. Everyone was expected to play their part in "national revival", especially those chosen as sacrificial victims. Life in the Third Reich draws on the recollections of those who lived through the rise and fall of one of the most vicious and sadistic regimes the world has ever seen.

Whilst the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet, restricted for much of the period after 1919 by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, was relatively small in comparison to the Royal Navy, it did possess a number of highly potent battleships and other capital vessels that could - and did - pose a major threat to British interests in the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. Amongst the most powerful were the two battleships - the Bismarck and the Tirpitz.

Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the 20th century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany.

While our understanding of the Holocaust is well developed, we know little about everyday life in Nazi Germany. In this vivid and important study, Roger Moorhouse portrays the German experience of the Second World War from the viewpoint of the capital's streets and homes, raising issues of consent and dissent, morality and authority, and charting the violent humbling of a once-proud metropolis.

This is the story of Germany after the Nazis, a time when two separate states rose from the ashes to face each other across the Iron Curtain. Meanwhile, the people struggled to come to terms with both the physical and psychological impact of defeat, as well as guilt for the monstrous acts that had been committed under Hitler's regime.

The most highly decorated German regimental commander of World War II, Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz first won the Iron Cross in the Great War. He was serving with the 1st Panzer Division when the Polish campaign inaugurated World War II. Strachwitz's exploits as commander of a panzer battalion during the French campaign earned him further decorations before he transferred to the newly formed 16th Panzer Division. There, he participated in the invasion of Yugoslavia and then Operation Barbarossa, where he earned the Knight's Cross.

A painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history's most monstrous dictators - her father, Josef Stalin. Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy - the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.

In 1832, 17-year-old Otto von Bismarck had just entered university and was already rejecting the republican indoctrination of his grade school years. Unlike so many of his day who had championed representative government, Bismarck longed for the glory of a nation he believed would only be found under a single, strong leader. Though his early university days showed him he would be isolated by this thinking, he strongly believed not only in the ideal of a national German state, but in its possibility.

Often compared to Catherine the Great or Elizabeth I, Caroline of Ansbach is the great queen Britain forgot it had - a thinker, politician, schemer, patroness and matriarch. This book offers a remarkable portrait of a woman of great political astuteness and ambition, a radical icon of female power. The intellectual superior of her husband, George II, Caroline is credited with bringing the Enlightenment to Britain through her sponsorship of red-hot debates about science, religion, philosophy and the nature of the universe.

That a Jew living in Nazi Berlin survived the Holocaust at all is surprising. That he was a homosexual and a teenage leader in the resistance and yet survived is amazing. But that he endured the ongoing horror with an open heart, with love and without vitriol, and has written about it so beautifully is truly miraculous. This is Gad Beck's story.

At 22, the war is over for RAF serviceman Harry Leslie Smith - author of the acclaimed Harry's Last Stand - but the battle for love and hope rages on. Stationed in occupied Hamburg, a city physically and emotionally ripped apart by Allied bombing, and determined to escape grinding poverty of his Yorkshire youth, Harry unexpectedly finds a reason to stay: a young German woman by the name of Friede.

In the face of ruthless totalitarian rule, it is only the rare few who stand up at risk of their own life to do what is right. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of those exceptional individuals. Even on pain of death, he would not bend, he would not budge - this German pastor fought the Nazi regime with every fiber of his being.