Hitler: Profile of a Dictator is a fascinating exploration of Hitler and his role in the Third Reich. The book unravels the complex historiographical debate surrounding this notorious figure by examining his personality, his ideas and the nature of his power.
Hitler: Profile of a Dictator surveys Hitler's career chronologically and includes coverage of:
* the young idealogue
* the Führer State
* Hitler's role in the outbreak of the Second World War
* Hitler's involvement in the Holocaust.
This second edition brings the continuing debate up to date in light of the most recent reseach, and speculates on the implications of the Irving trial.

The first comprehensive history of the German Jews on the eve of Hitler's seizure of power, this book examines both their internal debates and their relations with larger German society. It shows that, far from being united, German Jewry was deeply divided along religious, political, and ideological fault lines. Above all, the liberal majority of patriotic and assimilationist Jews was forced to sharpen its self-definition by the onslaught of Zionist zealots who denied the "Germanness" of the Jews. This struggle for the heart and soul of German Jewry was fought at every level, affecting families, synagogues, and community institutions.

Although the Jewish role in Germany's economy and culture was exaggerated, they were certainly prominent in many fields, giving rise to charges of privilege and domination. This volume probes the texture of German anti-Semitism, distinguishing between traditional and radical Judeophobia and reaching conclusions that will give no comfort to those who assume that Germans were predisposed to become "willing executioners" under Hitler. It also assesses the quality of Jewish responses to racist attacks. The self-defense campaigns of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith included publishing counter-propaganda, supporting sympathetic political parties, and taking anti-Semitic demagogues to court. Although these measures could only slow the rise of Nazism after 1930, they demonstrate that German Jewry was anything but passive in its responses to the fascist challenge.

The German Jews' faith in liberalism is sometimes attributed to self-delusion and wishful thinking. This volume argues that, in fact, German Jewry pursued a clear-sighted perception of Jewish self-interest, apprehended the dangers confronting it, and found allies in socialist and democratic elements that constituted the "other Germany." Sadly, this profound and genuine commitment to liberalism left the German Jews increasingly isolated as the majority of Germans turned to political radicalism in the last years of the Republic. This full-scale history of Weimar Jewry will be of interest to professors, students, and general readers interested in the Holocaust and Jewish History.

This book provides a penetrating look into U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's strategy to bait Adolf Hitler into declaring war on America in order to defeat Germany militarily, thus preventing the Nazis from developing the atomic bomb. In late 1939, President Roosevelt learned that Hitler was attempting to develop an atomic bomb to use against the United States. The president responded by directing his own scientific community to develop an atomic bomb and began making plans to go to war with Germany. However, he was hampered by public opinion, with 80 percent of the American people against U.S. involvement in another ground war in Europe. Roosevelt seized an opportunity in 1940, when Japan and Nazi Germany formed a military alliance. To bait Germany into war, FDR shut down Japan's war-making economy, prompting Tokyo to attack Pearl Harbor. A few days later, Hitler declared war on America. Using declassified documents, this book shows how Pearl Harbor was not about Japan; it was about the United States going to war with Germany. It reveals how the U.S. Navy's intelligence gathering system could break virtually any Japanese naval code, but Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, was kept in the dark about the impending Pearl Harbor attack by his own government. Shows how Roosevelt had the courage and insight to see the threat that a Nazi atomic bomb posed to the United States and outlines his strategy to bait Germany into declaring war on America Explains how Japan's Bushido Code, which demands "death before dishonor," influenced Tokyo's decision to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor Demonstrates how the U.S. Navy's intelligence gathering system was second to none in terms of code breaking and locating the Imperial Japanese Navy's warships Uses declassified top-secret documents and other primary sources to prove that Roosevelt could have prevented the Pearl Harbor attack

The injustices committed against millions of Europe's Jews did not end with the fall of the Third Reich. Long after the Nazis had seized the belongings of Holocaust victims, Swiss banks concealed and appropriated their assets, demanding that their survivors produce the death certificates or banking records of the depositors in order to claim their family's property--demands that were usually impossible for the petitioners to meet. Now the full account of the Holocaust deposits affair is revealed by the journalist who first broke the story in 1995. Relying on archival and contemporary sources, Itamar Levin describes the Jewish people's decades-long effort to return death camp victims' assets to their rightful heirs. Levin also uncovers the truth about the behavior of Swiss banking institutions, their complicity with the Nazis, and their formidable power over even their own neutral government.

From the first attempt to settle the fate of German property in neutral countries at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, through the heated negotiations following publication of Levin's investigative article in 1995, to the Swiss banks' ultimate agreement to a $1.25 billion payment in 1997, the pursuit of restitution is a story of delaying tactics and legal complications of almost unimaginable dimensions. Terrified that the traditional and highly marketable wall of secrecy surrounding the Swiss banks would tumble and destroy the industry, the banks' managements were dismissive and uncooperative in determining the location and extent of the assets in question, forcing the United States, other European countries, and Jewish organizations worldwide to apply tremendous pressure for a just resolution. The details and the central characters involved in this struggle, as well as new information about Switzerland's controversial policies during World War II, are fascinating reading for anyone concerned with the Holocaust and its aftermath.

In 1939 Hitler went to war not just with Great Britain; he also went to war with the whole of the British Empire, the greatest empire that there had ever been. In the years since 1945 that empire has disappeared, and the crucial fact that the British Empire fought together as a whole during the war has been forgotten. All the parts of the empire joined the struggle and were involved in it from the beginning, undergoing huge changes and sometimes suffering great losses as a result. The war in the desert, the defence of Malta and the Malayan campaign, and the contribution of the empire as a whole in terms of supplies, communications and troops, all reflect the strategic importance of Britain's imperial status. Men and women not only from Australia, New Zealand and India but from many parts of Africa and the Middle East all played their part. Winston Churchill saw the war throughout in imperial terms. The British Empire and the Second World War emphasises a central fact about the Second World War that is often forgotten.

This is the official Naval Staff history of the Norway campaign, originally published internally in 1951. It covers the period from early April 1940 to the completion of operations in June. The operation involved most of the Royal Navy's ships in the Home theatre at the time.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology ever peak or regress? And why, since the dawn of time, has it always seemed as though death and destruction are waiting just around the corner? Combining his trademark thrilling, expansive storytelling with rigorous history and thought experiment, Dan Carlin connects past with future to explore the tipping points of collapsing civilisations - from the plague to nuclear war. Looking across every brush with apocalypse, crisis and collapse, this book also weighs, knowing all we do about human patterns, whether our world is likely to become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore. FROM THE CREATOR OF THE AWARD-WINNING, 100+ MILLION DOWNLOAD PODCAST HARDCORE HISTORY

Formed in July 1940 for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering behind enemy lines, the Long Range Desert Group was the first British special force unit. In no time the LRDG earned itself an enviable reputation for deep penetration patrols into German and Italian held territory. Its successes on prolonged missions into harsh terrain and under extreme climatic conditions were out of all proportion to its size. Wide-ranging military skills, including exceptional navigation techniques, and the highest standards of discipline and leadership were required from all ranks. Many of the previously unpublished and well captioned images in this comprehensive and well researched book come from the collections of LRDG veterans. They show the weapons, equipment, uniforms and insignia used and, together with personal accounts and operational reports, bring to life the extraordinary achievements of this legendary unit. The result is a fascinating record of the LRDG's contribution to the Allied victory in North Africa.

The Second World War is omnipresent in contemporary memory debates. As the war fades from living memory, this study is the first to systematically analyze how Second World War museums allow prototypical visitors to comprehend and experience the past. It analyzes twelve permanent exhibitions in Europe and North America - including the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, the House of European History in Brussels, the Imperial War Museums in London and Manchester, and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans - in order to show how museums reflect and shape cultural memory, as well as their cognitive, ethical, emotional, and aesthetic potential and effects. This includes a discussion of representations of events such as the Holocaust and air warfare. In relation to narrative, memory, and experience, the study develops the concept of experientiality (on a sliding scale between mimetic and structural forms), which provides a new textual-spatial method for reading exhibitions and understanding the experiences of historical individuals and collectives. It is supplemented by concepts like transnational memory, empathy, and encouraging critical thinking through difficult knowledge.

Nazi Germany utilized every available resource to fight the Second World War, and one significant weapon in Hitler's economic arsenal was gold - gold looted from the central banks of those European countries which were occupied by the Nazi regime between 1939 and 1942. Calculated at pre-1939 prices, the Germans gained access to about $625 million (US) in monetary gold, only about half of which was recovered by American Forces in April 1945 from a mine in central Germany. The 'Gold War' did not end then, however; it just assumed a different shape. Instead of fuelling Hitler's war effort, the recovered gold soon became a pawn in the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union and has remained a controversial issue in international politics for years, one not completely resolved to this day.Although this is an important aspect of the Second World War and its aftermath, it has been largely neglected in historical research because of the lack of adequate source materials. The author succeeded in gaining access to hitherto unavailable but crucial records from archives in West Germany, Britain and the United States and is thus in a position to piece together, for the first time, the story of the Nazi gold loot and the long, complicated restitution of part of this gold by the Western Allies. Hitler's Gold represents an essential contribution to the economic history of the Second World War.

One of the most famous accounts of living under the Nazi regime of World War II comes from the diary of a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl, Anne Frank. Today, The Diary of a Young Girl has sold over 25 million copies world-wide; this is the definitive edition released to mark the 70th anniversary of the day the diary begins. '12 June 1942: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support' The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most celebrated and enduring books of the last century. Tens of millions have read it since it was first published in 1947 and it remains a deeply admired testament to the indestructible nature of the human spirit. This definitive edition restores thirty per cent if the original manuscript, which was deleted from the original edition. It reveals Anne as a teenage girl who fretted about and tried to cope with her own emerging sexuality and who also veered between being a carefree child and an aware adult. Anne Frank and her family fled the horrors of Nazi occupation by hiding in the back of a warehouse in Amsterdam for two years with another family and a German dentist. Aged thirteen when she went into the secret annexe, Anne kept a diary. She movingly revealed how the eight people living under these extraordinary conditions coped with hunger, the daily threat of discovery and death and being cut off from the outside world, as well as petty misunderstandings and the unbearable strain of living like prisoners. The Diary of a Young Girl is a timeless true story to be rediscovered by each new generation. For young readers and adults it continues to bring to life Anne's extraordinary courage and struggle throughout her ordeal. This is the definitive edition of the diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank was born on the 12 June 1929. She died while imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen, three months short of her sixteenth birthday. This seventieth anniversary, definitive edition of The Diary of a Young Girl is poignant, heartbreaking and a book that everyone should read.

Nearly 50 years after Japan's attack, this text takes a fresh look at the air raid that plunged America into World War II. Michael Slackman scrutinizes the decisions and attitudes that prompted the attack and left the US unprepared to mount a successful defence.

In the 25 years since the revelation of the so-called 'Ultra secret', the importance of codebreaking and signals intelligence in the diplomacy and military operations of the Second World War has become increasingly evident. Studies of wartime signals intelligence, however, have largely focused on Great Britain and the United States and their successes against, respectively, the German Enigma and Japanese Purple cipher machines. Drawing upon newly available sources in Australia, Britain, China, France and the United States, the articles in this volume demonstrate that the codebreaking war was a truly global conflict in which many countries were active and successful. They discuss the work of Australian, Chinese, Finnish, French and Japanese codebreakers, shed new light on the work of their American and British counterparts, and describe the struggle to apply technology to the problems of radio intercept and cryptanalysis. The contributions also reveal that, for the Axis as well as the Allies, success in the signals war often depended upon close collaboration among alliance partners.

In the 25 years since the revelation of the so-called 'Ultra secret', the importance of codebreaking and signals intelligence in the diplomacy and military operations of the Second World War has become increasingly evident. Studies of wartime signals intelligence, however, have largely focused on Great Britain and the United States and their successes against, respectively, the German Enigma and Japanese Purple cipher machines. Drawing upon newly available sources in Australia, Britain, China, France and the United States, the articles in this volume demonstrate that the codebreaking war was a truly global conflict in which many countries were active and successful. They discuss the work of Australian, Chinese, Finnish, French and Japanese codebreakers, shed new light on the work of their American and British counterparts, and describe the struggle to apply technology to the problems of radio intercept and cryptanalysis. The contributions also reveal that, for the Axis as well as the Allies, success in the signals war often depended upon close collaboration among alliance partners.

Death camps are the most enduring image of the Holocaust, but they were only the final expression of a destruction process that began in 1933. In that year the Nazi regime mobilized members of an entire society to destroy their neighbors. Lawmakers, judges, attorneys, and the rest of the legal system played a crucial role in reassuring good Germans that a war on Jews was legitimate. Nazi Justiz emphasizes the prewar years of a robust Western European nation at peace with all countries. Such emphasis demonstrates that a Holocaust can happen in any country sharing the heritage of Western civilization, and warns of the inevitable outcome once ordinary people are targeted in a destruction process. Using original decrees, court decisions, and first-hand recollections of participants, Nazi Justiz documents how the German legal system transformed itself into a criminal organization. We see not only how the legal system shaped everyday life, but how good Germans and the business community benefited from the Holocaust. Germany in the 1930s-before the war-is emphasized. Such emphasis demonstrates that a Holocaust can happen in any country sharing the heritage of Western civilization, and warns of the inevitable outcome once ordinary people are targeted in a process of destruction. No other book has so much information on the Holocaust in peacetime Germany; indeed, the chapters on property confiscation and residential concentration are unique. With a richness of detail evoking an immediacy normally found in novels, Nazi Justiz offers a chilling portrayal of persons filled with so much goodness that they become oblivious to horrors they cause.

The soldiers of the Red Army identified the Reichstag as the victor's prize to be taken in Berlin. Stalin had promised Berlin to Marshal Zhukov, but the latter's blundering in the preliminary breakthrough battle threw his timetable and forced a complete change of plan for reducing the city. Stalin used the opportunity to chasten his subordinates by allowing Marshal Koniev, Zhukov's rival, to introduce one of his tank armies into the competition unknown to Zhukov. Abandoning the rest of his army group, Koniev personally directed this army in the hope of grabbing the prize.

Meanwhile, the Germans improvised a defence with inadequate resources. The remains of General Weidling's 56th Panzer Corps were reluctantly dragged into the city in a futile attempt to prolong the life of the Third Reich, whose leaders squabbled and schemed in their underground shelters, a world apart from the reality outside, where their subjects suffered and died unheeded. Ten days later, after the successive suicides of Hitler and Goebbels, the survivors chose between breakout and surrender.

This account of the battle lays the many myths created by Soviet propaganda after the event and details what exactly happened as the Red Army and the Allies raced to be the first to the Reichstag.

This book re-evaluates the architectural history of Nazi Germany and looks at the development of the forced-labour concentration camp system. Through an analysis of such major Nazi building projects as the Nuremberg Party Rally Grounds and the rebuilding of Berlin, Jaskot ties together the development of the German building economy, state architectural goals and the rise of the SS as a political and economic force. As a result, The Architecture of Oppression contributes to our understanding of the conjunction of culture and politics in the Nazi period as well as the agency of architects and SS administrators in enabling this process.

This book consists of a series of letters written by a young man during WWII. He went from banker to bombardier. He underwent starvation, depravation and his moral conflict with killing the enemy to a fear of being able to do his duty. Dead bodies laying around, flies, filth, hurricanes, no smokes, no candy, no female companionship.These are some of the things he lived with all the while flying in a cramped nose of a B-24 bomber with his pet dog beside him on all forty eight missions.

He earned the moniker "Torchman Tucker" after firebombing a village which gave him much personal conflict. He says in a letter to his mother, "I wonder what God thinks of me." Just before his first bombing mission, he wrote of his apprehension of being able to do the right thing for his crewmates and country.

His letters also tell a story about America. His crew was all boys by today's standard from all over the country. Busy with life farming, banking, and all the other normal things were suddenly immersed in the business of war. The farmer became their pilot, the banker became the bombardier, and the recent high school graduate became a waist gunner and so the story goes. In the end, they all did what was expected of them and they returned to America quietly trying to fit in society. But their lives had been changed forever.

Each section of this study focuses on a different aspect of the discourse between gender and identity and explores the major research trends evincing themselves since the end of the Second World War.

The first Japanese army unit was established in 1896. The Japanese railway engineers was a unique branch of the army which specialized in the operation and construction of railways and the employees of the Japanese National Railways conscripted into the army. This book tells the stories of the railway soldiers and JNR men during their training, their working experience in Burma, their engagements with the allied armies and their life after the surrender through the memoirs and testaments of those soldiers.

The year was 1935: the twilight of the English aristocracy. It was a time of wealth and glamour; of lavish balls and evening gowns; of tiaras and a coronation. As personal maid to Lady Coventry, Hilda Newman had a unique insight into the leisured life of one of Britain's most noble families. In her fascinating memoir of life upstairs and down, Hilda takes us back to this period between the wars; a gilded era which would soon be dramatically changed by the Second World War. Transplanted from a tiny house with no bath or hot water to an eighteenth-century Neo-Palladian mansion, Hilda's life changed beyond recognition. But in a time when the very foundations of British society were being shaken to their core, the luxurious life of the country nobility couldn't last. The Second World War brought more turbulence with it, and Croome Court, where Hilda had lived and worked, became a haven for the Dutch Royal Family fleeing Nazi occupation, whilst also home to a top-secret RAF base. The lavish banquets and decadent parties had become a thing of the past. Hilda's story takes us back to a bygone era, showing us what life was really like in England's classic country manors of old - and uncovers the real lives of the people who occupied them, from wealthy lord to lowly servant.