Empfehlungen basierend auf "The Story of the First World War"

Sydney Taylor Award-winning novel Berlin Boxing Club is loosely inspired by the true story of boxer Max Schmeling's experiences following Kristallnacht. Publishers Weekly called it "a masterful historical novel" in a starred review.Karl Stern has never thought of himself as a Jew; after all, he's never even been in a synagogue. But the bullies at his school in Nazi-era Berlin don't care that Karl's family doesn't practice religion. Demoralized by their attacks against a heritage he doesn't accept as his own, Karl longs to prove his worth.Then Max Schmeling, champion boxer and German hero, makes a deal with Karl's father to give Karl boxing lessons. A skilled cartoonist, Karl has never had an interest in boxing, but now it seems like the perfect chance to reinvent himself.But when Nazi violence against Jews escalates, Karl must take on a new role: family protector. And as Max's fame forces him to associate with Nazi elites, Karl begins to wonder where his hero's sympathies truly lie. Can Karl balance his boxing dreams with his obligation to keep his family out of harm's way?Includes an author's note and sources page detailing the factual inspirations behind the novel.

“When this book was first published it received some attention from the critics but none at all from the public. Nazism was finished in the bunker in Berlin and its death warrant signed on the bench at Nuremberg.”   That’s Milton Mayer, writing in a foreword to the 1966 edition of They Thought They Were Free. He’s right about the critics: the book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1956. General readers may have been slower to take notice, but over time they did—what we’ve seen over decades is that any time people, across the political spectrum, start to feel that freedom is threatened, the book experiences a ripple of word-of-mouth interest. And that interest has never been more prominent or potent than what we’ve seen in the past year.   They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” “These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.   A new foreword to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.

Following in the footsteps of seminal works that tell the stories of this terrible time - from The Diary of a Young Girl to The Silver Sword and more recently When the Sky Falls - this is sure to be a future classic. The text will be accompanied by effective and sensitive illustrations by David Ziggy Greene.

Presenting the desperate conflict of the First World War through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier, Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel is translated by Michael Hofmann in Penguin Modern Classics. 'As though walking through a deep dream, I saw steel helmets approaching through the craters. They seemed to sprout from the fire-harrowed soil like some iron harvest.' A memoir of astonishing power, savagery and ashen lyricism, Storm of Steel depicts Ernst Jünger's experience of combat on the front line - leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, and simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart. One of the greatest books to emerge from the catastrophe of the First World War, it illuminates like no other book not only the horrors but also the fascination of a war that made men keep fighting for four long years. Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) the son of a wealthy chemist, ran away from home to join the Foreign Legion. His father dragged him back, but he returned to military service when he joined the German army on the outbreak of the First World War. Storm of Steel (Stahlgewittern) was Jünger's first book, published in 1920. Greatly admired by the Nazis, Jünger remained at a distance from the regime, with books such as his allegorical work On the Marble Cliffs (1939) functioning as a covert criticism of Nazi ideology and methods. If you enjoyed Storm of Steel, you might like Edward Blunden's Undertones of War, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'To read this extraordinary book is to gain a unique insight into the compelling nature of organized, industrialized violence' Niall Ferguson, author of War of the World 'Hofmann's interpretation is superb' The Times 'Unique in the literature of this or any other war is its brilliantly vivid conjuration of the immediacy and intensity of battle' Telegraph 'Storm of Steel is what so many books claim to be but are not: a classic account of war' Evening Standard

The international million copy bestseller recounting the epic turning point of the WW2______________ In October 1942, an officer wrote 'Stalingrad is no longer a town . . . Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure'. The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination and its citizens endured unimaginable hardship as a result. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, was the first defeat of Hitler's territorial ambitions in Europe, and the start of his decline. An extraordinary story of tactical genius, civilian bravery, obsession, carnage and the nature of war itself, Stalingrad will act as a testament to the vital role of the soviet war effort.______________ 'He reveals the full awfulness and human cost of the conflict with scholarly verve and deep sympathy' Ben Macintyre 'A superb re-telling. Beevor combines a soldier's understanding of war's realities with the narrative techniques of a novelist' Orlando Figes, Sunday Telegraph 'A brilliantly researched tour de force of military history' Sarah Bradford, The Times

Nine-year-old Anna was too busy with schoolwork and friends in 1933 to take much notice of Adolf Hitler's rise to power in her native Germany. But when her father is suddenly, unaccountably missing, and her family flees Berlin in secrecy, Anna is forced to learn the skills needed to be a refugee and finds she's much more resilient than she thought.192 pp.

Post-World War 2, Bernie Gunther investigates the murder of an American Nazi-hunter amongst the ruins of the Third Reich in this riveting thriller in Philip Kerr's bestselling historical mystery series.Vienna, 1947. Bernie Gunther had his first brush with evil as a policeman in 1930s Berlin and came to know it intimately as a private eye under the Nazis, when each case drew him deeper into the enormities of the regime. Now the war is over and Bernie is in Vienna, trying to clear an old friend and ex-Kripo colleague of the murder of an American officer. Amid decaying imperial splendor Bernie traces concentric circles of evil that lead him to a former head of the Gestapo and to a legacy that makes the atrocities of the war seem lily-white in comparison...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest sieges in history and it inflicted some of the worst civilian casualties of World War Two. When Hitler declared his intention to obliterate the key city of Leningrad on 22 September 1941, he could not have foreseen the grim determination of its citizens. Over the course of 900 days, the city resisted the Germans pounding at its gates. Its survival contributed to the defeat of Nazism. But the price was heavy – over 1 million died in Leningrad from German bombs and artillery, or from disease, the cold or starvation. In its suffering Leningrad became a source of symbolic national pride, of good conquering evil. The story of the siege is one of heroic resistance and stoical survival but it also one of unimaginable suffering and extreme deprivation. THE SIEGE OF LENINGRAD: HISTORY IN AN HOUR is essential reading for all history lovers. Know your stuff: read about the Siege of Leningrad in just one hour.

Winston Churchill's six-volume history of the cataclysm that swept the world remains the definitive history of the Second World War. Lucid, dramatic, remarkable both for its breadth and sweep and for its sense of personal involvement, it is universally acknowledged as a magnificent reconstruction and is an enduring, compelling work that led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Their Finest Hour enthrallingly recounts key events and battles from May to December 1940 as Britain stood isolated while Nazi Germany pursued its seemingly unconquerable war path - the fall of France, Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, the horrors of the Blitz and Hitler's plans to invade and crush Russia, his sole ally in Europe.

Winston Churchill's six-volume history of the cataclysm that swept the world remains the definitive history of the Second World War. Lucid, dramatic, remarkable both for its breadth and sweep and for its sense of personal involvement, it is universally acknowledged as a magnificent reconstruction and is an enduring, compelling work that led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. The Grand Alliance recounts the momentous events of 1941 surrounding America's entry into the War and Hitler's march on Russia - the continuing onslaught on British civilians during the Blitz, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the alliance between Britain and America that shaped the outcome of the War.