Recommendations based on "Shadowplay Behind the Lines & Under Fire : the Inside Story of Europe's Last War"

‘Lucid and damning … an absorbing – and infuriating – tale of complicity, coverup and denial’ PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, author of EMPIRE OF PAINA groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions from the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II – and how the world allowed them to get away with it.In 1946, Günther Quandt – patriarch of Germany’s most iconic industrial empire, a dynasty that today controls BMW – was arrested for suspected Nazi collaboration. Quandt claimed that he had been forced to join the party by his arch-rival, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and the courts acquitted him. But Quandt lied. And his heirs, and those of other Nazi billionaires, have only grown wealthier in the generations since, while their reckoning with this dark past remains incomplete at best. Many of them continue to control swaths of the world economy, owning iconic brands whose products blanket the globe. The brutal legacy of the dynasties that dominated Daimler-Benz, cofounded Allianz and still control Porsche, Volkswagen and BMW has remained hidden in plain sight – until now.In this landmark work, investigative journalist David de Jong reveals the true story of how Germany’s wealthiest business dynasties amassed untold money and power by abetting the atrocities of the Third Reich. Using a wealth of untapped sources, de Jong shows how these tycoons seized Jewish businesses, procured slave labourers and ramped up weapons production to equip Hitler’s army as Europe burnt around them. Most shocking of all, de Jong exposes how the wider world’s political expediency enabled these billionaires to get away with their crimes, covering up a bloodstain that defiles the German and global economy to this day.

From the quintessential author of wartime Germany, A Time to Love and a Time to Die echoes the harrowing insights of his masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front.After two years at the Russian front, Ernst Graeber finally receives three weeks’ leave. But since leaves have been canceled before, he decides not to write his parents, fearing he would just raise their hopes.Then, when Graeber arrives home, he finds his house bombed to ruin and his parents nowhere in sight. Nobody knows if they are dead or alive. As his leave draws to a close, Graeber reaches out to Elisabeth, a childhood friend. Like him, she is imprisoned in a world she did not create. But in a time of war, love seems a world away. And sometimes, temporary comfort can lead to something unexpected and redeeming.“The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure.”—The New York Times Book Review

This is Winston Churchill's six-volume history of the Second World War.

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER AWARD A magisterial and acclaimed history of post-war Europe, from Germany to Poland, from Western Europe to Eastern Europe, selected as one of New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year Europe in 1945 was drained. Much of the continent was devastated by war, mass slaughter, bombing and chaos. Large areas of Eastern Europe were falling under Soviet control, exchanging one despotism for another. Today, the Soviet Union is no more and the democracies of the European Union reach as far as the borders of Russia itself. Postwar tells the rich and complex story of how we got from there to here, demystifying Europe's recent history and identity, of what the continent is and has been. 'It is hard to imagine how a better - and more readable - history of the emergence of today's Europe from the ashes of 1945 could ever be written...All in all, a real masterpiece' Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler

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. Closing the Ring chronicles the period between June 1943 and July 1944 as the Allies consolidated their gains towards a drive to victory - the fall of Mussolini, Hitler's 'secret weapon', the mounting air offensive on Germany, strategies to defeat Japan and the plans for D Day.

In Days of Masquerade Claudia Schoppmann offers the first in-depth account of lesbians living in Germany during the Third Reich. Through a series of interviews, Schoppmann recounts the lives of perpetrators, bystanders, and victims: women who fought against Hitler's regime, others who married gay men to ward off suspicion, and one who remained active despite fairly clear pronouncements of her sexuality.Schoppmann enriches these vivid oral histories with the findings of her archival research, including a fascinating look at Nazi policy papers. She explores the drive toward sexual emancipation in Imperial and Weimar Germany and presents a comprehensive overview of Nazi attitudes and policies toward homosexual men and women. Identifying ways in which the Nazi positions were highly gender-specific, she points out that lesbianism was seen as less reprehensible than male homosexuality, since it was not considered a threat to women's reproductive potential.Days of Masquerade demonstrates that lesbianism, though not criminalized or subjected to systematic persecution as was male homosexuality, was driven underground by the Nazis, the thriving lesbian communities that had flourished during the Weimar Republic effectively destroyed.An eloquent reminder of the "forgotten victims" of the Third Reich, Days of Masquerade also points out that the experiences of gay men and lesbians during the Nazi era were not one and the same. As a major chapter in the social history of lesbians, Schoppmann's work opens new doors for students of lesbian and gay history, women's studies, and modern German and European history.

Pilot officer Archie Jackson, 19, is in control of the RAF's newest fighter aircraft, a Supermarine Spitfire. Now he has the Luftwaffe in his sights and only one thing matters- defending Britain. Suddenly planes are falling from the sky, exploding and spiralling into the English Channel. France has fallen and the swastika flies over Occupied Europe. Only these young pilots - barely out of boyhood - stand between Britain and a Nazi invasion . . . Duty Calls- Battle of Britain, throws you deep into the heart - and horror - of Britain's darkest, and finest, hour.

Published to immediate acclaim in 1962 and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1963, The Guns of August is the classic account of the cataclysmic outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the 30 days of battle that followed. This opening clash determined the future course of the war and shaped the history of our century. Its tense drama continues to enthrall readers of Barbara W. Tuchman's magnificent best-selling work, now in 25th anniversary edition with a new preface by the author. In the summer of 1914, Europe with a heap of swords piled as delicately as jackstraws, and not one could be drawn out without upsetting the others. Still, statesmen, field marshals, admirals, kings, and patriots believed what they wanted to believe -- or what they feared not to believe -- and waited in profound ignorance for victory to reveal itself within a matter of weeks. Instead, the holocaust of August was the prelude to 4 bitter years of deadlocked war that cost a generation of European lives. The German, French, English, and Russian General Staffs had had their plans for war completed as early as 10 years before hostilities began. Germany intended to invade France; England had committed her army to cooperation with the French Army. France, bolstered by her alliance with Russia and her "entente" with Britain, designed her strategy in terms solely of the offensive and the attaque brusqueée. Russia planned a pincer invasion of East Prussia while the main German armies were involved in the West. None of these plans allowed for the contingencies of the others, or recognized their own intrinsic errors. Yet for perhaps five years before the war began, each General Staff knew what the others would do; all that was planned. The bloody catalogue of the battles of August 1914 includes the almost mythic names of Liège, Tannenberg, Mons, the Battle of the Frontiers, and Charleroi. And of men like Joffre, indomitably rebuilding his shattered French armies; Samsonov dying a suicide after the annihilation of the Russian 2nd Army; von Kluck stubbornly committing his fatal mistake; Admiral Souchon choosing his desperate and fateful course for Constantinople. Through her unforgettable portraits of these characters and many others, Mrs. Tuchman has made her book doubly exciting -- revealing the human reasons for the disasters of war. - Jacket flap.