Recommendations based on "The Wages of Guilt : Memories of War in Germany and Japan"

Richard Evans' brilliant book unfolds perhaps the single most important story of the 20th century: how a stable and modern country in less than a single lifetime led Europe into moral, physical and cultural ruin and despair. A terrible story not least because there were so many other ways in which Germany's history could have been played out. With authority, skill and compassion, Evans recreates a country torn apart by overwhelming economic, political and social blows: the First World War, Versailles, hyperinflation and the Great Depression. One by one these blows ruined or pushed aside almost everything admirable about Germany, leaving the way clear for a truly horrifying ideology to take command.

From Neil MacGregor, the author of A History of the World in 100 Objects, this is a view of Germany like no other For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental Europe. Twenty-five years ago a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people now understand themselves? Neil MacGregor argues that uniquely for any European country, no coherent, over-arching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed, for in Germany both geography and history have always been unstable. Its frontiers have constantly floated. Königsberg, home to the greatest German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is now Kaliningrad, Russia; Strasbourg, in whose cathedral Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest writer, discovered the distinctiveness of his country's art and history, now lies within the borders of France. For most of the five hundred years covered by this book Germany has been composed of many separate political units, each with a distinct history. And any comfortable national story Germans might have told themselves before 1914 was destroyed by the events of the following thirty years. German history may be inherently fragmented, but it contains a large number of widely shared memories, awarenesses and experiences; examining some of these is the purpose of this book. Beginning with the fifteenth-century invention of modern printing by Gutenberg, MacGregor chooses objects and ideas, people and places which still resonate in the new Germany - porcelain from Dresden and rubble from its ruins, Bauhaus design and the German sausage, the crown of Charlemagne and the gates of Buchenwald - to show us something of its collective imagination. There has never been a book about Germany quite like it.

A classic military history, now in a fully illustrated and redesigned edition.First published in 1959, The Longest Day is one of the bestselling military history books of all time, and the inspiration for the legendary 1962 film released by 20th Century Fox. The author, war journalist Cornelius Ryan, pioneered a new style of military history writing based on interviews with more than a thousand battle participants from both sides. From these powerful stories emerges a vivid description of the crucial 24 hours that made up D-Day. This beautifully designed archive edition incorporates 25 original research documents with Ryan’s classic text, all further enhanced by the addition of 120 photographs.

“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.

When Hitler's war ended in 1945, the war over Hitler--who he really was, what gave birth to his unique evil--had just begun. Hitler did not escape the bunker in Berlin but, half a century later, he has managed to escape explanation in ways both frightening and profound. Explaining Hitler is an extraordinary quest, an expedition into the war zone of Hitler theories. This is a passionate, enthralling book that illuminates what Hitler explainers tell us about Hitler, about the explainers, and about ourselves.

Discover the key battles, tactics, technologies and turning points of the Second World War - the epic conflict that shaped the modern world.Combining authoritative, exciting text and bold explanatory graphics The World War II Book explores the causes, key events, and lasting consequences of the Second World War.Using the original, graphic-led approach of the series, entries profile more than 90 of the key ideas and events during and surrounding the conflict - from the rise of Hitler and Fascism in the 1930s to Pearl Harbor, the D-Day landings, and the bombing of Hiroshima to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.Offering a uniquely compelling, accessible, and immediate history of the war, The World War II Book shows how key battles, political and economic forces, individual leaders, and technological advances influenced the course of the conflict.

The Sensational International Bestseller On The Overwhelming Role Of Drug-taking In The Third Reich 'the Most Brilliant And Fascinating Book I Have Read In My Entire Life' Dan Snow 'extremely Interesting ... A Serious Piece Of Scholarship, Very Well Researched' Ian Kershaw The Nazis Presented Themselves As Warriors Against Moral Degeneracy. Yet, As Norman Ohler's Gripping Bestseller Reveals, The Entire Third Reich Was Permeated With Drugs: Cocaine, Heroin, Morphine And, Most Of All, Methamphetamines, Or Crystal Meth, Used By Everyone From Factory Workers To Housewives, And Crucial To Troops' Resilience - Even Partly Explaining German Victory In 1940. The Promiscuous Use Of Drugs At The Very Highest Levels Also Impaired And Confused Decision-making, With Hitler And His Entourage Taking Refuge In Potentially Lethal Cocktails Of Stimulants Administered By The Physician Dr Morell As The War Turned Against Germany. While Drugs Cannot On Their Own Explain The Events Of The Second World War Or Its Outcome, Ohler Shows, They Change Our Understanding Of It. Blitzed Forms A Crucial Missing Piece Of The Story.

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

Within days of the D-Day lanings, the 'Das Reich' 2nd SS Panzer Division marched north through France to reinforce the front-line defenders of Hitler's Fortress Europe. Veterans of the bloodiest fighting of the Russion Front, 15,000 men with their tanks and artillery, they were hounded for every mile of their march by saboteurs of the Resistance and agents of the Allied Special Forces. Along their route they took reporisals so savage they will live for ever in the chronicles of the most appalling atrocities of war. Max Hasting's powerful account of their progress is a true military classic.

'of The Great Powers That Dominated Europe From The Eighteenth To The Twentieth Centuries, Prussia Is The Only One To Have Vanished ... Iron Kingdom Is Not Just Good: It Is Everything A History Book Ought To Be ... The Nemesis Of Prussia Has Cast Such A Long Shadow That German Historians Have Tiptoed Around The Subject. Thus It Was Left To An Englishman To Write What Is Surely The Best History Of Prussia In Any Language' Sunday Telegraph