German History English

A thrilling Cold War narrative of superpower showdowns, media suppression, and two escape tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall.

The German Revolution of 1918-1919 told the story of a bruised nation attempting to overcome its military defeat at the hands of enemies who wanted to punish Germany for starting the war. Because Germany was caught in the vise of such irreconcilable political philosophies between the left and the right, the Weimar Republic, although it was the ruling power following the German Revolution, was destined to have a doomed, short life in Germany’s tragic 20th-century history.

After 1933, as the terror regime took hold, most of the two-thirds of Germans who had never voted for the Nazis tried to keep their heads down and protect their families - they moved to the country, or pretended to support the regime to avoid being denounced by neighbours, and tried to work out what was really happening in the Reich, surrounded as they were by Nazi propaganda and fake news.

Martin Luther, full of compassion, grief, disappointment, and frustration, turns away from his entreaties to and debates with church leaders and writes instead to the German political leaders. With extreme clarity, Luther explains in this letter the unbalanced nature and habits of the religious institution - certain at this point that the German people could only be set free from this continual and escalating religious destruction through the intervention of their government.

Few rock bands were as successful as the Scorpions by the mid '80s - headlining arenas/stadiums worldwide. German Metal Machine: Scorpions in the '70s is the first-ever book to focus solely on this period of the band. Interviews include such former members as Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Francis Buchholz, and Herman Rarebell, longtime Scorpions producer Dieter Dierks, plus members of other bands that are major admirers,

German South West Africa: The History and Legacy of Germany’s Biggest African Colony chronicles the politics and conflicts that marked Germany’s efforts to colonize German South West Africa. You will learn about German South West Africa like never before.

In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles stripped Germany of its overseas colonies. This sudden transition to a post-colonial nation left the men and women invested in German imperialism to rebuild their status on the international stage. Remnants of an earlier era, these Kolonialdeutsche (Colonial Germans) exploited any opportunities they could to recover, renovate, and market their understandings of German and European colonial aims in order to reestablish themselves as "experts" and "fellow civilizers" in discourses on nationalism and imperialism.

This book is a compendium of Alberta politicians who are considered to be ethnically German. Using a variety of sources, the idea behind this manuscript is that researchers will have an excellent starting point when tracing ethnic lineages in Alberta's political history.

This exciting and thought provoking alternative history is observed through the eyes of a young German war correspondent...The setting is 10 years after Germanys partial 1943 victory and its subsequent reconciliation with its former enemies when Joseph the German war correspondent meets with Cliff his American counterpart and old friend to describe his own, first-hand account of how the road to Germanys victory began with Rommel and his success in North Africa.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill had no qualms about using native German speakers from Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany itself. The majority were Jews who had fled persecution. Two examples of these secret units were X Troop Commandos and the Special Interrogation Group. The SIG men deserve their legendary status. They fought, and often died, wearing Wehmacht uniform. As this book reveals that, after infiltrating Field Marshal Rommel's Afrika Korps, one detachment even drew Nazi pay.

Before the mid-19th century, European intervention in much of tropical Africa was extremely difficult because of the disease gradient. The combination of malaria and yellow fever commonly killed off half of European troops stationed in West Africa each year. It was the reverse of the conquest of the Americas, where introduced diseases wiped out 50 million indigenous Americans, opening the land to settlement and greatly reducing the ability to resist. This was much less of a problem in temperate southern Africa, accounting for the Dutch being able to set up a colony there in the 17th century.

Albert Williams was the special war correspondent of "The Outlook" in France and Belgium during the First World War. In these early days of the conflict, Albert was riding up and down the lines and even crossed over to the German side. Unfortunately he found himself on the wrong side of a German bayonet and quickly marched into captivity as a possible spy. With an aggressive German officer trumping up charges, the situation was grim. This book relates Albert's experiences.

When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a trunk full of his late aunt's personal belongings, he was unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, journals, and photographs, surrounded by suitors and living the precarious existence of a British citizen in a country controlled by the enemy during World War II.

From the depths of German and American archives comes a story one soldier never wanted told. The first volunteer killed defending Robert E. Lee’s position in battle was really a German assassin. After fleeing to the United States to escape prosecution for murder, the assassin enlisted in a German company of the Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Mexican-American War and died defending Lee’s battery at the Siege of Veracruz in 1847.

Dramatic, highly listenable, and painstakingly researched, The Great Desert Escape brings to light a little-known escape by 25 determined German sailors from an American prisoner-of-war camp.The disciplined Germans tunneled unnoticed through rock-hard, sunbaked soil and crossed the unforgiving Arizona desert. They were heading for Mexico, where there were sympathizers who could help them return to their fatherland. It was the only large-scale domestic escape by foreign prisoners in US history.

A tale of terrorism, espionage, and an epic struggle for justice in an America on the verge, sparked by a massive and mysterious explosion in New York Harbor in 1916.

That year, while the Allied and Central forces waged war in Europe, a group of German saboteurs blew up Black Tom Island, a spit of land in New York Harbor within earshot of downtown Manhattan. The subsequent hail of missiles and gunpowder devastated much of lower New York City.

When war broke out in Europe in August 1914, the new German luxury ocean liner SS Vaterland was interned in New York Harbor, where it remained docked for nearly three years - until the United States officially entered the fight to turn the tide of the war. Seized by authorities for the US Navy once war was declared in April 1917, the liner was renamed the USS Leviathan by President Woodrow Wilson and converted into an armed troop carrier.

Americans have long been fascinated by the Civil War, marveling at the size of the battles, the leadership of the generals, and the courage of the soldiers. The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history, and had the two sides realized it would take four years and inflict over a million casualties, it might not have been fought. Since it did, however, historians and history buffs alike have been studying and analyzing the military and political history of the conflict ever since.

After the fall of France in the mid-1940s, Adolf Hitler faced a British Empire that refused to negotiate for peace. With total war looming, he ordered the Abwehr, Germany's defense and intelligence organization, to carry out Operation Lena - a program to place information-gathering spies within Britain. Quickly, a network of secret agents spread within the United Kingdom and across the British Empire. The stunning truth, though, was that every last one of these German spies had been captured and turned by the British.

As war began in Europe in 1939, a naturalized German American was recruited by the Nazis to set up a radio transmitter and collect messages from spies active in the city to send back to Nazi spymasters in Hamburg. This German American, William G. Sebold, approached the FBI and became the first double agent in the Bureau's history, the center of a 16-month investigation that led to the arrest of a colorful cast of 33 enemy agents.