Germany War Ii

On June 14, 1940, German tanks rolled into Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. Most citizens adapted and many even allied themselves with the new fascist leadership. Yet others refused to capitulate; in answer to the ruthless violence, shortages, and curfews imposed by the Nazis, a resistance arose. Among this shadow army were Jews, immigrants, communists, workers, writers, police officers, shop owners, including many young people in their teens and 20s.

In September 1943, Adolf Hitler, furious at the ouster of Mussolini, sent German troops into Rome and ordered SS General Karl Wolff, who had been Heinrich Himmler's chief aide, to occupy the Vatican and kidnap (and perhaps kill) Pope Pius XII. At the same time, plans were being made to deport Rome's Jews to Auschwitz. Wolff began playing a dangerous game: stalling Hitler's plot against the pope, whom he hoped would save him from the noose in case Germany lost the war.

In 1942, eight Nazi saboteurs were caught on American beaches after one turned the others in. The execution of the saboteurs was challenged in court but eventually upheld in the Supreme Court's ruling in Ex parte Quirin, a decision that has frequently been cited by the George W. Bush administration in support of its declared power to hold "enemy combatants" and try them by military commission.

The Mafia at War reconstructs the relationships between the Mafia and Allied intelligence organizations.

Discover how Jewish gangsters clashed with Nazis on the streets of New York; how Mafiosi nearly issued contracts to kill top Nazis, including Hitler; how Mafia-backed bandits conducted a guerrilla war for Sicilian independence; and how Eisenhower was happy to arm the Mafia during the Allied invasion of Sicily.

After the last shots of World War II were fired and the process of rebuilding Germany and Europe began, the Western Allies and the Soviet Union each tried to obtain the services of the Third Reich's leading scientists, especially those involved in rocketry, missile technology, and aerospace research. Naturally, this was a delicate affair due to the fact many of the German scientists were not only active Nazis but had helped the Nazi war machine terrorize the world.

At the end of 1941, it seemed to many people, especially in Germany, that the war was virtually over. Some began to consider what a postwar Europe would look like after a Nazi victory. With nothing to stop them, the Nazis became the most rapacious looters of art the world had ever seen, to the extent that it has been estimated that the Nazis may have acquired up to 20 percent of all art in Western Europe. Some works were returned after the war, many disappeared, and still others have become the subject of intense speculation.

Uranprojekt: The History and Legacy of Nazi Germany’s Nuclear Weapons Program During World War II examines the Nazis’ race to reach the ultimate goal from 1939-45, how they went about their objectives, and why they failed. You will learn about Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons program like never before.

On September 7, 1940, the long-feared and anticipated attack by the German Luftwaffe plunged London into a cauldron of fire and devastation. This compelling book recreates that day in all its horror, using rich archival sources and first-hand accounts, many never before published. Eminent historian Peter Stansky weaves together the stories of people who recorded their experiences of the opening hours of the Blitz. Then, exploring more deeply, the author examines what that critical day meant to the nation at the time, and what it came to mean in following years.

In 1998, Helga Schneider, in her sixties, was summoned from Italy to the nursing home in Vienna in which her 90-year-old mother lived. The last time she had seen her mother was 27 years earlier, when her mother asked her daughter to try on the SS uniform which she treasures, and tried to give her several items of jewellery, the loot of holocaust victims, which Schneider rejected.

In the warm predawn darkness of June 22, 1941, three million men waited along a front hundreds of miles long, stretching from the Baltic coast of Poland to the Balkans. Ahead of them in the darkness lay the Soviet Union, its border guarded by millions of Red Army troops echeloned deep throughout the huge spaces of Russia.

In the predawn darkness of June 22, 1941, three million men waited along a front stretching from the Baltic coast of Poland to the Balkans. Ahead of them lay the Soviet Union, its border guarded by millions of Red Army troops. This massive gathering of Wehrmacht soldiers from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and his allied states stood poised to carry out Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's surprise attack against the country of his putative ally, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Of course,Paris was not destroyed before the Allies liberated it, but it would take more than four years for them to wrest control of France from Nazi Germany after they took the country by storm in about a month in 1940. That said, it's widely overlooked today given how history played out that as the power of Nazi Germany grew alarmingly during the 1930s, the French sought means to defend their territory against the rising menace of the Thousand-Year Reich.

When World War II erupted, Philipp von Boeselager, son of an aristocratic Catholic family, fought enthusiastically for his country as a cavalry lieutenant. But in the summer of 1942, when he witnessed the regime's criminal brutality toward Jews and Gypsies, his patriotism quickly turned to disgust, and he joined a group of officers intent on killing Hitler. After one aborted attempt, it was decided that a bomb would be used to assassinate HItler.

"Blitzkrieg", or "lightning war", describes the Third Reich's invasion strategy during its 1940 conquest of France not only due to the speed of the Wehrmacht advance but also its devastating effect on its ill-prepared adversaries. Mired in the paralyzing muck of plodding staff college military doctrine and demoralized as a nation by their appalling losses during World War I, the French succumbed in a few weeks to German skill and vigor.

Following the success of Forgotten Voices of the Great War, the series now chronicles one of human histories darkest hours. The author comes to the project following her significant work in recording the experiences of Holocaust survivors for the Imperial War Museum sound archive, one of the most important archives of its kind in the world. The intertwined moving and revealing interviews reveal the sheer complexity and horror of the Holocaust.

After the last shots of World War II were fired and the process of rebuilding Germany and Europe began, the Western Allies and the Soviet Union each tried to obtain the services of the Third Reich's leading scientists, especially those involved in rocketry, missile technology, and aerospace research. Naturally, this was a delicate affair due to the fact many of the German scientists were not only active Nazis, but had helped the Nazi war machine terrorize the world.

By the end of D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies had managed to successfully land 170,000 men, with over 75,000 on the British and Canadian beaches, 57,000 on the American beaches, and over 24,000 airborne troops. Thanks to Allied deception, the German army had failed to react to prevent the Allies from making the most of their landings. Just one division, the Hitlerjugend, would arrive the following day. Despite a fearsome and bloody day, the majority of the Allied forces had achieved their objectives.

All his life, journalist Walter Shapiro assumed that the outlandish stories about his great-uncle Freeman were exaggerated family lore; some cockamamie Jewish revenge fantasies dreamt up to entertain the kids and venerate their larger-than-life relative. Only when he started researching Freeman Bernstein's life did he realize that his family was actually holding back.

The extraordinary true story of surviving the unimaginable … In 1945, seven-year-old Barbie and her sister Eva were trapped, terrified, in wartorn Germany. With their father missing, and hundreds of miles from their mother, news of the approaching army left them confronted with an impossible choice: to face invasion, or to flee on foot.Eva, aged nineteen, was determined to find her mother.

An insightful historical account, Democrat and Diplomat exposes the dark underbelly of 1930s Germany and explores the terrible burden of those who realized the horror that was to come. Dodd was the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937, arriving in Berlin with his wife and daughter just as Hitler assumed the chancellorship. An unlikely candidate for the job - and not President Roosevelt's first choice - Dodd quickly came to realize that the situation in Germany was far grimmer than was understood in America.