Germany World War Ii

When the Italian dictator Mussolini saw that Hitler was conquering Europe, he decided that he too would have a share of the plunder. He declared war on the Allies, vowed to control the Mediterranean, and with his 300,000 troops stationed in Libya, take Egypt and the Suez Canal. But he knew that this could not be accomplished while the strategic island of Malta remained in Allied hands. For the next two years Malta and its people suffered for almost continuous bombardment, but never gave in.

The Dodecanese Campaign was a British attempt to seize islands in the Aegean during the fall and winter of 1943. The campaign brought Anglo-American relations to their lowest point during the war. The Dodecanese Campaign was the tragic outcome of the fundamental differences of opinion and approach between allies who otherwise worked closely and in harmony, and though nobody knew it at the time, it marked one of the last major victories for German forces who had been forced to retreat in every other theater of operations.

The Swedish Red Cross expedition to the German concentration camps in March-April 1945 was the largest rescue effort inside Germany during World War II. Sponsored by the Swedish Government and led by Count Bernadotte of Wisborg, the mission became known for its distinctive buses. Each bus was purposefully painted entirely white except for the Red Cross emblem on the side so that they would not be mistaken for military targets.

While the Nazi party was being condemned by much of the world for burning books, they were already hard at work perpetrating an even greater literary crime. Through extensive new research that included records saved by the Monuments Men themselves, Anders Rydell tells the untold story of Nazi book theft, as he himself joins the effort to return the stolen books. When the Nazi soldiers ransacked Europe's libraries and bookshops, large and small, the books they stole were not burned. Instead, the Nazis began to compile a library of their own.

World War II was the culmination of a quarter century of tank development, and it would also be the first major test of tanks in mobile warfare. However, many of the tanks were constructed with the static warfare of the Western Front in mind and were thus slow and had short operational ranges. Others were too light to face opposing tanks or the new generation of anti-tank weapons that hadn’t existed in World War I. The unsuitability of these tank models for this new kind of warfare was quickly recognized, and the belligerent powers scrambled to create better designs.

Seit Anfang der achtziger Jahre hat Professor Guido Knopp, Leiter der ZDF-Redaktion Zeitgeschichte, mit unzähligen Menschen aus dem Umfeld der Paladine Hitlers gesprochen. Er hat Familienangehörige, Freunde, Mitarbeiter und andere Zeitzeugen befragt, und er hat persönliche Dokumente eingesehen. Die daraus entstandenen Bücher, Hitlers Helfer und "Hitlers Helfer - Täter und Vollstrecker" waren sowohl bei der Kritik als auch beim Lesepublikum ein außerordentlicher Erfolg. Erstmals und mit großem Feingefühl beantwortete Guido Knopp die Frage, was die Paladine Hitlers zu Massenmord und Kriegshetze, in Rassenwahn und bedingungslose Gefolgschaft trieb.

The first British major success of World War II was when the Royal Navy forced the preying pocket battleship, Graf Spee, to scuttle at sea. Hitler had ordered a blockade of the British Isles and for some months German U-boats and warships caused havoc among allied merchant shipping carrying vital supplies.

South of the Norman city of Caen, Verrieres Ridge was seen a key stepping-stone for the British Second Army if it was to break out of the Normandy bridgehead in late July 1944. Imposing in height and containing perfect terrain for armored operations, the Germans viewed it as the lynchpin to their defenses south of the city of Caen and east of the Orne river. Following the failure of British Operation Goodwood on 18-20 July and the containment of the Canadian Operation Atlantic, further Allied attacks to seize the ridge would have to defeat the strongest German armored formation in Normandy.

In a story spanning seven decades, Citizen 865 chronicles the harrowing wartime journeys of two Jewish orphans from occupied Poland who outran the men of Trawniki and settled in the United States, only to learn that some of their one-time captors had followed. A tenacious team of prosecutors and historians pursued these men and, up against the forces of time and political opposition, battled to the present day to remove them from US soil.

After the failure of the Weimar Republic, the Nazis believed their mission was to "masculinize" life in Germany. Hermann Goering told women, "Take a pot, a dustpan and a broom, and marry a man", but many still became active participants in murder and mayhem. From the Reich Bride Schools through the Bund Deutscher Mädel and the bizarre Lebensborn Aryan breeding programme to the brothels of the Sicherheitsdienst, this book covers the lives of women in the Third Reich, concentrating on those who sought personal power and influence amid the chaos.

Weikart reveals the startling and fascinating truth about the most hated man of the 20th century: Adolf Hitler was a pantheist who believed nature was God. In Hitler's Religion, Weikart explains how the laws of nature became Hitler's only moral guide - how he became convinced he would serve God by annihilating supposedly "inferior" human beings and promoting the welfare and reproduction of the allegedly superior Aryansin accordance with racist forms of Darwinism prevalent at the time.

On February 13 and 14, 1945, three successive waves of British and U.S. aircraft rained down thousands of tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs on the largely undefended German city of Dresden. Night and day, Dresden was engulfed in a vast sea of flame, a firestorm that generated 1,500-degree temperatures and hurricane-force winds. Thousands suffocated in underground shelters where they had fled to escape the inferno above.

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.

Had Hitler succeeded in conquering Europe, he would have crowned himself Holy Roman Emperor. The Nazis had in their possession priceless artifacts that would give Hitler legitimacy in his subjects' eyes: the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire including the Spear of Destiny, alleged to have pierced Christ's side at the Crucifixion. Looted from the royal treasury in Vienna, Austria, the Crown Jewels were hidden in a secret bunker deep beneath Nrnberg castle, known to few.

The Berlin blockade brought former allies to the brink of war. Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union defeated and began their occupation of Germany in 1945, and within a few years, the Soviets and their Western partners were jockeying for control of their former foe. Attempting to thwart the Allied powers' plans to create a unified West German government, the Soviets blocked rail and road access to the western sectors of Berlin in June 1948.

On 25 December 1943, the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst slipped out Altenfjord in Norway to attack Arctic convoy JW55B which was carrying vital war supplies to the Soviet Union. But British naval intelligence knew of the Scharnhorst's mission before she sailed and the vulnerable convoy was protected by a large Royal Naval force, including the battleship Duke of York. In effect the Scharnhorst was sailing into a trap. One of the most compelling naval dramas of the Second World War had begun.

As the Nazi war machine caused death and destruction throughout Europe, one man in the Fatherland began his own reign of terror. This is the true story of the pursuit and capture of a serial killer in the heart of the Third Reich. For all appearances, Paul Ogorzow was a model German. An employed family man, party member, and sergeant in the infamous Brownshirts, he had worked his way up in the Berlin railroad from a manual laborer laying track to assistant signalman. But he also had a secret need to harass and frighten women.

Germany was a deeply divided nation when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. As the shadow of the swastika lengthened, its citizens quickly came to realize that the Nazis' brutal programme was not optional. Everyone was expected to play their part in "national revival", especially those chosen as sacrificial victims. Life in the Third Reich draws on the recollections of those who lived through the rise and fall of one of the most vicious and sadistic regimes the world has ever seen.

Dealing with the Italians was one thing, but the British faced an entirely different monster in North Africa when Erwin Rommel, a German general who had gained much fame for his role in the invasions of Poland and France, was sent to North Africa in February 1941. For the next two years, the Allies would face off against the legendary Desert Fox and his Afrika Korps. This audiobook chronicles one of World War II’s most famous fighting units.

Gertrude "Gertie" Legendre was a big-game hunter from a wealthy industrial family who lived a charmed life in Jazz Age America. Her adventurous spirit made her the inspiration for the Broadway play Holiday, which became a film starring Katharine Hepburn. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Legendre, by then married and a mother of two, joined the OSS, the wartime spy organization that preceded the CIA.