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For 32 days, they were chased across the mountains as they headed for the coast and a rendezvous with a Royal Navy launch waiting to spirit the general to Cairo. Rick Stroud, whose Phantom Army of Alamein won plaudits for its meticulous research and its lightness of touch in the telling, brings these same gifts to bear in this new project.

Set against the backdrop of the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s, this compelling audiobook provides the first comprehensive history of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, notorious for the abduction of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists and the hostages' tragic deaths after a botched rescue mission by the German police. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources from the time, eminent historian David Clay Large explores the 1972 festival in all its ramifications.

Tausend Jahre deutsche Geschichte und drei zentrale Fragen: Wer sind wir? Woher kommen wir? Wohin gehen wir? Guido Knopp, Stefan Brauburger...

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.

"Wer in der Ost-West-Debatte mit Schuldbegriffen operiert, ist schon auf dem Holzweg." Die Diskussion über Ostdeutschland und das Verhältnis zwischen Ost und West flammt immer wieder auf. Sei es anlässlich runder Jubiläen, sei es nach Protesten. Und dennoch gibt es in dieser Debatte keine Verständnisfortschritte. Sie dreht sich im Kreis, auf Vorwürfe folgen Gegenvorwürfe: "Ihr seid diktatursozialisiert!" – "Ihr habt uns ökonomisch und symbolisch kleingemacht!" Im November jährt sich der Mauerfall zum 35. Mal. Bereits zuvor könnte die AfD aus drei Landtagswahlen als stärkste Partei hervorgehen.

Known as “Hitler's Filmmaker,” Leni Riefenstahl directed two of the most innovative and effective propaganda documentaries ever made, Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), which glorified the Third Reich. In this definitive biography, Steven Bach illuminates the truths and lies regarding the self-proclaimed apolitical artist's involvement with Hitler and other Nazi leaders who financed and advanced her career. Probing the borders that divide art and beauty from truth and humanity, Bach untangles the past and gives an objective but unsparing appraisal.

"Kein Volk der Welt hat erlebt, was dem deutschen "1923"-Erlebnis entspricht", schrieb Sebastian Haffner im englischen Exil, und Stefan Zweig befand, dass die Geschichte noch "nie eine ähnliche Tollhauszeit in solchen riesigen Proportionen produziert" habe. Volker Ullrich erzählt auf breiter Quellenbasis die Geschichte dieses Jahrs am Abgrund, das in manchem auf fatale Weise an die heutige Gegenwart erinnert.

In Hitler's Army, Omer Bartov focuses on the titanic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union—where the vast majority of German troops fought—to show how the savagery of war reshaped the army in Hitler's image. Both brutalized and brutalizing, these soldiers needed to see their bitter sacrifices as noble patriotism and to justify their own atrocities by seeing their victims as subhuman.

With a total of 40 victories, Oswald Boelcke was Germany's first ace in World War I-and a century later he remains a towering figure in the history of air warfare, renowned for his character, inspirational leadership, organizational genius, development of air-to-air tactics, and impact on aerial doctrine. Paving the way for modern air forces across the world with his pioneering strategies, Boelcke had a dramatic effect on his contemporaries. The famed Red Baron's mentor, instructor, squadron commander, and friend, he exerted a tremendous influence upon the German air force.

After Prussia was victorious in the Austro-Prussian War, Bismarck played a waiting game where the unification of Germany was concerned, as the joining of the southern states - initially resistant to Prussian rule, friendly with Austria, and bent on independence - would have to be overcome. What was needed was “a clear case of French aggression” toward either Prussia or the southern states. Not only would such a move by Emperor Napoleon III trigger the terms of the treaty between the German states, but it would keep the remaining world powers out of the conflict.

At the end of September 1941, more than a million German soldiers lined up along the frontline just 180 miles west of Moscow. They were well trained, confident, and had good reasons to hope that the war in the East would be over with one last offensive. Facing them was an equally large Soviet force, but whose soldiers were neither as well trained nor as confident. When the Germans struck, disaster soon befell the Soviet defenders.

In this last book by the late Donald Pitkin comes a story of the Schorcht family, through whose fortunes and struggles one can see the transformations of Germany through the long 20th century.

The names Klaus Barbie, Adolf Eichmann, Hermann Goering, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner struck terror into law-abiding citizens, let alone those who resisted Adolf Hitler. These men were leaders of the Gestapo, the secret police during the times of the Nazis. This book outlines who the Gestapo were, how they operated, what their numbers were, the terrible crimes they committed, and how they paid for these in the end when they were hunted down after the war.

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.

Frank Blaichman was 16 years old when the war broke out. In 1942, the killings began in Poland. With his family and friends decimated by the roundups, Blaichman decided that he would rather die fighting; he set off for the forest to find the underground bunkers of Jews who had already escaped. Together they formed a partisan force dedicated to fighting the Germans. This is a harrowing, utterly moving memoir of a young Polish Jew who chose not to go quietly and defied the mighty German war machine during World War II.

"Aus dem Hintergrund müsste Rahn schießen. Rahn schießt. Toooor!" Jeder Fußball-Fan kennt diese Sätze. Der deutsche Triumph 1954 gilt bis heute als ein Wunder. Manche sehen in ihm sogar die wahre Geburtsstunde der Bundesrepublik. Tobias Escher gelingt es, anhand der legendären Weltmeisterschaft ein Stück deutscher Geschichte zu erzählen - schließlich waren fast alle deutschen Spieler noch als Soldaten im Krieg, fünf Jahre zuvor war Deutschland noch besetzt gewesen, von einer Bundesliga konnte man in den Fünfzigerjahren nur träumen.

Whatever happened to the Nazis after World War II? While the Nuremberg trials saw key party members prosecuted, it was impossible to imprison every German who had supported the Third Reich. This is the story of what happened to the Nazis who escaped justice.

Wenn ein Mark Twain auf Reisen geht, dann ist nicht jedem vergönnt, dabei sein zu dürfen – uns schon! Ernest Hemingways berühmtes Zitat "Es gibt eine amerikanische Literatur vor Mark Twain und eine danach, denn nichts was davor da war noch etwas was danach kommt ist damit vergleichbar" wird durch die Unterwegs und Daheim-Reihe wunderbar bestätigt. Ob auf Berggipfeln oder vor Ameisenhaufen, ob auf stürmischer See oder am Karpfenteich, ob im fünf- Sterne-Hotel oder in der Jugendherberge, ob auf Kontinent A, B, C, D, oder E, ob in Gesellschaft oder allein, ob mit Bahn, Bus, Gondel, Ski oder Schwimmhose "on the road".

Around the turn of the nineteenth century, a steady stream of young German poets and thinkers coursed to the town of Jena to make history. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had dealt a one-two punch to the dynastic system. Confidence in traditional social, political, and religious norms had been replaced by a profound uncertainty that was as terrifying for some as it was exhilarating for others. Nowhere was the excitement more palpable than among the extraordinary group of poets, philosophers, translators, and socialites who gathered in this Thuringian village.

In the Second World War, Poznan was a key river crossing and railway junction on the Polish-German border. When the alarm was given indicating the Red Army's approach in January 1945, the city's 80-100,000 German civilians were speedily evacuated, leaving a garrison of some 15,000 men, mostly poorly-armed infantry, to face the rigors of a siege conducted by a massively superior and ruthless enemy anxious to acquire this transport center, which was vital for the advance on Berlin.