"An eminent historian recounts the Nazi rise to power from his unique perspective as a young Jewish boy in Munich, living with Adolf Hitler as his neighbor. Watching events unfold from his window, Edgar bore witness to the Night of the Long Knives, the Anschluss, and Kristallnacht. Jews were arrested; his father was imprisoned at Dachau. In 1939 Edgar was sent on his own to England, where he would make a new life, a career, have a family, and strive to forget the nightmare of his past--a past that came rushing back when he decided, at the age of eighty-eight, to tell the story of his buried childhood and his infamous neighbor"--Provided by publisher.

Weimar has become synonymous with catastrophic political failure, the prelude to the greatest moral and material disasters of the twentieth century. This book shows that such failure was never inevitable and that options remained tantalisingly open right up to Hitler's assumption of power. The democratic regime was saddled with heavy burdens stemming from defeat and never enjoyed general acceptance and legitimacy. On the other hand, it encouraged for the first time in German history expectations of a high level of welfare, individual rights and modern social practices, which were at least partially fulfilled. The period of relative prosperity was, however, too short, the return of crisis too severe and the resulting demoralisation too profound to save democracy.The author draws a compelling picture of a society frequently in turmoil, yet remarkably creative and innovative, but finally overwhelmed by a tide of irrationality and barbarism. He makes full use of the extensive sources and secondary literature available in German.

When Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha married his cousin, the young Queen Victoria, in 1840, it was not only a match whose fertility and personal devotion provided a model for the queen's subjects, it was also a triumph of dynastic politics. It drew the couple deeply into European politics, where their personal and family relationships with many of the rulers often had repercussions at home. Despite the death of Albert in 1861, the marriage of Victoria's children into Europe's royal houses continued the dynastic theme. It was a tragedy for Germany and Europe that Vicky, Victoria's eldest daughter, and her husband, the heir to the German throne were unable to master Bismarck. Albert and Victoria is a portrait of a marriage. It also traces Albert to his unhappy family roots in Coburg and shows how important his attitudes, most of them shared by Victoria, were in their joint dynastic enterprise. >

Imperial Germany focuses on the domestic political developments of the period, putting them into context through a balanced guide to the economic and social background, culture and foreign policy. This important study explores the tensions caused within an empire which was formed through war, against the prevailing liberal spirit of the age and poses many questions among them: * Was the desire to unify Germany the cause of the aggressive foreign policy leading to the First World War? * To what extent was Bismarck's Second Reich the forerunner of Hitler's Third? * Did Bismarck's authoritarian rule permanently hinder the political development of Germany? Recent debates raised by German scholarship are made accessible to English speaking readers, and the book summarises the important controversies and competing interpretations of imperial German history.