A critical biography of Belgium's highest-ranking Nazi collaborator, Léon Degrelle, who fought with the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front during the Second World War and served as inspiration for the protagonist of Jonathan Littell's bestselling, Prix Goncourt-winning novel The Kindly Ones ([Gallimard 2006] HarperCollins 2009). Originally published in French as Le sec et l'humide: Une brève incursion en territoire fasciste (Gallimard 2008) and translated into Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Catalan, and now English, The Damp and the Dry is a critical case study of a fascist true believer who was supported by both Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War and later sheltered by Franco in Spain. Littell pays close attention to Degrelle's autobiographical writings, especially his account of fighting on the Eastern Front, The Russian Campaign, and uncovers an "anatomy of fascist discourse," developing on the theories of German sociologist Klaus Theweleit, whose Afterword follows the text.

1833. Spain is gripped by a Civil War that will change everything. On one side the Carlists sought to return to an absolute monarchy under Carlos de Borbón, on the other the Liberals were fighting to defend constitutional monarchy under Isabella II. Both branches of the family abounded in colourful characters - the shrewd Maria Cristina, the masculine Infanta Carlota, the effete King Francisco, the suave Duke de Montpensier, the showy Carlos VII, and the licentious Alfonso XII. The drama unfolded across the world - in the court in the Palacio Real in Madrid, Don Juan dying incognito in a house in Brighton, Isabel living out her voluptuous days in Paris, Carlos VII scheming in his palazzo on the Grand Canal, the future Alfonso XII at Sandhurst, the Infanta Eulalia in Chicago, the son of Alfonso XIII dying in a car accident in the U.S.A. Royal Vendetta is a story of wars, revolutions, exiles and restorations; a parade of kings, queens, regents and pretenders. Theo Aronson is the author of over twenty works of royal historical biography, published in eleven languages. Among the widely read are Grandmama of Europe, The King in Love, Napoleon and Josephine and a biography of Princess Margaret.

Of all royal lost causes, none has a stronger fascination than that of the Stuart Pretenders to the British throne. For well over a century, four successive Stuart kings laid claim to the crown. The first was James II, deposed in 1688 by his daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange; then came James III the Old Pretender and his son, Bonnie Prince Charlie; finally, there was Henry IX who died in 1807, the last descendant in direct and legitimate line from James II. This book tells the story of these four men, and of their families. It is an account of their public and private lives, their personalities, their relationships with others, and the extraordinary hold which they never ceased to exercise over their adherents. It is a book about people and the twilight of one of the world's most romantic, colourful and ill-fated dynasties. Theo Aronson is the author of over twenty works of royal historical biography, published in eleven languages. Among the widely read are Grandmama of Europe, The King in Love, Napoleon and Josephine and a biography of Princess Margaret.

FREDERICK THE SECOND is the story of the remarkable man whose power and sphere of influence straddled the worlds of Christendom and of Islam. The last of the Hohenstaufens, HolyRoman Emperor and King of Sicily and Jerusalem, Frederick II was an energetic and versatile ruler, a man of great ambition in whose lifetime the conflict between Emperor and Pope reached a newintensity. Excommunicated three times by the Church, he was an absolute monarch whose power, defended in almost continuous struggle, extended over much of Germany and Italy as well as the Holy Land. Frederick was a complex man of cultured tastes and licentious manners who had unusually wide intellectual interests. At his Sicilian court scholars of all religions were welcomed--Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan. He founded the University of Naples in 1224 and was a patron of the arts and sciences. The life of this dynamic man is fully explored in Ernst Kantorowicz's notable biography, filled with dramatic incident and absorbing detail, and written with style and scholarship.

Monarchy and Matrimony is the first comprehensive study of Elizabeth I's courtships. Susan Doran argues that the cult of the `Virgin Queen' was invented by her ministers, and that Elizabeth was forced into celibacy by political necessity. Doran's detailed examination of the different suits is based on extensive archival research across Europe. Rather than focusing on Elizabeth's personality and image, she views the question within a wider political and religious context. She shows how the question of Elizabeth's marriage was divisive for England, affecting both political life and international relations, and provoking popular propaganda in the form of plays, poetry and paintings.

Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) was, during his lifetime, one of Europe's most famous men. A friend of Pope Urban VIII and Galileo, of Peter-Paul Rubens and Hugo Grotius, of Tommaso Campanella and Marin Mersenne, Peiresc played an important role in the intellectual culture of his time. This book is the first study in English of this extraordinary man, as well as a vivid portrait of his whole circle. Looking through the lens of Peiresc's life, Peter N. Miller brings into focus the early-seventeenth-century world of learning--its people, places, and ideas. Drawing on the extensive Peiresc archive (more than 50,000 pieces of paper), Miller brilliantly evokes the lives of antiquaries, philosophers, theologians, and politicians of Peiresc's day, only some of whom remain known today. He explores the age in which Peiresc's toleration and sociability, his political action and cosmopolitanism, and his serious scholarship without dogmatism were identified as a set of virtues and practices by which to live. Peiresc's notion of scholarship as a moral exercise, the sweep of his interests, and the cross-Continental reach of his intellectual life show with new clarity what it meant to be a man of learning during the decades around 1600.

"German, Jew, Muslim, Gay offers an astonishing perspective on the history of modern Germany through the vantage point of a man with multiple identities who devoted his life to religious utopias, fought for homosexual rights, wrote gay fiction, converted from Judaism to Islam (one of the few of any faith to do so), and considered himself part of a spiritual elite that held the key to Germany's salvation. Born in Posen in 1880, the son of a Jewish industrialist, Hugo Marcus converted to Islam and chose the name Hamid; he became the most important convert in Germany while retaining his membership in the Jewish community. He was renamed Israel by the Nazis and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1938, where he was in the unique position of Muslim witness to the Holocaust. The imam of his mosque gained his release and he escaped to Switzerland, where he wrote gay fiction under the pen name Hans Alienus. He died in Basel in 1966. The book challenges deeply ingrained perceptions of Muslim-Jewish relations during World War II and illuminates their interconnected histories in modern Europe. It also tells the unknown story of Marcus' orientalized Islam that, in echoing Goethe's, revitalized an essential strand of Germany's spiritual heritage"--

The painter son of the great surrealist Max Ernst describes his childhood amid the European avant-garde art world on the eve of World War II and his escape and new life in America

In Journey Through a Small Planet (1972), the writer Emanuel Litvinoff recalls his working-class Jewish childhood in the East End of London: a small cluster of streets right next to the city, but worlds apart in culture and spirit. With vivid intensity Litvinoff describes the overcrowded tenements of Brick Lane and Whitechapel, the smell of pickled herring and onion bread, the rattle of sewing machines and chatter in Yiddish. He also relates stories of his parents, who fled from Russia in 1914, his experiences at school and a brief flirtation with Communism. Unsentimental, vital and almost dream like, this is a masterly evocation of a long-vanished world.

"Sidney Reilly (c. 1873-1925) is one of the most colorful and best-known spies of the twentieth century. Emerging from humble beginnings in southern Russia, Reilly was an inventive multilingual businessman and conman who enjoyed espionage as a sideline. By the early twentieth century he was working as an agent for Scotland Yard, spying on émigré communities in Paris and London, with occasional sorties to Germany, Russia, and the Far East. He spent World War I in the United States, brokering major arms deals for tsarist Russia, and then decided to become a professional spy, joining the ranks of MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service. He came close to overthrowing the Bolshevik regime in Moscow before eventually being lured back to Russia and executed. Said to have been the inspiration for Ian Fleming's iconic James Bond character, Reilly was simultaneously married to three or four women and had mistresses galore. Sifting through the reality and the myth of Reilly's life, historian Benny Morris offers a fascinating portrait of one of the most intriguing figures from the golden age of spies"--Amazon.com.

Personal narratives of a British officer on the Western front during World War I.

The German Opposition to Hitler: An Appraisal by Hans Rothfels is a comprehensive analysis of the various groups and individuals who opposed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime during the Third Reich. The book explores the motivations, strategies, and actions of these opposition forces, including the conservative and liberal elites, the socialist and communist parties, and the military resistance. Rothfels also examines the challenges and limitations faced by these groups, such as the lack of unity, the fear of repression, and the difficulty of coordinating their efforts. The book provides a nuanced and critical assessment of the German resistance, highlighting both their achievements and their failures in the face of Nazi tyranny. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the history of World War II, the Holocaust, and the struggle against fascism.The Humanist Library.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Berlin! Berlin! is a satirical selection from the "man with the acid pen and the perfect pitch for hypocrisy," as New York author and Tucholsky-expert Peter Wortsman writes. This book os a complete collection of Tucholsky's news stories, features, satirical pieces, and poems about his hometown Berlin. It depicts Weimar Berlin, its cabarets, its policies, its follies, its ticks, and its celebrities, such as Pola Negri, Gussy Holl, Bert Brecht, Max Reinhardt, or Heinrich Zille. The book contains some of Tucholsky's most famous pieces, among them Berlin! Berlin!, a feature of the stereotypical Berliner on the phone, on vacation or doing "bizness", more than one satirical biography of the author himself, and some of his most famed stories such as where the holes in the cheese come from, or about the lion who escaped the Berlin zoo. Herr Wendriner, the chatty Berlin businessman makes an appearance, as well as Lottchen, the flapper, modelled after one of Tucholsky's real-life gilrfriends. Also Tucholsky's long-term friends Karlchen and Jakopp are part of this book. In Weimar Germany, Tucholsky was big, the most brilliant, prolific and witty cultural journalist of his time. He poured scorn on the reactionary institutions of the old regime, the follies of the Weimar Republic, and the peculiarities of the German character. - William Grimes, The New York Times Imagine a writer with the acid voice of Christopher Hitchens and the satirical whimsy of Jon Stewart. That's Tucholsky in a nutshell. - Anne Nelson, author of "The Red Orchestra" and "The Guys" Kurt Tucholsky was one of the most brilliant German-Jewish writers of his time. Today's Berliners adore him as one of their greatest sons. The world has yet to discover his genius. -Peter Schneider, author of "The Wall Jumper" and "Eduard's Homecoming" A selection from the man with the acid pen and the perfect pitch for hypocrisy, who was as much the voice of 1920s Berlin as Georg Grosz was its face. - Peter Wortsman, author of "Ghost Dance in Berlin" . . . a small, fat Berliner, who wanted to stop a catastrophe with his typewriter. -Erich Kästner, author of "Emil and the Detectives"

Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much controversy as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky’s extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on revolutionary conscience; and yet there was at one time a danger that his name would disappear altogether from history. Isaac Deutscher’s magisterial three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine, and in this definitive work Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian revolution. This first volume of the trilogy, originally published in 1954, traces Trotsky’s political development: his early activities, the formation and crystallization of his distinctive and motivating idea—the permanent revolution— his long feud and final reconciliation with Lenin and Bolshevism, and his role in the October insurrection of 1917. The volume ends in the year 1921, when Trotsky, then at the climax of his power, unwittingly sowed the seeds of his own defeat.

"This book brings together Vilém Flusser and intellectual Jewish history of the second half of the twentieth century. Flusser is viewed today by many scholars as the most original theoretician of media and photography in the second half of the twentieth century, and yet this is the first monograph about him in English. Combining elements of Flusser's biography with a rigorous study of his writing, this book shows that concepts of 'virtuality', 'medium', and 'embodiment' underpin not only Flusser's understanding of technological media, such as photography, but also his understanding of evolution and of real or imaginary biological organisms. This book argues that Flusser contended with Nazism in his writings on these biological and ecological themes. Two threads - and their relationship - are explored: the first bears on Nazism as undergirded by a biological perspective - an attempt to eradicate a population taken to be parasitic; in the second, Nazism is simply viewed as 'stupid'. Such a line of inquiry necessarily leads to and includes our dealing with the 'Nazi fantasy', because fantasy was fused into Nazism's own vision. This book will not only be an ideal resource for students and scholars of intellectual Jewish history but will interest anyone seeking an introduction to Flusser and the philosophy of science within the context of Nazism"--

An account of the struggle for survival faced by Miklos Hammer from his conscription in 1944 into a Hungarian Jewish forced labour camp, through his time in a ghetto to his eventual transportation to Birkenau, providing insight into the horrors of the camps. First published in 1995.

"I have been a Jew during Fascism, a bourgeois under Communism, a rebel defeated in an uprising, a refugee among the free, and a have-not amid plenty. This book contains over 60 stories that range from my youth in Hungary, the ordeal of a death march and concentration camps, the oppression of the Communist dictatorship, the promise and defeat of the Hungarian Revolution and, finally, my American years"--Preminary pages

""What Hitler Wants"" is a political analysis written by Leon Trotsky in 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. The book explores the motivations, goals, and strategies of the Nazi regime, particularly in regards to its expansionist ambitions and its hostility towards the Soviet Union. Trotsky argues that Hitler's regime is driven by a desire for territorial conquest and domination, fueled by a toxic blend of racism, nationalism, and anti-communism. He also critiques the policies of the Western powers, particularly their appeasement of Hitler and their failure to recognize the threat posed by fascism. The book is a powerful warning against the dangers of fascism and the need for international solidarity in the face of authoritarianism.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

""The Curtain Falls: Last Days Of The Third Reich"" is a historical account of the final days of Nazi Germany, written by Swedish diplomat and humanitarian, Folke Bernadotte. The book provides a detailed and personal perspective of the events leading up to the fall of Hitler's regime, including the military campaigns, political negotiations, and the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. Bernadotte's firsthand experiences as a mediator between the Allies and Nazi officials, as well as his interactions with key figures such as Himmler and Goebbels, offer unique insight into the inner workings of the Nazi government during its final days. The book also delves into the aftermath of the war and the Nuremberg Trials, providing a comprehensive look at the end of one of the darkest periods in human history. Overall, ""The Curtain Falls"" is a compelling and informative read for anyone interested in the history of World War II and the downfall of the Third Reich.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.