9 results for "History"

The Nazis next door

Lichtblau, Eric
Read the history behind the series THE HUNTERS (starring Al Pacino) in this "captivating book rooted in first-rate research" (New York Times Book Review) that tells the true story of how America became home to thousands of Nazi war criminals. For the first time, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story of the thousands of Nazis--from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich--who came to the United States after World War II and quietly settled into new lives. Many gained entry on their own as self-styled war "refugees." But some had help from the U.S. government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler's minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. Now, relying on a trove of newly disclosed documents and scores of interviews, Eric Lichtblau reveals this shocking, shameful, and little-known chapter of postwar history. New York Times bestseller -- Espionage category "Disturbing." -- Salon "Engaging." -- Chicago Tribune "A gripping chronicle." -- Times of Israel "Riveting . . . An important, fascinating read." -- Jewish Book Council
Mariner Books 2015-09-19 304 pages

Who's who in Nazi Germany

Wistrich, Robert S.
Who's Who in Nazi Germany looks at the individuals who influenced every aspect of life in Nazi Germany. It covers a representative cross-section of German society from 1933-1945, and includes: * Nazi Party leaders; SS, Wehrmacht and Gestapo personalities; civil service and diplomatic personnel * industrialists, churchmen, intellectuals, artists, entertainers and sports personalities * Resistance leaders, political dissidents, critics and victims of the regime * extensive biographical information on each figure extending into the post-war period * analysis of their role and significance in Nazi Germany * an accessible, easy to use A-Z layout * a glossary and comprehensive bibliography.
Routledge 1995 296 pages

Champion: a German boxer, a Jewish assassin and Hitler's revenge

Deutsch, Stephen
In the cauldron of Germany in the 1930s, two men from different worlds become key actors in the turbulent history of their time. Herschel Grynszpan, an undocumented Jewish adolescent living in Paris, wants to be a champion of his suffering people. Max Schmeling, a world champion boxer, becomes a reluctant symbol of the Third Reich. Their lives intertwine without touching, eventually converging in the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. Dark haired, slight, and with deep-set, haunted eyes, Herschel receives a postcard from his parents--recently taken from their Hanover flat, put on a train, and dumped, with 12 thousand others, on the Polish border. Enraged, Herschel buys a gun and kills a minor German official in the German Embassy. The repercussions of this act trigger Kristallnacht, the opening curtain to the tragedy of the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Max, as a result of his victory over the then-"invincible" Joe Louis in 1936, has become a poster boy for the Nazis. He and his movie-star wife, Anny Ondra, are feted by the regime--tea with Hitler, a passage on the airship Hindenburg--until his brutal two-minute beating in the rematch with Louis less than two years later. His story reaches a climax during Kristalnacht, where the champion performs an act of quiet heroism. Champion tells a story of tragedy and humanity as World War II unfolds. Set against a backdrop of racism, war, and displacement, it shines a light on those times as it holds a mirror to our own.
Universe 2020-07 367 pages

Hitler's bureaucrats: the Nazi Security Police and the banality of evil

Lozowick, Yaacov
For many, the name of Adolf Eichmann is synonymous with the Nazi murder of six million Jews. As a perpetuator of the Final Solution he stands alongside Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler as one of history's most notorious murderers, yet ever since Hannah Arendt's seminal book, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil", there has been disagreement about the essence of Eichmann and by extension, about the definition of evil action. Was he a human monster or a petty bureaucrat? To what degree did the totalitarian organization to which he belonged absolve him and his staff from individual choice and responsibility for atrocities? This title looks at the words and actions of Eichmann and the bureaucrats he worked with in Berlin and throughout the more significant Gestapo offices in Western Europe. It claims that Hannah Arendt's thesis about the banality of evil was wrong. In chilling detail, it presents a group of people completely aware of what they were doing, people with high ideological motivation, people of initiative and dexterity who contributed far beyond what was necessary. While most of these bureaucrats sat behind desks rather than behind machine guns, there was nothing banal about the role they played in the destruction of European Jewry>
Continuum 2003-06-01 297 pages

Joseph Goebbels: a biography

Riess, Curt
Coming generations will ask themselves how it was possible that millions of people, victims of an artificially induced enthusiasm, could be moved to do the very things which led to their own ruin. The answer could be given in hundreds of thousands of words, but, if it were expressed in one word alone, that word would be: Goebbels. Curt Riess, a Jewish Berliner who fled Germany upon Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933, considered Goebbels to be 'the most outstanding man of the Nazi regime, not even barring Hitler himself.' Without Goebbels' genius for organization and propaganda, Nazism could never have amassed the support it needed to gain and keep power in Germany. From provincial obscurity, Goebbels scurried through the Nazi ranks to become one of the most dominant and trusted members of Hitler's inner circle. His career was marked by formidable powers of administration, his ruthless hatred of the Jews, his resourcefulness in promoting Nazi ideals, and his inflexible devotion to the Führer, asserted in his final morbid gesture of propaganda: the sacrifice of his wife, six children, and himself in Hitler's bunker in 1945. Riess' biography was first published in 1949 and benefitted greatly from the discovery of Goebbels' diaries in 1946. It explores the many fascinating and pertinent aspects of Goebbels' character: the insecurities brought on by his diminutive stature; his rejection by his family; his consuming jealousy of his rivals; and his obsession with sex. It remains a compelling and authoritative biography of the man whose manipulative genius steered the German nation to ruin.
Fonthill 2013 368 pages

Prologue to annihilation: ordinary American and British Jews challenge the Third Reich

Norwood, Stephen H.
"American and British appeasement of Nazism during the early years of the Third Reich went far beyond territorial concessions. In Prologue to Annihilation: Ordinary American and British Jews Challenge the Third Reich, Stephen H. Norwood examines the numerous of ways that the two nations' official position of tacit acceptance of Jewish persecution enabled the policies that ultimately led to the Final Solution and how Nazi annihilationist intentions were clearly discernible even during the earliest years of Hitler's rule. Further, Norwood looks at the nature and impact of American and British Jewish resistance to Nazi persecution and the efforts of Jews at the grassroots level to press Jewish organizations to respond more forcefully to the Nazi menace. He examines the worldwide protest and boycott movements against Germany and German goods as well as mass demonstrations by working-class and lower-middle-class Jews in many American and British cities. Prologue to Annihilation details how the events of 1930-1936 tested American and British societies' willingness to accept Nazism and its anti-Jewish philosophy and illuminates the divisions that existed even within the Jewish community about how best to challenge Nazi antisemitic policies and atrocities"--
Indiana University Press 2021 347 pages

Justice behind the Iron Curtain: Nazis on trial in communist Poland

Finder, Gabriel N.,Prusin, Alexander Victor
"In Justice behind the Iron Curtain, Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin examine Poland's role in prosecuting Nazi German criminals during the first decade and a half of the postwar era. Finder and Prusin contend that the Polish trials of Nazi war criminals were a pragmatic political response to postwar Polish society and Poles' cravings for vengeance against German Nazis. Although characterized by numerous inconsistencies, Poland's prosecutions of Nazis exhibited a fair degree of due process and resembled similar proceedings in Western democratic counties. The authors examine reactions to the trials among Poles and Jews. Although Polish-Jewish relations were uneasy in the wake of the extremely brutal German wartime occupation of Poland, postwar Polish prosecutions of German Nazis placed emphasis on the fate of Jews during the Holocaust. Justice behind the Iron Curtain is the first work to approach communist Poland's judicial postwar confrontation with the legacy of the Nazi occupation"--Publisher's description
University of Toronto Press 2018 377 pages