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Author: Max Egremont Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 1429969334 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
Until the end of World War II, East Prussia was the German empire's farthest eastern redoubt, a thriving and beautiful land on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. Now it lives only in history and in myth. Since 1945, the territory has been divided between Poland and Russia, stretching from the border between Russia and Lithuania in the east and south, and through Poland in the west. In Forgotten Land, Max Egremont offers a vivid account of this region and its people through the stories of individuals who were intimately involved in and transformed by its tumultuous history, as well as accounts of his own travels and interviews he conducted along the way. Forgotten Land is a story of historical identity and character, told through intimate portraits of people and places. It is a unique examination of the layers of history, of the changing perceptions and myths of homeland, of virtue and of wickedness, and of how a place can still overwhelm those who left it years before.
Author: Ilse Stritzke Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 0786473541 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 201
Book Description
The mother of 11 year old Ilse Glaus turned down the last plane out of East Prussia ahead of the advancing Russians in order to stay back with her aged parents. That decision cost her family dearly in wartorn Europe, 1945. Ilse grew up on a small farm, with a wonderful family, the woods as a playground and the beaches of the Baltic. Then turmoil followed the German defeat by the Russians and the subsequent occupation. In 31 months under the Russians, Ilse's family is driven from their home, she mourns her missing father, witnesses her mother's rape, sees her grandparents and baby brother succumb to the brutal conditions, and hears of her oldest sister's capture and death in a work prison. Fighting starvation, Ilse crafts ways to coexist with the Russians, scavenging, begging and stealing to help the family survive.
Author: Walter Kempowski Publisher: New York Review of Books ISBN: 1681372061 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
A wealthy family tries--and fails--to seal themselves off from the chaos of post-World War II life surrounding them in this stunning novel by one of Germany's most important post-war writers. In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat and the Red Army is approaching. The von Globig family's manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer in the German army, went to war, leaving behind his beautiful but vague wife, Katharina, and her bookish twelve-year-old son, Peter. As the road fills with Germans fleeing the occupied territories, the Georgenhof begins to receive strange visitors--a Nazi violinist, a dissident painter, a Baltic baron, even a Jewish refugee. Yet in the main, life continues as banal, wondrous, and complicit as ever for the family, until their caution, their hedged bets, and their denial are answered by the wholly expected events they haven't allowed themselves to imagine. All for Nothing, published in 2006, was the last novel by Walter Kempowski, one of postwar Germany's most acclaimed and popular writers.
Author: Christel Weiss Brandenburg Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476606862 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
Decades have passed since World War II, yet the myth that all Germans were Nazi sympathizers still persists. This book follows the story of the Weiss family in East Prussia from World War I to the end of World War II. It is told from the point of view not of the victors but of the vanquished. Beginning with the good citizenship trap Hitler set for law-abiding German families, the book describes how Germany first prospered and then fell to ruin with the Third Reich. The people traded their freedoms for a national security, which quickly turned to tyranny with swift consequences for "disobedience." Like Christel's brothers (soldiers and members of Hitler's Youth), propaganda-fed children all over the Reich believed the highly idealized depiction of their roles and of their nation's victims. This fascinating and richly detailed memoir is told through the intimate narration of a woman who grew up in the midst of turmoil, experienced poverty and prejudice, witnessed the deaths of many loved ones, and was driven from her home by the Soviet Army. The combination of domestic details and vivid historical descriptions creates an unusual book as absorbing as it is educational.
Author: Prit Buttar Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1780964641 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 510
Book Description
An engrossing history of the last year of the Second World War, charting the battles fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazis across German soil. The terrible months between the arrival of the Red Army on German soil and the final collapse of Hitler's regime were like no other in the Second World War. The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished. From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this book recounts in chilling detail the desperate struggle of soldiers and civilians alike. These brutal campaigns are brought vividly to life by a combination of previously untold testimony and astute strategic analysis recognising a conflict of unprecedented horror and suffering.
Author: Bastiaan Willems Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108479723 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 367
Book Description
Explores how the Wehrmacht's defensive conduct contributed to the radicalisation of behavioural patterns in Germany during the war's final months.
Author: Cathryn J. Prince Publisher: Macmillan + ORM ISBN: 1137333561 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 299
Book Description
The worst maritime disaster ever occurred during World War II, when more than 9,000 German civilians drowned. It went unreported. January 1945: The outcome of World War II has been determined. The Third Reich is in free fall as the Russians close in from the east. Berlin plans an eleventh-hour exodus for the German civilians trapped in the Red Army's way. More than 10,000 women, children, sick, and elderly pack aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a former cruise ship. Soon after the ship leaves port and the passengers sigh in relief, three Soviet torpedoes strike it, inflicting catastrophic damage and throwing passengers into the frozen waters of the Baltic. More than 9,400 perished in the night—six times the number lost on the Titanic. Yet as the Cold War started no one wanted to acknowledge the sinking. Drawing on interviews with survivors, as well as the letters and diaries of those who perished, award-wining author Cathryn J. Prince reconstructs this forgotten moment in history with Death in the Baltic. She weaves these personal narratives into a broader story, finally giving this WWII tragedy its rightful remembrance.
Author: Sebastian Haffner Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 122
Book Description
Sebastian Haffner regarded himself as “a Prussian with a British passport.” In this overview of Prussia’s 170-year history as an independent state, he depicts Prussia’s evolution from a sensational 18th century success story – “a state based on law, one of the first in Europe” – to its absorption into the Third Reich where “the rule of law was the first thing that Hitler abolished.” In this succinct and readable book, Haffner argues that Hitler’s racial and nationality policy was the opposite of Prussia’s and Hitler’s political style, the very opposite of Prussian. “In his short book The Rise and Fall of Prussia Haffner combines a critical examination with a declaration of love for a state which always lived beyond its means ... but which managed to combine material poverty with intellectual grandeur.” — Michael Stürmer,Welt am Sonntag “Haffner sees Prussia’s history as the 'tragedy of a purely rational state'. An agglomeration of arbitrary territories, it made a virtue of its artificiality, adapting to the enlightenment and then to romanticism, but finally also to nationalism, betraying the basis of its statehood and leading to its ultimate destruction.” — Chrisian Roth,Akademische Blätter “Haffner long regarded himself as a 'Prussian with a British passport'. He identified with Prussia and its achievements: general compulsory schooling (1717), the abolition of torture (1740), the establishment of religious toleration (1740), Bismarck’s welfare state (1883), the medical giants Virchow, Koch, von Behring, the intellectual giants Kant, von Humboldt and von Schlegel, and much more. At the end of his book he recounted the (often-ignored) expulsion of millions of Prussians from their homeland in 1945. 'It was an atrocity, the final atrocity of a war which had more than its share in atrocities, admittedly begun by Germany under Hitler.' His message is very relevant today, when he praises those expelled for rejecting revenge and having the courage to say, 'This is enough.'” — David Childs, The Independent
Author: Robert M. Citino Publisher: University Press of Kansas ISBN: 0700617914 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 448
Book Description
For Hitler and the German military, 1942 was a key turning point of World War II, as an overstretched but still lethal Wehrmacht replaced brilliant victories and huge territorial gains with stalemates and strategic retreats. In this major reevaluation of that crucial year, Robert Citino shows that the German army's emerging woes were rooted as much in its addiction to the "war of movement"-attempts to smash the enemy in "short and lively" campaigns-as they were in Hitler's deeply flawed management of the war. From the overwhelming operational victories at Kerch and Kharkov in May to the catastrophic defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Death of the Wehrmacht offers an eye-opening new view of that decisive year. Building upon his widely respected critique in The German Way of War, Citino shows how the campaigns of 1942 fit within the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions. He examines every major campaign and battle in the Russian and North African theaters throughout the year to assess how a military geared to quick and decisive victories coped when the tide turned against it. Citino also reconstructs the German generals' view of the war and illuminates the multiple contingencies that might have produced more favorable results. In addition, he cites the fatal extreme aggressiveness of German commanders like Erwin Rommel and assesses how the German system of command and its commitment to the "independence of subordinate commanders" suffered under the thumb of Hitler and chief of staff General Franz Halder. More than the turning point of a war, 1942 marked the death of a very old and traditional pattern of warmaking, with the classic "German way of war" unable to meet the challenges of the twentieth century. Blending masterly research with a gripping narrative, Citino's remarkable work provides a fresh and revealing look at how one of history's most powerful armies began to founder in its quest for world domination.
Author: Peter B. Clark
Author: Peter B. Clark
Author: Max Egremont
Author: Ilse Stritzke
Author: Walter Kempowski
Author: Christel Weiss Brandenburg
Author: Prit Buttar
Author: Bastiaan Willems
Author: Cathryn J. Prince
Author: Sebastian Haffner
Author: Robert M. Citino