Showing titles in Germany

On a cold May morning in 1940, Adrian Vincent arrived in France with his battalion. His war didn’t last long. Within five days the Siege of Calais was over, and nearly all his comrades were killed, wounded or, like him, taken prisoner. After a brutal journey across the breadth of Germany, Vincent and his fellow survivors began their life in Stalag VIIIB, set to work in terrible conditions down a Polish mine. For the next five years, they waged a war not against enemy soldiers but instead versus monotony, disease, cruelty, starvation, and hopelessness.

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.

Refugee camps in Africa are swelling. And Europe has closed its borders. The refugees have no future, no hope, and no money to pay the vast sums now demanded by people smugglers. But what they do have is time. And then an angel arrives from reality TV. When German model and star presenter Nadeche Hackenbusch comes to film at the largest of the camps, one young refugee sees a unique opportunity: to organise a march to Europe, in full view of the media.

Was bedeutet es, eine Ost-Identität auferlegt zu bekommen? Eine Identität, die für die rasant wachsende gesellschaftliche Spaltung verantwortlich gemacht wird? Der Attribute wie Populismus, ein mangelndes Demokratieverständnis, Rassismus, Verschwörungsmythen und Armut zugeschrieben werden? Der Leipziger Germanist Dirk Oschmann zeigt in seinem augenöffnenden Text, dass der Westen sich über dreißig Jahre nach Mauerfall als Norm definiert und den Osten als Abweichung. Unsere Medien, Politik, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft werden von westdeutschen Perspektiven dominiert.

Die deutsche Geschichte ist komplex und zersplittert, doch viele Erinnerungen und Werte werden weltweit geteilt. Neil MacGregor wählt hier exemplarische Objekte, Ideen, Menschen und Orte, und nimmt uns mit auf eine akustische Reise durch diese Geschichte. Von Gutenbergs Druckerei, Dresdner Porzellan, Bauhaus-Design über Bratwurst, die Krone Karls des Großen bis zu den Toren von Buchenwald - eine britische Perspektive zeigt uns einen neuen Blick auf Deutschland.

What kind of a man could create the dreaming melodies of the "Moonlight Sonata"? Give birth to the dramatic voice of the "Fifth Symphony"? Compose the "Ode to Joy"? Meet Ludwig van Beethoven, the musical genius, the passionate artist, the incorrigible man, the composer from whose soul music breathed.

"We had to take that island to speed the end of the war against Japan." But the capture of Iwo Jima had come at great cost. Sixty-thousand marines had landed on the barren, volcanic island. For five weeks these men would become involved in some of the bloodiest and fiercest fighting of the Second World War. One third of them would end the battle either dead or wounded. The U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima, written by five official marine combat writers who personally saw action on the island, provides vivid insight into the battle that was described as "a nightmare in hell."

Warum die BRD nicht ohne die DDR zu verstehen ist – und umgekehrt. Ursula Weidenfeld legt eine Geschichte des doppelten Deutschland vor, wie sie so noch nicht geschrieben wurde. Bisher gibt es, zumindest in der westdeutschen Erinnerung, die Bundesrepublik (oder ganz einfach: »Deutschland«) und daneben die DDR, üblicherweise als der »zweite deutsche Staat« bezeichnet. Deren Geschichte wird immer von hinten erzählt, vom Ende her – das ist die übliche Strafe für gescheiterte Staaten.

Prussian leaders, especially Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor and advisor to Prussia’s king, believed Prussia could be a united power, but only without the traditional Austrian dominance. At the time, the Austrian empire was a collection of ethnically diverse peoples and had been dominated by a socio-political conservatism that sought to keep the empire ruled in Hapsburg tradition. 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 would have to be overcome.

East Germany: The History and Legacy of the Soviet Satellite State Established after World War II examines the controversial country and its place in the Cold War. The history of East Germany was a remarkable one, from its chaotic origins through its ossification as a Stalinist regime, until the country collapsed with the Berlin Wall. Not only is Germany still marked by the division, but the old frontier still represents different expectations, social conditions, and worldviews.

After the WWII, Germans began a generation-long debate about the status that should be accorded Wehrmacht deserters. The topic would be debated between the two Germanies and engaged survivors and perpetrators, playwrights, and judges, those who had stayed in the ranks and those who had not. Was the Wehrmacht a coward, a victim, or a role model? The book's discussion of this postwar debate explains how and why Germany finally decided to overturn military court-martial verdicts from the Second World War fifty years after its conclusion.

"A most valuable book." —Christian Science Monitor For readers of The Monuments Men and The Hare with Amber Eyes, the story of the Nazis' systematic pillaging of Europe's libraries, and the small team of heroic librarians now working to return the stolen books to their rightful owners. While...

'Sometimes I get fanciful and think the buildings speak. That all their history is locked into the walls and if you listened closely enough, you could hear all the people who'd once been there.' Sigi lived upstairs from Sara at Friedrichstrasse 19 yet before they met, Sara had no idea that...

If you want to discover the captivating history of the Holy Roman Empire, then pay attention... Two captivating manuscripts in one audiobook: The Holy Roman Empire and The Carolingian Empire. Throughout the story of the Holy Roman Empire, a wealth of fascinating tales from interesting people proliferates. Monks and emperors will clash, poets sing the praises of kings, and the pope rides blind and bareback on a frightened donkey through the streets of Rome.

What role did German big business play in the persecution of European Jews during the Holocaust? What were its motivations? And how did it respond to changing social and economic circumstances after the war? Profits and Persecution examines how the leaders of Germany's largest industrial and...

Berlin, November 1937. Adolf Hitler meets with his military commanders to impress upon them the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in Eastern Europe. Some generals are unnerved by the Führer’s grandiose plan, but these dissenters are silenced one by one, setting in motion events that will culminate in the most calamitous war in history. 

Despite the best efforts of a number of historians, many aspects of the ferocious struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War remain obscure or shrouded in myth. One of the most persistent of these is the notion - largely created by many former members of its own officer corps in the immediate postwar period - that the German Army was a paragon of military professionalism and operational proficiency whose defeat on the Eastern Front was solely attributable to the amateurish meddling of a crazed former Corporal.

When the ashes had settled after World War II and the Allies convened an international war crimes trial in Nuremberg, a psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, and a psychologist, Gustave Gilbert, tried to fathom the psychology of the Nazi leaders using extensive psychiatric interviews, IQ tests, and Rorschach inkblot tests. Never before or since has there been such a detailed study of governmental leaders who orchestrated mass killings.

The Dodecanese Campaign was a British attempt to seize islands in the Aegean during the fall and winter of 1943. The campaign brought Anglo-American relations to their lowest point during the war. The Dodecanese Campaign was the tragic outcome of the fundamental differences of opinion and approach between allies who otherwise worked closely and in harmony, and though nobody knew it at the time, it marked one of the last major victories for German forces who had been forced to retreat in every other theater of operations.

In 1949, the year of the Berlin airlift and the founding of the two post-war German states, Elisabeth Kusian (nurse, black marketeer, morphine and methamphetamine addict, and pathological liar) garroted and dismembered two people in a mini crime spree. Her actions both fascinated and terrified...