Swansong 1945 A Collective Diary Of The Last Days Of The Third Reich

Download or read book Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich written by Walter Kempowski and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-04-13 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A monumental work of history that captures the last days of the Third Reich as never before. Swansong 1945 chronicles the end of Nazi Germany through more than 1,000 extracts from letters, diaries, and autobiographical accounts, written by civilians and soldiers alike. Together, they present a panoramic view of four tumultuous days that fateful spring: Hitler’s birthday on April 20, American and Soviet troops meeting at the Elbe on April 25, Hitler’s suicide on April 30, and the German surrender on May 8. An extraordinary account of suffering and survival, Swansong 1945 brings to vivid life the end of World War II in Europe.

Download or read book Swansong 1945 written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book All for Nothing written by Walter Kempowski and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Nazi Germany written by Pamela E. Swett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-07-11 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nazi Germany provides a comprehensive survey of the National Socialist dictatorship, artfully balancing social and cultural history with a political and military history of the regime. The book unravels the complexities of the daily lives of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders in the 'Third Reich', and it also places events in Germany from 1933 to 1945 in a transnational context. Nazi Germany prompts readers to think about not only the historical debates but also the ethical questions that attend the study of this period. Pamela E. Swett and S. Jonathan Wiesen address: *The movement's ideological origins and the party's rise to power *The creation of a police state, the use of propaganda, and public support for Nazi ideas and programs *The Nazis' persecution of religious, racial, and sexual minorities *The place of youth, family, gender, and cultural expression in Nazi society *The transnational influence of Nazism and preparations for war in Germany *The Holocaust, resistance to Nazism, and the Second World War Swett and Wiesen explore how the violence and racism of the Nazis coexisted alongside Germany's self-presentation as a 'normal' state with happy, productive citizens.Through exposure to the voices of contemporaries, readers will be prompted to consider key questions: How did German democracy give way to a brutal dictatorship so quickly? What was daily life like for 'average' Germans and those labeled as biological and political outsiders? Why did the Nazi dictatorship embark on a destructive war that led to the death of tens of millions of Europeans and to the demise of a political order that had become exceedingly popular by 1939?

Download or read book The Last Million written by David Nasaw and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From bestselling author David Nasaw, a sweeping new history of the one million refugees left behind in Germany after WWII In May 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of global military conflict did not cease with the German capitulation. Millions of lost and homeless concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and Nazi collaborators in flight from the Red Army overwhelmed Germany, a nation in ruins. British and American soldiers gathered the malnourished and desperate refugees and attempted to repatriate them. But after exhaustive efforts, there remained more than a million displaced persons left behind in Germany: Jews, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and other Eastern Europeans who refused to go home or had no homes to return to. The Last Million would spend the next three to five years in displaced persons camps, temporary homelands in exile divided by nationality, with their own police forces, churches and synagogues, schools, newspapers, theaters, and infirmaries. The international community could not agree on the fate of the Last Million, and after a year of debate and inaction, the International Refugee Organization was created to resettle them in lands suffering from postwar labor shortages. But no nations were willing to accept the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. In 1948, the United States, among the last countries to accept refugees for resettlement, finally passed a displaced persons bill. With Cold War fears supplanting memories of World War II atrocities, the bill granted the vast majority of visas to those who were reliably anti-Communist, including thousands of former Nazi collaborators and war criminals, while severely limiting the entry of Jews, who were suspected of being Communist sympathizers or agents because they had been recent residents of Soviet-dominated Poland. Only after the controversial partition of Palestine and Israel's declaration of independence were the remaining Jewish survivors able to leave their displaced persons camps in Germany. A masterwork from acclaimed historian David Nasaw, The Last Million tells the gripping yet until now largely hidden story of postwar displacement and statelessness. By 1952, the Last Million were scattered around the world. As they crossed from their broken past into an unknowable future, they carried with them their wounds, their fears, their hope, and their secrets. Here for the first time, Nasaw illuminates their incredible history and, with profound contemporary resonance, shows us that it is our history as well.

Download or read book Writing in Witness written by Eric J. Sundquist and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2018-06-25 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive survey of the most important writing to come out of the Holocaust. Writing in Witness is a broad survey of the most important writing about the Holocaust produced by eyewitnesses at the time and soon after. Whether they intended to spark resistance and undermine Nazi authority, to comfort family and community, to beseech God, or to leave a memorial record for posterity, the writers reflect on the power and limitations of the written word in the face of events often thought to be beyond representation. The diaries, journals, letters, poems, and other works were created across a geography reaching from the Baltics to the Balkans, from the Atlantic coast to the heart of the Soviet Union, and in a wide array of original languages. Along with the readings, Eric J. Sundquist’s introductions provide a comprehensive account of the Holocaust as a historical event. Including works by prominent authors such as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel as well as those little known or anonymous, Writing in Witness provides, in vital and memorable examples, a wide-ranging account of the Holocaust by those who felt the imperative to give written testimony. “Written in every European language, in every conceivable manner, and from every point on the Holocaust compass—prisons, ghettos, transports, concentration and labor camps, killing fields, bunkers, makeshift shelters, camps for displaced persons—these diary entries, letters, testimonies, eyewitness accounts, poems, stories, sermons, and inscriptions demand that they be heard. Written by Jewish men, women, and children; by Christian bystanders; and yes, even by two German perpetrators, they depict the living nightmare as it unfolds. Six nightmare years and their aftermath are rendered in a language that defies the limits of language; an inescapable present that eclipses the past and cries out to an unattainable future. In the beginning was the Holocaust, and this is its story as told by its original responders.” — David G. Roskies, author of Holocaust Literature: A History and Guide “Writing in Witness is a devastatingly and deeply honest work of testimony by those whose worlds were shattered by the catastrophic rupture of the Holocaust. It is also, and primarily, a testament to the strength and courage of those who experienced the atrocities of Nazism and who felt compelled to write about those events in clear, unsparing language. Eric Sundquist, editor of this important collection, provides a sensitive selection of primary texts by men and women who witnessed the machinery and implementation of genocide. In his thoughtful and knowledgeable introduction, Sundquist establishes the framework for the ethical engagement of reader and eyewitness in the calculation of enormous loss. The various genres of witnessing included in this collection—diaries, poems, memoirs, letters, records—evoke in their clarity ancient forms of lamentation and Midrash, giving voice to memory. With judiciously interpretive preliminary material introducing each section, Sundquist lets the witnesses speak for themselves. No course on Holocaust literature or history should be without this anthology.” — Victoria Aarons, editor of Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir and Fiction “This wide-ranging and affecting collection of firsthand accounts of the Holocaust, each expertly chosen and deftly introduced and contextualized, will be ideal for teaching purposes and indispensable to anyone intent on recovering a sense of what the horror felt like. Eric Sundquist has assembled an extraordinarily illuminating and powerful book.” — Peter Hayes, Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor Emeritus, Northwestern University “Writing in Witness is a rich assortment of written accounts of diverse aspects of the experience of the Holocaust that are skillfully chosen and masterfully introduced and contextualized. What emerges from an overarching reading of these collective texts is a sense of how the actors who experienced or witnessed the events of the Holocaust registered them in language and through the sometimes immediate, sometimes reflective process of writing.” — Erin McGlothlin, author of Second-Generation Holocaust Literature: Legacies of Survival and Perpetration

Download or read book The Hitler Years: Disaster, 1940-1945 written by Frank McDonough and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second Volume of a new chronicle of the Third Reich under Hitler's hand, ending with his death and Germany's disastrous defeat. In The Hitler Years: Disaster 1940-1945, Frank McDonough completes his brilliant two-volume history of Germany under Hitler’s Third Reich. At the beginning of 1940, Germany was at the pinnacle of its power. By May 1945, Hitler was dead and Germany had suffered a disastrous defeat. Hitler had failed to achieve his aim of making Germany a super power and had left her people to cope with the endless shame of the Holocaust. Despite Hitler's grand ambitions and the successful early stages of the Third Reich's advances into Europe, Frank McDonough convincingly argues that Germany was only ever a middle-ranking power and never truly stood a chance against the combined forces of the Allies. In this second volume of The Hitler Years, Professor Frank McDonough charts the dramatic change of fortune for the Third Reich and Germany's ultimate defeat.