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In the autumn of 1938, Europe believed in the promise of peace. But only a year later, the fateful decisions of just a few men had again led Europe to a massive world war. Drawing on contemporary diaries, memoirs, and newspapers, as well as recorded interviews, 1939 is a narrative account of what the coming of the Second World War felt like to those who lived through it.

In Goering, Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel use firsthand testimonies and a variety of historical documents to tell the story of a monster lurking in Hitler's shadows. After rising through the ranks of the German army, Hermann Goering became Hitler's right hand man and was hand-picked to head the Luftwaffe, one of history's most feared fighting forces. As he rose in power, though, Goering became disillusioned and was eventually shunned from Hitler's inner circle.

Despite all the accomplishments and widespread victories and conquests throughout the long history of Republican and Imperial Rome, general perception still deems the Romans to have failed in one crucial conquest: the subjugation of Germany. Indeed, historians have singled out this one failure as central to the ultimate downfall of the entire empire, as the constant wars against the Germanic tribes and the need to defend the frontier on the Rhine at great expense against those tribes, helped bring the empire to its knees.

Growing up in Paris, the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, Svenja O'Donnell knew little of her family's German past. In this transporting and illuminating audiobook, the award-winning journalist vividly reconstructs the story of her grandmother Inge's life from the rise of the Nazis through the brutal postwar years, from falling in love with a man who was sent to the Eastern Front just after she became pregnant with his child, to spearheading her family's flight as the Red Army closed in, her young daughter in tow.

Harald Jähners große Mentalitätsgeschichte der Nachkriegszeit zeigt die Deutschen in ihrer ganzen Vielfalt: etwa den "Umerzieher" Alfred Döblin, der das Vertrauen seiner Landsleute zu gewinnen suchte, oder Beate Uhse, die mit ihrem "Versandgeschäft für Ehehygiene" alle Vorstellungen von Sittlichkeit infrage stellte; aber auch die namenlosen Schwarzmarkthändler oder die stilsicheren Hausfrauen am Nierentisch der anbrechenden Fünfziger. Das gesellschaftliche Panorama eines Jahrzehnts, das entscheidend war für die Deutschen und in vielem ganz anders, als wir oft glauben.

General Erhard Raus was one of the German Army's finest panzer generals and a leading exponent of blitzkrieg in the east. German panzers were witnesses to the incredible onslaught that was the first few months of Barbarossa, then the gradual strengthening of Russian resistance, counterattack and, ultimately, the long and drawn-out German retreat. Raus and his panzers were tested in every conceivable tactical situation and, inevitably, Raus became highly versed in all aspects of mobilized warfare.

Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions.

Die letzte Woche des Dritten Reiches hat begonnen. Hitler ist tot, aber der Krieg noch nicht zu Ende. Alles scheint zum Stillstand zu kommen, und doch ist alles in atemloser Bewegung. Volker Ullrich schildert Tag für Tag diese "zeitlose Zeit" und entführt den Leser in eine zusammenbrechende Welt voller Dramatik und Hoffnung, Gewalt und Angst. Sein Buch ist eine unvergessliche Zeitreise in den Untergang.

By the end of April 1945 in Germany, the Third Reich had fallen and invasion was underway. As the Red Army advanced, horrifying stories spread about the depravity of its soldiers. For many German people, there seemed to be nothing left but disgrace and despair. For tens of thousands of them, the only option was to choose death - for themselves and for their children.

Amid the ravages of economic depression, Germans in the early 1930s were pulled to political extremes both left and right. Then, in the spring of 1933, Germany turned itself inside out, from a deeply divided republic into a one-party dictatorship. In Hitler's First Hundred Days, award-winning historian Peter Fritzsche offers a probing account of the pivotal moments when the majority of Germans seemed, all at once, to join the Nazis to construct the Third Reich.

Schonungslos und selbstkritisch erzählt der Schriftsteller Erich Loest aus seinem Leben. 1926 im sächsischen Mittweida geboren, kam Loest über die Hitlerjugend zur NSDAP und nahm als junger Soldat, als sogenannter "Werwolf", am Zweiten Weltkrieg teil. 1947 trat er begeistert in die SED ein, wurde aber zehn Jahre später wegen angeblicher "konterrevolutionärer Gruppenbildung" zu siebeneinhalb Jahren Haft verurteilt. Mit seiner Entlassung endet diese Autobiografie. Gelesen von Kurt Böwe ist "Durch die Erde ein Riss" eine beeindruckende literarische Chronik deutscher Zeitgeschichte.

År 1946 stod 21 tyska ledare inför rätta framför en internationell tribunal i Nürnberg. Richard Overy ser på hur dessa rättegångar formade den internationella attityden mot nationers brott på 1900-talet, och undersöker om de principer som upprättades där skulle kunna-eller borde-överleva under 2000-talet. Det har varit mycket prat om krigsbrotten sedan kriget bröt ut i Irak 2003. En del misslyckade försök har gjorts för att hålla amerikanska och brittiska ledare ansvariga för att de fört ett anfallskrig som brutit mot internationella överenskommelser.

Läs historien om de amerikanska soldaterna som var beredda att utkämpa ett tredje världskrig i fiendeland. Soldaterna som rullade in i hög­kvarteret tillhörande 6:e infanteriets regemente i juli 1956 såg annor­lunda ut än de unga soldater som höll ögonen på dem. De stannade vid McNairkasernen, Telefunkens gamla fabrikskomplex i sydvästra Berlin som låg i den amerikanska sektorn. Det var totalt 40 män, ledda av den ameri­kanske majoren Edward Maltese, en infanteri­officer som hade hoppat fallskärm två gånger över Europa och en gång i Korea.

From the depths of German and American archives comes a story one soldier never wanted told. The first volunteer killed defending Robert E. Lee’s position in battle was really a German assassin. After fleeing to the United States to escape prosecution for murder, the assassin enlisted in a German company of the Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Mexican-American War and died defending Lee’s battery at the Siege of Veracruz in 1847.

Mary Fulbrook's encompassing book explores the lives of individuals across a full spectrum of suffering and guilt, each one capturing one small part of the greater story. Using "reckoning" in the widest possible sense to evoke how the consequences of violence have expanded almost infinitely through time. Fulbrook exposes the disjuncture between official myths about "dealing with the past" and the extent to which the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators evaded responsibility.

The attack on Nazi Germany’s dams on May 17, 1943, was one of the most remarkable feats in military history. The absurdly young men of the Royal Air Force’s 617 Squadron set forth in cold blood and darkness, without benefit of electronic aids, to fly lumbering heavy bombers straight and level towards a target at a height above the water less than the length of a bowling alley. Yet this story has never been told in full. Max Hastings takes us back to the May 1943 raid to reveal how the truth of that night is considerably different from the popularized account most people know.

In February 1945 the Allies obliterated Dresden, the 'Florence of the Elbe'. Explosive bombs weighing over 1,000 lbs fell every seven and a half seconds and an estimated 25,000 people were killed. Was Dresden a legitimate military target or was the bombing a last act of atavistic mass murder in a war already won? From the history of the city to the attack itself, conveyed in a minute-by-minute account from the first of the flares to the flames reaching almost a mile high best-selling author Sinclair McKay creates a vast canvas and brings it alive with touching human detail.

On February 13, 1945 at 10:03 p.m., British bombers began one of the most devastating attacks of WWII: the bombing of Dresden. The first contingent killed people and destroyed buildings, roads, and other structures. The second rained down fire, turning the streets into a blast furnace, the shelters into ovens, and whipping up a molten hurricane in which the citizens of Dresden were burned, baked, or suffocated to death.

Published in 1937, the result of 15 years of careful study since his days on the German General Staff in the First World War, Achtung Panzer! argues how vital the proper use of tanks and supporting armoured vehicles would be in the conduct of a future war. When that war came, just two years later, he proved it, leading his Panzers with distinction in the Polish, French and Russian campaigns. Panzer warfare had come of age, exactly as he had forecast.

Mengele describes the international search for the Nazi doctor in 1985 that ended in a cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the dogged forensic investigation that produced overwhelming evidence that Mengele had died - but failed to convince those who, arguably, most wanted him dead. This is the riveting story of science without limits, escape without freedom, and resolution without justice.