This is the first-ever analytical study of Nazi Germany's political foreign intelligence service, Office VI of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its head, Walter Schellenberg. Katrin Paehler tells the story of Schellenberg's career in policing and intelligence, charts the development and activities of the service he eventually headed, and discusses his attempts to place it at the center of Nazi foreign intelligence and foreign policy. The book locates the service in its proper pedigree of ...

Brings together geographies and methodologies often kept apart by the difficulties of researching such a broad-ranging topic as the warShots in the Dark offers cutting-edge scholarship across different subfields in World War II history, revealing new insights into how this crucial conflict was planned, experienced, and fought. Twelve chapters demonstrate the broad scope of wartime innovation and how the war functioned as a global turning point, driving cha...

The definitive history of Hitler and Stalin's politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century, from the author of the international bestseller, On Tyranny**.**Americans call the Second World War "the Good War." But before it even began, America's ally Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens, and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was defeated, he ...

Now available in a single, abridged paperback, Ian Kershaw's Hitler is the definitive biography of the Nazi leader.Ian Kershaw's two volume biography, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis, was greeted with universal acclaim as the essential work on one of the most malign figures in history, from his earliest origins to the final days of the Second World War.Now this landmark historical work is available in one si...

Between 1933 and 1945, more than 500,000 German citizens resisted the Nazi government. Many were imprisoned for political crimes which included both active attempts to remove Hitler from office and passive attempts to oppose the Nazi regime. Resistance was found among university students, churches and even in the German military.This fascinating and compelling history of the German resistance covers groups and methods from underground newspapers such as "Rote Kapella" and "Internal...

This "intriguing and chilling" WWII history follows thirteen ordinary German women who worked—and killed—on the Eastern Front ( Chicago Tribune).A National Book Award FinalistDrawing on twenty years of archival research and fieldwork, Wendy Lower introduces thirteen women who took jobs in Nazi-occupied Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. She presents startling evidence that these women were more than "desk murderers" or comforters of murde...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “[Timothy] Snyder identifies the conditions that allowed the Holocaust—conditions our society today shares. . . . He certainly couldn’t be more right about our world.”—The New RepublicA “gripping [and] disturbingly vivid” (The Wall Street Journal) portrait of the defining tragedy of our time, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of On TyrannyONE OF THE...

A comprehensive exploration of the history of the official secret police of Nazi Germany.Written with access to previously unpublished records, this is the fullest and most definitive account available on Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo. The book illustrates how, despite its material constraints, this group was able to extend its reach widely and quickly by manipulating and colluding with the general public during World War II, making ordinary German citizens c...

**An absorbing, revelatory, and definitive account of one of the greatest tragedies in human history, by the author of The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and Hitler's People“This is history in the grand style, the kind of large-scale narrative that few historians dare to write these days. It is difficult to imagine how it could be improved upon, let alone surpassed.” —The Washington Post"This superb book is n...

“A remarkable—and singularly chilling—glimpse of human behavior. . .This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."—NewsweekChristopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs.Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Ba...

As head of the SS, chief of police, 'Reichskommissar for the Consolidation of Germanness', and Reich Interior Minister, Heinrich Himmler enjoyed a position of almost unparalleled power and responsibility in Nazi Germany. Perhaps more than any other single Nazi leader aside from Hitler, his name has become a byword for the terror, persecution, and destruction that characterized the Third Reich. His wide-ranging powers meant that he bore equal responsibility for the repression of the German ...

For years, the history of the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany was hidden and distorted by Cold War politics. Providing a much-needed corrective, Red Orchestra presents the dramatic story of a circle of German citizens who opposed Hitler from the start, choosing to stay in Germany to resist Nazism and help its victims. The book shines a light on this critical movement which was made up of academics, theatre people, and factory workers; Protestants, Catholics and Jews; around 150 Ge...