The award-winning author of Target Switzerland uses "a wide breadth of research to attempt to answer why Switzerland escaped the Nazi onslaught" ( Daly History Blog).While surrounded by the Axis powers in World War II, Switzerland remained democratic and, unlike most of Europe, never succumbed to the siren songs and threats of the Nazi goliath.This book tells the story with emphasis on two voices rarely heard. One voice is that of scores of ...

That Every Man Be Armed, the first scholarly book on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, has played a significant role in constitutional debate and litigation since it was first published in 1984. Halbrook traces the right to bear arms from ancient Greece and Rome to the English republicans, then to the American Revolution and Constitution, through the Reconstruction period extending the right to African Americans, and onward to today’s controversies. With reviews of re...

The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the individual right to keep and bear arms, but courts in states that have extreme gun control restrictions apply tests that balance the right away. This book demonstrates that the right peaceably to carry firearms is a fundamental right recognized by the text of the Second Amendment and is part of our American history and tradition.Halbrook’s scholarly work is an exhaustive historical treatment of the fundamental, individual right to carry fir...

Based on newly-discovered, secret documents from German archives, diaries and newspapers of the time, Gun Control in the Third Reich presents the definitive, yet hidden history of how the Nazi regime made use of gun control to disarm and repress its enemies and consolidate power. The countless books on the Third Reich and the Holocaust fail even to mention the laws restricting firearms ownership, which rendered political opponents and Jews defenseless. A skeptic could surmise that...

In Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance, Stephen P. Halbrook tells this story of Nazi repression and the brave French men and women who refused to surrender to it.Nazi Germany invaded France in 1940. In every occupied town, Nazi soldiers put up posters that demanded civilians surrender their firearms within twenty-four hours or else be shot. Despite the consequences, many French citizens refused to comply with the order.Takin...

Stephen Halbrook's groundbreaking study of freed slaves and the right to bear arms in the aftermath of the Civil War, cited in Supreme Court cases, now with a new foreword by Robert J. Cottrol.What did it mean to take civil rights seriously—especially the "right to bear arms"—in the years following the abolition of slavery? By quoting legislative debates, Congressional hearings on Ku Klux Klan violence, and newspapers and law books of the time, constitutional schol...

Stephen P. Halbrook's The Founders' Second Amendment is the first book-length account of the origins of the Second Amendment, based on the Founders' own statements as found in newspapers, correspondence, debates, and resolutions. Mr. Halbrook investigates the period from 1768 to 1826, from the last years of British rule and the American Revolution through to the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the passing of the Founders' generation. His book offers the most compre...

There are over forty-four million AR-15s and similar semiautomatic rifles owned by Americans. Popular adoption on such a monumental scale is indicative of more than a passing fad; only proven utility through long history creates such lasting—indeed growing—demand.Since the founding of the American republic, rifles—beginning with muzzleloaders and later semiautomatics—have been at the center of American history and pre-history. This book, by renowned historian and attorney Stephen H...

A powerful account of the resistance group made up of German students who opposed Nazism, written by the sister of two members who were killed.The White Rose tells the story of Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, who in 1942 led a small underground organization of German students and professors to oppose the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazi Party. They named their group the White Rose, and they distributed leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime. Sophie, ...

"The Beautiful Beast" documents in meticulous detail the extraordinary and frightening biography of Irma Grese. Born in a tiny farming community fifty miles north of Berlin, she became the ultimate feminine representative of the Hitlerian vision of the warrior-youth;indeed, with her blonde hair and strikingly blue eyes, Grese embodied all the physical characteristics of the idealized Nazi youth! Once Irma Grese was old enough to secure a training spot in the newly-created corps of female S...

On Paths of Ash is an extraordinary Australian World War II story. Robert and Jack Holman were working-class brothers who found themselves in three of the most horrific experiences of the war. They were interned in Changi prisoner-of-war camp, from where they became prison labourers on the infamous Burma Railway. From there they went as slaves to the coalmines of Japan, close enough to Nagasaki to see the mushroom cloud when the atomic bomb was dropped.This is Robert Holma...

From the author of Children of the Camps, a look at the disturbing activities of the Kempeitai, Japan's feared military and secret police.The book opens by explaining the origins, organization, and roles of the Kempeitai apparatus, which exercised virtually unlimited power throughout the Japanese Empire. Author Mark Felton reveals their criminal and collaborationist networks that extorted huge sums of money from hapless citizens and businesses. They ran the...