Distinguished Professor Emeritus Abraham Ascher offers a skillful blend of engaging narrative and fresh analysis in this concise introduction to Russian history.Newly updated on the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, it covers the growing political tensions between Russia and its neighbors, and the mounting divergence between Russian and U.S. foreign policies. This stimulating and beautifully written introduction will prove enlightening for students, scholars, and trave...

Was Hitler A Riddle? is the first comparative study of how British, French, and American diplomats serving in Germany assessed Hitler and the Nazi movement. These assessments provided the governments in London, Paris, and Washington with ample information about the ruthlessness of the authorities in Germany and of their determination to conquer vast stretches of Europe. Had the British, French, and American leaders acted on this information and taken measures to rein in Hitler, th...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.Having suffered during World War One – not only the indignities of political betrayal and battlefield defeat but also starvation, fuel shortages and a domestic flu epidemic – the German people were left in widespread discontent. Soon inflation and economic stagnation had further sunk the nation into exhaustion, humiliation and disillusionment.Capitalizing on the nation’s instability, the Nazi Party, led by the embittered...

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...

During the Nuremberg trials, Leon Goldensohn—a U.S. Army psychiatrist—monitored the mental health of two dozen Germans leaders charged with carrying out genocide. These recorded conversations went largely unexamined for more than fifty years, until Robert Gellately—one of the premier historians of Nazi Germany—made them available to the public in this remarkable collection.Here are interviews with the likes of Hans Frank, Hermann Goering, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Joachim von Ribben...

Defined by the messianic, iconic figure of Adolf Hitler, the twelve years of the Third Reich were one of the pivotal periods of the modern age. From small beginnings in the 1920s, the Nazi Party rose to a position of absolute power in Germany, bringing with it the militarization of society, the apparatus of state terror and vicious discrimination against political opponents, the gypsies, homosexuals, and, above all, the Jews. Hitler's ambition thrust the world into a destructive and bloody...

A bold new accounting of the great social and political upheavals that enveloped Europe between 1914 and 1945—from the Russian Revolution through the Second World War.In Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, acclaimed historian Robert Gellately focuses on the dominant powers of the time, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but also analyzes the catastrophe of those years in an effort to uncover its political and ideological nature. Arguing that the tragedies endured by Europe were ine...

"The best single volume available on the torturous life and savage reign of Adolf Hitler." — TimeA bestseller in its original German edition and subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages, Joachim Fest's Hitler has become a classic portrait of a man, a nation, and an era.Fest tells and interprets the extraordinary story of a man's and nation's rise from impotence to absolute power, as Germany and Hitler, from shared premises, e...

The award-winning history of 12 million German-speaking civilians in Europe who were driven from their homes after WWII: "a major achievement" ( New Republic).Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized the forced relocation of ethnic Germans from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable: between 12 and 14 million civilians, most of them women and children. And the losses we...

Fuelled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to listen to dissenting voices, Adolf Hitler seemed an unlikely leader, and yet he commanded enormous support and was able to exert a powerful influence over those who encountered him. How did Hitler become such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the question at the core of Hitler’s Charisma.Acclaimed historian and documentary filmmaker Laurence Rees examines the nature of Hitler’s...

A groundbreaking, inclusive history of the Russian Revolution for "those who want to discover what really happened to Russia" (The New York Times Book Review)A "monumental study" (Wall Street Journal), enthralling in its narrative of a movement whose purpose, in the words of Leon Trotsky, was "to overthrow the world," The Russian Revolution draws conclusions that have aroused great controversy.Richard Pipes argues convincingly tha...

The Meaning of Hitler by Sebastian Haffner (translated from the German by Ewald Osers; 53,000 words)In this succinct, fact-based, insightful analysis of Hitler and his impact on the world, Sebastian Haffner displays his skills as a first-class journalist and a student of German and modern European history. A keen psychologist, he describes the man, the politician, the ideologue, the military leader, the mass-murderer, and ultimately the traitor to his own (adopted)...