He Was My Chief


Book Description

“A rare and fascinating insight into Hitler’s inner circle.” —Roger Moorhouse, author of Killing Hitler As secretary to the Führer throughout the time of the Third Reich, Christa Schroeder was perfectly placed to observe the actions and behavior of Hitler, along with the most important figures surrounding him. Schroeder’s memoir delivers fascinating insights: she notes his bourgeois manners, his vehement abstemiousness, and his mood swings. Indeed, she was ostracized by Hitler for a number of months after she made the mistake of publicly contradicting him once too often. In addition to her portrayal of Hitler, there are illuminating anecdotes about Hitler’s closest colleagues. She recalls, for instance, that the relationship between Martin Bormann and his brother Albert, who was on Hitler’s personal staff, was so bad that the two would only communicate with one another via their respective adjutants, even if they were in the same room. There is also light shed on the peculiar personal life and insanity of Reichsminister Walther Darré. Schroeder claims to have known nothing of the horrors of the Nazi regime. There is nothing of the sense of perspective or the mea culpa that one finds in the memoirs of Hitler’s other secretary, Traudl Junge, who concluded “we should have known.” Rather, the tone that pervades Schroeder’s memoir is one of bitterness. This is, without any doubt, one of the most important primary sources from the prewar and wartime period.




Hitler's Spy Chief


Book Description

A remarkable tale of espionage and intrigue—the true story of Hitler’s intelligence chief and his role in the conspiracy to assassinate the Führer. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was appointed by Adolf Hitler to head the Abwehr (the German secret service) eighteen months after the Nazis came to power. But Canaris turned against the Fu¨hrer and the Nazi regime, believing that Hitler would start a war Germany could not win. In 1938 he was involved in an attempted coup, undermined by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. In 1940 he sabotaged the German plan to invade England, and fed General Franco vital information that helped him keep Spain out of the war. For years he played a dangerous double game, desperately trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. The SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, became suspicious of Canaris and by 1944, when Abwehr personnel were involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler, he had the evidence to arrest Canaris himself. Canaris was executed a few weeks before the end of the war. In a riveting true story of intrigue and espionage, Richard Bassett reveals how Admiral Canaris’s secret work against the German leadership changed the course of World War II.




Eichmann in My Hands


Book Description

The true story behind “one of history’s great manhunts” and the film Operation Finale by the Mossad legend who caught the most wanted Nazi in the world (The New York Times). 1n 1960 Argentina, a covert team of Israeli agents hunted down the most elusive war criminal alive: Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of the Holocaust. The young spy who tackled Eichmann on a Buenos Aires street—and fought every compulsion to strangle the Obersturmführer then and there—was Peter Z. Malkin. For decades Malkin’s identity as Eichmann’s captor was kept secret. Here he reveals the entire breathtaking story—from the genesis of the top-secret surveillance operation to the dramatic public capture and smuggling of Eichmann to Israel to stand trial. The result is a portrait of two men. One, a freedom fighter, intellectually curious and driven to do right. The other, the dutiful Good German who, through his chillingly intimate conversations with Malkin, reveals himself as the embodiment of what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” Singular, riveting, troubling, and gratifying, Eichmann in My Hands “remind[s] of what is at stake: not only justice but our own humanity” (New York Newsday). Now Malkin’s story comes to life on the screen with Oscar Isaac playing the heroic Mossad agent and Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley playing Eichmann in Operation Finale.




Death to the Chief


Book Description

Modern-day Georgia. The state Supreme Court celebrates the opening of its new courthouse, but the Chief Justice—shot dead in his chambers—is late to the party. Enter ex-lawyer Chance Meridian. Pressed into service by an offer he cannot refuse, Chance launches the search for the bold killer. But dirty politics is part of Atlanta’s DNA. The town is full of secrets—secrets too damning to see the light of sunshine. And if Chance cannot crack the case and fast, the next murder on the court’s docket ... could be his own. A standalone follow-up to the best-selling The Murder of Sara Barton, Death to the Chief is a thrilling legal mystery that oozes with intrigue and suspense.




Chief Seattle and the Town That Took His Name


Book Description

The first thorough historical account of the great Washington State city and its hero, Chief Seattle—the Native American war leader who advocated for peace and strove to create a successful hybrid racial community. When the British, Spanish, and then Americans arrived in the Pacific Northwest, it may have appeared to them as an untamed wilderness. In fact, it was a fully settled and populated land. Chief Seattle was a powerful representative from this very ancient world. Here, historian David Buerge threads together disparate accounts of the time from the 1780s to the 1860s—including native oral histories, Hudson Bay Company records, pioneer diaries, French Catholic church records, and historic newspaper reporting. Chief Seattle had gained power and prominence on Puget Sound as a war leader, but the arrival of American settlers caused him to reconsider his actions. He came to embrace white settlement and, following traditional native practice, encouraged intermarriage between native people and the settlers—offering his own daughter and granddaughters as brides—in the hopes that both peoples would prosper. Included in this account are the treaty signings that would remove the natives from their historic lands, the roles of such figures as Governor Isaac Stevens, Chiefs Leschi and Patkanim, the Battle at Seattle that threatened the existence of the settlement, and the controversial Chief Seattle speech that haunts to this day the city that bears his name.




American Hero


Book Description

"John Marshall (1755-1835) was a good son, a kind older brother, a loving father and husband, and a dear friend to many. He was a soldier for the Revolutionary Army, a successful lawyer, a congressman, and Secretary of State. Most importantly, he was Chief Justice of the United States. As Chief Justice, John Marshall made the Supreme Court the strong and powerful body it is today."--Back cover.




The Chief


Book Description

‘Well written and persuasive …objective and well-rounded….this scholarly rehabilitation should be the standard biography’ **** Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday ‘A true judgment of him must lie somewhere between hero and zero, and in this detailed biography Gary Sheffield shows himself well qualified to make it … a balanced portrait’ Sunday Times ‘Solid scholarship and admirable advocacy’ Sunday Telegraph Douglas Haig is the single most controversial general in British history. In 1918, after his armies had won the First World War, he was feted as a saviour. But within twenty years his reputation was in ruins, and it has never recovered. In this fascinating biography, Professor Gary Sheffield reassesses Haig’s reputation, assessing his critical role in preparing the army for war.




A Shark Going Inland Is My Chief


Book Description

Tracing the origins of the Hawaiians and other Polynesians back to the shores of the South China Sea, archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch follows their voyages of discovery across the Pacific in this fascinating history of Hawaiian culture from about one thousand years ago. Combining more than four decades of his own research with Native Hawaiian oral traditions and the evidence of archaeology, Kirch puts a human face on the gradual rise to power of the Hawaiian god-kings, who by the late eighteenth century were locked in a series of wars for ultimate control of the entire archipelago. This lively, accessible chronicle works back from Captain James Cook’s encounter with the pristine kingdom in 1778, when the British explorers encountered an island civilization governed by rulers who could not be gazed upon by common people. Interweaving anecdotes from his own widespread travel and extensive archaeological investigations into the broader historical narrative, Kirch shows how the early Polynesian settlers of Hawai'i adapted to this new island landscape and created highly productive agricultural systems.




Hitler's Willing Executioners


Book Description

This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units, to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion. "Hitler's Willing Executioner's is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the...literature on the Holocaust."--New York Review of Books "The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity."--Philadelphia Inquirer




Duty


Book Description

From the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid, vivid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House, he thought he’d long left Washington politics behind: After working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happily serving as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty.