The Triumph of Propaganda


Book Description

Seeing German film during the Third Reich as a powerful and sinister tool for both indoctrination and escapist pacification, analyses the pictorial and spoken language to identify the psychological techniques used in the various genres, including news reels, documentaries, features, and cultural films. Two chapters focus on the role of flags, and a.




Jungvolk


Book Description

“An extraordinary account of a young boy caught up in the middle of a war . . . frank and even funny at times . . . utterly absorbing” (Books Monthly). This is the wartime memoir of a boy named Will, who happened to be the nephew of the head of Nazi Germany’s intelligence agency. The author, only ten years old when the war began, became a helper at the local Luftwaffe flak battery, fetching ammunition. It was exciting work for Will, a member of the “Jungvolk,” and by the end of the war, he had become expert at judging attacks. As fighter raids increased in frequency, he noted that the pilots became less skilled. Gehlen’s town was repeatedly bombed, and he often had to help with the wreckage or to pull survivors from basements. He witnessed more death than a child ever should; nevertheless, his flak battery continued firing until US tanks were almost on top of the position. In this book, Gehlen provides an intimate glimpse of the chaos, horror, and black humor of life just behind the front lines. As seen through the eyes of a child who was expert in aircraft identification and bomb weights, food-rationing and tank types, one encounters a view of life inside Hitler’s wartime Reich that is both fascinating and rare. “Although the memories Gehlen shares are narrow, and offer little insight into the Reich itself, they’re remarkable for the child’s perspective they bring to bear on a warring country’s ferocious struggle.” —Publishers Weekly “A real gem, a quiet tour de force . . . Despite its serious subject matter the book reads as an adventure story from start to finish.” —Military Modelling




Führer, Folk and Fatherland


Book Description

This is a true story--a rare, first-hand account of one soldier's experiences during the Third Reich. It is also a love story, for amid the strife and devastation of war, Albin Gagel found the love of his life.By 1943, it had been four long years since he had left his home in a small village in Bavaria to begin what was supposed to be only two years' mandatory military service. Although a seasoned veteran of the Wehrmacht, nothing he had experienced during the Blitzkrieg across France, or even the siege of Leningrad, had prepared him for the horror and desperation that surrounded him during the Battle of Kursk, the biggest tank battle of World War II and the start of Nazi Germany's slow retreat from the Eastern Front.Now Albin was in the fight of his life. Any dreams he might have harboured about honour and glory had long since vanished. Political rhetoric meant nothing on the battlefield. Medals were just trinkets and would never equal the value of lives lost in their purchase. His world was reduced to the men in his company and the enemy that shadowed their every manoeuvre. Yet there was also Gisela--his hope, his dream, his future--if ever he could get out of Russia alive.Captivating from start to finish, this account offers an uncommon insight into what most Germans really thought about Hitler and his regime--and it is not quite what the wartime newsreels portrayed.




Führer, Folk and Fatherland


Book Description




We Dont Talk About That


Book Description

Millions of women were abused and raped during the final stages of WW II, and while the attitude among many survivors is "We don't talk about that," this woman has found the courage to place her memories on record. Growing up in a rural village in Pomerania, Gila's tranquil life turned tragic when the fighting approached her neighborhood. Her father was captured and taken to Siberia while she and her family became displaced persons and joined the trek of thousands "on the road to nowhere." She was witness to gruesome acts of violence that quickly aged her before her years. She barely survived diphtheria and later, recovering from typhoid fever, she took responsibility for her three siblings while her mother worked. Despite her interrupted schooling through circumstances beyond her control, Gila's determination empowered her to become a Physical Education teacher and successful competitive kayaker. The division of Germany into East and West with its political ramifications caused her to escape to West Germany. Here she was able to fulfill an old dream despite having to face new challenges, including an unwanted affair. Gila's story is one of heartache, courage, pain, love, liberation and reclaiming life....




The Sven Hassel Collection


Book Description

From the fight for survival against the ferocious Red Army and the icy, shell-ravaged wastes of the vicious Russian winter, to the bloodiest battles on the Eastern Front, Sven Hassel's gripping novels are based on his own experiences in the German army. Convicted of deserting the German army, Sven Hassel was sent to a punishment regiment on the Russian Front. He and his comrades were regarded as little more than dispensable killing-machines, cannon fodder for Hitler's war. His unflinching narrative takes us to the most extreme outposts of war, where soldiers face an inferno of blood and butchery. THE SVEN HASSEL COLLECTION includes all 14 books in Sven Hassel's series and exclusive extra material.




The Commissar


Book Description

A shocking insight into the brutalities faced by ordinary soldiers and the atrocities committed in the name of survival. Dispassionately we stared at the bloody scene. It had become an everyday sight. The 27th Penal Regiment care nothing for Hitler's war. They fight only to stay alive. But then they uncover the Soviet Army's biggest secret. A Russian commissar has hidden 30 million dollars of gold somewhere behind enemy lines. In a madcap scheme, Porta brokers a deal with the commissar: free passage for the Russians in return for a share of the gold. To find it, Sven and his comrades must be prepared to lie, steal and go behind the lines of the deadly Russian army...




Peeling the Onion


Book Description

In this extraordinary memoir, Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass remembers his early life, from his boyhood in a cramped two-room apartment in Danzig through the late 1950s, when The Tin Drum was published. During the Second World War, Grass volunteered for the submarine corps at the age of fifteen but was rejected; two years later, in 1944, he was instead drafted into the Waffen-SS. Taken prisoner by American forces as he was recovering from shrapnel wounds, he spent the final weeks of the war in an American POW camp. After the war, Grass resolved to become an artist and moved with his first wife to Paris, where he began to write the novel that would make him famous. Full of the bravado of youth, the rubble of postwar Germany, the thrill of wild love affairs, and the exhilaration of Paris in the early fifties, Peeling the Onion--which caused great controversy when it was published in Germany--reveals Grass at his most intimate.




I Remember


Book Description

Born in 1929 in Germany, Ottomar Rudolf lived during World War II in Ulm on the Danube. Towards the end of the war he was inducted into the Wehrmacht. He served in the Panzer Corps in 1945 and was sent to the eastern front. He returned to Ulm after being wounded. When the war ended Ulm was in the American sector of occupation. Relatives sponsored him to come to the United States. Arriving in New York in 1948, he attended Manhattan College in New York City and received a BA in Philosophy. His first teaching position was at St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the Korean War he was drafted into the Signal Corps. While serving, he became an American citizen. After Korea he was sent to Heidelberg, Germany, to finish his tour of duty. At the University of Heidelberg he studied Philosophy and German Literature and upon his return to the United States he continued those studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He subsequently received appointments as assistant professor of German at Bryn Mawr and Haverford colleges in Pennsylvania. In 1959 he earned his PhD in Germanic Languages and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1963 he moved to Portland, Oregon to take the position of Assistant Professor of German and Humanities at Reed College, where he taught until his retirement in 1998 as Professor Emeritus. Professor Rudolf was also Visiting Professor at the universities of Freiburg and Munich. A published scholar and frequent lecturer on German culture and history, Professor Rudolf was awarded the Verdienstkreuz Erster Klasse, Officer's Cross, by the President of Germany in 1989. He lives in Portland with his wife Catherine.




A Family Secret


Book Description

While searching his Dutch grandmother's attic for yard sale items, Jeroen finds a scrapbook which leads Gran to tell of her experiences as a girl living in Amsterdam during the Holocaust, when her father was a Nazi sympathizer and Esther, her Jewish best friend, disappeared.