Download or read book Forgotten Land written by Max Egremont and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the end of World War II, East Prussia was the German empire's farthest eastern redoubt, a thriving and beautiful land on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. Now it lives only in history and in myth. Since 1945, the territory has been divided between Poland and Russia, stretching from the border between Russia and Lithuania in the east and south, and through Poland in the west. In Forgotten Land, Max Egremont offers a vivid account of this region and its people through the stories of individuals who were intimately involved in and transformed by its tumultuous history, as well as accounts of his own travels and interviews he conducted along the way. Forgotten Land is a story of historical identity and character, told through intimate portraits of people and places. It is a unique examination of the layers of history, of the changing perceptions and myths of homeland, of virtue and of wickedness, and of how a place can still overwhelm those who left it years before.
Download or read book The Lands of Partitioned Poland 1795 1918 written by Piotr S. Wandycz and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 1975-02-01 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 comprehensively covers an important, complex, and controversial period in the history of Poland and East Central Europe, beginning in 1795 when the remnanst of the Polish Commonwealth were distributed among Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and culminating in 1918 with the re-establishment of an independent Polish state. Until this thorough and authoritative study, literature on the subject in English has been limited to a few chapters in multiauthored works. Chronologically, Wandycz traces the histories of the lands under Prussian, Austrian, and Russian rule, pointing out their divergent evolution as well as the threads that bound them together. The result is a balanced, comprehensive picture of the social, political, economic, and cultural developments of all nationalities inhabiting the land of the old commonwealth, rather than a limited history of one state (Poland) and one people (the Poles).
Download or read book The Death of East Prussia written by Peter B. Clark and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book focuses on what happened in East Prussia in World War II and afterward"--Introduction.
Download or read book Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers written by United States. Department of State and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 1846 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ruined by the Reich written by Christel Weiss Brandenburg and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-08-31 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decades have passed since World War II, yet the myth that all Germans were Nazi sympathizers still persists. This book follows the story of the Weiss family in East Prussia from World War I to the end of World War II. It is told from the point of view not of the victors but of the vanquished. Beginning with the good citizenship trap Hitler set for law-abiding German families, the book describes how Germany first prospered and then fell to ruin with the Third Reich. The people traded their freedoms for a national security, which quickly turned to tyranny with swift consequences for "disobedience." Like Christel's brothers (soldiers and members of Hitler's Youth), propaganda-fed children all over the Reich believed the highly idealized depiction of their roles and of their nation's victims. This fascinating and richly detailed memoir is told through the intimate narration of a woman who grew up in the midst of turmoil, experienced poverty and prejudice, witnessed the deaths of many loved ones, and was driven from her home by the Soviet Army. The combination of domestic details and vivid historical descriptions creates an unusual book as absorbing as it is educational.
Download or read book Spoonfuls of Germany written by Nadia Hassani and published by Hippocrene Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book goes beyond the sauerkraut and knackwurst stereotype to unveil the often overlooked diversity of German cuisine. 170 regional recipes range from classic dishes, such as spaetzle with cheese and sauerbraten to forgotten delicacies like Westfalian pumpernickel pudding. Numerous profiles, anecdotes, and food lore complete the book.
Download or read book Inge s War written by Svenja O'Donnell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An extraordinary saga." —David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon The mesmerizing account of a granddaughter's search for a World War II family history hidden for sixty years Growing up in Paris as the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, Svenja O'Donnell knew little of her family's German past. All she knew was that her great-grandparents, grandmother, and mother had fled their home city of Königsberg near the end of World War II, never to return. But everything changed when O'Donnell traveled to the city—now known as Kaliningrad, and a part of Russia—and called her grandmother, who uncharacteristically burst into tears. "I have so much to tell you," Inge said. In this transporting and illuminating book, the award-winning journalist vividly reconstructs the story of Inge's life from the rise of the Nazis through the brutal postwar years, from falling in love with a man who was sent to the Eastern Front just after she became pregnant with his child, to spearheading her family's flight as the Red Army closed in, her young daughter in tow. Ultimately, O'Donnell uncovers the act of violence that separated Inge from the man she loved; a terrible secret hidden for more than six decades. A captivating World War II saga, Inge's War is also a powerful reckoning with the meaning of German identity and inherited trauma. In retracing her grandmother's footsteps, O'Donnell not only discovers the remarkable story of a woman caught in the gears of history, but also comes face-to-face with her family's legacy of neutrality and inaction—and offers a rare glimpse into a reality too long buried by silence and shame.
Download or read book Battleground Prussia written by Prit Buttar and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-20 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engrossing history of the last year of the Second World War, charting the battles fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazis across German soil. The terrible months between the arrival of the Red Army on German soil and the final collapse of Hitler's regime were like no other in the Second World War. The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished. From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this book recounts in chilling detail the desperate struggle of soldiers and civilians alike. These brutal campaigns are brought vividly to life by a combination of previously untold testimony and astute strategic analysis recognising a conflict of unprecedented horror and suffering.
Download or read book Prelude to Berlin written by Richard W. Harrison and published by Helion. This book was released on 2016 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prelude to Berlin: The Red Army's Offensive Operations in Poland and Eastern Germany, 1945, offers a panoramic view of the Soviet strategic offensives north of the Carpathians in the winter of 1945. During the course of this offensive the Red Army broke through the German defenses in Poland and East Prussia and eventually occupied all of Germany east of the Oder River. The book consists primarily of articles that appeared in various military journals during the first decade after the war. The General Staff's directorate charged with studying the war experience published these studies, although there are other sources as well. A particular highlight of these is a personal memoir that offers a rare insight into Soviet strategic planning for the winter-spring 1945 campaign. Also featured are documents relating to the operational-strategic conduct of the various operations, which were compiled and published after the fall of the Soviet Union. The book is divided into several parts, corresponding to the operations conducted. These include the Vistula-Oder operation by the First Belorussian and First Ukrainian Fronts out of their respective Vistula bridgeheads. This gigantic operation, involving over a million men and several thousand tanks, artillery and other weapons sliced through the German defenses and, in a single leap, advanced the front to the Oder River, less than 100 kilometres from Berlin, from which they launched their final assault on the Reich in April. Equally impressive was the Second and Third Belorussian Fronts' offensive into Germany's East Prussian citadel. This operation helped to clear the flank further to the south and exacted a long-awaited revenge for the Russian Army's defeat here in 1914. This effort cut off the German forces in East Prussia and concluded with an effort to clear the flanks in Pomerania and the storming of the East Prussian capital of Konigsberg in April. The study also examines in considerable detail the First Ukrainian Front's Upper and Lower Silesian operations of February-March 1945. These operations cleared the army's flanks in the south and deprived Germany of one of its last major industrial and agricultural areas.
Download or read book Violence in Defeat written by Bastiaan Willems and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how the Wehrmacht's defensive conduct contributed to the radicalisation of behavioural patterns in Germany during the war's final months.
Download or read book Revolution from Abroad written by Jan T. Gross and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jan Gross describes the terrors of the Soviet occupation of the lands that made up eastern Poland between the two world wars: the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. His lucid analysis of the revolution that came to Poland from abroad is based on hundreds of first-hand accounts of the hardship, suffering, and social chaos that accompanied the Sovietization of this poorest section of a poverty-stricken country. Woven into the author's exploration of events from the Soviet's German-supported aggression against Poland in September of 1939 to Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, these testimonies not only illuminate his conclusions about the nature of totalitarianism but also make a powerful statement of their own. Those who endured the imposition of Soviet rule and mass deportations to forced resettlement, labor camps, and prisons of the Soviet Union are here allowed to speak for themselves, and they do so with grim effectiveness.
Download or read book Iron Kingdom written by Christopher Clark and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2007-09-06 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Of the "Great Powers" that dominated Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, Prussia is the only one to have vanished ... Iron Kingdom is not just good: it is everything a history book ought to be ... The nemesis of Prussia has cast such a long shadow that German historians have tiptoed around the subject. Thus it was left to an Englishman to write what is surely the best history of Prussia in any language' Sunday Telegraph
Download or read book All for Nothing written by Walter Kempowski and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wealthy family tries--and fails--to seal themselves off from the chaos of post-World War II life surrounding them in this stunning novel by one of Germany's most important post-war writers. In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat and the Red Army is approaching. The von Globig family's manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer in the German army, went to war, leaving behind his beautiful but vague wife, Katharina, and her bookish twelve-year-old son, Peter. As the road fills with Germans fleeing the occupied territories, the Georgenhof begins to receive strange visitors--a Nazi violinist, a dissident painter, a Baltic baron, even a Jewish refugee. Yet in the main, life continues as banal, wondrous, and complicit as ever for the family, until their caution, their hedged bets, and their denial are answered by the wholly expected events they haven't allowed themselves to imagine. All for Nothing, published in 2006, was the last novel by Walter Kempowski, one of postwar Germany's most acclaimed and popular writers.
Download or read book The Flight Across The Ice written by Patricia Clough and published by Haus Publishing. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The moving and untold story of the Russian advance into East Prussia in 1945, and the fight for survival of a people and their way of life
Download or read book The Realignment of Europe written by Arnold Toynbee and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forfattere: Arnold Toynbee; Sidney Lowery; Hugh Seton-Watson; William H. McNeill; Katharine Duff; Margaret Carlyle; Viscount Chilston.
Download or read book Iron Curtain written by Anne Applebaum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 803 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.
Download or read book The Kaliningrad Question written by Richard J. Krickus and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only comprehensive English-language study of Kaliningrad, this invaluable book explores the history and uncertain fate of the former East Prussia. Once touted as a future Hong Kong, Russia's western-most oblast has become a black hole of social and economic decay. Often overlooked in the West, this exclave is a potential flashpoint in an already unstable region. Richard Krickus, a leading expert on Kaliningrad, fills a crucial gap by tracing its long history of unstable possession, critiquing Russian and Western policy, and mapping out possible futures for the oblast. Visit our website for sample chapters!