Download or read book The Last Prussian written by Charles Messenger and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2012-01-23 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The renowned WWII historian’s in-depth biography of the Nazi military commander who played a key role in the invasions of Poland, France and Russia. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt was one of the most important German commanders of the Second World War. He served on both the Western and Eastern Fronts of World War I and rose steadily through the ranks of the German army before retiring in 1938. Then, only a year later, he was recalled to help execute Hitler’s invasion of Poland. He played a leading part in this and the subsequent invasion of France. Thereafter he commanded Army Group South in the assault on Russia before being sacked at the end of 1941. Recalled again, Rundstedt was made Commander-in-Chief West and as such faced the 1944 Allied invasion of France, but was removed that July. He resumed his post in September 1944 and had overall responsibility for the December 1944 Ardennes counter-offensive. Captured by the Americans, he gave testimony as a defense witness at Nuremberg. Though he was charged with war crimes, he was spared trial due to his ill health.
Download or read book The Last Kaiser written by Michael Sidney Tyler-Whittle and published by Crown. This book was released on 1977 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wilhelm II or William II (German: Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albrecht; English: Frederick William Victor Albert) (27 January 1859? 4 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918. He was a grandson of the British Queen Victoria and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe. Crowned in 1888, he dismissed the Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in 1890 and launched Germany on a bellicose "New Course" in foreign affairs that culminated in his support for Austria-Hungary in the crisis of July 1914 that led to World War I. Bombastic and impetuous, he sometimes made tactless pronouncements on sensitive topics without consulting his ministers, culminating in a disastrous Daily Telegraph interview that cost him most of his power in 1908. His generals dictated policy during World War I with little regard for the civilian government. An ineffective war leader, he lost the support of the army, abdicated in November 1918, and fled to exile in the Netherlands."--Wikipedia.
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 Prussian Apocalypse written by Egbert Kieser and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2012-07-19 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The German historian’s classic account of the Red Army’s assault on East Prussia at the end of WWII, now available in English translation. Using extensive and vividly detailed eyewitness testimony, Egbert Kieser documents in the catastrophic Russian invasion of Danzig in 1945. Prussian Apocalypse is a riveting portrait of German civilians and soldiers as they fled from the onslaught and their world collapsed around them. In this fluid, authoritative, and accessible translation, Tony Le Tissier brings to bear his expert knowledge of the military defeat of the German armies in the East and the enormity of the human disaster that went with it. Egbert Kieser was born in 1928 in Bad Salzungen, Thringen, and studied philosophy and the history of art at Heidelberg University. He worked as a freelance journalist, writer, and editor. Among his many publications are two outstanding studies of German Second World War history, Prussian Apocalypse and Operation Sea Lion: The German Plan to Invade Britain, 1940.
Download or read book Aryan the Last Prussian written by Donald J Przebowski and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2001-11-15 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of a Prussian family, and their values. Duty, honor and country, as with all patriots, were a Prussians most precious valuesa sacred trust. Karl von Braun, the last Prussian, is born into an historical period of political and national turmoil, and is morally trapped between Prussian tradition and National Socialism. Various scholars have labored to explain the reasons for the rise of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism. This fictional novel considers the depression that followed World War I, philosophical principles, the effects of the Treaty of Versailles, and the tradition of Prussian militarism.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Prussia written by Sebastian Haffner and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-16 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sebastian Haffner regarded himself as “a Prussian with a British passport.” In this overview of Prussia’s 170-year history as an independent state, he depicts Prussia’s evolution from a sensational 18th century success story – “a state based on law, one of the first in Europe” – to its absorption into the Third Reich where “the rule of law was the first thing that Hitler abolished.” In this succinct and readable book, Haffner argues that Hitler’s racial and nationality policy was the opposite of Prussia’s and Hitler’s political style, the very opposite of Prussian. “In his short book The Rise and Fall of Prussia Haffner combines a critical examination with a declaration of love for a state which always lived beyond its means ... but which managed to combine material poverty with intellectual grandeur.” — Michael Stürmer,Welt am Sonntag “Haffner sees Prussia’s history as the 'tragedy of a purely rational state'. An agglomeration of arbitrary territories, it made a virtue of its artificiality, adapting to the enlightenment and then to romanticism, but finally also to nationalism, betraying the basis of its statehood and leading to its ultimate destruction.” — Chrisian Roth,Akademische Blätter “Haffner long regarded himself as a 'Prussian with a British passport'. He identified with Prussia and its achievements: general compulsory schooling (1717), the abolition of torture (1740), the establishment of religious toleration (1740), Bismarck’s welfare state (1883), the medical giants Virchow, Koch, von Behring, the intellectual giants Kant, von Humboldt and von Schlegel, and much more. At the end of his book he recounted the (often-ignored) expulsion of millions of Prussians from their homeland in 1945. 'It was an atrocity, the final atrocity of a war which had more than its share in atrocities, admittedly begun by Germany under Hitler.' His message is very relevant today, when he praises those expelled for rejecting revenge and having the courage to say, 'This is enough.'” — David Childs, The Independent
Download or read book Kaiser Wilhelm II written by John Van der Kiste and published by The History Press. This book was released on 1999-07-22 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, this biography examines the complex personality of Germany's last emperor. Born in 1859, the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria, Prince Wilhelm was torn between two cultures - that of the Prussian Junker and that of the English liberal gentleman.
Download or read book The Last Kaiser written by Giles MacDonogh and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-04-25 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the statesman who had a penchant for victory, war, and the belligerent aims of his staff, even though he dubbed himself the "Emperor of Peace," detailing his life, from his childhood to his involvement in World War I.
Download or read book Blood and Iron written by Katja Hoyer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this vivid fifty-year history of Germany from 1871-1918—which inspired events that forever changed the European continent—here is the story of the Second Reich from its violent beginnings and rise to power to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. Before 1871, Germany was not yet nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians, Bavarians, and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France—all without destroying itself in the process? In this unique study of five decades that changed the course of modern history, Katja Hoyer tells the story of the German Empire from its violent beginnings to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. This often startling narrative is a dramatic tale of national self-discovery, social upheaval, and realpolitik that ended, as it started, in blood and iron.
Download or read book Prussian Blue written by Philip Kerr and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When his cover is blown, former Berlin bull and unwilling SS officer Bernie Gunther must re-enter a cat-and-mouse game that continues to shadow his life a decade after Germany’s defeat in World War 2... The French Riviera, 1956: Bernie’s old and dangerous adversary Erich Mielke, deputy head of the East German Stasi, has turned up in Nice—and he’s not on holiday. Mielke is calling in a debt and wants Bernie to travel to London to poison a female agent they’ve both had dealings with. But Bernie isn't keen on assassinating anyone. In an attempt to dodge his Stasi handler—former Kripo comrade Friedrich Korsch—Bernie bolts for the German border. Traveling by night and hiding by day, he has plenty of time to recall the last case he and Korsch worked together... Obersalzberg, Germany, 1939: A low-level bureaucrat has been found dead at Hitler’s mountaintop retreat in Bavaria. Bernie and Korsch have one week to find the killer before the leader of the Third Reich arrives to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. Bernie knows it would mean disaster if Hitler discovers a shocking murder has been committed on the terrace of his own home. But Obersalzberg is also home to an elite Nazi community, meaning an even bigger disaster for Bernie if his investigation takes aim at one of the party’s higher-ups... 1939 and 1956: two different eras about to converge in an explosion Bernie Gunther will never forget.
Download or read book The End of the German Monarchy written by John Van der Kiste and published by Fonthill Media. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Last German Empress written by John Van der Kiste and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-05-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born a princess of Schleswig-Holstein in 1858, Empress Augusta Victoria, known in the family as 'Dona', was marked out from early childhood as a potential bride for Prince William of Prussia. When they married in 1881, everyone expected that she would never concern herself with more than the traditional Prussian princess's interests of Kirche, Küche, Kinder (church, kitchen, children). Yet within twenty years of his accession as William II, the last German Emperor, she would become in some ways the stronger character and steadying influence her increasingly neurotic and unstable husband required. This is the first biography of an often overlooked personality in modern history.
Download or read book The Last Kaiser written by Michael Sidney Tyler-Whittle and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Franco Prussian War written by Michael Howard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-12-09 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1870 Bismarck ordered the Prussian Army to invade France, inciting one of the most dramatic conflicts in European history. It transformed not only the states-system of the Continent but the whole climate of European moral and political thought. The overwhelming triumph of German military might, evoking general admiration and imitation, introduced an era of power politics, which was to reach its disastrous climax in 1914. First published in 1961 and now with a new introduction, The Franco-Prussian War is acknowledged as the definitive history of one of the most dramatic and decisive conflicts in the history of Europe.
Download or read book The Myth and Reality of German Warfare written by Gerhard P. Gross and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surrounded by potential adversaries, nineteenth-century Prussia and twentieth-century Germany faced the formidable prospect of multifront wars and wars of attrition. To counteract these threats, generations of general staff officers were educated in operational thinking, the main tenets of which were extremely influential on military planning across the globe and were adopted by American and Soviet armies. In the twentieth century, Germany's art of warfare dominated military theory and practice, creating a myth of German operational brilliance that lingers today, despite the nation's crushing defeats in two world wars. In this seminal study, Gerhard P. Gross provides a comprehensive examination of the development and failure of German operational thinking over a period of more than a century. He analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of five different armies, from the mid--nineteenth century through the early days of NATO. He also offers fresh interpretations of towering figures of German military history, including Moltke the Elder, Alfred von Schlieffen, and Erich Ludendorff. Essential reading for military historians and strategists, this innovative work dismantles cherished myths and offers new insights into Germany's failed attempts to become a global power through military means.
Download or read book Order in Chaos written by Hermann Balck and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-06-23 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German general Hermann Balck (1897–1982) was considered to be one of World War II's greatest battlefield commanders. His brilliantly fought battles were masterpieces of tactical agility, mobile counterattack, and the technique of Auftragstaktik, or "mission command." However, because he declined to participate in the U.S. Army's military history debriefing program, today he is known only to serious students of the war. Drawing heavily on his meticulously kept wartime journals, Balck discusses his childhood and his career through the First and Second World Wars. His memoir details the command decision-making process as well as operations on the ground during crucial battles, including the Battle of the Marne in World War I and his incredible victories against a larger and better-equipped Soviet army at the Chir River in World War II. Balck also offers observations on Germany's greatest generals, such as Erich Ludendorff and Heinz Guderian, and shares his thoughts on international relations, domestic politics, and Germany's place in history. Available in English for the first time in an expertly edited and annotated edition, this important book provides essential information about the German military during a critical era in modern history.
Download or read book The Paradox of German Power written by Hans Kundnani and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: The return of history? -- The German question -- Idealism and realism -- Continuity and change -- Perpetrators and victims -- Economics and politics -- Europe and the world -- Conclusion: Geo-economic semi-hegemony.
