Bøger om 2. verdenskrig

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel comes a powerful, sweeping historical novel about a courageous woman in World War II Germany.Sophia Alexander, the beautiful daughter of a famous surgeon in Berlin, has had to grow up faster than most young women. When her mother falls ill, Sophia must take charge of her younger sister, Theresa, and look after her father and the household, while also volunteering at his hospital after school. Meanwhile, Hitler’s rise to power and the violence in her very own town have Sophia concerned, but only her mother is willing to share her fears openly.After tragedy strikes and her mother dies, Sophia becomes increasingly involved in the resistance, attending meetings of dissidents and helping however she can. Circumstances become increasingly dangerous and personal when Sophia assists her sister’s daring escape from Germany, as Theresa flees with her young husband and his family. Her father also begins to resist the regime, secretly healing those hiding from persecution, only to have his hospital burned to the ground. When he is arrested and sent to a concentration camp, Sophia is truly on her own, but more determined than ever to help.While working as a nurse with the convent nuns, the Sisters of Mercy, Sophia continues her harrowing efforts to transport Jewish children to safety and finds herself under surveillance. As the political tensions rise and the brutal oppression continues, Sophia is undeterred, risking it all, even her own freedom, as she rises to the challenge of helping those in need—no matter the cost.In Only the Brave, Danielle Steel vividly captures the devastating effects of war alongside beautiful moments of compassion and courage.

Witnessing the Disaster examines how histories, films, stories and novels, memorials and museums, and survivor testimonies involve problems of witnessing: how do those who survived, and those who lived long after the Holocaust, make clear to us what happened? How can we distinguish between more and less authentic accounts? Are histories more adequate descriptors of the horror than narrative? Does the susceptibility of survivor accounts to faulty memory and the vestiges of trauma make them any more or less useful as instruments of witness? And how do we authenticate their accuracy without giving those who deny the Holocaust a small but dangerous foothold? These essayists aim to move past the notion that the Holocaust as an event defies representation. They look at specific cases of Holocaust representation and consider their effect, their structure, their authenticity, and the kind of knowledge they produce. Taken together they consider the tension between history and memory, the vexed problem of eyewitness testimony and its status as evidence, and the ethical imperatives of Holocaust representation.

"Franco's Friends" tells the little-known true story of how MI6 orchestrated the coup that brought General Franco to power.

A Promise at Sobibór is the story of Fiszel Bialowitz, a teenaged Polish Jew who escaped the Nazi gas chambers. Between April 1942 and October 1943, about 250,000 Jews from European countries and the Soviet Union were sent to the Nazi death camp at Sobibór in occupied Poland. Sobibór was not a transit camp or work camp: its sole purpose was efficient mass murder. On October 14, 1943, approximately half of the 650 or so prisoners still alive at Sobibór undertook a daring and precisely planned revolt, killing SS officers and fleeing through minefields and machine-gun fire into the surrounding forests, farms, and towns. Only about forty-two of them, including Fiszel, are known to have survived to the end of the war. Philip (Fiszel) Bialowitz, now an American citizen, tells his eyewitness story here in the real-time perspective of his own boyhood, from his childhood before the war and his internment in the brutal Izbica ghetto to his harrowing six months at Sobibór--including his involvement in the revolt and desperate mass escape--and his rescue by courageous Polish farmers. He also recounts the challenges of life following the war as a teenaged displaced person, and his eventual efforts as a witness to the truth of the Holocaust. In 1943 the heroic leaders of the revolt at Sobibór, Sasha Perchersky and Leon Feldhendler, implored fellow prisoners to promise that anyone who survived would tell the story of Sobibór: not just of the horrific atrocities committed there, but of the courage and humanity of those who fought back. Bialowitz has kept that promise.

In May of 1939 the Cuban government turned away the Hamburg-America Line's MS St. Louis, which carried more than 900 hopeful Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Germany. The passengers subsequently sought safe haven in the United States, but were rejected once again, and the St. Louis had to embark on an uncertain return voyage to Europe. Finally, the St. Louis passengers found refuge in four western European countries, but only the 288 passengers sent to England evaded the Nazi grip that closed upon continental Europe a year later. Over the years, the fateful voyage of the St. Louis has come to symbolize U.S. indifference to the plight of European Jewry on the eve of World War II. Although the episode of the St. Louis is well known, the actual fates of the passengers, once they disembarked, slipped into historical obscurity. Prompted by a former passenger's curiosity, Sarah Ogilvie and Scott Miller of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum set out in 1996 to discover what happened to each of the 937 passengers. Their investigation, spanning nine years and half the globe, took them to unexpected places and produced surprising results. Refuge Denied chronicles the unraveling of the mystery, from Los Angeles to Havana and from New York to Jerusalem. Some of the most memorable stories include the fate of a young toolmaker who survived initial selection at Auschwitz because his glasses had gone flying moments before and a Jewish child whose apprenticeship with a baker in wartime France later translated into the establishment of a successful business in the United States. Unfolding like a compelling detective thriller, Refuge Denied is a must-read for anyone interested in the Holocaust and its impact on the lives of ordinary people.

Christopher R. Browning addresses some of the most heated controversies that have arisen from the use of postwar testimony: Hannah Arendt's uncritical acceptance of Adolf Eichmann's self-portrayal in Jerusalem; the conviction of Ivan Demjanuk (accused of being Treblinka death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible") on the basis of survivor testimony and its subsequent reversal by the Israeli Supreme Court; the debate in Poland sparked by Jan Gross's use of both survivor and communist courtroom testimony in his book Neighbors; and the conflict between Browning himself and Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners, regarding methodology and interpretation in the use of pre-trial testimony. Despite these controversies and challenges, Browning delineates the ways in which the critical use of such problematic sources can provide telling evidence for writing Holocaust history. He examines and discusses two starkly different sets of "collected memories"--the voluminous testimonies of notorious Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann and the testimonies of 175 survivors of an obscure complex of factory slave labor camps in the Polish town of Starachowice.

In September, 1939, George Lucius Salton's boyhood in Tyczyn, Poland, was shattered by escalating violence and terror under German occupation. His father, a lawyer, was forbidden to work, but eleven-year-old George dug potatoes, split wood, and resourcefully helped his family. They suffered hunger and deprivation, a forced march to the Rzeszow ghetto, then eternal separation when fourteen-year-old George and his brother were left behind to labor in work camps while their parents were deported in boxcars to die in Belzec. For the next three years, George slaved and barely survived in ten concentration camps, including Rzeszow, Plaszow, Flossenburg, Colmar, Sachsenhausen, Braunschweig, Ravensbrück, and Wobbelin. Cattle cars filled with skeletal men emptied into a train yard in Colmar, France. George and the other prisoners marched under the whips and fists of SS guards. But here, unlike the taunts and rocks from villagers in Poland and Germany, there was applause. "I could clearly hear the people calling: "Shame! Shame!" . . . Suddenly, I realized that the people of Colmar were applauding us! They were condemning the inhumanity of the Germans!" Of the 500 prisoners of the Nazis who marched through the streets of Colmar in the spring of 1944, just fifty were alive one year later when the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division liberated the Wobbelin concentration camp on the afternoon of May 2, 1945. "I felt something stir deep within my soul. It was my true self, the one who had stayed deep within and had not forgotten how to love and how to cry, the one who had chosen life and was still standing when the last roll call ended."

W.E. Fairbairn is a legendary figure in the history of Military Combatives and the Fairbairn -Sykes Fighting Knife he designed with E.A. Sykes has achieved a legendary status of its own. There have been numerous books, primarily aimed at collectors, written about the Fairbairn -Sykes and it's variations. This book however, based on accounts from O.S.S. veterans and extensive research of O.S.S. records, is the first to take an in depth look at the actual fighting system developed for using the knife

"Echoes from Hiroshima" is more than a historical novel; it is a gripping journeythrough the tragic events that took place in Hiroshima in 1945.Through the eyes of several characters, this book highlights the unimaginable consequencesof the atomic bomb and how its echoes continued for generations.At the centre is Emiko Saito, a survivor - a hibakusha - whose life was foreverchanged by the bomb. We follow her struggle to survive andprocess, while trying to preserve her memories as a legacy forfuture generations.This novel is a silent witness to the power of stories and memories.It is a reflection on the darkness of the past, but also a shining light that casts hopecasts hope for a more peaceful future.It is a book for those who are moved by the human spirit,by history, and by the inexhaustible power of hope.It is a reminder that although the echoes of the past can be painful, they also show us the way to a better future.

When Peg Ryan has a chance to join her Marine fighter pilot husband in Tsingtao, China in 1947, she jumps at it. After their separation during World War II and his year in China, her family could be whole again. Soon Peg and her seven-year-old daughter are on a transport ship to China forming friendships with other Marine families. Once the Riviera of the Orient, Peg discovers Tsingtao's layered complexity as she lives in a mansion with servants, volunteers at a local orphanage, and befriends those who mingle with the international community. Her life becomes tangled with others through loves, losses, births, deaths, and intrigue in a city where little is as it seems. As Mao's troops threaten the city and its strategic port, Peg will discover if coming to China has saved or destroyed her family.

"Daphne Cavin's poignant story of love, loss and sacrifice was one of the most memorable I encountered in writing The Greatest Generation. Her daughter now completes the story with this very heartfelt book." - Tom BrokawThe war claimed Daphne Kelley's young husband's life, but it couldn't keep Raymond - and his abiding love - from being with her when she needed him most.First told in Tom Brokaw's landmark bestseller, The Greatest Generation, Daphne and Raymond Kelley's story provides what New York Times book reviewer Michael Lind called, "perhaps the most compelling" love story in Brokaw's book.Taking its title from a poem newlywed Daphne sent her soldier-husband during World War II, When You Come Home tells of their young love in the heartland at the brink of war, and of the crushing uncertainty and fear as they find themselves a world apart. When her poem comes back to Daphne - blood-stained by Raymond's mortal wounds - she accepts the loss. And yet, through her pain, the grieving young widow finds that her faith provides hope and healing amidst the wounds of war.

Das Gebiet der heutigen Ukraine gehörte zu den zentralen Tatorten der deutschen Besatzungsverbrechen und des Holocaust. Im September 1941 richteten die Deutschen dort das Reichskommissariat Ukraine ein, das zum Zeitpunkt seiner größten Ausdehnung aus Teilen des damaligen Ostpolens sowie der Sowjetrepubliken Belarus und Ukraine bestand. Zur Jahreswende 1941/42 ließ das Reichssicherheitshauptamt dort auch stationäre Dienststellen der Kommandeure der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD aufbauen. Sie führten weitgehend die verbrecherische Tätigkeit der sogenannten Einsatzgruppen fort, die weiter nach Osten vorstießen. Doch mit einem Unterschied: Sie waren gekommen, um zu bleiben und die Dystopie eines deutsch-dominierten Osteuropas in die Praxis umzusetzen. In der Folge erschossen die Angehörigen dieser Dienststellen unzählige als Juden und Roma verfolgte Menschen und Kriegsgefangene, errichteten ein eigenes Lagersystem, verfolgten den Widerstand, richteten eine einheimische Kriminalpolizei ein und nahmen aktiv Einfluss auf die Kirchenpolitik. Die Studie untersucht erstmals die Geschichte und das Personal der Dienststellen im Reichskommissariat Ukraine und wirft damit auch neues Licht auf die Praxis der Besatzung und den Holocaust.

Im Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts wurde Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer als brillanter Chemiker bekannt, während mehrere seiner Verwandten ¿ darunter Dietrich Bonhoeffer ¿ in den Widerstand gegen Hitler verwickelt waren, was zu ihrer Hinrichtung führte. Dieses Buch zeichnet die Verflechtung von Wissenschaft, Religion und Politik im Dritten Reich und im Leben von Karl-Friedrich, seiner Familie und seinen Kollegen, darunter Fritz Haber und Werner Heisenberg, nach. Der für den Nobelpreis nominierte Karl-Friedrich war ein Experte für schweres Wasser, ein Bestandteil der Atombombe. Während des Krieges geriet er zwischen die Fronten vonVerwandten, die Hitler töten wollten, und Freunden, die Hitler beim Bau einer Atomwaffe halfen. Karl-Friedrich entpuppt sich als eine komplexe Figur ¿ ein Agnostiker, dessen Bruder ein renommierter Theologe war, und ein Chemiker, der sowohl widerwillig deutsche Atomwissenschaftler beriet als auch mit Paul Rosbaud, einem Spion der Briten, zusammenarbeitete. Die wissenschaftliche Welt von Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer ist die Geschichte eines Mannes, der die Chemie, seine Familie und seine Nation liebt und versucht, inmitten des Chaos allen gerecht zu werden.

This book aims to place the Ottoman Empire within its proper context in the Napoleonic Age and calls for a recognition of the crucial role of the Sublime Porte in the War of Second Coalition (1798-1802). The Ottoman-Russian joint naval expedition (1798-1800) to the Ionian Islands under the French occupation provides the framework for an examination of the Ottoman willingness to join the European system of alliance in the Napoleonic age which brought the victory against France in the Levant in the War of Second Coalition (1798-1802). Collections of the Ottoman Archives and Topkap¿ Palace Archives in Istanbul as well as various chronicles and treatises in Turkish supply most of the primary sources for this dissertation. Appendices, charts and maps are provided to make the findings on the expedition, finance aand logistics more readable.

In the dying embers of Europe's largest conflagration, the three teams are on a collision course that will lead them to one of the evilest places on earth-the ideological heart of the Nazi SS.

"The true story of Japan's surrender in World War II and how it nearly didn't happen! In the final days of World War II, Japan lay in ruins and the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been obliterated. A tense drama unfolds in Tokyo as Japan teeters on the edge of Armageddon. Japan's Longest Day tells the true story of the day immediately before the surrender, as a group of fanatical army officers attempt to prevent the Emperor from surrendering--an act of high treason which will inevitably result in Japan's total annihilation. This dramatic story recounts events that most people outside Japan are completely unaware of: The fierce disagreement between the army and the Japanese government as Emperor Hirohito prepares to announce the nation's unconditional surrender to the Allies, Attempts by War Minister Korechika Anami to change the Emperor's mind. Treasonous actions by a fanatical group of officers who vow to fight on, even if it means the death of every single Japanese citizen. The shocking plot to overthrow the government as Anami faces a fateful choice between loyalty to the cause and loyalty to the Emperor. Japan's Longest Day is beautifully told by award-winning manga artist Yukinobu Hoshino, who brings to life the story of Japan's most fateful day in elegant graphic novel form."--Publisher.

Little known outside of Central Europe, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) mounted one of the largest and longest lasting armed resistance against the totalitarian forces that occupied their homeland. This handbook focuses on the struggle against Nazi and Soviet occupations in the UPA's campaign for Ukrainian independence. Thirteen maps and 114 images, including historical images and modern reenactor photographs, allow the reader to expand their knowledge of this area of history as well as to provide the information needed to refight battles in miniature. The scenarios themselves can be adapted to your favorite rulesets and suggestions are included to fight small-scale actions using Warlord Games Bolt Action ruleset.

In 1939, in the Polish town of Tarnogród, 65 miles (105 km) south of Lublin, lived 5000 residents, half Jewish. Jews lived in Tarnogród for hundreds of years. By the end of WWII none remained.The story of this community, it's history, it's people, it's culture and it's demise is told in this book by those who survived. After the War they settled in Israel, the United States and England.In 1966, as a memorial to the Tarnogród they knew, they published Sefer Tarnogrod, The Book of Tarnogrod, in Yiddish and Hebrew.The authors wrote -"We do not pretend to erect a full memorial to the ancient Jewish Settlement in our city. Tarnogród deserves a more perfect monument. Our ambition was to describe and commemorate the Tarnogród that still lives in us, that is in our flesh and bones.May The Book of Tarnogrod be a kind of bridge between the past that has been so cruelly interrupted, and the future whosesun rises before our eyes."The authors hope that this book will serve as a bridge to the future is fulfilled. Jews have returned to Tarnogród to visit where their ancestors lived. In addition to what is written on these pages memorials have been erected in Tarnogród to those who perished in the Holocaust. And now Sefer Tarnogrod has been translated into English.

Japan’s Holocaust is a comprehensive exploration of Japan’s mass murder and sexual crimes during the Pacific and Asian Wars from 1927 to 1945.Japan’s Holocaust combines research conducted in over eighteen research facilities in five nations to explore Imperial Japan’s atrocities from 1927 to 1945 during its military expansions and reckless campaigns throughout Asia and the Pacific. This book brings together the most recent scholarship and new primary research to ascertain that Japan claimed a minimum of thirty million lives, slaughtering far more than Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Japan’s Holocaust shows that Emperor Hirohito not only knew about the atrocities his legions committed, but actually ordered them. He did nothing to stop them when they exceeded even the most depraved person’s imagination, as illustrated during the Rape of Nanking as well as many other events. Japan’s Holocaust will document in painful detail that the Rape of Nanking was not an isolated event during the Asian War but rather representative of how Japan behaved for all its campaigns throughout Asia and the Pacific from 1927 to 1945.Mass murder, rape, and economic exploitation was Japan’s modus operandi during this time period, and whereas Hitler’s SS Death’s Head outfits attempted to hide their atrocities, Hirohito’s legions committed their atrocities out in the open with fanfare and enthusiasm. Moreover, whereas Germany has done much since World War II to atone for its crimes and to document them, Japan has been absolutely disgraceful with its reparations for its crimes and in its efforts to educate its population about its wartime past. Shockingly, Japan continues, in general, to glorify is criminals and its wartime past.

"In 1932, Hazel Ying Lee, a nineteen-year-old American daughter of Chinese immigrants, sat in on a friend's flight lesson. It changed her life. In less than a year, a girl with a wicked sense of humor, a newfound love of flying, and a tough can-do attitude earned her pilot's license and headed for China to help against invading Japanese forces. In time, Hazel would become the first Asian American to fly with the Women Airforce Service Pilots. As thrilling as it may have been, it wasn't easy. In America, Hazel felt the oppression and discrimination of the Chinese Exclusion Act. In China's field of male-dominated aviation she was dismissed for being a woman, and for being an American. But in service to her country, Hazel refused to be limited by gender, race, and impossible dreams. Frustrated but undeterred she forged ahead, married Clifford Louie, a devoted and unconventional husband who cheered his wife on, and gave her all for the cause achieving more in her short remarkable life than even she imagined possible. American Flygirl is the untold account of a spirited fighter and an indomitable hidden figure in American history. She broke every common belief about women. She challenged every social restriction to endure and to succeed. And against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Hazel Ying Lee reached for the skies and made her mark as a universal and unsung hero whose time has come."--

"Berlin 1945. Following the fall of the Third Reich, drug use-long kept under control by the Nazis' strict anti-drug laws-is rampant throughout the city. Split into four sectors, Berlin's drug policies are being enforced under the individual jurisdictions of each allied power-the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the US. In the American zone, Arthur J. Giuliani of the nascent Federal Bureau of Narcotics is tasked with learning about the Nazis' anti-drug laws and bringing home anything that might prove "useful" to the United States. Five years later, Harvard professor Dr. Henry Beecher began work with the US government to uncover the research behind the Nazis psychedelics program. Begun as an attempt to find a "truth serum" and experiment with mind control, the Nazi study initially involved mescaline, but quickly expanded to include LSD. Originally created for medical purposes by Swiss pharmaceutical Sandoz, the Nazis coopted the drug for their mind control military research-research that, following the war, the US was desperate to acquire. This research birthed MKUltra, the CIA's notorious brainwashing and psychological torture program during the 1950s and 1960s, and ultimately shaped US drug policy regarding psychedelics for over half a century. Based on extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, TRIPPED is a wild, unconventional postwar history, a spiritual sequel to Norman Ohler's NEW YORK TIMES bestseller BLITZED. Revealing the close relationship and hidden connections between the Nazis and the early days of drugs in America, Ohler shares how this secret history held back therapeutic research of psychedelic drugs for decades and eventually became part of the foundation of America's War on Drugs"--

On Emmy's first day at work, she finds a poetry collection by Rainer Maria Rilke, and on the title pages is a handwritten dedication: To Annelise, my brave Edelweiss Pirate. Emmy is instantly intrigued by the story behind the dedication and becomes determined to figure out what happened.