(Book). April 1945 Inspector Pekkala is in a race against time as he heads to Berlin to capture the plans for a secret weapon that could change the course of the war. "Excellently plotted and paced, with a lively cast, real and fictional." The London Times (Book of the Month) Berlin Red is the seveneth and final novel in this "gripping series of literary thrillers" ( Booklist ) by Sam Eastland, the nom de plume of acclaimed novelist and memoirist Paul Watkins. The previous Inspector Pekkala suspense novels published by Opus were Red Icon and The Beast in the Red Forest .
For years, the history of the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany was hidden and distorted by Cold War politics. Providing a much-needed corrective, Red Orchestra presents the dramatic story of a circle of German citizens who opposed Hitler from the start, choosing to stay in Germany to resist Nazism and help its victims. The book shines a light on this critical movement which was made up of academics, theatre people, and factory workers; Protestants, Catholics and Jews; around 150 Germans all told and from all walks of life. Drawing on archives, memoirs, and interviews with survivors, award-winning scholar and journalist Anne Nelson presents a compelling portrait of the men and women involved, and the terrifying day-to-day decisions in their lives, from the Nazi takeover in 1933 to their Gestapo arrest in 1942. Nelson traces the story of the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) resistance movement within the context of German history, showing the stages of the Nazi movement and regime from the 1920s to the end of the Second World War. She also constructs the narrative around the life of Greta Kuckhoff and other female figures whose role in the anti-Nazi resistance fight is too-often unrecognised or under appreciated. This revised edition includes: * A new introduction which explores elements of the Red Orchestra's experience that resonate with our times, including: the impact of new media technologies; the dangers of political polarization; and the way the judiciary can be shaped to further the ends of autocracy. The introduction will also address the long-standing misconception that the German Resistance only took action when it was clear that Germany was losing the war. * Historiographic updates throughout the book which take account of recent literature and additional archival sources
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.
An alternative history of art in Berlin, detaching artistic innovation from art world narratives and connecting it instead to collective creativity and social solidarity. In pre- and post-reunification Berlin, socially engaged artists championed collective art making and creativity over individual advancement, transforming urban space and civic life in the process. During the Cold War, the city’s state of exception invited artists on both sides of the Wall to detour from artistic tradition; post-Wall, art became a tool of resistance against the orthodoxy of economic growth. In Free Berlin, Briana Smith explores the everyday peculiarities, collective joys, and grassroots provocations of experimental artists in late Cold War Berlin and their legacy in today’s city. These artists worked intentionally outside the art market, believing that art should be everywhere, freed from its confinement in museums and galleries. They used art as a way to imagine new forms of social and creative life. Smith introduces little-known artists including West Berlin feminist collective Black Chocolate, the artist duo paint the town red (p.t.t.r), and the Office for Unusual Events, creators of satirical urban political theater, as well as East Berlin action art and urban interventionists Erhard Monden, Kurt Buchwald, and others. Artists and artist-led urban coalitions in 1990s Berlin carried on the participatory spirit of the late Cold War, with more overt forms of protest and collaboration at the neighborhood level. The temperament lives on in twenty-first century Berlin, animating artists’ resolve to work outside the market and citizens’ spirited defenses of green spaces, affordable housing, and collectivist projects. With Free Berlin, Smith offers an alternative history of art in Berlin, detaching artistic innovation from art world narratives and connecting it instead to Berliners’ historic embrace of care, solidarity, and cooperation.
Mendl Mann's autobiographical novel The Fall of Berlin tells the painful yet compelling story of life as a Jewish soldier in the Red Army. Menakhem Isaacovich is a Polish Jew who, after fleeing the Nazis, finds refuge in the USSR. The novel follows Menakhem as he fights on the front line in Stalin's Red Army against Hitler and the Nazis who are destroying his homeland of Poland and exterminating the Jews. Menakhem encounters anti-Semitism on various occasions throughout the narrative, and struggles to comprehend how seemingly normal people could hold such appalling views. As Mann writes, it is odd that "vicious, insidious anti-Semitism could reside in a person with elevated feelings, an average person, a decent person". The Fall of Berlin is both a striking and timely look at the struggle that many Jewish soldiers faced. Skillfully translated from Yiddish and introduced by Maurice Wolfthal, this is an affecting and unique book which eloquently explores a variety of themes - anti-Semitism, patriotism, Stalinism and life as a Jewish soldier in the Second World War. The Fall of Berlin is essential reading for anyone interested in the Yiddish language, Jewish history, and the history of World War II. As with all Open Book publications, this entire book is available to read for free on the publisher's website. Printed and digital editions, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found at www.openbookpublishers.com.
The scene is Amsterdam. The Nazis invade The Netherlands early on Friday, May 10, 1940. Hitler says the Dutch will surrender in four hours. Tonny Ahlers comes from a disfunctional family. He runs from school after punching his teacher. Tonny believes the Dutch Nazis, The NSB, will help him. Cherryl, a Jewish girl, falls for him. She will not give up on Tonny. Jews returning after the war must pay overdue property taxes. The Dutch want to keep Jewish children they have hidden during the occupation. These Jews are now part of the family. What would you do?
From a master of popular history, the lively, immersive story of the race to seize Berlin in the aftermath of World War II as it’s never been told before BERLIN’S FATE WAS SEALED AT THE 1945 YALTA CONFERENCE: the city, along with the rest of Germany, was to be carved up among the victorious powers— the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. On paper, it seemed a pragmatic solution. In reality, once the four powers were no longer united by the common purpose of defeating Germany, they wasted little time reverting to their prewar hostility toward—and suspicion of—one another. The veneer of civility between the Western allies and the Soviets was to break down in spectacular fashion in Berlin. Rival systems, rival ideologies, and rival personalities ensured that the German capital became an explosive battleground. The warring leaders who ran Berlin’s four sectors were charismatic, mercurial men, and Giles Milton brings them all to rich and thrilling life here. We meet unforgettable individuals like America’s explosive Frank “Howlin’ Mad” Howley, a brusque sharp-tongued colonel with a relish for mischief and a loathing for all Russians. Appointed commandant of the city’s American sector, Howley fought an intensely personal battle against his wily nemesis, General Alexander Kotikov, commandant of the Soviet sector. Kotikov oozed charm as he proposed vodka toasts at his alcohol-fueled parties, but Howley correctly suspected his Soviet rival was Stalin’s agent, appointed to evict the Western allies from Berlin and ultimately from Germany as well. Throughout, Checkmate in Berlin recounts the first battle of the Cold War as we’ve never before seen it. An exhilarating tale of intense rivalry and raw power, it is above all a story of flawed individuals who were determined to win, and Milton does a masterful job of weaving between all the key players’ motivations and thinking at every turn. A story of unprecedented human drama, it’s one that had a profound, and often underestimated, shaping force on the modern world – one that’s still felt today.
A study of the Red Army’s penultimate offensive operation in the war in Europe. The forces of three fronts—Second and First Belorussian and First Ukrainian—reached the Oder River and surrounded the defenders of the German capital, reduced the city and drove westward to link up with the Western allies in central Germany. This is another in a series of studies compiled by the Soviet Army General Staff, which during the postwar years gave itself the task of gathering and generalizing the experience of the war for the purpose of training the armed forces’ higher staffs in the conduct of large-scale offensive operations. The study is divided into three parts. The first contains a brief strategic overview of the situation, as it existed by the spring of 1945, with special emphasis on German preparations to meet the inevitable Soviet attack. This section also includes an examination of the decisions by the Stavka of the Supreme High Command on the conduct of the operation. As usual, materiel-technical and other preparations for the offensive are covered in great detail. These include plans for artillery and engineer support, as well as the work of the rear services and political organs and the strengths, capabilities, and tasks of the individual armies. Part two deals with the Red Army’s breakthrough of the Germans’ Oder defensive position up to the encirclement of the Berlin garrison. This covers the First Belorussian Front’s difficulty in overcoming the defensive along the Seelow Heights, which has a direct path to Berlin, as well as the First Ukrainian Front’s easier passage over the Oder and its secondary attack along the Dresden axis. The Second Belorussian Front’s breakthrough and its sweep through the Baltic littoral is also covered. Part three recounts the intense fighting to reduce the city’s defenders from late April until the garrison’s surrender on May 2, as well as operations in the area up to the formal German capitulation. This section contains a number of detailed descriptions of urban fighting at the battalion and regimental level, closing with conclusions about the role of the various combat arms in the operation.
An examination of Berlin's turbulent history through the lens of its water and energy infrastructures. In Remaking Berlin, Timothy Moss takes a novel perspective on Berlin's turbulent twentieth-century history, examining it through the lens of its water and energy infrastructures. He shows that, through a century of changing regimes, geopolitical interventions, and socioeconomic volatility, Berlin's networked urban infrastructures have acted as medium and manifestation of municipal, national, and international politics and policies. Moss traces the coevolution of Berlin and its infrastructure systems from the creation of Greater Berlin in 1920 to remunicipalization of services in 2020, encompassing democratic, fascist, and socialist regimes.
Almost 75 years have passed since thousands of artillery rounds rained down on the western bank of the Oder River shattering the pre-dawn silence on April 16, 1945, the date the Soviet Red Army commenced its Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation. In the decades following that momentous day, many historical accounts have been published on what would more commonly come to be known as the Battle of Berlin. Cornelius Ryan, John Erickson and Antony Beevor are among the authors whose books are considered the standards on the subject. This work complements those efforts by offering an entirely new and unique perspective on the battle that would result in German leader Adolf Hitler's death and the near total destruction of Berlin - Nazi Germany's Reichshauptstadt. For the very first time, the Battle of Berlin unfolds via the individual combat exploits of the Soviet military personnel who fought in it. Drawing upon primary source material in the archival holdings of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the battle is chronicled employing the descriptive narratives recorded in the original award recommendations of those Red Army personnel who were bestowed the title Hero of the Soviet Union (HSU) for their heroism during the fighting to capture the city. As the former Soviet Union's highest decoration for combat valor, the HSU is broadly analogous to the American Medal of Honor, the British Victoria Cross and wartime Germany's Knights Cross. For Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, the city of Berlin was the "beast's lair" - логово зверя (logovo zverya) in the Russian language. No symbol within that lair held more significance for him than the German Reichstag building. While some may argue that Berlin's Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) or Hitler's Reichskanzlei (Reich Chancellery) would have been more appropriate symbols, Stalin was fixated on the Reichstag alone. Although largely abandoned after it burned in 1933, the Reichstag's capture was nonetheless of immense symbolic meaning for him. In Stalin's mind, only when a red Soviet banner was unfurled and rippled in the wind over the Reichstag, would victory in the beast's lair and Germany's total defeat be secured. These are the stories of the Red Army soldiers whose valor in the Battle of Berlin made Stalin's order a reality.
