A popularly written history of the SS and Gestapo - the main tools of Nazi political and racial terror. Inter alia, highlights the role of these bodies in the "Final Solution": discusses the activities of the Einsatzgruppen, the establishment of ghettos in Poland, and the death camps. The SS played a crucial role in the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Accompanied by numerous photographs.
Johnson's exhaustive new history tackles terror, the central aspect of the Nazi dictatorship, focusing on the role of the society in making this tactic work, and delving deeply into the how and why of this horrendous regime. Illustrations.
For decades, history ignored the Nazi persecution of gay people. Only with the rise of the gay movement in the 1970s did historians finally recognize that gay people, like Jews and others deemed “undesirable,” suffered enormously at the hands of the Nazi regime. Of the few who survived the concentration camps, even fewer ever came forward to tell their stories. This heart wrenchingly vivid account of one man's arrest and imprisonment by the Nazis for the crime of homosexuality, now with a new preface by Sarah Schulman, remains an essential contribution to gay history and our understanding of historical fascism, as well as a remarkable and complex story of survival and identity.
The Grim story of the most vicious Terror Agency of all time-Its sinister Power and Barbaric acts, and the twisted men who led it-Hitler, Himmler, and Eichmann. This is the brutal expose of the rotten core of Nazi Germany. Here is revealed the true story of Hitler's terror police, the in-famous Gestapo-the madmen who headed it, the sadists who staffed it, the degenerate party that spawned it.
This book offers an intellectual history of Ernst Fraenkel's classic The Dual State (1941), recently republished by OUP, and one of the most erudite books on the theory of dictatorship ever written. It was the first comprehensive analysis of the nature and rise of Nazism, and the only such analysis written from within Hitler's Germany.
Any consideration of the 20th century would be incomplete without a discussion of Nazi Germany, an extraordinary regime which dominated European history for 12 years, and left a legacy that still echoes with us today. The incredible force of the destructive vision at the heart of Nazi Germany led to a second world war when the world was still aching from the first one, and an incomprehensible death count, both at home and abroad. In this Very Short Introduction, Jane Caplan's insightful analysis of Nazi Germany provides a highly relevant reminder of the fragility of democratic institutions, and the ways in which the exploitation of national fears, mass political movements, and frail political opposition can lead to the imposition of dictatorship. Considering the emergence and popular appeal of the Nazi party, she discusses the relationships between belief, consent, and terror in securing the regime, alongside the crucial role played by Hitler himself. Covering the full history of the regime, she includes an unflinching look at the dark stains of war, persecution, and genocide. At the same time, Caplan offers unexpected angles of vision and insights; asking readers to look behind the handful of over-used images of Nazi Germany we are familiar with, and to engage critically with a history that that is so abhorrent it risks seeming beyond interpretation. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
An examination of the everyday operations of the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. It looks at the three-way interaction between the police, the German people and the enforcement of Hitler's policies, as an example of popular participation in the operations of institutions such as the Gestapo.