The Curtain Falls: The Last Days Of The Third Reich
The Curtain Falls: The Last Days Of The Third Reich

Author: Folke Bernadotte

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 1786255731

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COUNT FOLKE BERNADOTTE attracted the whole world’s attention during the hectic months that preceded the total collapse of the Third Reich and the capitulation of the German forces. About the middle of February 1945 he set out from Sweden for Germany to try to establish contact with Heinrich Himmler and induce him to allow all Danes and Norwegians in German concentration camps to be transported to Sweden for internment until the end of the war. In this book, which is based on his own notes and reports, Count Bernadotte describes his various missions, which were repeated up to the very day of the surrender, his meetings with Himmler and other leading figures of the Nazi regime, and gives Intimate close-ups of the events and the weird atmosphere in which the last act of the drama of the Third Reich was played. He explains, further, how his project, which originally had had a purely humanitarian character, developed a political one of great importance when, long past the eleventh hour, he was asked to convey, via the Swedish Government, Himmler’s offer of surrender to the western Powers. After the war, Bernadotte was unanimously chosen by the victorious powers to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-1948. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by members of the underground Zionist group Lehi while pursuing his official duties.

Last Days of the Reich
Last Days of the Reich

Author: Count Folke Bernadotte

Publisher: Frontline Books

Published: 2009-01-30

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1848325223

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Count Folke Bernadotte was one of those rare figures in war ' a man trusted by both sides alike. Shortly before the war ended, Bernadotte was the leader of a rescue operation to transfer western European inmates to Swedish hospitals in the so-called 'White Buses'. This work through the Swedish Red Cross involved mercy missions to Germany and it was through this link that Bernadotte came into touch with prominent Nazi leaders in the 1940s. During the last months of the war, Bernadotte was introduced to Heinrich Himmler ' one of the most sinister men of the Third Reich. Bernadotte was asked by Himmler to approach the Allies with the proposal of a complete surrender to Britain and the US ' providing Germany could continue to fight the Soviet Union. The offer was passed to Winston Churchill and Harry Truman, but rejected. The course of these negotiations is narrated in this book with a simple, compelling clarity and thrilling immediacy. This new edition of Bernadotte's memoir includes a Preface by his two sons, and an Introduction by a leading Swedish author discussing Count Bernadotte's wartime record and his post-war assassination.

The Collaborators
The Collaborators

Author: Ian Buruma

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2023-03-07

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0593296648

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Ian Buruma’s spellbinding account of three near-mythic figures—a Dutch fixer, a Manchu princess, and Himmler’s masseur—who may have been con artists and collaborators under Japanese and German rule, or true heroes, or something in between. On the face of it, the three characters in this book seem to have little in common—aside from the fact that each committed wartime acts that led some to see them as national heroes, and others as villains. All three were mythmakers, larger-than-life storytellers, for whom the truth was beside the point. Felix Kersten was a plump Finnish pleasure-seeker who became Heinrich Himmler’s indispensable personal masseur—Himmler calling him his “magic Buddha.” Kersten presented himself after the war as a resistance hero who convinced Himmler to save countless people from mass murder. Kawashima Yoshiko, a gender-fluid Manchu princess, spied for the Japanese secret police in China, and was mythologized by the Japanese as a heroic combination of Mata Hari and Joan of Arc. Friedrich Weinreb was a Hasidic Jew in Holland who took large amounts of money from fellow Jews in an imaginary scheme to save them from deportation, while in fact betraying some of them to the German secret police. Sentenced after the war as a con artist, he was regarded regarded by supporters as the “Dutch Dreyfus.” All three figures have been vilified and mythologized, out of a never-ending need, Ian Buruma argues, to see history, and particularly war, and above all World War II, as a neat story of angels and devils. The Collaborators is a fascinating reconstruction of what in fact we can know about these incredible figures and what will always remain out of reach. What emerges is all the more mesmerizing for being painted in chiaroscuro. In times of life-and-death stakes, the truth quickly gets buried under lies and self-deception. Now, when demagogues abroad and at home are assaulting the truth once more, the stories of the collaborators and their lessons are indispensable.

The Third Reich's Intelligence Services
The Third Reich's Intelligence Services

Author: Katrin Paehler

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-03-24

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1107157196

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Gaining a foothold -- Rising star -- Intelligence man -- Office VI and its forerunner -- Competing visions: Office VI and the Abwehr -- Doing intelligence: Italy as an example -- Alternative universes: Office VI and the Auswärtige Amt -- Schellenberg, Himmler, and the quest for "peace"--Postwar

Nazi Millionaires
Nazi Millionaires

Author: Theodore P. Savas

Publisher: Casemate

Published: 2007-07-24

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1935149687

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The untold story of Nazi officers who escaped Germany after WWII with stolen treasure—and the Allied investigation to get it back. During the final days of World War II, German SS officers crammed trains, cars, and trucks full of gold, currency, and jewels, and headed for the mountains of Austria. Most of these men were eventually apprehended, but many managed to evade capture. The intensive postwar Allied investigation that followed recovered only a sliver of their treasure. The true story of the men who escaped, and the riches that went missing, is finally revealed in Nazi Millionaires. This groundbreaking study, based on previously unpublished and newly declassified documents, offers insight into the minds and methods of these SS thieves. Readers are taken inside the Reich Security Main Office where they worked and the Allied investigation into their activities to discover what happened to the vast wealth they looted from Europe’s Jews. Nazi Millionaires tells a remarkable tale of greed, fraud, treachery, and murder.

The Gestapo
The Gestapo

Author: Frank McDonough

Publisher: Coronet

Published: 2015-08-27

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1444778080

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Name as a 2016 Book of the Year by the Spectator A Daily Telegraph 'Book of the Week' (August 2015) Longlisted for 2016 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize Ranked in 100 Best Books of 2015 in the Daily Telegraph Professor Frank McDonough is one of the leading scholars and most popular writers on the history of Nazi Germany. Frank McDonough's work has been described as, 'modern history writing at its very best...Ground-breaking, fascinating, occasionally deeply revisionist' by renowned historian Andrew Roberts. Drawing on a detailed examination of previously unpublished Gestapo case files this book relates the fascinating, vivid and disturbing accounts of a cross-section of ordinary and extraordinary people who opposed the Nazi regime. It also tells the equally disturbing stories of their friends, neighbours, colleagues and even relatives who were often drawn into the Gestapo's web of intrigue. The book reveals, too, the cold-blooded and efficient methods of the Gestapo officers. This book will also show that the Gestapo lacked the manpower and resources to spy on everyone as it was reliant on tip offs from the general public. Yet this did not mean the Gestapo was a weak or inefficient instrument of Nazi terror. On the contrary, it ruthlessly and efficiently targeted its officers against clearly defined political and racial 'enemies of the people'. The Gestapo will provide a chilling new doorway into the everyday life of the Third Reich and give powerful testimony from the victims of Nazi terror and poignant life stories of those who opposed Hitler's regime while challenging popular myths about the Gestapo.

The Nazi Titanic
The Nazi Titanic

Author: Robert P. Watson

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 2016-04-26

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0306824906

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Built in 1927, the German ocean liner SS Cap Arcona was the greatest ship since the RMS Titanic and one of the most celebrated luxury liners in the world. When the Nazis seized control in Germany, she was stripped down for use as a floating barracks and troop transport. Later, during the war, Hitler's minister, Joseph Goebbels, cast her as the "star" in his epic propaganda film about the sinking of the legendary Titanic. Following the film's enormous failure, the German navy used the Cap Arcona to transport German soldiers and civilians across the Baltic, away from the Red Army's advance. In the Third Reich's final days, the ill-fated ship was packed with thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Without adequate water, food, or sanitary facilities, the prisoners suffered as they waited for the end of the war. Just days before Germany surrendered, the Cap Arcona was mistakenly bombed by the British Royal Air Force, and nearly all of the prisoners were killed in the last major tragedy of the Holocaust and one of history's worst maritime disasters. Although the British government sealed many documents pertaining to the ship's sinking, Robert P. Watson has unearthed forgotten records, conducted many interviews, and used over 100 sources, including diaries and oral histories, to expose this story. As a result, The Nazi Titanic is a riveting and astonishing account of an enigmatic ship that played a devastating role in World War II and the Holocaust.

History of Norway
History of Norway

Author: Karen Larsen

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-12-08

Total Pages: 603

ISBN-13: 140087579X

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A distinguished one-volume history of Norway, from the Vikings through the Resistance of World War II. "Full, objective, and thoroughly readable history, rich in content.... The result is a well-rounded treatment of Norwegian life—political, religious, economic, and intellectual—during the long centuries.... Easily the most important history of Norway in the English language since Gjerset."—N. Y. Times Originally published in 1948. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Death Marches
The Death Marches

Author: Daniel Blatman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 584

ISBN-13: 0674050495

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Blatman writes about the end phase of the German concentration camp system when the Nazis, realizing that they were losing the war, were faced with the enormous problem of what to do with the people being held captive. As these camps were being evacuated, the collapse of the front in Poland and the advance of the Red Army generated frantic waves of flight and the evacuation of millions of civilians and soldiers. The panicky retreat created conditions under which prisoners were murdered in horrific death marches. Gas chambers in faraway camps were no longer in use, and now the slaughters took place on the very doorsteps of ordinary German civilians' homes and in the streets German and Austrian towns. Unknown numbers of ordinary civilians across the dissolving Reich, fearing for the fate of their families and property, participated in the lethal eruption of violence. The book is divided into two sections. The first part provides an detailed overview of the camp system and a thorough chronological treatment of the camp evacuations during the winter of 1944-45 and the spring of 1945. The second part is a case study of the atrocity in the German town of Gardelegen where over 1000 prisoners were murdered, along with about 400 in the surrounding villages. This event serves as a focused example of the breakdown of the evacuation plans at the end of the war.