You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Tracing the rise of racist and eugenic ideologies, Henry Friedlander explores in chilling detail how the Nazi program of secretly exterminating the handicapped and disabled evolved into the systematic destruction of Jews and Gypsies. He describes how the so-called euthanasia of the handicapped provided a practical model for the later mass murder, thereby initiating the Holocaust. The Nazi regime pursued the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped based on a belief in the biological, and thus absolute, inferiority of those groups. To document the connection between the assault on the handicapped and the Final Solution, Friedlander shows how the legal restrictions and exclusionary policies of the 1930s, including mass sterilization, led to mass murder during the war. He also makes clear that the killing centers where the handicapped were gassed and cremated served as the models for the extermination camps. Based on extensive archival research, the book also analyzes the involvement of the German bureaucracy and judiciary, the participation of physicians and scientists, and the nature of popular opposition.
Iron Age Myth and Materiality: an Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400-1000 considers the relationship between myth and materiality in Scandinavia from the beginning of the post-Roman era and the European Migrations up until the coming of Christianity. It pursues an interdisciplinary interpretation of text and material culture and examines how the documentation of an oral past relates to its material embodiment. While the material evidence is from the Iron Age, most Old Norse texts were written down in the thirteenth century or even later. With a time lag of 300 to 900 years from the archaeological evidence, the textual material has until recently been ruled out as a usable source for any study...
This new and innovative biography portrays the life of Wilhelm Heinrich Solf, a man who lived from Bismarck to Hitler (1862-1936), and whose life was deeply entangled with the ups and downs of Germany's domestic and in particular foreign and international policies.Solf went from carving out a name for himself as a liberal - and successful - colonial Governor to becoming the imperial colonial minister of the Kaiserreich before World War I. During the war he struggled to influence the Kaiser's ruling circle away from its aggressive military policies towards a negotiated peace, rising to become imperial Germany's last Foreign Minister. He was appointed Weimar's ambassador to Japan, and turned o...
Over the past half-century, Europe has experienced the most radical reallocation of authority that has ever taken place in peace-time, yet the ideological conflicts that will emerge from this are only now becoming apparent. The editors of this 2004 volume, Gary Marks and Marco Steenbergen, have brought together a formidable group of scholars of European and comparative politics to investigate patterns of conflict that are arising in the European Union. Using diverse sources of data, and examining a range of actors, including citizens, political parties, members of the European Parliament, social movements, and interest groups, the authors of this volume conclude that political contestation concerning European integration is indeed rooted in the basic conflicts that have shaped political life in Western Europe for many years. This comprehensive volume provides an analysis of political conflict in the European Union.
The Autobiography of an Unknown South African by Naboth Mokgatle offers a detailed and rich narrative of the author’s life and his tribal roots, providing a vivid glimpse into the customs, traditions, and history of the Bafokeng people of South Africa. Mokgatle begins with his family history, recounting the circumstances of his birth in 1911 in Phokeng, a tribal village in the Rustenburg district of the Transvaal Province. He describes the complex dynamics of his family, shaped by both African traditions and the influence of Christianity, which often created tension in their practices. The narrative reveals the traditional African values of marriage, gender roles, and the discipline instil...
"Once you heard that pinging sound you knew they had got to you, then the depth charges came. Terrible, just terrible." Kurt Wehling, u-boat survivor The steel coffins was the name given to the U-boats of the Kriegsmarine by their own crews. Their fatalistic view of the war was certainly justified; it is estimated that seventy-five per cent of the 39,000 men who sailed in the U-boat fleet paid the ultimate price as the tide of war turned inexorably against Hitler's Germany. This is the illustrated history of the U-boat war from the perspective of the men who sailed into battle in the service of the Third Reich. Drawing heavily on the accounts of the last remaining survivors, 'The U-boat War'...
This book is a comprehensive account of the Chelmno death camp. Chelmno was not only the first Nazi death camp, it also set a horrific example in establishing gas vans as the first mass use of poison gas to kill Jews. Chris Webb and Artur Hojan cover the construction and the development of the mass murder process, as perfected by the Nazis. The story is painstakingly told from all sides, the Jewish inmates, some who survived the Holocaust, the perpetrators, the Polish Arbeitskommando, and others. A major part of this work is the Jewish Roll of Remembrance that includes the few survivors and the Jews deported from the Reich, via the Litzmannstadt ghetto, to their deaths in the gas vans. The book is richly illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs and documents.
A comprehensive history of the Nazi persecution and murder of European Jews, demonstrating just how central anti-semitism was to Nazi ideology and what a driving force it was in the development of Nazi decision-making, from their earliest days in power through to the invasion of the Soviet Union and the implementation of the Final Solution.
Under the Nazi regime a secret program of ‘euthanasia’ was undertaken against the sick and disabled. Known as the Krankenmorde (the murder of the sick) 300,000 people were killed. A further 400,000 were sterilised against their will. Many complicit doctors, nurses, soldiers and bureaucrats would then perpetrate the Holocaust. From eyewitness accounts, records and case files, The First into the Dark narrates a history of the victims, perpetrators, opponents to and witnesses of the Krankenmorde, and reveals deeper implications for contemporary society: moral values and ethical challenges in end of life decisions, reproduction and contemporary genetics, disability and human rights, and in remembrance and atonement for the past.
This volume presents a comprehensive, multifaceted picture both of the destructive dynamic of the Nazi leadership and of the attitudes and behavior of ordinary Germans as the persecution of the Jews spiraled into total genocide.