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WARLORDS recreates in forensic and gripping detail the extraordinary mind games between Churchill, Hitler, Stalin and Roosevelt as World War Two unfolded day by day. Why did Hitler make a deal in August 1939 with his sworn enemy Stalin? Was it always his intention to double-cross the Russian? Or was Operation Barbarossa forced on Hitler because he'd failed to bring Churchill to heel? What was going on in Roosevelt's mind as Churchill stood alone against Hitler? Did he always intend to bring America into the war, as Churchill pleaded with him to do? Or was his real plan for Britain to do the fighting, backed by American money - a plan that was disrupted only by Pearl Harbour? And in the war's endgame, did the two great leaders of the West failed to understand Stalin's intentions; or did they have no choice but to concede half of Europe to him? "Gripping, innovative and perceptive... It reads like a thriller but it is also a scholarly, impeccably researched piece of work... superlative." - Tribune "Fascinating insights into the minds of these titans." - Daily Mail
How a German city became Polish after World War II With the stroke of a pen at the Potsdam Conference following the Allied victory in 1945, Breslau, the largest German city east of Berlin, became the Polish city of Wroclaw. Its more than six hundred thousand inhabitants—almost all of them ethnic Germans—were expelled and replaced by Polish settlers from all parts of prewar Poland. Uprooted examines the long-term psychological and cultural consequences of forced migration in twentieth-century Europe through the experiences of Wroclaw's Polish inhabitants. In this pioneering work, Gregor Thum tells the story of how the city's new Polish settlers found themselves in a place that was not onl...
Known as Lemberg in German and Lwów in Polish, the city of L'viv in modern Ukraine was in the crosshairs of imperial and national aspirations for much of the twentieth century. This book tells the compelling story of how its inhabitants (Roman Catholic Poles, Greek Catholic Ukrainians, and Jews) reacted to the sweeping political changes during and after World Wars I and II. The Eastern Front shifted back and forth, and the city changed hands seven times. At the end of each war, L'viv found itself in the hands of a different state. While serious tensions had existed among Poles, Ukrainians/Ruthenians, and Jews in the city, before 1914 eruptions of violence were still infrequent. The changes ...
Central Europe, 1914-1918. A broad vista of the lives of the inhabitants of the border zones between Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary during the Great War. The ordinary man's struggle to survive against the background of political and military affairs during the First World War, and in the comparative European context.
Jan Gross describes the terrors of the Soviet occupation of the lands that made up eastern Poland between the two world wars: the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. His lucid analysis of the revolution that came to Poland from abroad is based on hundreds of first-hand accounts of the hardship, suffering, and social chaos that accompanied the Sovietization of this poorest section of a poverty-stricken country. Woven into the author's exploration of events from the Soviet's German-supported aggression against Poland in September of 1939 to Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, these testimonies not only illuminate his conclusions about the nature of totalitarianism but also make a powerful statement of their own. Those who endured the imposition of Soviet rule and mass deportations to forced resettlement, labor camps, and prisons of the Soviet Union are here allowed to speak for themselves, and they do so with grim effectiveness.
"This source-reader invites you to encounter the world of one thousand years of Jewish self-government in eastern Europe. It tells about the beginnings in the Middle Ages, delves into the unfolding of communal hierarchies and supra-communal representation in the early modern period, and reflects on the impact of the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and of growing state interference, as well as on the communist and post-communist periods. Translated into English from Hebrew, Latin, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, German, and other languages, in most cases for the first time, the sources illustrate communal life, the interdependence of civil and religious leadership, the impact of state legislation, Jewish-non-Jewish encounters, reform projects and political movements, but also Jewish resilience during the Holocaust"--
In the spring of 1940, the Soviet Union carried out the mass executions of 14,500 Polish prisoners of war - army officers, police, gendarmes, and civilians - taken by the Red Army when it invaded eastern Poland in September 1939. This work details the Soviet killings, the elaborate cover-up of the crime, and the subsequent revelations.
A major new history of the eight days in February 1945 when FDR, Churchill, and Stalin decided the fate of the world Imagine you could eavesdrop on a dinner party with three of the most fascinating historical figures of all time. In this landmark book, a gifted Harvard historian puts you in the room with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as they meet at a climactic turning point in the war to hash out the terms of the peace. The ink wasn't dry when the recriminations began. The conservatives who hated Roosevelt's New Deal accused him of selling out. Was he too sick? Did he give too much in exchange for Stalin's promise to join the war against Japan? Could he have done better in Eastern Europe...
In 1756, Jacob Frank, an Ottoman Jew who had returned to the Poland of his birth, was discovered leading a group of fellow travelers in a suspect religious service. At the request of the local rabbis, Polish authorities arrested the participants. Jewish authorities contacted the bishop in whose diocese the service had taken place and argued that since the rites of Frank's followers involved the practice of magic and immoral conduct, both Jews and Christians should condemn them and burn them at the stake. The scheme backfired, as the Frankists took the opportunity to ally themselves with the Church, presenting themselves as Contra-Talmudists who believed in a triune God. As a Turkish subject,...
Originally published in 1941, this book presents a comprehensive history of Poland from 1697 to 1935. The text was begun on the initiative of the renowned Cambridge historian Harold Temperley (1879-1939), who arranged numerous meetings with Polish and British historians in relation to the project, and was completed following his death. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Poland and European history.