This gripping and heartbreaking narrative is the first full account of an American woman who gave her life in the struggle against the Nazi regime. As members of a key resistance group, Mildred and her husband, Arvid Harnack, assisted in the escape of German Jews and political dissidents, and for years provided vital economic and military intelligence to both Washington and Moscow. But in 1942, following a Soviet blunder, the Gestapo arrested, tortured and tried some four score members of the Harnack's group, which the Nazis dubbed the Red Orchestra. Mildred Fish-Harnack was guillotined in Berlin on February 16, 1943, on the personal instruction of Adolf Hitler--the only American woman executed as an underground conspirator. Yet as World War II ended and the Cold War began, her courage, idealism and self-sacrifice went largely unacknowledged in America and the democratic West, and were distorted and sanitized in the Communist East. Only now, with the opening of long-sealed archives, can the full story be told. Resisting Hitler is based on extensive interviews with Fish-Harnack family, friends and associates; it draws on personal correspondence and formerly classified German and Soviet KGB files and recently released CIA and FBI dossiers. It describes the life of a Wisconsin girl whose intelligence and beauty captivated a visiting scholar, Arvid Harnack, a member of a distinguished German academic family. It explores for the first time the complex familial connections of the Harnacks, Delbrucks and Bonhoeffers, twelve of whom were executed for resistance acts. And it details Mildred's friendship with Martha Dodd, daughter of FDR's ambassador to the Third Reich, whose affair with a Soviet diplomat led to his death. Moments before her death, Mildred said, "I have loved Germany so much." In this superbly told life of an unjustly forgotten woman, Shareen Blair Brysac depicts the human side of a controversial resistance group that for too long has been portrayed as merely a Soviet espionage network. The extraordinary story of Mildred Fish-Harnack's ten dramatic years of resisting the Nazi regime also reminds today's readers of the hard moral choices that beset opponents of a ruthless totalitarian dictatorship.

Lisa Pine's Hitler's 'National Community' explores German culture and society during the Nazi era and analyses how this impacted upon the Germany that followed this fateful regime. Drawing on a range of significant scholarly works on the subject, Pine informs us as to the major historiographical debates surrounding the subject whilst establishing her own original, interpretative arc. The book is divided into four parts. The first section explores the attempts of the Nazi regime to create a Volksgemeinschaft ('national community'). The second part examines men, women, the family, the churches and religion. The third section analyses the fate of those groups that were excluded from the Volksgemeinschaft. The final section of the book considers the impact of the Nazi government upon German culture, in particular focusing on the radio and press, cinema and theatre, art and architecture, music and literature. This new edition includes historiographical updates throughout, an additional chapter on the early Nazi movement and brand new primary source excerpt boxes and illustrations. There is also expanded material on key topics like resistance, women and family, men and masculinity and religion. A crucial text for all students of Nazi Germany, this book provides a sophisticated window into the social and cultural aspects of life under Hitler's rule.

This new study provides a concise, accessible introduction to occupied Europe. It gives a clear overview of the history and historiography of resistance and collaboration. It explores how these terms cannot be examined separately, but are always entangled. Covering Europe from east to west, this book aims to explore the evolution of scholarly approaches to resistance and collaboration. Not limiting itself to any one area, it looks at armed struggle, daily life, complicity and rescue, the Catholic Church, and official and public memory since the end of the war.

Klemens von Klemperer's scholarly and detailed study uncovers the beliefs and activities of numerous individuals who fought against Nazism within Germany, and traces their many efforts to forge alliances with Hitler's opponents outside the Third Reich. -;Klemens von Klemperer's scholarly and detailed study uncovers the beliefs and activities of numerous individuals who fought against Nazism within Germany, and traces their many efforts to forge alliances with Hitler's opponents outside the Third Reich. Measured by conventional standards of diplomacy, the foreign ventures of the German Resistance ended in failure. The Allied agencies, notably the British Foreign Office and the US State Department, were ill prepared to deal with the unorthodox approaches of the Widerstand. Ultimately, the Allies' policy of absolute silence', the Grand Alliance with the Soviet Union, and the demand for unconditional surrender' pushed the war to its final denouement, disregarding the German. Resistance. -;a massive work by a distinguished historian - New Statesman and Society;a detailed, sympathetic, and meticulously documented chronicle of German resistance diplomacy - Journal of Military History;a superbly researched study - Financial Times

1932. The economic crisis in Germany was unprecedented—a severe recession, 6 million unemployed, and a collapse in the popularity of Chancellor Brüning, who was criticized for his lack of foresight and who stubbornly focused on a single objective—reducing public deficits and restoring the state's finances under pressure from other European countries. All the while far-right parties, which would soon take power, were experiencing an irrepressible rise. How can one not be struck by the similarity between the economic and political situation in Germany in 1932 and that of some Western countries in 2022? In a fictionalized biography tracing the astonishing career of Hjalmar Schacht, a German financial genius of the last century, Jean-François Bouchard indirectly highlights the interest in drawing inspiration from the economic methods that worked at that time. With this perspective, the current economic situation does not seem to be without a solution. In 1933, Hitler appointed Hjalmar Schacht as Minister of the Economy. A child from a modest background, severely raised in the working-class neighborhoods of the port of Elba, brilliant at school but also mocked by his classmates, he developed a distant, haughty and arrogant personality very early on. After studying philosophy and economics (he wrote his thesis on mercantilism), he climbed the ladder of power one step at a time. As currency commissioner of the Weimar Republic, Hjalamar Schacht reduced inflation and stabilized the Mark with a miraculous initiative—the creation of a transitional currency, the Rentenmark, backed by mortgages. The population embraced the idea. It was a masterly success. For Schact, "the savior of German currency," devotion to his country was boundless. He became close to the NSDAP and participated in Hitler's rise to power, attracted by his economic program. Quickly appointed president of the Reichsbank in a still very weak Germany, he did not try to restore the balance of the state's accounts. Quite the contrary! Abolishing the dogma of balanced public finances, he applied an economic policy close to the New Deal (launching major works) and implemented his own solutions (repatriation of German capital, limiting imports to only those raw materials necessary for rearmament, organizing Germany's insolvency vis-à-vis external creditors, creating MEFO bills, etc.). It was the end of unemployment that became the factor of social stabilization for Adolf Hitler, and of consolidation of his power and of military hegemony. In this regard, sadly, the incredible story of Hjalmar Schacht is the most painful demonstration of this process. Jean-François Bouchard began a classic executive career in 1986 after studying law, with positions in the banking industry and at the corporate level. He also taught financial analysis at the University of Toulon. In 1995, he joined the Inspection Générale de la Banque de France. From then on, he carried out control missions in French and foreign banks (France, Europe, the Caribbean and Africa), as a specialist in banking supervision, risk control and the fight against money laundering. In 2005, he was resident advisor for two years to the National Bank of Romania, where on behalf of the European Commission, he piloted the upgrading program of this institution in view of Romania's admission to the European Union, which took place on January 1, 2007. He then went to Bulgaria to work on the preparation of that country's entry into the euro, a project that did not materialize in the end due to the turbulence in the euro zone, and the Bulgarian political authorities preferred to give up. Back in France, he was appointed head of mission at the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel; he also headed the Lyon branch of the Banque de France for three years. As head of mission, he participated in the major European bank assessment exercise, before the European Central Bank took over banking supervision in the framework of the Banking Union. At the end of this large project, he left in June 2014 as resident advisor to the International Monetary Fund in Libreville, Gabon. He is in charge of banking supervision for Central Africa, i.e., the six countries of the CEMAC zone (Gabon, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, Congo Brazzaville, and Chad), as well as for the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo Kinshasa) and Burundi.

Women in the resistance is to this day a barely treated topic of the historiography of World War II. But many successful actions of the Allies, the knowledge of German activities would not have been possible without the perilous use of women. Whether as spies, as couriers of important news, in the supply and accommodation of resistance fighters or refugee soldiers of the Allies, without the energetic help of women many lives would have been lost. This book tries to use examples of women from different countries to record how active and sometimes very effective their work was. But this book also commemorates those women who lost their lives in this fight against oppression, occupation and barbarism.

Hoffmann examines the growing recognition by some Germans in the 1930s of the malign nature of the Nazi regime, the ways in which these people became involved in the resistance, and the views of those who staked their lives in the struggle against tyranny and murder.

Describes the relationship between British party politics and the conduct of British foreign policy between 1933 and 1940.

What Hitler Knew is a fascinating study of how the climate of fear in Nazi Germany affected Hitler's advisers and shaped the decision making process. It explores the key foreign policy decisions from the Nazi seizure of power up to the hours before the outbreak of World War II. Zachary Shore argues persuasively that the tense environment led the diplomats to a nearly obsessive control over the "information arsenal" in a desperate battle to defend their positions and to safeguard their lives. Unlike previous studies, this book draws the reader into the diplomats' darker world, and illustrates how Hitler's power to make informed decisions was limited by the very system he created. The result, Shore concludes, was a chaotic flow of information between Hitler and his advisers that may have accelerated the march toward war.

Revealed for the first time: how the SS rounded up the Nazis' most prominent prisoners to serve as human shields for Hitler in the last days of World War II In April 1945, as Germany faced defeat, Hitler planned to round up the Third Reich's most valuable prisoners and send them to his "Alpine Fortress," where he and the SS would keep the hostages as they made a last stand against the Allies. The prisoners included European presidents, prime ministers, generals, British secret agents, and German anti-Nazi clerics, celebrities, and officers who had aided the July 1944 bomb plot against Hitler--and the prisoners' families. Orders were given to the SS: if the German military situation deteriorated, the prisoners were to be executed--all 139 of them. So began a tense, deadly drama. As some prisoners plotted escape, others prepared for the inevitable, and their SS guards grew increasingly volatile, drunk, and trigger-happy as defeat loomed. As a dramatic confrontation between the SS and the Wehrmacht threatened the hostages caught in the middle, the US Army launched a frantic rescue bid to save the hostages before the axe fell. Drawing on previously unpublished and overlooked sources, Hitler's Last Plot is the first full account of this astounding and shocking story, from the original round-up order to the prisoners' terrifying ordeal and ultimate rescue. Told in a thrilling, page-turning narrative, this is one of World War II's most fascinating episodes.