BOOKS

Amazon Books and Printed Materials

  • Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography

    A New York Times bestseller, this major new biography of Hitler puts an emphasis on the man himself: his personality, his temperament, and his beliefs.

    Volker Ullrich’s Hitler, the first in a two-volume biography, has changed the way scholars and laypeople alike understand the man who has become the personification of evil. Drawing on previously unseen papers and new scholarly research, Ullrich charts Hitler’s life from his childhood through his experiences in the First World War and his subsequent rise as a far-right leader. Focusing on the personality behind the policies, Ullrich creates a vivid portrait of a man and his megalomania, political skill, and horrifying worldview. Hitler is a landmark biography with unsettling resonance in these times.

  • Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    Pulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin has written the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror to the conflict with Hitler’s Germany that is the signal event of modern world history
     
    In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world’s largest peasant economy into “socialist modernity,” otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost.
     
    What it cost, and what Stalin ruthlessly enacted, transformed the country and its ruler in profound and enduring ways. Building and running a dictatorship, with life and death power over hundreds of millions, made Stalin into the uncanny figure he became. Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 is the story of how a political system forged an unparalleled personality and vice versa.
     
    The wholesale collectivization of some 120 million peasants necessitated levels of coercion that were extreme even for Russia, and the resulting mass starvation elicited criticism inside the party even from those Communists committed to the eradication of capitalism. But Stalin did not flinch. By 1934, when the Soviet Union had stabilized and socialism had been implanted in the countryside, praise for his stunning anti-capitalist success came from all quarters. Stalin, however, never forgave and never forgot, with shocking consequences as he strove to consolidate the state with a brand new elite of young strivers like himself. Stalin’s obsessions drove him to execute nearly a million people, including the military leadership, diplomatic and intelligence officials, and innumerable leading lights in culture.
     
    While Stalin revived a great power, building a formidable industrialized military, the Soviet Union was effectively alone and surrounded by perceived enemies. The quest for security would bring Soviet Communism to a shocking and improbable pact with Nazi Germany. But that bargain would not unfold as envisioned. The lives of Stalin and Hitler, and the fates of their respective dictatorships, drew ever closer to collision, as the world hung in the balance.
     
    Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 is a history of the world during the build-up to its most fateful hour, from the vantage point of Stalin’s seat of power. It is a landmark achievement in the annals of historical scholarship, and in the art of biography.

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    Red Wind over the Balkans: The Soviet offensive south of the Danube, September-October 1944

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    This book describes two Soviet offensive operations carried out during September and October 1944. The first was the operation for the occupation of Bulgaria – known as the ‘Bulgarian operation’; the second was the Belgrade offensive operation, which was carried out immediately after the Bulgarian operation. Although separate, the two operations were closely linked to each other: the first was conducted in an almost peaceful manner, which saved resources. This necessitated that the Soviet Command carried out the second operation promptly, which seriously endangered the encirclement of German Army Group position in the Southern Balkans. Pressed by the advancing Red Army, the German troops withdrew from the territories of Greece and Albania. They also relocated fresh forces from the Western Balkans to the Bulgarian-Yugoslav Border in order to build up a defense line.

    The book describes in detail the heavy battles during the Belgrade offensive operation. Both combatants suffered from the same problems: heavy mountainous terrain; poor roads and infrastructure; and severe weather conditions. This is one of the few Soviet offensives which started without a large superiority of their forces over those of the enemy. The German soldiers were trained to fight in mountainous conditions, and the Soviets were not. The Soviet armament was more modern, but heavier. Additionally, it was not designed to move on the narrow and steep mountain roads. Therefore, the success of this offensive operation was unclear for a long time. The German Command was but a step away from turning Belgrade into a fortress, and slowing down the war in the region for months. The Soviet troops won, but as a result of very tough fighting. After Bulgaria joined the Allied forces, its military forces were subject to the command of the 3rd Ukrainian Front. The commander of the Front used this new ally to the max – thus conserving Soviet forces. There is also a short description of the activities of the Bulgarian troops, who undertook a secondary offensive from the Aegean Sea to the town of Nis in Southern Serbia.

    The book describes the operations of both ground and air forces. Special attention is paid to the Soviet tank and mechanized units which participated in both operations, and the book benefits from a detailed set of daily statistics and accompanying analysis which has not been attempted before. As well as a detailed narrative, the author also provides information covering camouflage, markings and unit insignia. The authoritative text is supported by more than 400 photographs (the majority of them previously unpublished); full-color profiles showing the aforementioned camouflage, markings and unit insignia; and also full-color battle maps. This book is a result of the author’s years spent studying documents from the Russian Federation’s Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense and the Bulgarian State Military Historical Archives. Such a detailed study on this topic has not appeared before – and the author’s work is unlikely to be superseded.

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    The Devil’s Disciples: Hitler’s Inner Circle

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    The Nazi regime was essentially a religious cult relying on the hypnotic personality of Adolf Hitler, and it was fated to die with him. But while it lasted, his closest lieutenants competed feriously for power and position as his chosen successor. This peculiar leadership dynamic resulted in millions of deaths and some of the worst excesses of World War II. This book examines these lieutenants, both as individuals and as a group. It focuses on the three most important Nazi paladins – Goring, Goebbels and Himmler – with their nearest rivals – Bormann, Speer and Ribbentrop – in close attendance. It shows how these personalities developed, and how their constant jealousies and intrigues affected the regime, the war and Hitler himself.

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    Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation, 1940-1944

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE 2009

    “…an essential book. It provides precise facts and figures for many issues that have heretofore been presented in impressionistic terms.” · The International History Review

    Basing his extensive research into hitherto unexploited archival documentation on both sides of the Rhine, Allan Mitchell has uncovered the inner workings of the German military regime from the Wehrmacht’s triumphal entry into Paris in June 1940 to its ignominious withdrawal in August 1944. Although mindful of the French experience and the fundamental issue of collaboration, the author concentrates on the complex problems of occupying a foreign territory after a surprisingly swift conquest. By exploring in detail such topics as the regulation of public comportment, economic policy, forced labor, culture and propaganda, police activity, persecution and deportation of Jews, assassinations, executions, and torture, this study supersedes earlier attempts to investigate the German domination and exploitation of wartime France. In doing so, these findings provide an invaluable complement to the work of scholars who have viewed those dark years exclusively or mainly from the French perspective.

  • Tojo

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    General, minister of war, prime minister, and unrepentant ultranationalist, Hideki Tojo (1884–1948) was the most powerful leader in the Japanese government during World War II. From October 1941 to July 1944 he held unquestioned control, advocating and setting in motion the attack on Pearl Harbor as well as pushing forward the Japanese offensives in China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. The author examines Tojo’s life against the backdrop of increasing Japanese militarism—Civil war, political assassinations, and coup d’états—and uses exclusive interviews with Tojo’s wife to illuminate the spartan, single-minded, incorruptible personality of the man who chose war rather than succumb to U.S.–induced economic strangulation. From the initial victories, through the later severe defeats and Tojo’s resignation, to his thwarted suicide attempt, trial as a war criminal, and execution, no other book offers such a clear and compelling portrait.

  • Mussolini

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    Mussolini was one of the tyrant-killers of the Axis powers who scarred Europe during World War II, but we can’t properly understand him or his regime by any facile equation with Hitler or Stalin. Like them, his life began modestly in the provinces; unlike them, he maintained a traditional male family life, including both a wife and mistresses, and sought in his way to be an intellectual. He was cruel (though not the cruelest); his racism existed, but never with the consistency and vigor that would have made him a good recruit for the SS. He sought an empire, but, for the most part, his was of the old-fashioned, costly, nineteenth-century variety, not of a racial or ideological imperialism. And Italy was not Germany or Russia: the particular patterns of that society greatly shaped his dictatorship.

    R. J. B. Bosworth’s Mussolini allows us to come closer than ever before to an appreciation of the life and actions of the man and of the political world and society within which he operated. With extraordinary skill and vividness, drawing on a huge range of sources, this biography paints a picture of brutality and failure, yet one tempered with an understanding of Mussolini as a human being shaped by and living within the context of this time.

  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

    ByDorothy Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    “No president since the founders has done more to shape the character of American government,” notes Alan Brinkley in this magnificent biography of America’s thirty-second president. “And no president since Lincoln has served through darker or more difficult times. Roosevelt thrived in crisis. It brought out his greatness, and his guile. It triggered his almost uncanny ability to communicate effectively with people of all kinds. And at times, it helped him excoriate his enemies, and to revel in doing so.”
    This brilliant, compact biography chronicles Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s rise from a childhood of privilege to a presidency that forever changed the face of international diplomacy, the American party system, and the government’s role in global and domestic policy. Brinkley, the National Book Award-winning New Deal historian, provides a clear, concise introduction to Roosevelt’s sphinx-like character and remarkable achievements. In a vivid narrative packed with telling anecdotes, the book moves swiftly from Roosevelt’s youth in upstate New York–characterized by an aristocratic lifestyle of trips to Europe and private tutoring–to his schooling at Harvard, his brief law career, and his initial entry into politics. From there, Brinkley chronicles Roosevelt’s rise to the presidency, a position in which FDR remained until death, through an unparalleled three-plus terms in office. Throughout the book, Brinkley elegantly blends FDR’s personal life with his professional one, providing a lens into the President’s struggles with polio and his somewhat distant relationship with the first lady.
    Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the United States through the worst economic crisis in the nation’s history and through the greatest and most terrible war ever recorded. His extraordinary legacy remains alive in our own troubled new century as a reminder of what bravery and strong leadership can accomplish.