Recommended Reading

[tonyp]

Two books I would recommend on Weimar would be Otto Friedrich's "Before the Deluge: Berlin in the 1920's". It is well written, easy to read for the less scholastically inclined, and chock full of interesting personalities and history.
The other book is by Count Harry Kessler titled "Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler". Kessler was a liberal minded German who was a witness to those years and he dissects the many individuals (Edouard Munch, Elizabeth Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler, Walter Rathenau, Count Hermann Keyserling, and of course, Adolf Hitler) who were making news at that time. He was a good friend of Elizabeth Nietzsche, but didn't like her anti-semitic and nationalistic attitudes. He considered himself to be what Nietzsche called "The Good European". It's a really good book and contains a lot of fascinating insights into the time.

I've got Kessler's book on my "to-read" list. I'll have to move it up.

[Avatar]

I strongly recommend the book "Stella" by Peter Wyden. Stella Goldschlag was an Aryan looking Berlin Jewess who became infamous as a Jew baiter - ferreting out Jews hiding out in Berlin during the war. A truly extraordinary chilling piece of literature of the Holocaust

Anyway interested in learning a little known history ie. the price Germany paid for WW2 should read "In the Ruins of the Reich" by Douglas Botting. In the bombed-out cities life reverted back to a stone-age existence in the rubble of caves and cellars, the occupying powers behaved like imperial overlords, punishing past crimes - and perpetrating new ones of their own.

Some 40000 men and 3500 women served in Nazi death camps and concentration camps during WW2. "Judgement at Dachau" by Joshua M. Greene tells the story of how the appetite for judgement became a secondary priority with the advent of the Cold War

Great reading - Enjoy!

[Vikki]

Hello Avatar, and

I've moved your post to the Recommended Reading on Life in the Third Reich sticky thread. Thanks very much for your contribution!

~Vikki

[Fletch_UK]

Hey - long-time axis lurker and sometime poster. This website is brilliant, and informative - keep up the good work

Jackboot Britain is a new alternate history novel of a Nazi-occupied UK! Features a diverse range of fictional British, German and Spanish characters, and a whole host of notable Nazis, SS and Wehrmacht; from Heydrich to Hitler and Himmler, Göring, Goeth, Nebe, Globocnik, Eicke, Jost, Schöngarth, Schellenberg, Goebbels, Lange, Ohlendorf, Jäger, von Brauchitsch, Bormann and more besides. The multiple storylines show different facets of life in Britain under the Jackboot, the internecine intrigues within the German power structure and their wider effect, and how people of various races, ideologies and cultures struggle to adjust to the new totalitarian order, and life in the Nazi-occupied territory.
This isn't a recommendation per se, but just spreading awareness about the new work which fellow AH members might appreciate. Cheers

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/220 ... ot-britain

It's available on Amazon.com - or co.uk, .de, .jp, .es, .fr, .it, com.au, com.in, .com.mx, etc.

[wenty]

Congratulations Daniel, sounds like a very interesting concept. I'm glad it's available for download on Kindle, i'll put it next on my list to read once i'm finished with the two i'm trying to read at the same time now!

As for recommendations, I recently finished "The Boy On The Wooden Box" by Leon Leyson, who was a young boy during the Holocaust and eventually became the youngest of the "Schindler Jews". Very interesting read and a great insight, i'd recommend it - unfortunately though it's not an overly long book, I was left wanting a bit more detail in some parts.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Fletch_UK]

Congratulations Daniel, sounds like a very interesting concept. I'm glad it's available for download on Kindle, i'll put it next on my list to read once i'm finished with the two i'm trying to read at the same time now!

Cheers,
Adam.

Nice one mate!
If and when you do read it, please feel free to leave a review on Amazon, as a débutante I'm hankering after as much feedback as I can get!

Hope you enjoy it.

Cheers Adam,
Fletch.

[Keir]

These two volumes are the best I've found about ordinary items used in the Third Reich. Only problem is that I bought them in China- but the English titles are apparently 'Uniforms, Equipment and Personal Items of the German Soldier Volumes 1 and 2.' Imagine DK-type travel books for the past; Volume 2 moves away from the front to the medicine cabinet and more daily-used items:

[Keir]

-More pages

[BlackSun]

Inside the Reich - Speer
Ten years & Twenty Days - Donitz
Mein Kampf - Hitler [Although even Hitler believed this to be outdated it was current in 1925]
Hitler's Hangman - A good book on Heydrich


I am reading enjoying immensely the moment Goering by Roger Manvell he claims to have had more access to family, letters, old enemies etc than the other Goering bios.

[GIEH]

The diary of Brigitte Eicke
Amazing as it was written in hand at the time and so isn't effected by hindsight and was written with the intention of nobody ever reading it. What is amazing, is it shows how a persons 'worm eyes view' is very different from documentaries which focus on dramatic events. She regards the bombings as a hindrance that stops her going to the cinema. She remarks with disinterest that all the Jewish girls have disappeared from class at school. It's an honest view written at the time without being worded to apologise or condemn.
Link about the book below.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zei ... 01355.html

[GIEH]

The actual name of the book is Backfisch im Bombenkrieg

[Reader3000]

-More pages

The uniform photos are re-used from a German edition "Deutsche Uniformen 1939-1945" by Jean de Lagarde.

[transakt]

Here's a question. Is it OK for an author to mention his own new book on this Life in the Third Reich topic?

[Marcus]

Here's a question. Is it OK for an author to mention his own new book on this Life in the Third Reich topic?

The reference material section is the place to make announcements about books: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewforum.php?f=19

/Marcus

[Haven]

Suicide in Nazi Germany

by Christian Goeschel

The Third Reich met its end in the spring of 1945 in an unparalleled wave of suicides. Hitler, Goebbels, Bormann, Himmler and later Goering all killed themselves. These deaths represent only the tip of an iceberg of a massive wave of suicides that also touched upon ordinary lives. As this suicide epidemic has no historical precedent or parallel, it can tell us much about the Third Reich's peculiar self-destructiveness and the depths of Nazi fanaticism.

Christian Goeschel looks at the suicides of both Nazis and ordinary people in Germany between 1918 and 1945, from the end of World War I until the end of World War II, including the mass suicides of German Jews during the Holocaust. He shows how suicides among different population groups, including supporters, opponents, and victims of the regime, responded to the social, cultural, economic and, political context of the time. He also analyses changes and continuities in individual and societal responses to suicide over time, especially with regard to the Weimar Republic and the post-1945 era.

Richly grounded in gripping and previously unpublished source material such as suicide notes and police investigations, the book offers a new perspective on the central social and political crises of the era, from revolution, economic collapse, and the rise of the Nazis, to Germany's total defeat in 1945.