Making Friends With Hitler

Britain, as the most powerful of the European victors of World War One, had a unique responsibility to maintain the peace in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles. The outbreak of a second, even more catastrophic war in 1939 has therefore always raised painful questions about Britain's failure to deal with Nazism. Could some other course of action have destroyed Hitler when he was still weak? In this highly disturbing new book, Ian Kershaw examines this crucial issue. He concentrates on the figure of Lord Londonderry - grandee, patriot, cousin of Churchill and the government minister responsible for the RAF at a crucial point in its existence. Londonderry's reaction to the rise of Hitler-to pursue friendship with the Nazis at all costs-raises fundamental questions about Britain's role in the 1930s and whether in practice there was ever any possibility of preventing Hitler's leading Europe once again into war.

Ian Kershaw’s biography of Adolf Hitler is widely regarded as the definitive work on the subject, as well as one of the most brilliant biographies of our time. In Making Friends with Hitler, the great scholar shines remarkable new light on decisions that led to war by tracing the extraordinary story of Lord Londonderry—one of Britain’s wealthiest aristocrats, cousin of Winston Churchill, confidant of the king, and the only British cabinet member to outwardly support the Nazi party. Through Londonderry’s tragic tale, Kershaw shows us that behind the accepted dogma of English appeasement and German bullying is a much more complicated and interesting reality—full of miscalculations on both sides that proved to be among the most fateful in history.

Describes how one of Britain's most important aristocrats, Lord Londonderry, was ruined by his association with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party and the miscalculations on the part of the British that led to the Second World War.

For readers who were enthralled by Alan Gratz's PRISONER B-3087 comes a gripping novel about a lesser-known part of WWII. Lida thought she was safe. Her neighbors wearing the yellow star were all taken away, but Lida is not Jewish. She will be fine, won't she?But she cannot escape the horrors of World War II.Lida's parents are ripped away from her and she is separated from her beloved sister, Larissa. The Nazis take Lida to a brutal work camp, where she and other Ukrainian children are forced into backbreaking labor. Starving and terrified, Lida bonds with her fellow prisoners, but none of them know if they'll live to see tomorrow.When Lida and her friends are assigned to make bombs for the German army, Lida cannot stand the thought of helping the enemy. Then she has an idea. What if she sabotaged the bombs... and the Nazis? Can she do so without getting caught?And if she's freed, will she ever find her sister again?This pulse-pounding novel of survival, courage, and hope shows us a lesser-known piece of history -- and is sure to keep readers captivated until the last page.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch (author of Making Bombs for Hitler and Stolen Girl) delivers a gripping story about the bonds of friendship forged in the perils of war. In the grip of World War II, Maria has realized that her Nazi-occupied Ukrainian town is no longer safe. Though she and her family might survive, her friend Nathan, who is Jewish, is in grave danger. So Maria and Nathan flee -- into the heart of Hitler's Reich in Austria.There, they hope to hide in plain sight by blending in with other foreign workers. But their plans are disrupted when they are separated, sent to work in different towns.With no way to communicate with Nathan, how can Maria keep him safe? And will they be able to escape Hitler's web of destruction?

Heinrich Hoffmann was the photographer to kings, princes, and the glitterati of the first half of the 20th Century. His archive of images ran into the millions and he grew to be rich and moderately famous. An assistant in London to Emil Otto Hoppé, the undisputed leader of pictorial portraiture in Europe at the time, Hoffmann returned to Germany, progressed through the tumult of WWI into the chaos of the Weimar, and there he came into contact with an idealist with a growing following—Adolf Hitler. As official ‘court’ photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann played a critical role in the painstaking cultivation of Hitler’s public image and the glorification of the Third Reich. However, his influence stretched far beyond the realm of propaganda: not only was he present during many of the key moments in the history of the Third Reich, he was also a close, personal friend of the Führer, with exclusive and intimate access to Hitler’s inner circle and to the man himself. It was Hoffmann who introduced Hitler to Eva Braun, his studio assistant. It was also Hoffmann with whom Hitler was on a trip from Munich to Hamburg when the Führer received word that his beloved niece, Geli Raubal had committed suicide. Hoffmann took over two million photographs of Hitler and published several books, including The Hitler Nobody Knows (1933). At the end of the war, Hoffmann was arrested by the U.S. military, who seized his photographic archive, and was sentenced to imprisonment for Nazi profiteering. These memoirs were first published in English in 1955, four years after his release from prison, and represent a crucial eyewitness source for the historian and general reader alike.

A book examining the strange terrain of Nazi sympathizers, nonintervention campaigners and other voices in America who advocated on behalf of Nazi Germany in the years before World War II. Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided. Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime. Some of these friends were Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führer. Some were as bizarre and hair-raising as the Silver Shirt Legion, run by an eccentric who claimed that Hitler fulfilled a religious prophesy. Some were Midwestern Catholics like Father Charles Coughlin, an early right-wing radio star who broadcast anti-Semitic tirades. They were even members of Congress who used their franking privilege—sending mail at cost to American taxpayers—to distribute German propaganda. And celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh ended up speaking for them all at the America First Committee. We try to tell ourselves it couldn't happen here, but Americans are not immune to the lure of fascism. Hitler's American Friends is a powerful look at how the forces of evil manipulate ordinary people, how we stepped back from the ledge, and the disturbing ease with which we could return to it.

Robinson was mainly brought up by her grandparents. Her grandfather, known to her as Api, was an opthalmologist. Forty years after his death, she discovered a diary that he had kept beginning in April 1945, when he had left her and her grandmother in the countryside and returned to Berlin. Api had been an army doctor and as such, however reluctantly, he had had to join the Nazi Party. His diary is a heart-rending account of what is was like to live in Berlin as Hitler's Reich collapsed-- the hunger, the disease, the bombing, the threat of retribution from the occupiers-- and his struggle to survive, to shake off the stigma of being a Party member, to rebuild his life and to return to his beloved wife and granddaughter.