Soldaten

On a visit to the British National Archive in 2001, Sonke Neitzel made a remarkable discovery: reams of meticulously transcribed conversations among German POWs that had been covertly recorded and recently declassified. Netizel would later find another collection of transcriptions, twice as extensive, in the National Archive in Washington. These were discoveries that would provide a unique and profoundly important window into the true mentality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German navy, and the military in general -- almost all of whom had insisted on their own honourable behaviour during the war. Collaborating with renowned social psychologist Harald Welzer, Neitzel examines these conversations -- and the casual, pitiless brutality omnipresent in them -- from a historical and psychological perspective, and in reconstucting the frameworks and situations behind these conversations, they have created a powerful narrative of wartime experience.

In November 2001, as the world still reeled from the attack on the Twin Towers, German historian Sonke Neitzel discovered an extraordinary cache of documents from the Second World War. The documents were the transcripts of German prisoners of war talking among themselves in prisoner of war camps, and secretly recorded by the allies. In these apparently private conversations the soldiers talked freely and openly about their hopes and fears, their concerns and their day-to-day lives. With a banality and ease which to the modern reader can appear shocking, they also talked about the horrors of war -- about rape, death and killing. Sonke Neitzel shared the material with renowned and bestselling psychologist Harald Wezler and they set about trying to make sense of the vast piles of documents, the hours of transcripts. The result is SOLDATEN, a landmark book which will change the way we look at soldiers and war, and is as relevant to our modern conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as it was to the soldiers of the German Army in 1945. Published to huge acclaim and controversy in Germany it was a number one bestseller there and reignited the debate about the banality of evil under the Nazi regime.

A visual history of the German soldier, providing a unique insight into how they lived, ate, maintained themselves at the front, and how they behaved when out of line, through a collection of personal items and artifacts they left behind.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

This military biography examines the man who sought to rebuild the Germany Army after WWI—and the rival who stoked the rise of Nazism. After Germany’s devastating defeat in the First World War, General Hans von Seekt became Chief of the Army Command at the Reichewehr Ministry of the Weimar Republic. His job was to rebuild the shattered German army and repair the nation’s standing on the world stage. The punitive terms of the post-war settlement made these ambitious goals nearly impossible, but the most significant challenges von Seekt faced came from within Germany. Von Seekt aimed to build a modern and efficient military with a main strategy of peaceful defense purposes. This original and far-sighted policy was opposed by his rival, General Erich Ludendorff, who led a nationalistic movement seeking revenge for Germany’s defeat. Ludendorff proposed to rebuild the once-mighty German imperial army as a major international force. The failure of von Seekt's experiment was tragically mirrored by the fall of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers, called up to take part in controversial campaigns like the 1982 invasion of Lebanon or policing duties in the Palestinian territories today, have refused orders. Many of these 'refuseniks' have faced prison sentences rather than take part in what they regard as an unjust occupation in defence of illegal Jewish settlements. In this inspirational book, Peretz Kidron, himself a refusenik, gives us the stories, experiences, viewpoints, even poetry, of these courageous conscripts who believe in their country, but not in its actions beyond its borders. We read about the cautious, even embarrassed, response of the authorities. And we see the wider implications of the philosophy of selective refusal - which is not the same thing as pacifism -- for conscientious citizens in every country where conscription still exists. Here is a real model for the peace movement in Israel and worldwide.