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Americans call the Second World War “The Good War.” But before it even began, America’s wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens-and kept killing them during and after the war.

Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.

The definitive work on Hitler's war machine, charting its evolution from the formidable force which won stunning victories during the Blitzkrieg in 1940, to the hard campaigns it fought in the deserts of North Africa and the frozen wastelands of the Soviet Union to the eventual retreat to the Fatherland itself. Drawing upon Osprey Publishing's unique archive, this volume expertly weaves together the story of the development and deployment of Hitler's armies displayed alongside a stunning collection of original artwork and photographs to show the uniform and equipment of the various land forces.

In this groundbreaking biography of Eva Braun, German historian Heike B. Gortemaker delves into the startlingly neglected historical truth about Adolf Hitler’s mistress. More than just the vapid blonde of popular cliche, Eva Braun was a capricious but uncompromising, fiercely loyal companion to Hitler; theirs was a relationship that flew in the face of the Fuhrer’s proclamations that Germany was his only bride.

From the preeminent Hitler biographer, a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II.

Michael Prichard's gravelly, unaffected reading of this WWII memoir evokes the style and manner of a 1940s broadcaster one who has witnessed firsthand the horrors and the perils of that desperate era but is honor bound to report what he has seen fairly, fully, and dispassionately. Von Boeselager's account of his and his brother Georg's involvement in the 1944 plot to kill Hitler is brief and somewhat peripheral, but interesting for its eyewitness perspective. Prichard breathes character and immediacy into a narrative that, composed when the author was 89, owes more to the leveling of the years than to the impressions of the moment. This VALKYRIE is tangential to the story told in the Tom Cruise film of the same name and is recommended for those who have seen that film, or already know something about this story.

This devastating account of the ecclesiastical career of Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958), who became Pope Pius XII in 1939, is all the more powerful because British historian John Cornwell maintains throughout a measured though strongly critical tone. After World War II, murmurs of Pacelli's callous indifference to the plight of Europe's Jews began to be heard. A noted commentator on Catholic issues, Cornwell began research for this book believing that "if his full story were told, Pius XII's pontificate would be exonerated." Instead, he emerged from the Vatican archives in a state of "moral shock," concluding that Pacelli displayed anti-Semitic tendencies early on and that his drive to promote papal absolutism inexorably led him to collaboration with fascist leaders.

This book traces the many efforts of the German Resistance to forge alliances with Hitler's opponents outside Germany. The Allied agencies, notably the British Foreign Office and the U.S. 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. Von Klemperer's scholarly and detailed study uncovers the activities and beliefs of numerous individuals who fought against Nazism within Germany. He explores the formation of their policy and analyzes the relations of the Resistance with the Vatican and the ecumenical movement, the intelligence agencies of the Allied powers, and the resistance movements outside Germany. Measured by the conventional standards of diplomacy, the German Resistance to Hitler was a failure. However, von Klemperer shows that many of the principles and strategies of the German Resistance, albeit ignored or overridden by the Allies during wartime, were to find their place in the concerns of international relations in the post-war period.

In late September 1941 the war in the east was approaching a climax. Since the beginning of the German invasion on 22 June 1941, Soviet forces had suffered the staggering loss of over 2 million troops. Operation Typhoon began and in the first week of the offensive, the three German panzer armies surrounded virtually the bulk of the Soviet forces barring the way to Moscow. This title details the dramatic battle that took place right up to the suburbs of Moscow itself, and the defeat which altered Hitler’s strategic management of the war.

This first socio-organizational history of the Gestapo, the SD, and the regular detectives of the Third Reich, 1932-1937, explores the roots of their roles in police terror and programs of mass murder. These personnel helped to form the character and missions of their organizations, which were not simply created from above by Hitler, Himmler, or Heydrich. Hitler's Enforcers is based on research at 34 archives in Germany and the United States, including the personnel files of over 1,000 former members, and is the first such study to benefit from the German documents captured by the Soviets and Poles and kept secret until recently.