Title: Genocide in German South-West Africa

Author: Jurgen Zimmerer & Joachim Zeller

Publisher: Merlin Press

Price: £15.99

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Kaiser Wilhelm II

Category: Military History

Early in 1904 war broke out in German South West Africa, when the Herero tribe rose up against an oppressive colonial regime. The German army despatched to the colony brutally suppressed the uprising and set about the systematic annihilation of the Herero and Nama people. This collection of essays considers many aspects of this war of extermination. Edward Neather adds an introduction that situates these events in the context for the great African land rush by European powers and shows how racism, concentration camps and genocide in the German colony foreshadow the crimes committed during Hitler'ss Third Reich.

Title: The Red Prince

Author: Timothy Snyder

Publisher: Bodley Head

Price: £20.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Spies and Spymasters

Category: Russian History

The first ever biography of the extraordinarily colourful Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg (1895-1947). Tattooed, bisexual, crossdressing, multilingual, he was a major - & symbolic - figure in 20th-century European culture & politics. Born into one of the great European dynasties with every expectation of a glittering future, instead he became a playboy in Paris during the 1930s and died – a spy for Britain - under interrogation in a Soviet prison. The arc of Wilhelm’s life therefore describes the dying fall of the ancien régime – the Europe of his birth bears very little resemblance to that of his death.

Title: Nazi Germany

Author: Jane Caplan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Price: £50.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Nazi Germany

Category: German History

The history of National Socialism as movement and regime remains one of the most compelling and intensively studied aspects of twentieth-century history, and one whose significance extends far beyond Germany or even Europe alone. This volume presents an up-to-date and authoritative introduction to the history of Nazi Germany, with ten chapters on the most important themes, each by an expert in the field. Following an introduction which sets out the challenges this period of history has posed to historians since 1945, contributors explain how Nazism emerged as ideology and political movement; how Hitler and his party took power and remade the German state; and how the Nazi 'national community' was organized around a radical and eventually lethal distinction between the 'included' and the 'excluded'. Further chapters discuss the complex relationship between Nazism and Germany's religious faiths; the perverse economic rationality of the regime; the path to war laid down by Hitler's foreign policy; and the intricate and intimate intertwining of war and genocide, with a final chapter on the aftermath of National Socialism in postwar German history and memory.

Title: Imperial Germany 1871-1918

Author: James Retallack

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Price: £50.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Germany 1900-45

Category: German History

The German Empire was founded in January 1871 not only on the basis of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's 'blood and iron' policy but also with the support of liberal nationalists. Under Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany became the dynamo of Europe. Its economic and military power were pre-eminent; its science and technology, education, and municipal administration were the envy of the world; and its avant-garde artists reflected the ferment in European culture. But Germany also played a decisive role in tipping Europe's fragile balance of power over the brink and into the cataclysm of the First World War, eventually leading to the empire's collapse in military defeat and revolution in November 1918. With contributions from an international team of twelve experts in the field, this volume offers an ideal introduction to this crucial era, taking care to situate Imperial Germany in the larger sweep of modern German history, without suggesting that Nazism or the Holocaust were inevitable endpoints to the developments charted here.

Title: Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy

Author: Eric D. Weitz

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Price: £17.95

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Weimar Republic

Category: Travel Writing

Weimar Germany still fascinates us, and now this complex and remarkably creative period and place has the history it deserves. Eric Weitz's new book reveals the Weimar era as a time of strikingly progressive achievements - and even greater promise. With a rich thematic narrative and detailed portraits of some of Weimar's greatest figures, this comprehensive history recaptures the excitement and drama as it unfolded, viewing Weimar in its own right - and not as a mere prelude to the Nazi era. "Weimar Germany" tells how Germans rose from the defeat of World War I and the turbulence of revolution to forge democratic institutions and make Berlin a world capital of avant-garde art. Setting the stage for this story, Weitz takes the reader on a walking tour of Berlin to see and feel what life was like there in the 1920s, when modernity and the modern city - with its bright lights, cinemas, "new women," cabarets, and sleek department stores - were new. We learn how Germans enjoyed better working conditions and new social benefits and listened to the utopian prophets of everything from radical socialism to communal housing to nudism. "Weimar Germany" also explores the period's revolutionary cultural creativity, from the new architecture of Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut, and Walter Gropius to Hannah Hoch's photomontages and Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's theater. Other chapters assess the period's turbulent politics and economy, and the recipes for fulfilling sex lives propounded by new "sexologists." Yet "Weimar Germany" also shows how entrenched elites continually challenged Weimar's achievements and ultimately joined with a new radical Right led by the Nazis to form a coalition that destroyed the republic. Thoroughly up-to-date, skillfully written, and strikingly illustrated, "Weimar Germany" brings to life as never before an era of creativity unmatched in the twentieth century-one whose influence and inspiration we still feel today.

Educational Websites

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