Nightmares of an East Prussian Childhood

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Author :
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786473541
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis Nightmares of an East Prussian Childhood by : Ilse Stritzke

Download or read book Nightmares of an East Prussian Childhood written by Ilse Stritzke and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mother of 11 year old Ilse Glaus turned down the last plane out of East Prussia ahead of the advancing Russians in order to stay back with her aged parents. That decision cost her family dearly in wartorn Europe, 1945. Ilse grew up on a small farm, with a wonderful family, the woods as a playground and the beaches of the Baltic. Then turmoil followed the German defeat by the Russians and the subsequent occupation. In 31 months under the Russians, Ilse's family is driven from their home, she mourns her missing father, witnesses her mother's rape, sees her grandparents and baby brother succumb to the brutal conditions, and hears of her oldest sister's capture and death in a work prison. Fighting starvation, Ilse crafts ways to coexist with the Russians, scavenging, begging and stealing to help the family survive.

Forgotten Land

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Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1429969334
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Forgotten Land by : Max Egremont

Download or read book Forgotten Land written by Max Egremont and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the end of World War II, East Prussia was the German empire's farthest eastern redoubt, a thriving and beautiful land on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. Now it lives only in history and in myth. Since 1945, the territory has been divided between Poland and Russia, stretching from the border between Russia and Lithuania in the east and south, and through Poland in the west. In Forgotten Land, Max Egremont offers a vivid account of this region and its people through the stories of individuals who were intimately involved in and transformed by its tumultuous history, as well as accounts of his own travels and interviews he conducted along the way. Forgotten Land is a story of historical identity and character, told through intimate portraits of people and places. It is a unique examination of the layers of history, of the changing perceptions and myths of homeland, of virtue and of wickedness, and of how a place can still overwhelm those who left it years before.

Ruined by the Reich

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Author :
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476606862
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Ruined by the Reich by : Christel Weiss Brandenburg

Download or read book Ruined by the Reich written by Christel Weiss Brandenburg and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-08-31 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decades have passed since World War II, yet the myth that all Germans were Nazi sympathizers still persists. This book follows the story of the Weiss family in East Prussia from World War I to the end of World War II. It is told from the point of view not of the victors but of the vanquished. Beginning with the good citizenship trap Hitler set for law-abiding German families, the book describes how Germany first prospered and then fell to ruin with the Third Reich. The people traded their freedoms for a national security, which quickly turned to tyranny with swift consequences for "disobedience." Like Christel's brothers (soldiers and members of Hitler's Youth), propaganda-fed children all over the Reich believed the highly idealized depiction of their roles and of their nation's victims. This fascinating and richly detailed memoir is told through the intimate narration of a woman who grew up in the midst of turmoil, experienced poverty and prejudice, witnessed the deaths of many loved ones, and was driven from her home by the Soviet Army. The combination of domestic details and vivid historical descriptions creates an unusual book as absorbing as it is educational.

Battleground Prussia

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1780964641
Total Pages : 510 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (89 download)

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Book Synopsis Battleground Prussia by : Prit Buttar

Download or read book Battleground Prussia written by Prit Buttar and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-20 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engrossing history of the last year of the Second World War, charting the battles fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazis across German soil. The terrible months between the arrival of the Red Army on German soil and the final collapse of Hitler's regime were like no other in the Second World War. The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished. From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this book recounts in chilling detail the desperate struggle of soldiers and civilians alike. These brutal campaigns are brought vividly to life by a combination of previously untold testimony and astute strategic analysis recognising a conflict of unprecedented horror and suffering.

All for Nothing

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Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1681372061
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (813 download)

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Book Synopsis All for Nothing by : Walter Kempowski

Download or read book All for Nothing written by Walter Kempowski and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wealthy family tries--and fails--to seal themselves off from the chaos of post-World War II life surrounding them in this stunning novel by one of Germany's most important post-war writers. In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat and the Red Army is approaching. The von Globig family's manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer in the German army, went to war, leaving behind his beautiful but vague wife, Katharina, and her bookish twelve-year-old son, Peter. As the road fills with Germans fleeing the occupied territories, the Georgenhof begins to receive strange visitors--a Nazi violinist, a dissident painter, a Baltic baron, even a Jewish refugee. Yet in the main, life continues as banal, wondrous, and complicit as ever for the family, until their caution, their hedged bets, and their denial are answered by the wholly expected events they haven't allowed themselves to imagine. All for Nothing, published in 2006, was the last novel by Walter Kempowski, one of postwar Germany's most acclaimed and popular writers.

The Death of East Prussia

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Author :
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781481935753
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (357 download)

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Book Synopsis The Death of East Prussia by : Peter B. Clark

Download or read book The Death of East Prussia written by Peter B. Clark and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book focuses on what happened in East Prussia in World War II and afterward"--Introduction.

The Flight Across The Ice

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Author :
Publisher : Haus Publishing
ISBN 13 : 191037685X
Total Pages : 185 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis The Flight Across The Ice by : Patricia Clough

Download or read book The Flight Across The Ice written by Patricia Clough and published by Haus Publishing. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The moving and untold story of the Russian advance into East Prussia in 1945, and the fight for survival of a people and their way of life

Hitler's Last Levy in East Prussia

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Author :
Publisher : Helion
ISBN 13 : 9781909982727
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (827 download)

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Book Synopsis Hitler's Last Levy in East Prussia by : Bruno Just

Download or read book Hitler's Last Levy in East Prussia written by Bruno Just and published by Helion. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 16 October, 1944, the 3rd White Russian Front launched its massive offensive against Heeresgruppe Mitte. The German 4th Armee, whose line of defense stretched from Nowograd on the Narew to Memel, was quickly broken through. This is the very personal war-diary of the adjutant of Volkssturm Einsatz Bataillon Goldap (25/235), which was activated, with a strength of 400 men, on 17 October, 1944. Inadequately armed with Russian infantry rifles lacking slings, light machine guns and Panzerfäuste, with no uniforms, entrenching tools, identity discs, blankets or medical packets, the battalion was hastily thrown into action three days later, on October 20, in the Goldap sector of the 4th Armee front, losing 76 killed and wounded in its first action. Withdrawn on 23 October for urgently needed training and better armament, the battalion went back into action on 18 January in the Eichwald northeast of Insterburg, near Stobingen, and fought on, with hardly a break, falling back to the city of Königsberg and taking a valiant part in the bitter defense that enabled the escape of refugees and most of the surviving military units by sea. The 70 survivors of the battalion owed their personal survival to an order forged by their last battalion commander that led to their relief by a Wehrmacht division and enshipment for Denmark. The author chronicles daily life dominated by desperate military action, interspersed with brief glimpses of his family, as he crosses paths with his wife and daughter, caught up in the mass of refugees fleeing before the advancing Russians. There are very few personal accounts of Hitler's last levy, the Volkssturm. For years, the handwritten diary and a copy typed by the author, remained in the files of the Bundesarchiv (L) in Bayreuth. The author's granddaughter approved publication for distribution, in photocopied form, to survivors and family members of the battalion. Such copies, in German, are hard to find. Now at last, this precious document from the closing days of World War II in East Prussia has become available in English translation, with careful footnotes filling in details regarding the Volkssturm, a unique force called into being by the Nazi Party in the closing months of the war, conceived as a party-led alternative to the Wehrmacht. Ill-equipped, pitifully armed (when armed at all) and poorly led, nevertheless on the Eastern Front - where the youngsters and older men comprising its battalions were highly motivated in a desperate attempt to delay the onrushing Russian hordes so that their wives and children could escape rape, torture, mutilation and murder at Russian hands - the Volkssturm sometimes achieved their goal.

Abandoned and Forgotten

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Author :
Publisher : Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1587366932
Total Pages : 442 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (873 download)

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Book Synopsis Abandoned and Forgotten by : Evelyne Tannehill

Download or read book Abandoned and Forgotten written by Evelyne Tannehill and published by Wheatmark, Inc.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written about World War II, but not often do we hear about the immeasurable suffering of the Germans who wanted no part of Hitler's regime. Abandoned and Forgotten is the memoir of a young girl growing up in the then-German province of East Prussia by the Baltic Sea. Orphaned at the age of nine and left to fend for herself in a hostile world, Evelyne Tannehill witnessed firsthand what happens when law and order break down and self-preservation becomes the only thing that matters. Her journey is a poignant example of how resilient the human spirit can be, even in the face of war's greatest horrors.

Violence in Defeat

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108479723
Total Pages : 367 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Violence in Defeat by : Bastiaan Willems

Download or read book Violence in Defeat written by Bastiaan Willems and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how the Wehrmacht's defensive conduct contributed to the radicalisation of behavioural patterns in Germany during the war's final months.

Orderly and Humane

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Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300183763
Total Pages : 696 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Orderly and Humane by : R. M. Douglas

Download or read book Orderly and Humane written by R. M. Douglas and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning history of 12 million German-speaking civilians in Europe who were driven from their homes after WWII: “a major achievement” (New Republic). Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized the forced relocation of ethnic Germans from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable: between 12 and 14 million civilians, most of them women and children. And the losses were horrifying: at least five hundred thousand people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, locked in trains, or after arriving in Germany malnourished, and homeless. In this authoritative and objective account, historian R.M. Douglas examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the forced migrations were conceived, planned, and executed, and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The first comprehensive history of this immense manmade catastrophe, Orderly and Humane is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing." It may also be the most significant untold story of the World War II.

From Stonischken to Gedhus

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781570740992
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (49 download)

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Book Synopsis From Stonischken to Gedhus by : Gerda Braunheim

Download or read book From Stonischken to Gedhus written by Gerda Braunheim and published by . This book was released on 2014-02-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Weeds Like Us

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Author :
Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1438933126
Total Pages : 486 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (389 download)

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Book Synopsis Weeds Like Us by : Gunter Nitsch

Download or read book Weeds Like Us written by Gunter Nitsch and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2008 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The uprooting of seven million civilians - women, children, and elderly men - from their homes in the German provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia following World War II is largely unknown in the United States. Weeds Like Us is a gripping true adventure story about the author's own East Prussian family. The author's earliest years were spent in relative comfort on his grandfather's farm in East Prussia during World War II. For him, life in Hitler's Germany was the natural order of things. Then, in January 1945, just after the author's seventh birthday, the Russians rolled into East Prussia. Full of unexpected twists and turns, Weeds Like Us tells the story of what happened over the next six years, as the author's family tried to make its way safely to the West.

Prussian Apocalypse

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Author :
Publisher : Pen and Sword
ISBN 13 : 1783461209
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (834 download)

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Book Synopsis Prussian Apocalypse by : Egbert Kieser

Download or read book Prussian Apocalypse written by Egbert Kieser and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2012-07-19 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The German historian’s classic account of the Red Army’s assault on East Prussia at the end of WWII, now available in English translation. Using extensive and vividly detailed eyewitness testimony, Egbert Kieser documents in the catastrophic Russian invasion of Danzig in 1945. Prussian Apocalypse is a riveting portrait of German civilians and soldiers as they fled from the onslaught and their world collapsed around them. In this fluid, authoritative, and accessible translation, Tony Le Tissier brings to bear his expert knowledge of the military defeat of the German armies in the East and the enormity of the human disaster that went with it. Egbert Kieser was born in 1928 in Bad Salzungen, Thringen, and studied philosophy and the history of art at Heidelberg University. He worked as a freelance journalist, writer, and editor. Among his many publications are two outstanding studies of German Second World War history, Prussian Apocalypse and Operation Sea Lion: The German Plan to Invade Britain, 1940.

Letters From Berlin

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Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0762789743
Total Pages : 389 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (627 download)

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Book Synopsis Letters From Berlin by : Kerstin Lieff

Download or read book Letters From Berlin written by Kerstin Lieff and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Margarete Dos moved with her family to Berlin on the eve of World War II, she and her younger brother were blindly ushered into a generation of Hitler Youth. Like countless citizens under Hitler’s regime, Margarete struggled to understand what was happening to her country. Later, as a nurse for the German Red Cross, she treated countless young soldiers—recruited in the eleventh hour to fight a losing battle—they would die before her eyes as Allied bombs racked her beloved city. Yet, her deep humanity, intelligence, and passion for life—which sparkles in every sentence of her memoir—carried Margarete through to war’s end. But just when she thought the worst was over, and she and her mother were on a train headed to Sweden, they were suddenly rerouted deep into Russia… This powerful account draws back the curtain on a piece of history that has been largely overlooked—the nightmare that millions of German civilians suffered, simply because they were German. That Margarete survived to tell her tale so vividly and courageously is a gift to us all.

The Home of My Heart

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Author :
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781974698868
Total Pages : 128 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis The Home of My Heart by : Gerda Pleasants

Download or read book The Home of My Heart written by Gerda Pleasants and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I am writing this book for myself and my children, and also to keep alive the memory of my home in East Prussia. This home as I knew it no longer exists; most of the people you will read about have died, many of the building have disappeared, and even the towns and the region have different names." So begins this deeply personal memoir of a young woman's life irrevocably changed by Germany's declaration of war. Gerda was only 17 when she was drafted into Nazi Germany's civilian labor corps. She vividly describes her experiences as a land girl, plane spotter, prisoner of war, refugee and American war bride.

Inge's War

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1984880225
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (848 download)

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Book Synopsis Inge's War by : Svenja O'Donnell

Download or read book Inge's War written by Svenja O'Donnell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An extraordinary saga." —David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon The mesmerizing account of a granddaughter's search for a World War II family history hidden for sixty years Growing up in Paris as the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, Svenja O'Donnell knew little of her family's German past. All she knew was that her great-grandparents, grandmother, and mother had fled their home city of Königsberg near the end of World War II, never to return. But everything changed when O'Donnell traveled to the city—now known as Kaliningrad, and a part of Russia—and called her grandmother, who uncharacteristically burst into tears. "I have so much to tell you," Inge said. In this transporting and illuminating book, the award-winning journalist vividly reconstructs the story of Inge's life from the rise of the Nazis through the brutal postwar years, from falling in love with a man who was sent to the Eastern Front just after she became pregnant with his child, to spearheading her family's flight as the Red Army closed in, her young daughter in tow. Ultimately, O'Donnell uncovers the act of violence that separated Inge from the man she loved; a terrible secret hidden for more than six decades. A captivating World War II saga, Inge's War is also a powerful reckoning with the meaning of German identity and inherited trauma. In retracing her grandmother's footsteps, O'Donnell not only discovers the remarkable story of a woman caught in the gears of history, but also comes face-to-face with her family's legacy of neutrality and inaction—and offers a rare glimpse into a reality too long buried by silence and shame.