For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental europe. Twenty-five years ago a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people understand themselves? Neil MacGregor argues that, uniquely for any European country, no coherent, overarching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed, for in Germany both geography and history have always been unstable. Its frontiers have constantly shifted. Königsberg, home to the greatest German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is now Kaliningrad, Russia; Strasbourg, in whose cathedral Wolfgang von Geothe, Germany's greatest writer, discovered the distinctiveness of his country's art and history, now lies within the borders of France. For most of the five hundred years covered by this book Germany has been composed of many separate political units, each with a distinct history. And any comfortable national story Germans might have told themselves before 1914 was destroyed by the events of the following thirty years. German history may be inherently fragmented, but it contains a large number of widely shared memories, awarenesses, and experiences; examining some of these is the purpose of this book. MacGregor chooses objects and ideas, people and places that still resonate in the new Germany—porcelain from Dresden and rubble from its ruins, Bauhaus design and the German sausage, the crown of Charlemagne and the gates of Buchenwald—to show us something of its collective imagination. There has never been a book about Germany quite like it.

A ground-breaking study that looks at why European nations sent troops to take part in Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.

A riveting account of the dictator’s final years, when he got the war he wanted but led his nation, the world, and himself to catastrophe—from the author of Hitler: Ascent “Skillfully conceived and utterly engrossing.” —The New York Times Book Review In the summer of 1939, Hitler was at the zenith of his power. Having consolidated political control in Germany, he was at the helm of a newly restored major world power, and now perfectly positioned to realize his lifelong ambition: to help the German people flourish and to exterminate those who stood in the way. Beginning a war allowed Hitler to take his ideological obsessions to unthinkable extremes, including the mass genocide of millions, which was conducted not only with the aid of the SS, but with the full knowledge of German leadership. Yet despite a series of stunning initial triumphs, Hitler’s fateful decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 turned the tide of the war in favor of the Allies. Now, Volker Ullrich, author of Hitler: Ascent 1889–1939, offers fascinating new insight into Hitler’s character and personality. He vividly portrays the insecurity, obsession with minutiae, and narcissistic penchant for gambling that led Hitler to overrule his subordinates and then blame them for his failures. When he ultimately realized the war was not winnable, Hitler embarked on the annihilation of Germany itself in order to punish the people who he believed had failed to hand him victory. A masterful and riveting account of a spectacular downfall, Ullrich’s rendering of Hitler’s final years is an essential addition to our understanding of the dictator and the course of the Second World War.

Włodzimierz Borodziej and Maciej Górny set out to salvage the historical memory of the experience of war in the lands between Riga and Skopje, beginning with the two Balkan conflicts of 1912–1913 and ending with the death of Emperor Franz Joseph in 1916. The First World War in the East and South-East of Europe was fought by people from a multitude of different nationalities, most of them dressed in the uniforms of three imperial armies: Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian. In this first volume of Forgotten Wars, the authors chart the origins and outbreak of the First World War, the early battles, and the war's impact on ordinary soldiers and civilians through to the end of the Romanian campaign in December 1916, by which point the Central Powers controlled all of the Balkans except for the Peloponnese. Combining military and social history, the authors make extensive use of eyewitness accounts to describe the traumatic experience that established a region stretching between the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas.

Academics of modern, still emerging sciences were particularly involved in the so-called?war of the intellectuals?: an-thropology, (anthropo- )geography, ethnopsychology. The book tells the story of this engagement in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. 0Górny?s study deals with WWI political engagement of science with an eye on Eastern Europe between 1912 (the First Balkan War) and 1923. The writings of intellectuals from this region that subscribed to the tradition of?national characterology? skillfully integrated the most modern science of the time: physical anthropology, psychiatry and anthropogeography. Consequently, neither in the intellectual standing of the authors, nor in the discursive strate-gies they used did the intellectuals? war in the East fundamentally deviate from its counterpart on the Western front. Yet, their liaison with politics proved to be even longer, harsher and more fateful than in the West.

This groundbreaking book explores the interpretative potential and analytical capacity of the concept ‘fascist warfare’. Was there a specific type of war waged by fascist states? The concept encompasses not only the practice of violence at the front, but also war culture, the relationship between war and the fascist project, and the construction of the national community. Starting with the legacy of the First World War and using a transnational approach, this collection presents case studies of fascist regimes at war, spanning Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Francoist Spain, Croatia, and Imperial Japan. Themes include the idea of rapid warfare as a symbol of fascism, total war, the role of modern technology, the transfer of war cultures between regimes, anti-partisan warfare as a key feature, and the contingent nature and limits of fascist warfare.