In 1937, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King travelled to Nazi Germany in an attempt to prevent a war that, to many observers, seemed inevitable. The men King communed with in Berlin, including Adolf Hitler, assured him of the Nazi regime's peaceful intentions, and King not only found their pledges sincere, but even hoped for personal friendships with many of the regime's top officials. Four Days in Hitler's Germany is a clearly written and engaging story that reveals why King believed that the greatest threat to peace would come from those individuals who intended to thwart the Nazi agenda, which as King saw it, was concerned primarily with justifiable German territorial and diplomatic readjustments. Mackenzie King was certainly not alone in misreading the omens in the 1930s, but it would be difficult to find a democratic leader who missed the mark by a wider margin. This book seeks to explain the sources and outcomes of King's misperceptions and diplomatic failures, and follows him as he returns to Germany to tour the appalling aftermath of the very war he had tried to prevent.

In 1937, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King travelled to Nazi Germany in an attempt to prevent a war that, to many observers, seemed inevitable. The men King communed with in Berlin, including Adolf Hitler, assured him of the Nazi regime’s peaceful intentions, and King not only found their pledges sincere, but even hoped for personal friendships with many of the regime's top officials. Four Days in Hitler’s Germany is a clearly written and engaging story that reveals why King believed that the greatest threat to peace would come from those individuals who intended to thwart the Nazi agenda, which as King saw it, was concerned primarily with justifiable German territorial and diplomatic readjustments. Mackenzie King was certainly not alone in misreading the omens in the 1930s, but it would be difficult to find a democratic leader who missed the mark by a wider margin. This book seeks to explain the sources and outcomes of King’s misperceptions and diplomatic failures, and follows him as he returns to Germany to tour the appalling aftermath of the very war he had tried to prevent.

Hitler's Germany provides a comprehensive narrative history of Nazi Germany and sets it in the wider context of nineteenth and twentieth century German history. Roderick Stackelberg analyzes how it was possible that a national culture of such creativity and achievement could generate such barbarism and destructiveness. This second edition has been updated throughout to incorporate recent historical research and engage with current debates in the field. It includes: an expanded introduction focusing on the hazards of writing about Nazi Germany an extended analysis of fascism, totalitarianism, imperialism and ideology a broadened contextualisation of antisemitism discussion of the Holocaust including the euthanasia program and the role of eugenics new chapters on Nazi social and economic policies and the structure of government as well as on the role of culture, the arts, education and religion additional maps, tables and a chronology a fully updated bibliography. Exploring the controversies surrounding Nazism and its afterlife in historiography and historical memory Hitler’s Germany provides students with an interpretive framework for understanding this extraordinary episode in German and European history.

In 1933, before World War II, and the Holocaust, the world was unaware of Hitler's plans to exterminate millions. Author Cathy A. Lewis discovered a tattered leather suitcase containing her deceased father's journal documenting his six-week trek through Europe in 1933 while on his way to the 4th Boy Scout World Jamboree. Inspired by her father's historical recount, The Road We Took is the four-day epic tale of a desperate group of Jewish citizens attempting to escape Nazi-occupied Germany. Fascinating characters come together in a narrative of extreme courage, budding adolescent love, and their fight for survival. Life in Germany will never be the same as Hitler and the Nazis advance their propaganda campaign, to systematically murder the Jewish population. And this was only the beginning.

A riveting account of the five most crucial days in twentieth-century diplomatic history: from Pearl Harbor to Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States By early December 1941, war had changed much of the world beyond recognition. Nazi Germany occupied most of the European continent, while in Asia, the Second Sino-Japanese War had turned China into a battleground. But these conflicts were not yet inextricably linked—and the United States remained at peace. Hitler’s American Gamble recounts the five days that upended everything: December 7 to 11. Tracing developments in real time and backed by deep archival research, historians Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman show how Hitler’s intervention was not the inexplicable decision of a man so bloodthirsty that he forgot all strategy, but a calculated risk that can only be understood in a truly global context. This book reveals how December 11, not Pearl Harbor, was the real watershed that created a world war and transformed international history.

The story of how Germans came to embrace the Third Reich.Germany in early 1933 was a country ravaged by years of economic depression and increasingly polarized between the extremes of left and right. Over the spring of that year, Germany was transformed from a republic, albeit a seriously faltering one, into a one-party dictatorship. In Hitler's First Hundred Days, award-winning historian PeterFritzsche examines the pivotal moments during this fateful period in which the Nazis apparently won over the majority of Germans to join them in their project to construct the Third Reich. Fritzsche scrutinizes the events of theperiod - the elections and mass arrests, the bonfires and gunfire, the patriotic rallies and anti-Jewish boycotts - to understand both the terrifying power that the National Socialists came to exert over ordinary Germans and the powerful appeal of the new era that they promised.

By early 1945, the destruction of the German Nazi State seems certain. The Allied forces, led by American generals George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower, are gaining control of Europe, leaving German leaders scrambling. Facing defeat, Adolf Hitler flees to a secret bunker with his new wife, Eva Braun, and his beloved dog, Blondi. It is there that all three would meet their end, thus ending the Third Reich and one of the darkest chapters of history. Hitler's Last Days is a gripping account of the death of one of the most reviled villains of the 20th century—a man whose regime of murder and terror haunts the world even today. Adapted from Bill O'Reilly's historical thriller Killing Patton, this book will have young readers—and grown-ups too—hooked on history. This thoroughly-researched and documented book can be worked into multiple aspects of the common core curriculum.