Jurgen Herbst s account of growing up in Nazi Germany from 1928 to 1948 is a boy s experience of anti-Semitism and militarism from the inside. Herbst was a middle-class boy in a Lutheran family that saw value in Prussian military ideals and a mythic German past. His memoir is a compelling, understated tale of moral awakening.

A detailed study examining The German Requiem, Brahms's controversial, and his largest, masterpiece.

Most Western models suggest that in the face of open threats to the military's core interests, the army would have fought to keep the status quo. Yet the military actually facilitated the introduction of a new democratic polity and in the process dug its own grave. Trained under a Russian-inspired system that minimized the role of the individual, this group was suddenly exposed to the radically different 'Innere Fuehrung' concept that lies at the heart of the Bundeswehr's ethos.

Named a Best History Book of 2019 by The Times (UK) The astounding true story of how thousands of ordinary Germans, overcome by shame, guilt, and fear, killed themselves after the fall of the Third Reich and the end of World War II. By the end of April 1945 in Germany, the Third Reich had fallen and invasion was underway. As the Red Army advanced, horrifying stories spread about the depravity of its soldiers. For many German people, there seemed to be nothing left but disgrace and despair. For tens of thousands of them, the only option was to choose death -- for themselves and for their children. "Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself" recounts this little-known mass event. Using diaries, letters, and memoirs, historian Florian Huber traces the euphoria of many ordinary Germans as Hitler restored national pride; their indifference as the Führer's political enemies, Jews, and other minorities began to suffer; and the descent into despair as the war took its terrible toll, especially after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Above all, he investigates how suicide became a contagious epidemic as the country collapsed. Drawing on eyewitness accounts and other primary sources, "Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself" presents a riveting portrait of a nation in crisis, and sheds light on a dramatic yet largely unknown episode of postwar Germany.

To lend weight to his charge that the public school teacher has been betrayed and gravity to his indictment of the educational establishment for that betrayal, Jurgen Herbst goes back to the beginnings of teacher education in America in the 1830s and traces its evolution up to the 1920s, by which time the essential damage had been done. Initially, attempts were made to upgrade public school teaching to a genuine profession, but that ideal was gradually abandoned. In its stead, with the advent of newly emerging graduate schools of education in the early decades of the twentieth century, came the so-called professionalization of public education. At the expense of the training of elementary school teachers (mostly women), teacher educators shifted their attention to the turning out of educational "specialists" (mostly men)--administrators, faculty members at normal schools and teachers colleges, adult education teachers, and educational researchers. Ultimately a history of the neglect of the American public school teacher, And Sadly Teach ends with a plea and a message that ring loud and clear. The plea: that the current reform proposals for American teacher education--the Carnegie and the Holmes reports--be heeded. The message: that the key to successful school reform lies in educating teacher's true professionals and in acknowledging them as such in their classrooms.

These two fragments of novels, Ingeborg Bachmann's only untranslated works of fiction, were intended to follow the widely acclaimed Malina in a cycle to be entitled Todesarten, or Ways of Dying. Although Bachmann died before completing them, The Book of Franza and Requiem for Fanny Goldmann stand on their own, continuing Bachmann's tradition of using language to confront the disease plaguing human relationships. Through the tales of two women in postwar Austria, Bachmann explores the ways of dying inflicted upon the living from outside and from within, through history, politics, religion, family, gender relations, and the self.Bachmann's allegiance to the twin muses of memory and history, as well as her perception of fascism as not being limited to the context of the war but also existing within the intimate relations of everyday life between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, psychiatrists and patients' are supremely evident in The Book of Franza. Here, Bachmann follows a woman who escapes from a sanitorium and, after years of silence, sends her brother a cryptic telegram. Rightly suspecting that she has fled her sadistic husband -- a renowned Austrian psychiatrist whose intimate relations have merged with his studies of concentration camps -- her brother finds her in their childhood home. Together they travel to Egypt, where Franza slowly begins to regain her bearings. But Franza's desire to cleanse herself by journeying into the heart of the desert's void ends in tragedy, as she becomes the victim of a horrible act of violence.Unlike Franza, who attempts to flee her past but fails, the heroine of Requiem for Fanny Goldmann makes no attempt to escape her history. Thisnovel tells of the demise of a Viennese actress who is manipulated by a younger, ambitious playwright to advance his career. Deception follows disloyalty; the final treachery comes when the playwright portrays her in a novel, which secures his fame and, in Fanny's eyes, robs her of her future. Caught in a perpetual stasis, Fanny suffers in total obscurity, as her present is stolen from her as well.Whether analyzing the place where the self begins and the power of history ends or the ways in which women are forced to be complicit in their mistreatment at the hands of men, Bachmann's critical approach to the human psyche is unparalleled. Mesmerizing and profound, The Book of Franza and Requiem for Fanny Goldmann constitute the final evidence that Ingeborg Bachmann is the most important female German-language writer of the postwar period.

"Every historical fiction novel should strive to be this compelling, well-researched and just flat-out good." — Associated Press For fans of The Nightingale and The Handmaid's Tale, Cradles of the Reich uncovers a topic rarely explored in fiction: the Lebensborn project, a Nazi breeding program to create a so-called master race. Through thorough research and with deep empathy, this chilling historical novel goes inside one of the Lebensborn Society maternity homes that existed in several countries during World War II, where thousands of "racially fit" babies were bred and taken from their mothers to be raised as part of the new Germany. At the Heim Hochland maternity home in Bavaria, three women's lives coverage as they find themselves there under very different circumstances. Gundi is a pregnant university student from Berlin. An Aryan beauty, she's secretly a member of a resistance group. Hilde, only eighteen, is a true believer in the cause and is thrilled to carry a Nazi official's child. And Irma, a 44-year-old nurse, is desperate to build a new life for herself after personal devastation. Despite their opposing beliefs, all three have everything to lose as they begin to realize they are trapped within Hitler's terrifying scheme to build a Nazi-Aryan nation. A cautionary tale for modern times told in stunning detail, Cradles of the Reich uncovers a little-known Nazi atrocity but also carries an uplifting reminder of the power of women to set aside differences and work together in solidarity in the face of oppression. "Skillfully researched and told with great care and insight, here is a World War II story whose lessons should not—must not—be forgotten." — Susan Meissner, bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things