The Third Reich proves Lord Byron's maxim that truth is stranger than fiction. Hitler's mania made the Reich surreal. This book documents his neuroses, charisma, ruthlessness, and "storybook" rise to power. It's alarming that an astute psychopath with acting ability became an absolute dictator in a modern European state. German political naivety contributed to his miraculous ascent. During election campaigns between 1927 and 1933 Hitler posed as an anti-Communist savior, while concealing his real agenda of war, genocide, and quack "eugenics." The Surreal Reich closely examines all leading Nazis. It shows how Hitler had different sets of favorites at various times. Dietrich Eckart, Rudolf Hess, and Ernst Rohm in the early years; Hermann Goering and Josef Goebbels through the middle period, then Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann from 1939 to 1945. Nazism's heyday occurred during an era of supposed progress. Yet escalating war casualties in that "enlightened age" tell a different story. 620,000 people died in America's Civil War, only 5% of them civilians. World War I caused approximately 16 million fatalities. Most of the 5 million non-combatants succumbed from starvation or Spanish Influenza. World War II resulted in 60 million deaths, 52% of them civilians. One warped "idealist" sparked that fruitless orgy of destruction: Adolf Hitler.

Travelers in the Third Reich is an extraordinary history of the rise of the Nazis based on fascinating first-hand accounts, drawing together a multitude of voices and stories, including politicians, musicians, diplomats, schoolchildren, communists, scholars, athletes, poets, fascists, artists, tourists, and even celebrities like Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett. Their experiences create a remarkable three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler—one so palpable that the reader will feel, hear, even breathe the atmosphere.These are the accidental eyewitnesses to history. Disturbing, absurd, moving, and ranging from the deeply trivial to the deeply tragic, their tales give a fresh insight into the complexities of the Third Reich, its paradoxes, and its ultimate destruction.

"[G]ripping, immaculately researched . . . In Mr. Ullrich’s account, the murderous behavior of the Reich’s last-ditch loyalists was not a reaction born of rage or of stubbornness in the face of defeat—common enough in war—but of something that had long ago tipped over into the pathological." —Andrew Stuttaford, Wall Street Journal The best-selling author of Hitler: Ascent and Hitler: Downfall reconstructs the chaotic, otherworldly last days of Nazi Germany. In a bunker deep below Berlin’s Old Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler and his new bride, Eva Braun, took their own lives just after 3:00 p.m. on April 30, 1945—Hitler by gunshot to the temple, Braun by ingesting cyanide. But the Führer’s suicide did not instantly end either Nazism or the Second World War in Europe. Far from it: the eight days that followed were among the most traumatic in modern history, witnessing not only the final paroxysms of bloodshed and the frantic surrender of the Wehrmacht, but the total disintegration of the once-mighty Third Reich. In Eight Days in May, the award-winning historian and Hitler biographer Volker Ullrich draws on an astonishing variety of sources, including diaries and letters of ordinary Germans, to narrate a society’s descent into Hobbesian chaos. In the town of Demmin in the north, residents succumbed to madness and committed mass suicide. In Berlin, Soviet soldiers raped German civilians on a near-unprecedented scale. In Nazi-occupied Prague, Czech insurgents led an uprising in the hope that General George S. Patton would come to their aid but were brutally put down by German units in the city. Throughout the remains of Third Reich, huge numbers of people were on the move, creating a surrealistic tableau: death marches of concentration-camp inmates crossed paths with retreating Wehrmacht soldiers and groups of refugees; columns of POWs encountered those of liberated slave laborers and bombed-out people returning home. A taut, propulsive narrative, Eight Days in May takes us inside the phantomlike regime of Hitler’s chosen successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, revealing how the desperate attempt to impose order utterly failed, as frontline soldiers deserted and Nazi Party fanatics called on German civilians to martyr themselves in a last stand against encroaching Allied forces. In truth, however, the post-Hitler government represented continuity more than change: its leaders categorically refused to take responsibility for their crimes against humanity, an attitude typical not just of the Nazi elite but also of large segments of the German populace. The consequences would be severe. Eight Days in May is not only an indispensable account of the Nazi endgame, but a historic work that brilliantly examines the costs of mass delusion.

'"Cloudbusting"...was inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf... It was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It's about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child's point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers' - Kate Bush This famous book, the inspiration behind Kate Bush's 1985 hit song 'Cloudbusting', is the extraordinary account of life as friend, confidant and child of the brilliant but persecuted Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. Peter, his son, shared with his father the revolutionary concept of a world where dream and reality are virtually indistinguishable, and the sense of mission which set him and his followers apart from the rest of the human race.Here, Peter Reich writes vividly and movingly of the mysterious experiences he shared with his father: of flying saucers; the 'cloudbuster' rain-makers and the FDA narks; and of the final tragic realization of his father's death, which woke him up to the necessity of living out his life in an alien world.Already regarded as a modern classic, A Book of Dreams is not only a beautifully written narrative of a remarkable friendship and collaboration, but a loving son's heartfelt tribute to a loving father.WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR

Ian Watson, author of the very first novels in the Warhammer 40K universe, makes a long-anticipated return to military SF with "In Golden Armour," one of three original stories in this fabulous new collection from the man who wrote the screen story to AI: Artificial Intelligence for Stanley Kubrick (later filmed by Steven Spielberg). The 1000 Year Reich boasts eighteen stories that showcase the multiple award-winning author at his best. Brimming with ingenuity and invention, the content varies from fast-paced action to thought-provoking conjecture, from wicked humour to chilling possibility, from the sublime to the outrageous. "The brilliant Ian Watson remains the most stimulating and the least comfortable science fiction writer working today. Reading his short fiction reminds us why he is one of the genre's unassailable greats." - Adam Roberts Contents 1.Introduction by Justina Robson 2.The 1000 Year Reich 3.In Golden Armour 4.How We Came Back From Mars: A Story That Cannot Be Told 5.Blair's War 6.The Name of the Lavender 7.Forever Blowing Bubbles 8.The Tale of Trurl and the Great TanGent 9.The Wild Pig's Collar 10.Beloved Pig-Brother of the Daughter of the Pregnant Baby: a Transgenic Story of Genius (with Roberto Quaglia) 11.Red Squirrel 12.An Inspector Calls 13.Me and My Flying Saucer 14.Faith Without Teeth 15.The Travelling Raven Problem 16.The Arc de Triomphe Code 17.Spanish Fly 18.Having the Time of His Life 19.Breakfast in Bed

Author Joseph Howard Tyson, who has written biographies of William Penn, Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, Dietrich Eckart, and Adolf Hitler, admits to being a "closet astrologer." In World War II Leaders: A Historical & Astrological Study he puts Astrology to the test by juxtaposing biographical sketches of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Emperor Hirohito, Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt with detailed interpretations of their natal charts. On another level this work sets forth six different perspectives on the Second World War-- from the standpoints of Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, Britain, and America. Those interested in history and the occult will find this book an unforgettable reading experience.