Dangerous and mysterious events are afoot in a peace-loving land... Someone is killing Swiss colonels, and painting a hammer and sickle at the scene. When Dr. Fritz Rubenstein, a physicist in Zurich, is gunned down in his office, the only clue is a letter in his trash requesting assistance for the French Resistance. Swiss Intelligence is new, underfunded, and understaffed, and they ask the U.S. government for help. Martin Schuller is sent to Switzerland to go undercover to find the killers, and what they're after. As war rages all around, Switzerland is an island of serenity. But Switzerland in the fall of 1941 is not all it appears. Delving beneath the serene appearance, Martin finds a secretive world of right-wing organizations, idealistic student activists, banks full of Nazi gold, and competing foreign agents. With the help of Franz Lemiel, a world-wise artist and activist, and Jason Bachman, an eager young American diplomat, Martin discovers a conspiracy to bring down the Swiss government in one dramatic event. Can he stop the conspirators from carrying out their attack, and changing the course of the war? Book Three in the Martin Schuller Spy Catcher series brings new dangers, and forces Martin to blur the lines between spy and spy catcher. It reintroduces a character from Gray Paree, a companion novel to this series. Content warning: This book contains a dark sequence involving torture in a Gestapo dungeon, including sexual assault. This is realistically portrayed, and may be traumatic for certain readers.

A “compelling [and] carefully researched” account of greed, duplicity, and an unholy partnership between Switzerland and the Third Reich (The Washington Times). In the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century, the European continent fell, nation by nation, to Nazi Germany’s invincible war machine. But Switzerland remained neutral during World War II, taking no side and bowing to no master. For a long time after, that was the accepted history—but it was a lie. Respected British investigative journalist Tom Bower reveals the shocking truth about how the government of Switzerland and the Swiss banking industry knowingly collaborated with the Reich during the darkest era in modern history. With the knowledge and acquiescence of the Swiss government, hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from Jewish Holocaust victims—including gold teeth extracted from the mouths of those murdered—were systematically hidden away in Swiss bank accounts. But these crimes did not end with the defeat of Hitler. For the next half century, Swiss authorities engaged in a covert campaign of lies, subterfuge, and corruption to hide the wealth from its rightful owners—concentration camp survivors and the families of the slain—while freely dispensing the illegally obtained funds to fugitive Nazis. Written by “one of the finest investigative journalists in the English-speaking world,” Nazi Gold is an explosive true account of state-endorsed crimes and atrocities; of former victims fighting courageously for their due in the face of prejudice, hatred, and indifference; and of the dedicated US Treasury agents who worked tirelessly for decades to right an unconscionable wrong (The Washington Times).

Conspiracy theories seem to be proliferating today. Long relegated to a niche existence, conspiracy theories are now pervasive, and older conspiracy theories have been joined by a constant stream of new ones – that the USA carried out the 9/11 attacks itself, that the Ukrainian crisis was orchestrated by NATO, that we are being secretly controlled by a New World Order that keep us docile via chemtrails and vaccinations. Not to mention the moon landing that never happened. But what are conspiracy theories and why do people believe them? Have they always existed or are they something new, a feature of our modern world? In this book Michael Butter provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the nature and development of conspiracy theories. Contrary to popular belief, he shows that conspiracy theories are less popular and influential today than they were in the past. Up to the 1950s, the Western world regarded conspiracy theories as a legitimate form of knowledge and it was therefore normal to believe in them. It was only after the Second World War that this knowledge was delegitimized, causing conspiracy theories to be banished from public discourse and relegated to subcultures. The recent renaissance of conspiracy theories is linked to internet which gives them wider exposure and contributes to the fragmentation of the public sphere. Conspiracy theories are still stigmatized today in many sections of mainstream culture but are being accepted once again as legitimate knowledge in others. It is the clash between these domains and their different conceptions of truth that is fuelling the current debate over conspiracy theories.

In this updated and revised edition of Just Passing Through: A German American Family Saga, first published in 2011, the author tells the story of several generations of his unique but dysfunctional family spanning over a hundred years including the two world wars. Peter Zell was eight years old when World War II ended and in a prologue entitled A German - American Childhood recounts his boyhood experiences that included the apocalyptic firebombing of his hometown of Stuttgart by the western Allies, the postwar occupation of Germany, and his family’s emigration to America. The book centers on the author’s mother, whom her children called Mutti, and her ordeal during the Nazi era for having been married to a Jew, the son of prosperous Frankfurt business owners, with whom she had two children. With anti-Semitism on the rise in Germany, her husband decided to emigrate to America but Mutti chose to remain behind to take care of her ailing father. The couple had an amicable divorce and while her ex-husband took their son with him, their daughter remained with Mutti in Germany. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, mother and daughter now found themselves classified as non-Aryans which meant that Mutti could not remarry while their teenage daughter, being half Jewish, was put in dire jeopardy of her life. At this point Mutti’s older brother, himself a dedicated National Socialist, proposed an unconventional solution that ensured her survival. Following his advice, she had more children, fathered by so-called Aryans, who were eventually all brought to America. The book follows the lives of the five siblings, all half-brothers and half-sisters, and their difficult relationships with each other as each seeks to achieve his or her version of the American Dream.

This title is available in Open Access thanks to the support of Université de Genève. Factional Struggles explores the dynamics of conflicts among ruling elites within cities, dynastic courts, rural areas and regional noble lineages during the early modern period. Building on case studies from France, Italy, the Empire and the Swiss Confederation, the essays collected by Mathieu Caesar in this volume highlight how factions were formed and how they shaped political society from the late Middle Ages. The authors have especially focused on how political and religious ideologies contributed to the formation of partisanship, the role of propaganda, and the significance and strategies of factional leaders. The volume shows how factions, despite the generally negative view of them held by theologians and jurists, were in practice accepted and used as political tools.

Democratic President Earl Eastwood seeks re-election against the formidable Connecticut Governor Sophia Kallias, a Republican moderate with winning appeal to the critical independent vote. A unifi ed Third World infl uenced by China offers him the "global presidency" at the United Nations, if he loses the US race. Eastwood's dependency on China curdles his loyalties. He needs China's endorsement for the UN job. And Chinese foreign investment is the only viable source of job growth in a badly recessed US economy. The Chinese recruit the fi nancial wizardry of Swiss-based Nikos Rallis to fashion a Swiss-Brazilian network of equity funds. The network launders US investments of Chinese-owned Brazilian companies. They covertly acquire control of Canadian and US shale oil and gas stakes and their pipeline conduits. The network then infi ltrates critical US defense technology sources. Eastwood, a brilliant political tactician and the fi rst African-American president, must act forcefully as he learns of the Chinese scheme. His rigid, West Point ethics are challenged by ambition, and his complicated romantic life.