This new illustrated book by noted Third Reich edged weapon author, collector, and dealer Thomas Johnson explores the vast array of militaria "liberated" from Germany by U.S. soldiers during the Second World War. The book contains over 580 beautiful full-color, large-format photographs of German daggers, swords, helmets, uniforms, insignia, award documents, weapons, and many other rare and unusual items. Also included is a generous selection of World War II era photographs showing many items in the act of being liberated.

The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years... The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the twentieth century's most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our minds that the period of anarchy and civil war that followed has been forgotten. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted - such as the police, the media, transport, local and national government - were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places – particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France – they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities. Savage Continent is the story of post WWII Europe, in all its ugly detail, from the end of the war right up until the establishment of an uneasy stability across Europe towards the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is a frightening and thrilling chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come.

World War II was the most devastating conflict in human history, but the tragedy did not end on the battlefields. During the war, Germany -- and, later, the Allies -- plundered Europe's historic treasures. Between 1939 and 1945, German armed forces roamed from Dunkirk to Stalingrad, looting gold, silver, currency, paintings and other works of art, coins, religious artifacts, and millions of books and other documents. The value of these items, many of which were irreplaceable, is estimated in the billions of dollars. The artwork alone, looted under Hitler's direction, exceeded the combined collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and the Louvre. As the war wound to its conclusion in 1945, occupying forces continued the looting. The story of these celebrated works of art and other vanished treasures -- and the mystery of where they went -- is a remarkable tale of greed, fraud, deceit, and treachery. Kenneth Alford's Nazi Plunder is the latest word on this fascinating subject.

This four volume set by Thomas M. Johnson, a leading collector and authoritative researcher, has been compiled to serve as a useful and authoritative reference on the daggers of Nazi Germany, and have been designed to aid not only the beginning collector, but also the seasoned advanced collector and specialist. These volumes are the result of many years of arduous research conducted on both sides of the Atlantic, and are a scholarly study that is more than a perfunctory annotation and illustration of the known basic patterns. Also, the series is a study of a culture and the crafts that actually produced the blades, as well as being a manual in the art of collecting them. The embracing scope is both educational and recreational and it adds a whole new dimension to this popular collecting subject as a whole. Within these books one will see coverage of the historical background; the manufacturing techniques; constructional information; the actual basic patterns; variations and rarities; the art of collecting, and a whole host of other salient facts of absorbing interest.