In 1942 Germany, Traudl Junge was a young woman with dreams of becoming a ballerina when she was offered the chance of a lifetime. At the age of twenty-two she became private secretary to Adolf Hitler and served him for two and a half years, right up to the bitter end. Junge observed the intimate workings of Hitler's administration, she typed correspondence and speeches, including Hitler's public and private last will and testament; she ate her meals and spent evenings with him; and she was close enough to hear the bomb that was intended to assassinate Hitler in the Wolf's Lair, close enough to smell the bitter almond odor of Eva Braun's cyanide pill. In her intimate, detailed memoir, Junge invites readers to experience day-to-day life with the most horrible dictator of the twentieth century. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Offering an insider's perspective on the final days of the Third Reich, the recollections of a woman who became Hitler's secretary in 1942 sheds new light on his day-to-day life, character, and habits.

“A rare and fascinating insight into Hitler’s inner circle.” —Roger Moorhouse, author of Killing Hitler As secretary to the Führer throughout the time of the Third Reich, Christa Schroeder was perfectly placed to observe the actions and behavior of Hitler, along with the most important figures surrounding him. Schroeder’s memoir delivers fascinating insights: she notes his bourgeois manners, his vehement abstemiousness, and his mood swings. Indeed, she was ostracized by Hitler for a number of months after she made the mistake of publicly contradicting him once too often. In addition to her portrayal of Hitler, there are illuminating anecdotes about Hitler’s closest colleagues. She recalls, for instance, that the relationship between Martin Bormann and his brother Albert, who was on Hitler’s personal staff, was so bad that the two would only communicate with one another via their respective adjutants, even if they were in the same room. There is also light shed on the peculiar personal life and insanity of Reichsminister Walther Darré. Schroeder claims to have known nothing of the horrors of the Nazi regime. There is nothing of the sense of perspective or the mea culpa that one finds in the memoirs of Hitler’s other secretary, Traudl Junge, who concluded “we should have known.” Rather, the tone that pervades Schroeder’s memoir is one of bitterness. This is, without any doubt, one of the most important primary sources from the prewar and wartime period.

'To have such an uncomplicated, unaffected witness present at some of the key defining moments of the 20th century was fortunate for historians...her testimony rings absolutely true, when other politically motivated accounts of the last days of Hitler do not' Andrew Roberts Traudl Junge was 22 years old and dreamt of a career as a ballerina, until the 'opportunity of her life' beckoned and she was appointed as Adolf Hitler's secretary. From 1942 until his death she was at his side in the bunker, typing his correspondence, his speeches and even his last private and political will and testament. It was only after the war that the horrible reality of Hitler's regime began to dawn on her, and she became racked with guilt for 'liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived.' Her journal, written in 1947, is a startling eyewitness account of Hitler's court during its final years, and of the building sense of doom as the war progressed.

Relates the final days of World War II in a study of Hitler's final days in the bunker and the torment in Germany's cities and towns as the Third Reich collapsed under the weight of American, British, French, and Russian forces.

Defying Hitler was written in 1939 and focuses on the year 1933, when, as Hitler assumed power, its author was a 25-year-old German law student, in training to join the German courts as a junior administrator. His book tries to answer two questions people have been asking since the end of World War II: “How were the Nazis possible?” and “Why did no one stop them?” Sebastian Haffner’s vivid first-person account, written in real time and only much later discovered by his son, makes the rise of the Nazis psychologically comprehensible. “An astonishing memoir... [a] masterpiece.” — Gabriel Schoenfeld, The New York Times Book Review “A short, stabbing, brilliant book... It is important, first, as evidence of what one intelligent German knew in the 1930s about the unspeakable nature of Nazism, at a time when the overwhelming majority of his countrymen claim to have know nothing at all. And, second, for its rare capacity to reawaken anger about those who made the Nazis possible.” — Max Hastings, The Sunday Telegraph “Defying Hitler communicates one of the most profound and absolute feelings of exile that any writer has gotten between covers.” — Charles Taylor, Salon “Sebastian Haffner was Germany’s political conscience, but it is only now that we can read how he experienced the Nazi terror himself — that is a memoir of frightening relevance today.” — Heinrich Jaenicke, Stern “The prophetic insights of a fairly young man... help us understand the plight, as Haffner refers to it, of the non-Nazi German.” — The Denver Post “Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler is a most brilliant and imaginative book — one of the most important books we have ever published.” — Lord Weidenfeld

This memoir of Hitler’s personal bodyguard presents “convincing first-person testimony of the dictator’s final desperate months, days and hours” (Huffington Post). After being seriously wounded in the 1939 Polish campaign, Rochus Misch was invited to join Hitler’s SS-bodyguard. There he served until the war’s end as Hitler’s bodyguard, courier, orderly, and, finally, as Chief of Communications. On the Berghoff terrace, he watched Eva Braun organize parties, observed Heinrich Himmler and Albert Speer, and monitored telephone conversations from Berlin to the East Prussian Headquarters on July 20, 1944—after the attempt on Hitler’s life. As the Allied forces closed in, Misch was drawn into the Führerbunker with the last of the faithful. He remained in charge of the bunker switchboard as his duty required, even after Hitler committed suicide. Misch knew Hitler the private man. His memoirs offer an intimate view of life in close attendance to Hitler and of the endless hours deep inside the bunker. They also provide new insights into military events—such as Hitler’s initial feeling that the 6th Army should pull out of Stalingrad. Shortly before he died, Misch wrote a new introduction for this English-language edition.