The defeat of Nazi Germany in the words of those who were there New Year's Day 1945 was not a day for rest or rejoicing on the embattled continent of Europe. Hard winter gripped the land, from the Channel coast to the distant Urals. Only the thought of victory warmed the frozen soldiers huddled in tanks and foxholes as the New Year dawned and they faced the prospect of battling onwards toward Berlin. This is the story of the last five months of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich, from New Year's Day to VE Day, May 8, 1945. It is a story told not in the words of historians or scholars, but in the words of the people who lived through it, who fought and endured: soldier and civilian, American infantryman and British paratrooper, Canadian gunner and Australian pilot, New Zealand POW and German civilian. With his unrivaled gift for popular history, Robin Neillands, in his follow-up to the enormously successful D-Day 1944, recreates in engaging narrative fashion the most dramatic and bloody months of the war. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, letters, and inside eyewitness testimony from veterans about such subjects as the esprit de corps in the Allied and Axis armies, the discovery of the concentration camps, the dissension in the Allied command, and the meeting of Russians and Americans at the Elbe, the book recounts the effects of many of the most crucial events of the conflict on soldier and citizen alike. The Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of Auschwitz, the Malmedy Massacres, the fall of Warsaw to the Red Army, the destruction of Dresden, the lynching of Allied aircrews, Yalta, Hitler's Scorched Earth directive, the massive parachutes drops by the Allied forces, the death of Roosevelt, the last days of Hitler, and, finally, the surrender of Germany—it's all here, rendered in engrossing and rich detail in this example of military history at its finest. For a comprehensive and thrilling account of the end of World War II, The Conquest of the Reich will stand as the definitive people's history for years to come.

The Roman Empire has been a source of inspiration and a model for imitation for Western empires practically since the moment Rome fell. Yet, as Julia Hell shows in The Conquest of Ruins, what has had the strongest grip on aspiring imperial imaginations isn’t that empire’s glory but its fall—and the haunting monuments left in its wake. Hell examines centuries of European empire-building—from Charles V in the sixteenth century and Napoleon’s campaigns of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to the atrocities of Mussolini and the Third Reich in the 1930s and ’40s—and sees a similar fascination with recreating the Roman past in the contemporary image. In every case—particularly that of the Nazi regime—the ruins of Rome seem to represent a mystery to be solved: how could an empire so powerful be brought so low? Hell argues that this fascination with the ruins of greatness expresses a need on the part of would-be conquerors to find something to ward off a similar demise for their particular empire.

The final book in his acclaimed trilogy on the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, Richard J. Evans's The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster shows how Germany rushed headlong into destroying itself, shattering an entire continent. In 1939 Hitler mobilized Germany into all-out war. Richard Evans's astonishing, acclaimed history conjures up a whole society plunged into conflict - from generals and front-line soldiers to Hitler Youth activists and middle-class housewives - tracing events from the invasion of Poland and the Battle of Stalingrad to Hitler's plans for genocide and his eventual suicide. 'Masterly ... will surely be the standard history for many years to come ... This is a warning for the future, as much as a judgement on the past' ;Richard Overy, Daily Telegraph 'We all know how the story ends ... but Richard Evans brings it masterfully home ... magnificent';Peter Preston, Observer 'A chilling, brilliant read' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year 'It is hard to do justice to the humanity and scholarly range of The Third Reich at War ... triumphant ... a masterful historical narrative and the most comprehensive account of Nazi Germany' Nicholas Stargardt, The Times Literary Supplement 'It gives the reader persuasive answers to questions asked for so long, that will continue to be asked, about this most violent and inexplicable of regimes' Mark Mazower, Guardian Sir Richard J. Evans is Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. His previous books include In Defence of History, Telling Lies about Hitler and the companions to this title, The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich in Power.

Written as a journal of his experiences while a teenager during the German occupation of his village and later, as a memoir of his military service, Victims, Victors describes the confusion and agony of the conquered, and, ultimately, the triumph of avengers over those who invaded and ransacked their homeland. Victims, Victors is, however, much more than a common chronicle of wartime experiences. Only since the demise of the Communist regime can memoirs such as Victims, Victors be openly produced and marketed. Western readers will find that the author's perspective on the events of his youth seem quite alien, but will also find them fascinating. Like Alfred Novotny (The Good Soldier), whose Social Democrat family had openly opposed the ruling regime in Austria, Roman Kravchenko-Berezhnoy's family had openly opposed the Bolsheviks... yet, also like Novotny, who served in Germany's elite Grossdeutschland Division, the young Roman also proudly served in the Red Army. Like the green young American infantryman Frank Gurley (Into the Mountains Dark), who wrote down his account of events as they happened, or like the idealistic SS machinegunner Johann Voss (Black Edelweiss), who wrote his memoir immediately after the war, Roman also kept a detailed diary that rings with the ardor and authenticity of recent-not half-century old-observations and recollections. The horrific, first-hand experiences chronicled by the author combine with the rumors, myths, and misunderstandings that characterized the young diarist's comprehension of the war to create a sometimes strange, sometimes misinformed, but always spell-binding and illuminating and absorbing account... and the author's unvarnished, occasionally brutal descriptions of his combat experiences provide revealing glimpses into the savage nature of fighting on the Eastern Front.

*Includes pictures*Includes accounts of the negotiations and fighting*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading*Includes a table of contentsOne of the most famous people in the world came to tour the city of Paris for the first time on June 28, 1940. Over the next three hours, he rode through the city's streets, stopping to tour L'Op�ra Paris. He rode down the Champs-�lys�es toward the Trocadero and the Eiffel Tower, where he had his picture taken. After passing through the Arc de Triomphe, he toured the Pantheon and old medieval churches, though he did not manage to see the Louvre or the Palace of Justice. Heading back to the airport, he told his staff, "It was the dream of my life to be permitted to see Paris. I cannot say how happy I am to have that dream fulfilled today." Four years after his tour, Adolf Hitler would order the city's garrison commander, General Dietrich von Choltitz, to destroy Paris, warning his subordinate that the city "must not fall into the enemy's hand except lying in complete debris." The fact that Hitler set foot in Paris in June 1940 was remarkable in its own right and the culmination of Nazi Germany's lightning advance across most of Western Europe, beginning even before the war with the annexations of lands, some of which was made possible by the now widely reviled Munich agreement. Other negotiations with the Soviet Union allowed Germany to invade Poland with few consequences in September 1939, and the military superiority built up over the two decades between the world wars made it possible for the Germans to push aside their opponents when they found them. Of course, Paris was not destroyed before the Allies liberated it, but it would take more than 4 years for them to wrest control of France from Nazi Germany after they took the country by storm in about a month in 1940. That said, it's widely overlooked today given how history played out that as the power of Nazi Germany grew alarmingly during the 1930s, the French sought means to defend their territory against the rising menace of the Thousand-Year Reich. As architects of the most punitive measures in the Treaty of Versailles following World War I, France was a natural target for Teutonic retribution, so the Maginot Line, a series of interconnected strongpoints and fortifications running along much of France's eastern border, helped allay French fears of invasion. The true flaw in French military strategy during the opening days of World War II lay not in reliance on the Maginot fortifications but in the army's neglect to exploit the military opportunities the Line created. In other words, the border defense performed as envisioned, but the other military arms supported it insufficiently to halt the Germans. The French Army squandered the opportunity not because the Maginot Line existed but because they failed to utilize their own defensive plan properly; the biggest problem was that the Germans simply skirted past the intricate defensive fortifications by invading neutral Belgium and swinging south, thereby avoiding the Maginot Line for the most part. Nazi Germany's Conquest of Western Europe: The Negotiations and Campaigns that Let Hitler Conquer the Continent Before and During World War II chronicles the background leading up to World War II and Germany's quick success in the first year of it. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Nazi Germany's conquest of Western Europe like never before, in no time at all.