The Dirlewanger Brigade was an anti-partisan unit of the Nazi army, reporting directly to Heinrich Himmler. The first members of the brigade were mostly poachers who were released from prisons and concentration camps and who were believed to have the skills necessary for hunting down and capturing partisan fighters in their camps in the forests of the Eastern Front. Their numbers were soon increased by others who were eager for a way out of imprisonment—including men who had been convicted of burglary, assault, murder, and rape.

Under the leadership of Oskar Dirlewanger, a convicted rapist and alcoholic, they could do as they pleased: there were no repercussions for even their worst behavior. This was the group used for its special “talents” to help put down the Jewish uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto, killing an estimated 35,000 men, women, and children in a single day. Even by Nazi standards, the brigade was considered unduly violent and an investigation of its activities was opened. The Nazi hierarchy was eager to distance itself from the behavior of the brigade and eventually exiled many of the members to Belarus. Based on the archives from Germany, Poland, and Russia, The SS Dirlewanger Brigade offers an unprecedented look at one of the darkest chapters of World War II.

Zusammenfassung: De geschiedenis van rechts terreur in Duitsland begon niet met de opkomst van de nationaalsocialisten, maar met een samenzwering tegen de Duitse democratie en een bloedige reeks moorden precies honderd jaar geleden. De daders in de vroege Weimarrepubliek hadden dezelfde motieven, wrok en doelen als de rechtse terroristen van nu. Hun dodelijke vastberadenheid was gebaseerd op sociaal milieu en emotie, op structeren en netwerken die overal mogelijk zijn en nooit helemaal zijn verdwenen. In De wraak van de verliezers legt Florian Huber parallellen tussen rechts terreur in de vroege Weimarrepubliek en het rechts-terrorisme van nu. Een spannend verhaal dat uitmondt in de spectaculaire moord op Walther Rathenau, de Duitse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, waarmee Huber laat zien dat de geschiedenis zich nu herhaalt - of dat de aantrekkingskracht rechts-terrorisme wellicht nooit echt is afgenomen. Bron: Flaptekst, uitgeversinformatie.

An extraordinary portrait of thirteenth-century Languedoc as well as of the savage war fought within its borders over the future of Christianity

In the twelfth century, Languedoc, in the far south, was among the most beautiful parts of France, far away from the world of the feudal north. However, it was in this rich region that a heresy of Eastern origin took hold, forcing the Catholic Church to confront a rival whose teachings questioned the foundations of Christian thought. These heretics, called Cathars, held a profoundly pessimistic view of the world that was based on the duality of all things, including good and evil: according to one heretic, "The one, the good God, made the invisible world, while the other, the evil God, made the visible one."

Jonathan Sumption's acclaimed history examines the roots of this heresy as well as of the crusade the Church undertook in 1208 to stamp out the infidels, who ultimately were conquered by the Catholic armies. But this book does more than simply describe this terrible war; it reconstructs a lost world of great cultural richness, one that saw the creation in Languedoc of the troubadour tradition as well as the magnificent castles at Cabaret and Carcassonne.

Mark Greengrass's gripping, major, original account of Europe in an era of tumultuous change

SUNDAY TIMES and FINANCIAL TIMES Books of the Year 2014

This addition to the landmark Penguin History of Europe series is a fascinating study of 16th and 17th century Europe and the fundamental changes which led to the collapse of Christendom and established the geographical and political frameworks of Western Europe as we know it.

From peasants to princes, no one was untouched by the spiritual and intellectual upheaval of this era. Martin Luther's challenge to church authority forced Christians to examine their beliefs in ways that shook the foundations of their religion. The subsequent divisions, fed by dynastic rivalries and military changes, fundamentally altered the relations between ruler and ruled. Geographical and scientific discoveries challenged the unity of Christendom as a belief-community. Europe, with all its divisions, emerged instead as a geographical projection. It was reflected in the mirror of America, and refracted by the eclipse of Crusade in ambiguous relationships with the Ottomans and Orthodox Christianity. Chronicling these dramatic changes, Thomas More, Shakespeare, Montaigne and Cervantes created works which continue to resonate with us. Christendom Destroyed is a rich tapestry that fosters a deeper understanding of Europe's identity today.

'The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects' New Statesman

This gripping and richly illustrated account of wartime Greece explores the impact of the Nazi Occupation upon the lives and values of ordinary people. The first full account of the experience of occupation, it offers a vividly human picture of resistance fighters and black marketeers, teenage German conscripts and Gestapo officers, Jews and starving villagers.

"Fascinating. . . . [Mazower] succeeds in getting under the skin of the occupation. . . . [This book] conjures up, in vivid detail, life under an occupation that had shattered old certainties and replaced them with painful choices, cynical compromises, and hopes undercut by the daily death toll." --Mark Almond, New York Times

"A vivid picture of the German occupier's mind and actions. . . . Mazower's arguments are always fair." --Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A superb book on the horrors afflicting wartime Greece. . . . [Mazower] has done vast archival research and emerged with a gripping, readable and human account, setting every moment of a tragic period in appropriate context." --Fritz Stern, Foreign Affairs

"[A] sensitive, illuminating and richly textured account of painful, complex experience." --Richard Overy, Observer
Mark Mazower is professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London, and author of Dark Continent.

In the early nineteenth century, Britons and Americans renewed their struggle over the legacy of the American Revolution, leading to a second confrontation that redefined North America.  Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor’s vivid narrative tells the riveting story of the soldiers, immigrants, settlers, and Indians who fought to determine the fate of a continent. Would revolutionary republicanism sweep the British from Canada? Or would the British contain, divide, and ruin the shaky republic?
 
In a world of double identities, slippery allegiances, and porous boundaries, the leaders of the republic and of the empire struggled to control their own diverse peoples. The border divided Americans—former Loyalists and Patriots—who fought on both sides in the new war, as did native peoples defending their homelands. And dissident Americans flirted with secession while aiding the British as smugglers and spies.

During the war, both sides struggled to sustain armies in a northern land of immense forests, vast lakes, and stark seasonal swings in the weather. After fighting each other to a standstill, the Americans and the British concluded that they could safely share the continent along a border that favored the United States at the expense of Canadians and Indians.

Moving beyond national histories to examine the lives of common men and women, The Civil War of 1812 reveals an often brutal (sometimes comic) war and illuminates the tangled origins of the United States and Canada.

Moving beyond national histories to examine the lives of common men and women, The Civil War of 1812 reveals an often brutal (sometimes comic) war and illuminates the tangled origins of the United States and Canada.

'The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects' New Statesman

The Pursuit of Glory brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in European history - from the battered, introvert continent after the Thirty Years War to the dynamic one that experienced the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. Tim Blanning depicts the lives of ordinary people and the dominant personalities of the age (Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, Napoleon), and explores an era of almost unprecedented change, growth and cultural, political and technological ferment that shaped the societies and economies of entire countries.

'A scintillating, encyclopaedic history, rich in detail from the arcane to the familiar... a veritable tour de force' Richard Overy, New Statesman

'Transnational history at its finest ... .. social, political and cultural themes swirl together in one great canvas of immense detail and beauty' Gerard DeGroot, The Times

'Dazzlingly erudite and entertaining' Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times

A masterpiece which brings to life an extraordinarly turbulent and dramatic era of revolutionary change.

The Pursuit of Power draws on a lifetime of thinking about nineteenth-century Europe to create an extraordinarily rich, surprising and entertaining panorama of a continent undergoing drastic transformation. The book aims to reignite the sense of wonder that permeated this remarkable era, as rulers and ruled navigated overwhelming cultural, political and technological changes. It was a time where what was seen as modern with amazing speed appeared old-fashioned, where huge cities sprang up in a generation, new European countries were created and where, for the first time, humans could communicate almost instantly over thousands of miles. In the period bounded by the Battle of Waterloo and the outbreak of World War I, Europe dominated the rest of the world as never before or since: this book breaks new ground by showing how the continent shaped, and was shaped by, its interactions with other parts of the globe.

Richard Evans explores fully the revolutions, empire-building and wars that marked the nineteenth century, but the book is about so much more, whether it is illness, serfdom, religion or philosophy. The Pursuit of Power is a work by a historian at the height of his powers: essential for anyone trying to understand Europe, then or now.

"This engaging book tackles the contentious issue of categorizing the Christian military campaigns against Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula."—Historian

Tijdens de Spaanse Burgeroorlog gaan vier mannen op weg om een belangrijke tegenstander te doden.

Verhalen en essays van 12 Nederlandse naoorlogse schrijvers over hun joodse identiteit.

Auteur tekent de levensgeschiedenis op van haar moeder Hélène Egger (1929), die na jarenlang zwijgen besloot haar levensverhaal te vertellen, eerst aan haar familie, vanaf 2007 ook aan kinderen op scholen via haar gastsprekerschap voor Westerbork. Egger was een vrolijk meisje uit een joods gezin dat tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog haar twee broers en haar vader verloor, in Auschwitz en Sobibor. Egger overleefde de oorlog.

Ooggetuigenverslagen van Britse en Duitse soldaten van het laatste jaar van de Eerste Wereldoorlog.

Ooggetuigenverslagen van Britse soldaten van het eerste jaar van de Eerste Wereldoorlog.

Ooggetuigenverslagen van Britse soldaten van het tweede jaar van de Eerste Wereldoorlog.

Europe in 1618 was riven between Protestants and Catholics, Bourbon and Hapsburg--as well as empires, kingdoms, and countless principalities. After angry Protestants tossed three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire out the window of the royal castle in Prague, world war spread from Bohemia with relentless abandon, drawing powers from Spain to Sweden into a nightmarish world of famine, disease, and seemingly unstoppable destruction.

Winner of the Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award 2011

The horrific series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years War (1618-48) tore the heart out of Europe, killing perhaps a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to whole areas of Central Europe to such a degree that many towns and regions never recovered. All the major European powers apart from Russia were heavily involved and, while each country started out with rational war aims, the fighting rapidly spiralled out of control, with great battles giving way to marauding bands of starving soldiers spreading plague and murder. The war was both a religious and a political one and it was this tangle of motives that made it impossible to stop. Whether motivated by idealism or cynicism, everyone drawn into the conflict was destroyed by it. At its end a recognizably modern Europe had been created but at a terrible price.

Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the war in a generation, and a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events. Wilson's great strength is in allowing the reader to understand the tragedy of mixed motives that allowed rulers to gamble their countries' future with such horrifying results. The principal actors in the drama (Wallenstein, Ferdinand II, Gustavus Adolphus, Richelieu) are all here, but so is the experience of the ordinary soldiers and civilians, desperately trying to stay alive under impossible circumstances.

Filosofische beschouwing over wat seksualiteit eigenlijk is.

Memoirs of ten Jewish men and women (from the Netherlands, France, and Germany) on their experiences as children or adults during the Holocaust period, in hiding or in concentration camps, and on their postwar lives. Many members of their families perished. Some of the children were converted and had serious problems after the war in the attempt to rediscover their Jewish identity. Some adults chose to change their names and assimilate. also relates to postwar experiences of antisemitism in the Netherlands.

This book is a major critical study of the connections between the 'public' character of television and the various ways it works as communication. John Corner asks fundamental questions about the nature of what appears on the screen and how it variously engages, informs and entertains viewers. After setting out some of the distinctive features of the medium, illustrated by examples, the question of the likely and possible social and political consequences of these features is directly addressed. Chapters on the specific but changing forms of news, documentary and advertising provide a vivid and detailed analysis of some of television's most controversial ways of addressing the viewer as citizen and consumer.

Dit boek schetst niet alleen een beeld van de werkzaamheden van een verzorgingsgroep, maar zet ook het stereotype beeld recht dat joden in Nederland zich zonder verzet naar de concentratiekampen hebben laten afvoeren. De PP-groep van Jan Hemelrijk en Bob van Amerongen, beiden 'half-joods', bestond voor een aanzienlijk deel uit mensen met een joodse achtergrond, zoals overigens bij meer Amsterdamse verzetsgroepen. Maar liefst twintig procent van de helpers aan joodse onderduikers - aangesloten bij de Vrije Groepen Amsterdam (VGA) - had zelf een joodse achtergrond. 0Dit boek werpt ook een licht op 'De avonden' van Gerard Reve. In die klassieker zijn alle figuren gemodelleerd naar werkelijke personages, onder wie een aantal mensen uit de PP-groep. Zo is Gerards broer Karel 0van het Reve, Joop van Egters en zijn verzetskameraden Bob van Amerongen 0en Jan Hemelrijk, respectievelijk Viktor Poort en Herman.0.

Het eerste deel van een tweeluik over de geschiedenis van de joden, geschreven bij een in 2013 door de BBC geproduceerde documentairereeks. 

On Saturday 9th September, 1922, the victorious Turkish cavalry rode into Smyrna, the richest and most cosmopolitan city in the Ottoman Empire. What happened over the next two weeks must rank as one of the most compelling human dramas of the twentieth century. Almost two million people were caught up in a disaster of truly epic proportions.

PARADISE LOST is told with the narrative verve that has made Giles Milton a bestselling historian. It unfolds through the memories of the survivors, many of them interviewed for the first time, and the eyewitness accounts of those who found themselves caught up in one of the greatest catastrophes of the modern age.

In the chaos after the Reich an astonishing 2.5 million ordinary citizens were killed. This harrowing history uncovers the extraordinary stories of real German people from all walks of life in the aftermath of the Second World War

Biografie van een SS-er die bekend werd door een wereldberoemde foto genomen in het getto van Warschau. Hierop staat een jongetje met beide handen in de lucht, onder schot gehouden door een soldaat. 

Richard M Watt's book unfolds the story of 1918-19, the fateful year that saw the tragedy of Germany, soon to become the tragedy of Europe. In 1918 came the brief moment when the victorious Allies at the Versailles Conference had the opportunity - by means of a peace with justice - to set up democracy in central Europe. The Kings Depart tells of their failure; of the Allies' rapacity which drove a ruined Germany to seek vengeance; of Germany's terrible collapse into anarchy and Red revolution and her even more frightful salvation at the hands of the army and the Freikorps; of the appearance of the swastika banner and right-wing terrorists and adventurers awaiting their Fuhrer.

Das Grundlagenwerk zur Geschichte der Weimarer Republik Die Weimarer Republik gilt als erster Versuch Deutschlands, auf demokratischen Füßen zu stehen. Doch ihre Schöpfer schafftes es aus nationalpolitischen Rücksichten nicht, einen klaren strukturellen und moralischen Trennungsstrich zu den Verfechtern der alten Ordnung zu ziehen. Dem großen Historiker Hans Mommsen gelingt es, die komplizierten innen- und außenpolitischen Geschehnisse zu verdeutlichen und eine pointierte Darstellung zum Thema zu liefern.