Books like The vanquished by Robert Gerwarth

John Keegan’s authoritative history of the Great War traces the political failures, battlefield campaigns, and human cost that reshaped Europe and the world.

Max Hastings illuminates the frantic opening year of World War I, tracing diplomacy’s collapse, the early battles of the Marne, Ypres and Tannenberg, and the brutal Eastern Front, while assessing leaders and ordinary soldiers to explain why Germany’s defeat saved Europe.

xi, 483 pages ; 21 cm

A sweeping collection of firsthand testimonies that reveals how ordinary Germans—soldiers, teachers, housewives, and others—experienced and shaped the Second World War.

"A century after the outbreak of the First World War, a powerful explanation of why the war's legacy continues to shape our world. The war would make a celebrity out of Woodrow Wilson and would ratify the emergence of the US as the dominant force in the world economy"--

"While it is recognised that the foreign policy of Nazi Germany caused the outbreak of the Second World War, it is far harder to determine how this actually came about. Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933-1941 provides an original treatment of this complex question. Focusing on Nazi Germany's relations with a number of regions such as Italy, France and Britain, and the Americas, Christian Leitz explores the diplomatic and political developments that led to the outbreak of war in 1939 and its transformation into a global conflict in 1941.". "The author considers, for instance, how Hitler's foreign policy ultimately meant the invasion of the Soviet Union was inevitable, and how Germany's relations with China deteriorated in favour of improved relations with Japan. Integrating the recent historical controversy over the nature of Hitler's regime with wider trends in the historiography of German foreign policy, Christian Leitz details the history of Nazi Germany's foreign policy from Hitler's inauguration as Reich Chancellor to the declaration of war by America in 1941."--BOOK JACKET.

Peter Fritzsche examines how ordinary Europeans living under Nazi occupation recorded the horrors of World War II, revealing a civilian experience far beyond front‑line warfare.

Explore Paris in the roaring 1920s, where art, architecture, music, literature, fashion, entertainment, and everyday life underwent dramatic transformation.

"What did it feel like to be a woman living in Paris from 1939 to 1949? These were years of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation and secrets until--finally--renewal and retribution. Even at the darkest moments of Occupation, with the Swastika flying from the Eiffel Tower and pet dogs abandoned howling on the streets, glamour was ever present. French women wore lipstick. Why? It was women more than men who came face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis--perhaps selling them their clothes or travelling alongside them on the Metro, where a German soldier had priority over seats. By looking at a wide range of individuals from collaborators to resisters, actresses and prostitutes to teachers and writers, Anne Sebba shows that women made life-and-death decisions every day, and often did whatever they needed to survive. Her fascinating cast of characters includes both native Parisian women and those living in Paris temporarily--American women and Nazi wives, spies, mothers, mistresses, and fashion and jewellery designers. Some women, like the heiress Béatrice de Camondo or novelist Irène Némirovsky, converted to Catholicism; others like lesbian racing driver Violette Morris embraced the Nazi philosophy; only a handful, like Coco Chanel, retreated to the Ritz with a German lover. A young medical student, Anne Spoerry, gave lethal injections to camp inmates one minute but was also known to have saved the lives of Jews. But this is not just a book about wartime. In enthralling detail Sebba explores the aftershock of the Second World War and the choices demanded. How did the women who survived to see the Liberation of Paris come to terms with their actions and those of others? Although politics lies at its heart, Les Parisiennes is a fascinating account of the lives of people of the city and, specifically, in this most feminine of cities, its women and young girls"--Publisher's website.