Books with category Nazi Germany
Displaying 4 books

You Are My Sunshine

2014

by Roberta Kagan

You Are My Sunshine is the sequel to All My Love, Detrick, set during the Holocaust. When Helga Haswell becomes pregnant by a married SS officer who abandons her, she finds herself alone and desperate. Afraid to tell her parents that she is pregnant out of wedlock, her doctor suggests that Helga check into Heinrich Himmler’s home for the Lebensborn. This program, instituted by the Nazis, aims to create perfect Aryan babies. Helga, being of pure German blood and the child's father an SS officer, is accepted. Her child will have a good life because adoption is available only to the finest of Hitler’s Elite. During her pregnancy, Helga will have the finest food and medical care available, and instead of a life of shame, she will be honored for her efforts in producing a perfect Aryan child for the new world that Hitler is creating.

However, by the time Helga feels life stir within her womb, it is too late. She has already moved into Steinhoring, home for the Lebensborn, and there is no possibility of turning back. The papers are signed, and she cannot escape. Hitler owns her unborn child. On a cold day in January, Helga’s little girl is born. But instead of being sheltered by her mother’s arms, she is torn away by the nurses at the home for the Lebensborn and thrust into a treacherous world where the very people sworn to protect her are not what they seem. The little girl grows amongst some of the cruelest people on earth, subjected daily to the ideology of the Third Reich.

But as Hitler, convinced of his invincibility, goes to war on two fronts, Germany begins to fall. The Nazis become fearful as America enters the war, joining Churchill against them in the west, while Stalin, a formidable enemy with brutal Russian winters on his side, rips them apart in the east. The tables turn on the Third Reich. The cruel Nazis, who believed they could not be defeated, are about to swallow their pride and surrender at the feet of the Allies. The superior race proves to be inferior after all. Hitler’s elite run for cover, some commit suicide, some are tried in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity, while others escape with their tails tucked between their legs to South America or other friendly ports.

But God has other plans for Helga’s tiny innocent child, born on that January morning. The child’s life is about to change in a very strange but significant way. Instead of becoming whom and what the Nazis had hoped to create, this child will be befriended and nurtured by the most unexpected people.

Spark of Life: A Novel of Resistance

Spark of Life is a gripping tale of resilience and resistance set in a German concentration camp during World War II. For ten years, 509 has been a political prisoner, enduring the most hellish conditions imaginable.

Despite being deathly weak, he retains his wits and senses that the end of the war is near. If he and his fellow prisoners can hold on for liberation—or force their own—they might find meaning in their suffering.

The SS officers running the camp have become complacent, and their defenses are down. The courageous, though terribly weak, prisoners might have just enough strength left to resist. Even if they die fighting, they will do so on their own terms, cheating the Nazis out of their devil's contract.

The Last Battle: The Classic History of the Battle for Berlin

1995

by Cornelius Ryan

The classic account of the final offensive against Hitler's Third Reich. The Battle for Berlin was the culminating struggle of World War II in the European theater, the last offensive against Hitler's Third Reich, which devastated one of Europe's historic capitals and marked the final defeat of Nazi Germany. It was also one of the war's bloodiest and most pivotal battles, whose outcome would shape international politics for decades to come.

Cornelius Ryan's compelling account of this final battle is a story of brutal extremes, of stunning military triumph alongside the stark conditions that the civilians of Berlin experienced in the face of the Allied assault. As always, Ryan delves beneath the military and political forces that were dictating events to explore the more immediate imperatives of survival, where, as the author describes it, "to eat had become more important than to love, to burrow more dignified than to fight, to exist more militarily correct than to win."

It is the story of ordinary people, both soldiers and civilians, caught up in the despair, frustration, and terror of defeat. It is history at its best, a masterful illumination of the effects of war on the lives of individuals, and one of the enduring works on World War II.

Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem

1994

by Philip Kerr

Berlin Noir brings together the first three novels in Philip Kerr’s New York Times bestselling historical mystery series starring the hard-boiled detective Bernie Gunther.

March Violets: We first meet ex-policeman Bernie Gunther in 1936, in a Germany where the Olympic Games are about to start. Some of Bernie’s Jewish friends are beginning to realize they should have left while they could. Gunther himself has been hired to look into two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party. A term of derision, "March Violets" describes late converts to the Nazi cause.

The Pale Criminal: The year is 1938, and Gunther is blackmailed into rejoining the police by Heydrich himself. The investigation delves deeper into the sinister underbelly of Nazi Germany.

A German Requiem: The saddest and most disturbing of the three books, set in 1947, sees Gunther stumbling across a nightmare landscape that conceals even more death than he imagines. Amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovers a legacy of horrors.

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