Their Darkest Hour: People Tested to the Extreme in WWII

Rees, Laurence. Their Darkest Hour: People tested to the extreme during WWII New York, Ebury, 2007. 15.5 cm x 24 cm. X, 310 pages. With 15 colour illustrations. Original Hardcover with illustrated dustjacket in protective Mylar. Excellent condition with only very minor signs of external wear. Award-winning writer and filmmaker Laurence Rees has spent nearly 20 years meeting people who were tested to the extreme during World War II. He has come face-to-face with rapists, mass murderers, even cannibals, but he has also met courageous individuals who are an inspiration to us all. His quest has taken him from the Baltic States to Japan, from Poland to America, and from Germany to China. Here he presents 35 of his most electrifying encounters. Meet Estera Frenkiel, a young Jewish woman given the chance to save ten fellow Jews from deportation and death; Peter Lee, a British officer brutally treated by his Japanese captors; Zinaida Pytkina, a female member of the Soviet Union's infamous SMERSH organisation, who took pleasure in killing a German Prisoner; Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier so fanatical that he refused to surrender until 29 years after the end of the war; and Petras Zelionka, a Lithuanian who shot Jewish men, women and children for the Nazis. The devastating first-hand testimony in Their Darkest Hour is both a lasting contribution to our understanding of the war and a powerful insight into the behaviour of human beings in crisis. (Amazon)

History

LAURENCE REES

Europe

Ebury Press

Their Darkest Hour

Penguin/Random House

The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

[Read by Jonathan Keeble] In June 1944, Freda Wineman and her family were dropped off at Birkenau-one of the Nazis' largest and deadliest concentration camps. With the nod of an SS official's head, her life was spared. With another nod, her mother was sent to the gas chambers. Freda's survival was a miracle, and her mother's death one of millions caused by an amalgam of violent crimes rooted in fanaticism, bigotry, complacency, and greed. In this sweeping narrative history, Laurence Rees combines rigorous academic research with twenty-five years' worth of heartbreaking testimony to investigate how history's greatest crime was possible. ''Bergen-Belsen cannot be described in human language'' says Alice Lok Cahana, who was sent there from Auschwitz. But in a way it can, and the memory and significance of the era echoes through words like Alice's. Packed with never-before-told stories and astute analysis, Rees reveals that what became known as the Holocaust was in fact a series of escalating decisions, made amid a culture of deadly inventiveness, that developed into a worldwide catastrophe. The blame is widespread, Rees reminds us, and the effects are enduring. The Holocaust is the first new, accessible history for thirty years, an authoritative account that offers new judgments on the key decision makers and brings renewed urgency to the Holocaust's role in our collective past and our shared future.

The Holocaust

VIKING

'Laurence Rees brilliantly combines powerful eye-witness testimony, vivid narrative and compelling analysis in this superb account' Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler: Hubris and Hitler: Nemesis\n'In this fascinating study of two monsters, Rees is extraordinarily perceptive and original' Antony Beevor 
_____________________\nTwo tyrants. Each responsible for the death of millions.\nThis compelling book on Hitler and Stalin - the culmination of thirty years' work - examines the two leaders during the Second World War, when Germany and the Soviet Union fought the biggest and bloodiest war in history.\nHitler's charismatic leadership may contrast with Stalin's regimented rule by fear; and his intransigence later in the war may contrast with Stalin's change in behaviour in response to events. But as bestselling historian Laurence Rees shows, at a macro level, both were prepared to create undreamt-of suffering - in Hitler's case, most infamously the Holocaust - in order to build the utopias they wanted.\nUsing previously unpublished, startling eyewitness testimony from soldiers, civilians and those who knew both men personally, Laurence Rees - probably the only person alive who has met Germans who worked for Hitler and Russians who worked for Stalin - challenges long-held popular misconceptions about two of the most important figures in history. This is a master work from one of our finest historians. 
_____________________\n'Coming from one of the world's experts on the Second World War, this is an important and original - and devastating - account of Hitler and Stalin as dictators. A must read' Professor Robert Service, author of Stalin: A Biography\n'Impressive . . . well paced and well informed with an eye for telling anecdotes and colourful character sketches . . . Rees' decision to add personal stories to his narrative adds an important layer to our understanding of both the dictators themselves and their victims' Robert Gerwarth, The Daily Telegraph

Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Penguin

The Nazis: A Warning from History

BBC Books

This text offers interviews with witnesses who knew Stalin and Hitler, together with documents from Russian archives. It explores in detail the reasons why Hitler invaded Russia, why it was a mistake to believe Hitler was a reasonable conqueror, and, ultimately, was Stalin another Hitler?

War of the Century: When Hitler Fought Stalin

Bbc Pubns

Light wear and marks in book. Missing Dust Jacket. Shipped directly from Amazon

AUSCHWITZ : THE NAZIS AND THE FINAL SOLUTION by LAURENCE REES (2005-01-01)

BBC FOR THE BOOK PEOPLE

book -- striking account and analysis of a dark period for humanity

Auschwitz How Mankind Committed the Ultimate Infamy

BBS Public Affairs

An award-winning historian plumbs the depths of Hitler and Stalin's vicious regimes, and shows the extent to which they brutalized the world around them. 
Two 20th century tyrants stand apart from all the rest in terms of their ruthlessness and the degree to which they changed the world around them. Briefly allies during World War II, Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin then tried to exterminate each other in sweeping campaigns unlike anything the modern world had ever seen, affecting soldiers and civilians alike. Millions of miles of Eastern Europe were ruined in their fight to the death, millions of lives sacrificed.\nLaurence Rees has met more people who had direct experience of working for Hitler and Stalin than any other historian. Using their evidence he has pieced together a compelling comparative portrait of evil, in which idealism is polluted by bloody pragmatism, and human suffering is used casually as a political tool. It's a jaw-dropping description of two regimes stripped of moral anchors and doomed to destroy each other, and those caught up in the vicious magnetism of their leadership.

Hitler And Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

Hachette B and Blackstone Publishing

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