Ocean State Libraries

Hitler's Mein Kampf combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of his political ideology. Hitler began the book while imprisoned for "political crimes" after his failed government take-over. Though he received many visitors earlier on, he soon devoted himself entirely to writing the book. After Hitler's rise to power, the book gained enormous popularity. By the end of the war, about ten million copies had been sold or distributed in Germany....

In 1943, the Germans opened Stalag Luft III, a maximum-security prisoner-of-war camp designed to hold even the craftiest escape artists. In doing so, however, the Nazis unwittingly assembled the finest escape team in military history-who worked on what became the largest prison breakout ever attempted.

When the famous German author Sebastian Haffner died at age ninety-one in 1999, a manuscript was discovered among his unpublished papers that offers a compelling eyewitness account of the rise of Hitler and Nazism. He describes the country's inflation and the political climate that contributed to Hitler's rise to power and also examines the pervasive influence of such groups as the Free Corps and the Hitler Youth movement that swept the nation. He...

A history of German women in the Holocaust reveals their roles as plunderers, witnesses, and actual executioners on the Eastern front, describing how nurses, teachers, secretaries, and wives responded to what they believed to be Nazi opportunities only to perform brutal duties.

"A comprehensive new biography of Hitler focusing on the dictator's personality"--Provided by publisher. The historical significance of Adolf Hitler has overshadowed the man behind the public persona. For decades, misconceptions about Hitler have percolated, but to cast Hitler as purely a psychopathic monster is to ignore the facets of his personality that help explain his enigmatic hold on the German populace. Ullrich recounts Hitler's personal...

A court reporter for the Nuremberg war crimes trial of Nazi doctors reveals the shocking truth of their torture and murder in this monumental memoir. Vivien Spitz reported on the Nuremberg trials for the U.S. War Department from 1946 to 1948. In Doctors from Hell, she vividly describes her experiences both in and out of the courtroom. A chilling story of human depravity and ultimate justice, this important memoir includes trial transcripts as well...

In this book, historian Evans tells of Germany's radical reshaping under Nazi rule. Every area of life, from literature, culture, and the arts to religion, education, and science, was subordinated to the relentless drive to prepare Germany for war. Evans shows how the Nazis attempted to reorder every aspect of German society, encountering many kinds and degrees of resistance along the way but gradually winning the acceptance of the German people....

In Hitler's Army, Omer Bartov focuses on the titanic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union-where the vast majority of German troops fought-to show how the savagery of war reshaped the army in Hitler's image. Both brutalized and brutalizing, these soldiers needed to see their bitter sacrifices as noble patriotism and to justify their own atrocities by seeing their victims as subhuman. In the unprecedented ferocity and catastrophic losses of...

In Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum investigates the meanings and motivations people have attached to Hitler and his crimes against humanity. What does Hitler tell us about the nature of evil? In often dramatic encounters, Rosenbaum confronts historians, scholars, filmmakers, and deniers as he skeptically analyzes the key strains of Hitler interpretation. A balanced and thoughtful overview of a subject both frightening and profound, this is an extraordinary...

Chaplin plays the double role of the persecuted Jewish barber and Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomania. The barber is imprisoned, escapes, and is finally mistaken for the dictator at which point he makes an impassioned, humanistic speech which amazes the dictator's followers.