(Part 3) Best european history books according to redditors
We found 8,184 Reddit comments discussing the best european history books. We ranked the 2,998 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 41-60. You can also go back to the previous section.
The Clean Wehrmacht myth is a blatant lie. The Wehrmacht were repeatedly involved in war crimes, including the extermination of undesirables, and at the very least most, if not all, members were aware that their government was pursuing a campaign of violence against civilians and had purged undesirables (such as cripples and mentally ill) from society back home. The Wehrmacht may have been normal men, but that does not mean they are free of the blame for what occurred during World War 2.
Here are some resources regarding the Clean Wehrmacht Myth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht
https://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776
https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319
https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930
I'd also add Ordinary Men to that list, as it's a very interesting study/discussion of how plain people like you and me can become bloodthirsty exterminators of other people in the right circumstances. https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492122897&sr=1-1&keywords=ordinary+men
Edit: Done replying to comments in this thread, it's exhausting. None of the argumentation is new. To quote the Duke of Wellington, "they came on in the same old way...". The materials are there for you to explore and read. You can form your own judgments based on facts and rigorous research, that's the beauty of a free and open society, the kind of society Nazi Germany was actively trying to prevent. The reason the Clean Wehrmacht myth needs to be refuted is because, as I've said in another comment, it presents an ignorant view of history that allows us to avoid the hard truth, learned largely from World War Two, that ordinary men who would otherwise be considered honorable, decent people can take part in atrocious crimes or, at the very least, hear about them and be permissive or even supportive of them. If we deny that, we can't learn to prevent such things happening again.
Edit 2: Honestly last thing, I just want to add a comment by one of the mods of r/askhistorians specifically relating to this subject. It's honestly the best comment on Reddit I've ever seen regarding this subject and it has a list of plenty of resources for those who want to investigate this issue further: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/cy3cxs0/
> ISBN 9780552152297
Welp the isbn is legit. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vulcan-607-Rowland-White/dp/0552152293 But I don't have time to read that shit. Now I just need someone to read it.
Battle for Castle Itter Wiki entry
Itter's prisoners were freed by units of the American 103rd Infantry Division of General Anthony McAuliffe on May 5, 1945.
The next day, the American units, including 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee, Jr., the former prisoners themselves, and anti-Nazi elements of the Wehrmacht under the command of Major Josef ‘Sepp’ Gangl, who died in the battle fought alongside the German guards against attacking SS elements until reinforcements arrived.
If you want to buy the book, here's the Amazon link.
May 1945. Hitler is dead, and the Third Reich little more than smoking rubble. No GI wants to be the last man killed in action against the Nazis. But for cigar-chewing, rough-talking, hard-drinking, hard-charging Captain Jack Lee and his men, there is one more mission: rescue fourteen prominent French prisoners held in an SS-guarded castle high in the Austrian Alps.
It's a dangerous mission, but Lee has help from a decorated German Wehrmacht officer and his men, who voluntarily join the fight.
Based on personal memoirs, author interviews, and official American, German, and French histories, The Last Battle is the nearly unbelievable story of the most improbable battle of World War II-a tale of unlikely allies, bravery, cowardice, and desperate combat between implacable enemies.
Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
Edit = I've listed some of the best books I've read on the subject below. Just ask if you want to know anything about them:
[The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans] (http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0143034693/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904650&sr=8-3&keywords=third+reich+at+war)
[The Third Reich in Power by Richard J. Evans] (http://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-Power-Richard-Evans/dp/0143037900/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904650&sr=8-2&keywords=third+reich+at+war)
[The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans] (http://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-at-War/dp/0143116711/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904650&sr=8-1&keywords=third+reich+at+war)
[Maus by Art Speigelman] (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Maus-25th-Anniversary/dp/0679406417/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904780&sr=8-2&keywords=maus)
[Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics by Frederich Spotts] (http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Power-Aesthetics-Frederic-Spotts/dp/1585673455/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904821&sr=8-1&keywords=hitler+power+of+aesthetics)
[Art of the Third Reich by Peter Adam] (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Third-Reich-Peter-Adam/dp/0810919125/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=21WGRYFWN5L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR115%2C160_&refRID=1VRZ6QYR6PG5XXXMYTPN)
[Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower] (http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Empire-Nazis-Ruled-Europe/dp/014311610X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904865&sr=8-1&keywords=hitler%27s+empire)
[State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda by Susan Bachrach and Steven Luckert] (http://www.amazon.com/State-Deception-Power-Nazi-Propaganda/dp/0896047148/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904916&sr=8-1&keywords=state+of+deception+nazi)
[Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris by Ian Kershaw] (http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-1889-1936-Hubris-Ian-Kershaw/dp/0393320359/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904967&sr=8-2&keywords=hitler+kershaw)
[Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis by Ian Kershaw] (http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-1936-1945-Nemesis-Ian-Kershaw/dp/0393322521/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=01WJ9WDS06KZ1AX79B3M)
[The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton] (http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Doctors-Medical-Psychology-Genocide/dp/0465049052/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457905061&sr=1-1&keywords=the+nazi+doctors)
[The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg] (http://www.amazon.com/Raul-Hilberg-Destruction-European-third/dp/B008UYLG6K/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457905115&sr=1-4&keywords=destruction+of+the+european+jews)
[Heinrich Himmler by Peter Longerich] (http://www.amazon.com/Heinrich-Himmler-Peter-Longerich/dp/0199651744/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457905176&sr=1-1&keywords=heinrich+himmler)
[Hitler's Hangman - The Life of Heydrich by Robert Gerwartch] (http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Hangman-The-Life-Heydrich/dp/0300187726/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=51FT1ecdFQL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR104%2C160_&refRID=084WSKT05G4GB1FGE1SY)
[Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939 by Saul Friedlander] (http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Germany-Jews-Persecution-1933-1939/dp/0060928786/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457905269&sr=1-3&keywords=nazi+germany+and+the+jews+saul)
[Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedlander] (http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Germany-Jews-1939-1945-Extermination/dp/0060930489/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0DQYMK2GMYNVJK794F03)
[Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning] (http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068)
[KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann] (http://www.amazon.com/KL-History-Nazi-Concentration-Camps/dp/0374118256/ref=pd_sim_14_6?ie=UTF8&dpID=41yRIhssGkL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR106%2C160_&refRID=0BSM1HJ13NDQ46VKENQK)
Yes, righteous shitpost, but that's not what "fascism" means.
http://www.amazon.com/Mussolinis-Intellectuals-Fascist-Political-Thought/dp/0691127905
The idea that the Wehrmacht engaged in an honourable war and the SS committed the atrocities is known as the "clean wehrmacht myth". There's lots of books and sources available, some good starting points would be https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319 and https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930
There's also a wikipedia page that might be more accessible on the "clean wehrmacht myth". The gist is that we needed allies for the war against communism, so we rehabilitated the German Army and let them have a scapegoat. We literally let them write the history of the war in the East.
First of all, Switzerland is very hard to get into. Mountains, etc. make things difficult. Additionally, pretty much every point of entry to the country is in fact booby trapped. Bridges are rigged with explosives so they can be very quickly demolished, tunnels can be collapsed, etc. Here is a book which covers this in detail, if you're very interested. If it's a casual interest, this might be enough info.
It's fascinating!
Oh my yes. I preface this by saying that this is by no means negative, many great societies spread early through conquest.
Early Islamic Civilization was spread by an active and fully endorsed series of conquests, which were then carried on by his successors. The original title of Muhammad's successors was even al-Mu'minin, Commander of the Believers, it was an interesting combination of religion and militaristic action.. If a city or group just surrendered, they would be happily absorbed by the growing nation
Though shortly after his immediate successors (about 100 years after Muhammad's death) it became more politically motivated, and though conquest was the most common way the religion was spread, it was really used as an excuse for rulers to stake a claim (like Christianity)
For further info, check out Muhammad and the Believers by Fred Donner
The history of Islamic Civilization is both extremely fascinating and confusing, its good stuff.
I'm not sure how well someone could measure the effects of propaganda, but personally I really dislike when people use clips from German propaganda to "prove" how enthusiastic the Germans were about the regime. From my readings, (Richard Evans mostly) it seems IMHO like most Germans wanted to believe in the propaganda, and pretended to buy the whole thing hook line and sinker while the Germans kept winning, but stopped believing once the disaster in Russia became known. I think almost more effective on the German people than propaganda was Hitler's impressive string of victories, most of them relatively bloodless annexations and diplomatic victories. These diplomatic victories really underscored his credentials as a "man of peace" and a wise statesman. It's difficult to see him in that light now, but probably to a lot of German people saw him as a "peacemaker" up until the war, which was not actually very popular among the people(if you go by Gestapo files collected on the subject). I really like Richard Evan's series on the Third Reich.
http://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-Power-Richard-Evans/dp/0143037900
https://www.amazon.com/Supplying-War-Logistics-Wallenstein-Patton/dp/0521546575
This book has a great chapter on the North Africa campaign and argues, with a massive amount of evidence from records on logistics, that Rommel never had a chance to win in North Africa.
You can read a lot of that chapter in the book preview if you're interested. Check out the conclusion to chapter 6 for a quick run down
https://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Battle-German-Soldiers/dp/0306822083/
>fascism is literally anti-communism after all.
Well, actually fascism is literally a result of marriage between Italian revolutionary syndicalism and Italian nationalism but I don't expect socialists to know socialist elements of fascism. Don't tell them about Sergio Panunzio, Georges Sorel, Enrico Corradini, Ugo Spirito and their ideal of Proleterian Nation (which is what fascism is originally) or their head might explode.
Fred Donner's new book Muhammad and the Believers goes to some lengths to answer this question. While I'm not an expert in this time period, I can tell you that it takes a few centuries, even as late as the 14th century before you have something close to a majority Muslim population in the Arab territories, Persia and Anatolia. Even then, by the time the Ottoman Empire reached its height in the 16th century, it probably ruled over more Christians than Muslims.
Some factors that you could consider as increasing the Muslim quotient in this part of the world include the legal incentives you mention and also things like slavery, which resulted in non-Muslims being enslaved, converted and eventually released. Aside from legal incentives, there were also social incentives such as access to schooling, which in many areas meant an Islamic school of one stripe or another, and access to other social services.
For your bonus question, the two are tied pretty closely. This is due to the fact that Arabic as the pure language of God is given a paramount place in the religion. Education in the Islamic system begins with the learning of Arabic, so its vernacularization inevitably came along with conversion.
Actually the archaeological evidence is the opposite. Most cities were taken without much fighting or destruction. Prof Donner of U Chicago discusses this at length.
http://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Believers-At-Origins-Islam/dp/0674064143
http://www.amazon.com/Islamic-Conquests-History-Project-Reprints/dp/1597404586/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374340788&sr=8-1&keywords=donner+islamic+conquests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RFK5u5lkhA
The believers were able to take the cities without much fighting because they absorbed the jews, Christians and zoroastrians and did not force them to convert. The islam of the quran is an inclusive religion.
The initial conquests were not at all like the later destructive ones.
I think you can find his book on bookos.org
Right. Hitler wasn't exactly a rational leader. The Swiss kept out the Nazis because they made it very clear that any invasion would be met by a fight to the death of every Swiss citizen.
John McPhee wrote a fascinating book called La Place De La Concorde Suisse that details the history of why Switzerland is armed to the teeth.
http://www.amazon.com/Place-Concorde-Suisse-John-McPhee/dp/0374519323/ref=ed_oe_p/104-4347189-5900725
I think that's part of it, but Great Man theory isn't the only historical framework that puts an emphasis on characters, even singular important characters. One example that comes to mind is Shiela Fitzpatrick's Commissariat of Enlightenment (https://www.amazon.com/Commissariat-Enlightenment-Organization-Lunacharsky-Post-Soviet/dp/0521524385). It is very much based in social history, but also focuses on the importance of Anatole Lunacharsky throughout. It is not only his story, but it is a story to which he is central and someone who is interested in stories could certainly find an interest in that book.
Another example is microhistory - something that really hasn't proven to be very popular at all outside of academia. This is a kind of history that focuses intensely on something very small, sometimes a single person. Gizberg's The Cheese and the Worms is the prototypical example of the genre in this case (https://www.amazon.com/Cheese-Worms-Cosmos-Sixteenth-Century-Miller/dp/0801843871).
There is something kind of easy about it though. Our popular media is filled with stories of archetypal heroes and villains and the Great Man theory does, perhaps, lend itself to writing stories about characters that can slide into that particular kind of narrative.
That being said, Great Man history isn't the only thing that sells well. Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History has been very popular and is about as far from a narrative about a single person as you can get (especially if you don't count salt as a person!!)
There’s a really interesting book out there about Operation Black Buck , the RAF Vulcan Bomber - Victor Tanker missions during the Falklands War.
Sheesh, I know what you mean about the depressing information. Everything I'm taking this semester is depressing: Anthro, Environmental Sociology x2. Hopefully, the supposed checks and balances within the political, and legal system prove to do their job and we can get back on track to attempting to figure a solution to our infinite consumption economics.
Is this the book you referred to?
That's a very complicated topic and I don't feel qualified to give answers based off my recollections.
The best books I've read on the Spanish Civil War - https://www.amazon.ca/Battle-Spain-Antony-Beevor/dp/014303765X and https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Civil-War-Revised-Paperbacks/dp/0375755152 don't go into detail on the command structures of each side, but it will give you a very good idea of the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the Republican forces in Spain, the extent of Soviet, German, and Italian involvement (as well as their relative effectiveness). Beevor's book is more recent and I'd say a bit more readable and does a good job of criticizing the response of the democratic powers, while at the same time giving context to their hesitance to get involved. Thomas' book is older, does a better job of staying neutral on the Republican/Nationalist debate, but goes a bit softer on the democracies than Beevor.
Truth be told, I don't know of a source that details how the left was organized. The war was very chaotic, and the Republicans were deeply divided into factions. Catalan anarchists wanted nothing to do with communists, the Republican government itself was divided about how much involvement with the USSR it wanted, the Basques were seeking independence and collaborated out of necessity more than anything else, the Soviet advisors increasingly infiltrated the main Republican forces, until the Republican's gold started running out.
Hitler wasn't a Christian; he was a pagan who worshipped Wagner and the "old gods" and wanted to restore what he saw as a heroic (i.e. militaristic) conception of Man. The torchlight processionals, the secret rituals, were all profoundly anti-Christian. Hitler actively prosecuted Christian churches until "Hitler's Pope," Pius XII, cut a deal with him - both equally cynical in what they hoped to attain from it. Christian youth groups were banned and disbanded and their members forced into the Hitler Youth instead.
See Unholy Alliance for Hitler's fascination with the occult, and The Third Reich in Power for this:
>Rosenberg declared in 1938, since young people were now almost completely under the control of the Hitler Youth and the Nazified education system, the hold of the Church over its congregation would be broken and the Catholic and Confessing churches would disappear from the life of the people in their present form. It was a sentiment from which Hitler himself did not dissent.
Or this from the same book:
>In July 1935...a speaker told a meeting of the Nazi Students' League in Bernau: 'One is either a Nazi or a committed Christian.' Christianity, he said, 'promotes the dissolution of racial ties and of the national racial community...We must repudiate the Old and the New Testaments, since for us the Nazi idea alone is decisive. For us there is only one example, Adolf Hitler and no one else."
The "cult of personality" makes no room for any other person, living or dead, at the top of the adoration pyramid. Hitler used religion as he saw fit to gain power and respectability, but had as much religion in him as our modern right wingers with their "do as I say not as I do, I've had my fun and I've had yours too" approach to morality.
Yeah, but in Europe the highways were actually designed to land/takeoff aircraft.
From wikipedia:
A highway strip or road runway is a section of a highway or motorway that is specially built to allow landing of (mostly) military aircraft and to serve as a military airbase. These were built to allow military aircraft to operate even if their airbases, the most vulnerable targets in any war, are destroyed. The first highway strips were constructed near the end of World War II in Nazi Germany, where the well developed Reichsautobahn system allowed aircraft to use the motorways. In the Cold War highway strips were systematically built on both sides of the Iron Curtain, mostly in the two Germanys, but also in North Korea, Republic of China (Taiwan), Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Additionally, several countries in Europe have bridges and tunnels that are designed with critical structural fail points for easy demolition. Ie Germany - France, Switzerland border, etc. They still don't trust each other!
To interrupt the utility of bridges, tunnels, highways, railroads, Switzerland has established three thousand points of demolition. That is the number officially printed.
Near the German border of Switzerland, every railroad and highway tunnel has been prepared to pinch shut explosively.
Book Recommendation:
La Place de la Concorde Suisse John McPhee
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374519323
> Switzerland is two times the size of New Jersey. New Jersey, by far, has the larger population. Nonetheless, there are six hundred and fifty thousand people in the Swiss Army. At any given time, most of them are walking around in street clothes or in blue from the collar down. They are a civilian army, a trained and practiced militia, ever ready to mobilize. They serve for thirty years. All six hundred and fifty thousand are prepared to be present at mobilization points and battle stations in considerably less than forty-eight hours.
There's also a strong connection between rank in the army and civilian leadership. The Swiss feel that someone who is a Major, and is in charge of leading 800 men, is well-equipped to lead a similar number of people at their office.
The author follows some men of a Section de Renseignements (Information Section - could also be called scouts) as they survey their part of the country - how many men can fit in a ski lift? What is the weight capacity of the bridges? What is the field of fire from a hillside? They make copious notes, which get synthesized into their unit's defense plan.
I became very interested in the Roma people when I lived in Italy. One of the best books I read was Bury Me Standing, which reviews say has a "pro-Gypsy bias" or is, at worst, "fair". Certainly it isn't anti-Roma. And if you read it, you'll come to understand the Roma's (fascinating, frustrating) socially and culturally ingrained attitudes about working for a living. Saying that pickpockets in Europe are often Roma is about as racist as saying anti-abortion protesters are often evangelical Christians.
There was more than one Inquisition. There was a Roman Inquisition and a Spanish Inquisition, and so forth. The Cheese and the Worms is a study of a trial of a heretical miller by the Roman Inquisition using trial records. You will be "surprised" at how even-handed the proceedings were. Far more professional than other trials of the 1500s.
The Spanish Inquisition was less concerned with justice. It was used as an instrument of the Spanish rulers for expansion and religious persecution. Good example why Christians should never mix their faith with political authority.
So you need to ask "which one?"
The Transfer Agreement--25th Anniversary Edition: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine
If you haven’t read it, this was by far the most powerful book I read regarding the holocaust in regards to relaying it’s true horror. It’s terrible reading but powerful nonetheless:
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators-Bystanders/dp/1568521332
The Good Old Days
The Battle for Spain by Anthony Beevor is considered the definitive, modern single volume history of this conflict.
Beevor is renowned for his justifiably famous books Stalingrad, D-Day and The Fall of Berlin.
I would recommend reading Stephen Harding's The Last Battle: When US and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of WWII. The book depicts the events surrounding the last major engagement between American and Nazi forces of the war, which took place on May 4th, 1945 in the Austrian Tyrol, at a castle outside the town of Itter. Itter Castle had been used by the SS as a "VIP Prison" for French notables - including two former prime ministers, two former military chiefs of staff, and several other politicians the Nazis thought would be valuable in the post-war settlement that never came. After Hitler's suicide, as the Allies swept across Western Europe, Himmler ordered the prisoners killed, so a ragtag force consisting of a small American tank squad and Austrian Wehrmacht soldiers who had decided to support the anti-Nazi resistance defended the Castle and the French VIPs against an assault by a sizable contingent of Waffen-SS. Just one day later, the Nazi's unconditional surrender was signed.
The book, written by an American military historian, gives great insight into the tenuous and dangerous situation in rural Germany and Austria in the War's final days. Many Wehrmacht soldiers decided to lay down their arms, but there were still roving bands of SS men who were aggressively resisting the Allies' advances and generally harassing anyone who they suspected of being a "defeatist" or supporting the resistance. Definitely check out Harding's book if you're interested in this period. The story he tells will make a great movie someday.
More info:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/12/world-war-ii-s-strangest-battle-when-americans-and-germans-fought-together.html
http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Battle-German-Soldiers/dp/0306822083/ref=as_at/?tag=thedailybeast-autotag-20&linkCode=as2&
Source: I finished reading the book yesterday.
I've been reading a book about this called The Last Battle. AMAZING book that has completely reshaped my thinking of the regular German army during WWII.
They supported the vulcans in Operation Black buck, but still are gorgeous aircraft in their own right, those 60s lines will never be repeated.
Vulcan 607 is a great read on the whole operation.
It's been a while since I read the book, but at the time I had strong feelings against the book, and this hasn't changed in the year since. First of all, it has to be said that Holland is a very engaging writer and I enjoyed his other books thoroughly, though perhaps it was because I'm not so familiar with other periods of history. At the very least, he writes excellent popular history and though his arguments in this book is controversial, it in my opinion brought more public attention to a very exciting and interesting field, which is no bad thing! This is also a flaw though, since he can get a bit too into his rhetoric, which is great for the reader, but obscures the complexities of the problems he deals with.
The key element of Holland's argument, that Islamic sources are not reliable, is not contested in modern Western scholarship, but the problem is that some historians, such as Patricia Crone, go too far and argue that they should be dismissed altogether. Holland unfortunately followed this approach blindly even though he's not an expert in this field. The book Hagarism by Crone and Michael Cook is the most obvious example of the views of these ultra-sceptics. It is a fascinating read, suggesting that based on contemporary non-Islamic sources, Islam was a Jewish splinter sect (with Samaritan influences) that became its own religious force in the reign of Abdul al-Malik in the late seventh century; Muhammad was a secular leader who got turned into a prophet by his successors when they realised that they need an alternative form of legitimacy after their ties with Judaism became strained. However, even though Islamic sources were written down at least a century after the events they described and some were obvious forgeries, I still think that SOME facts about Muhammad's life were passed down orally. Hagarism also used a shoddy methodology and its main argument about Islam being a Jewish sect relies on three sources: a contemporary Armenian history, a Byzantine anti-semitic pamphlet and a Jewish apocalyptic work. The first two would obviously cast Islam as a brand of Judaism, because contemporaries were unbelievably anti-semitic and Jews were the obvious scapegoat for any Byzantine misfortune, whilst the last source is hardly a reliable one. As far as I'm concerned, I'm willing to concede that Muhammad's early followers formed some kind of an ecumenical group that included Jews and Christians (as Fred Donner argued) since there are plenty of evidence for inter-faith co-operation and influence, but Islam being a Jewish sect or Muhammad not claiming to be a prophet? They don't mesh well with our sources at all.
Most modern historians are aware of the flaws of Islamic sources and always take care to compare these sources with other contemporary writings. Two historians who used this approach recently, James Howard-Johnston and Robert Hoyland, both came to the conclusion that Islamic traditions are generally accurate, though some dates/events were fudged to suit the religious/political sensibilities of the chroniclers, which is hardly surprising. A few others still use these sources uncritically (such as Hugh Kennedy, whose book on the Islamic conquests is excellent, but I still cringe a bit at the uncritical approach to sources he used), but generally, I get the impression that the consensus is somewhere in the middle, with historians using Islamic sources carefully to reconstruct early Islam, rather than following blindly or dismissing them altogether.
There are still some exciting theories floating around, but they are based on hard evidence. Most recently, Stephen Shoemaker's Death of a Prophet argued that Muhammad led an ecumenical movement of followers of various Abrahamic religions and was involved in early attacks on Palestine (rather than dying in Medina before the Islamic conquest as conventional accounts have it) - controversial, but there are contemporary sources that suggest Muhammad did just that. Holland on the other hand did not argue from sources (part of the nature of writing a non-academic book) and was trying to summarise complex theories into one exciting argument. The impression I got was that he was basically re-phrasing Crone's argument by positing an alternate home-city for Islam and de-emphasising the role of Muhammad as a prophet, but it was an argument that has generally been dismissed in academia - even though Hagarism was an exciting book to read and was really important in changing historians' perception of early Islam, it had a flawed methodology and I much prefer Crone's later works, which were still sceptical, but were more nuanced and actually looked at more than three sources.
>How did Islam spread so wide so quickly?
It didn't. This is a huge myth. I'll elaborate on this further down.
>There must be a significant number of early adopters of Islam that genuinely believe in Mo's message.
How did Mo convince them? If it was coercion, I doubt it will last. I am surprised that after his death, only a handful of apostate tribes rebelled. I would expect the whole of arabia would return to their pre-Islamic days, if indeed most of the conversions were half-hearted. But as you can see, that motley crew in medina grew to become 1.7 billion.
Muhammad preached Islam for 13 years in Mecca. Do you know how many followers he got? 150. This is supposedly the best version of Islam too, the most tolerant as much of it wasn't abrogated by later actions in Medina.
Muhammad conquered Arabia by force, and he converted tribes by force. You say only a handful of tribes rebelled, but that's false: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridda_wars
Majority rebelled, except those around Mecca & Medina. We can see Islam was not as popular with Arabs as the PR claims.
>It's the youngest abrahamic religion and yet had the fastest growth. No other major religions come close.
>We could probably dismiss the whole of sirah as a fabrication, but they are substantiated by hadiths, and as u know, hadiths are kinda hard to fake, unless a grand conspiracy is going on, but that would take the entire first and second generation muslims to agree to it. FYI, I'm more inclined towards this explanation, even though it's highly unlikely. It's still possible.
You've answered the question yourself. Much of Islamic history we know was written hundreds of years after Muhammad. Nothing is verifiable, Hadith are faked all the time. Even a few Muslims believe the Hadith compilations like Bukhari, Muslim etc were canonized for political reasons.
You can read Fred M. Donner's Muhammad and the Believers if you want to get an idea of how the actual Muhammad might have been (Donner is one of the most foremost Western scholars of Islam). https://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Believers-At-Origins-Islam/dp/0674064143
It posits that Islam wasn't even defined as a religion until much later than originally thought. Many similar theories exist too, some saying Islam was only formalized by the early empire for legitimacy reasons (as neighbor empires like Persians and Romans had their own state religions). There is heaps of evidence for this.
He even says the early Muslim armies were multiethnic and mutlireligious, with Christians and Jews among them.
>So what is Islam's secret? There must be some proper explanation other than "divine intervention". Something far sinister perhaps?
It's way more mundane than you think. It boils down to Islam coming along in the right place at the right time. Let me list some factors and facts:
There's nothing really miraculous about this stuff.
Now, you want to see an example of a religion that really was impressive in how it spread? Look at Manichaeism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism
This faith started in Iran and ended up spreading as far away as China and Britain - all without military conquest but purely through trade.
Now that's a fucking miracle! It even rivaled Christianity at one point, and in an alternate history could have easily replaced it had some things gone differently.
Shame it was persecuted heavily by pretty much everyone, from Zoroastrians to Muslims.
Not everyone who comments on politics or acts in the political arena is a political philosopher (Hitler is no more a philosopher than Hillary Clinton is), if you want the philosophical side of fascism the sorts of people you'd be looking at are Giovanni Gentile (who co-wrote The Doctrine of Fascism with Mussolini), (to an extent) Martin Heidegger, and possibly some further from mainstream names like Julius Evola. I'll pass on a recommendation I've heard before of Mussolini's Intellectuals by A James Gregor.
Of course it is insane, everything you have been led to believe is false... including Hitler, i sincerely and wholeheartedly ask you to investigate, and question the reality you live in.
Want me to blow your mind? Investigate who is Fred Leuchter, investigate the Leuchter report, read The Seventh Million, read The biggest lie of the 20th century, read The transfer agreement, read The great holocaust Trial.
This too: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators-Bystanders/dp/1568521332/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523721960&sr=1-1&keywords=the+good+old+days
Turns out the whole "I was just following orders or I would have been punished!" thing is complete bullshit. They knew what they were doing, and they did it with gusto. Not all of them wanted to take part (obviously), but those that did absolutely had a choice.
Another couple of good books about WWI are Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins. Rites of Spring spends a lot of time talking about the political and cultural climate of Europe immediately before the War - talking about German political will for their "time in the sun" specifically, but also about other countries as well. One review I remember reading calls it the "anatomy of the suicide of the European middle classes" and I think that's true - Modris shows in part that there was immense enthusiasm for a "short victorious war" (which of course never materialized) across Europe, and many people willingly participated rather than being "tricked" or coerced into fighting by their government.
There is also 14-18: Understanding the Great War by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker. This book delves more into the war itself and I'm a little embarrassed to say that even though I remember loving it, I don't remember the book itself very well except for some sections on propaganda and the treatment of civilians in the war zone.
I took a class in college about world war one that included these books in the curriculum, among others; they were my favorite of the books we read, and provide a very different and interesting perspective from the usual "military histories" that often get thrown around.
I recommend the following book on the subject: The Variational Principle Of Mechanics which elaborates on the relationship between the two views much more effectively than I can.
Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics.
Here are two reads that are accessible but still very informative.
https://www.amazon.com/Supplying-War-Logistics-Wallenstein-Patton/dp/0521546575/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493824623&sr=1-5&keywords=military+logistics
https://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Great-Logistics-Macedonian-Army/dp/0520042727/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493824623&sr=1-6&keywords=military+logistics
The Cheese and the Worms is awesome. Glad you mentioned it, it's an even-better example of what I was trying to explain.
Since you cruise Amazon The Sleepwalkers: How we went to war in 1914 is a fantastic book about the politics leading up to the war.
I recommended this book on another thread, but I just finished reading The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 and it is an excellent, if sometimes dry, account of the origins of WWI.
Also, All Quiet on the Western Front should be included in any WWI reading list, even if it isn't a history book. Same goes for Farewell to Arms.
I've had to remove some links from the main post. Added here:
General works - more advanced material
You should read at least one book from the preceding section before looking at books here. They are a more advanced treatment on the topic that may include viewpoints that are not commonly held.
This book discusses the war in general through transcripts of live discussions between leading historians. An unconventional look at the war which ranges widely while avoiding the academic tone of most books - highly recommended.
Sheffield reinterprets the war, debunking the myths of 'lions led by donkeys' and futility which arose from popular culture and powerfully arguing that the war had to be fought, and was won by a British Army which by 1918 was the most effective fighting force in the world.
This book is a narrative of the war that takes a detailed look at the conscientious objectors and the rise of the socialist movement in the context of the greater war. It is highly focused on British people and events.
An in depth look at the origins of World War I with particular focus on Balkans politics and events such as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.
Seems to be the only recent English language work on the Italian front that I and it brings to light a long forgotten front that had some of the most extreme fighting in the war.
General works - personal accounts
Online resources
This is also a description of how German stormtroop tactics evolved, but much shorter. It is worth to mention because it is available as a free PDF, and good enough that you will find it quoted in books now and then. Gudmundsson's book is a more comprehensive resource but this one has the benefit of being online and free.
Fiction
The classic novel of WWI experiences
Loosely based on his own experiences, this novel helps bring the war "up close & personal".
Wages of destruction by Adam Tooze
History of the Third Reich Series which include:
The Coming of the Third Reich
The Third Reich in Power
The Third Reich at War
Rise and fall of the Third Reich
Thats very good reading material right there.
Here's the Amazon.com link as opposed to the Amazon.ca link which I_am_a_BalbC posted.
By the way, thanks for the summary, I_am_a_BalbC! This is fascinating stuff. Just bought the book. :)
See also: The Last Battle, written about the battle by Stephen Harding.
Actually according to this book Switzerland is fairly invadable.
http://www.amazon.com/Place-Concorde-Suisse-John-McPhee/dp/0374519323
They do have everything rigged to explode, mountain forts and air bases, nuclear shelters for every citizen, but their military doctrine is (was? it's from the early 90s) a tactical retreat to the mountains giving up the lowlands (read: where everyone lives) to the invader and just waiting them out from their mountain forts.
In fact they have no plans at all to protect Basel because it would be so incredibly easy to invade.
If this interests you I suggest you read La Place de la Concorde Suisse by John McPhee. The book is an account of McPhee's experience studying the Swiss Army and its role in Swiss society for The New Yorker magazine. Mr. McPhee discusses the design logic behind crossing bridges and demolition points in some detail. http://www.amazon.com/Place-Concorde-Suisse-John-McPhee/dp/0374519323
If you're looking for a history of the experience of British women and civilians A Testament of Youth is a good read.
Now if you're looking for military history Alistair Horne's The Price of Glory is an incredibly detailed account of the largest battle of the great war. I can't recommend this book enough, it's also part of a three book set that deals with France and Germany's relationship over the years you're looking at.
Finally if you'd like something a little more out there The Rites of Spring is a good book.
Modris Eksteins uses that episode as a signal moment in the development of modernity, together with the First World War; see his The Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age which is a provocatively engaging read even if you don't quite agree with him about all of it.
The Variational Principles of Mechanics by Lanczos is an amazing book for understanding calculus of variations. The majority of it covers ODEs rather than PDEs / field equations, but to be honest the book is so good that the generalization to field theory is almost obvious. It does have a chapter or two on fields though. The book has the most beautiful economy of words I've ever seen in a textbook, concise and yet crystal clear. Also, the book is cheap! Just $16 at Amazon right now. It's definitely written for physicists, it's not a math book at all.
I can't say enough good things about this book. Reading it was the first time I understood calculus of variations. He actually explains what you are doing conceptually when you vary a path, whereas I feel like most physics books introduce it solely as a mathematical manipulation. I finally gained a good intuition for it.
My introduction to calculus of variations in field theory came through classical electrodynamics in Landau & Lifshitz and Jackson. I agree that those books don't tell you at all how it works; they just start performing manipulations and you just follow what they do.
Anyone had any first hand experience with Lancazos' Variational Principles of Mechanics?. I'm almost through Landau's Mechanics and was interested in learning more about the action principle, although I don't have any background in the calculus of variations and such.
Yes, it is definitely focussed on variational calculus, but I still found it highly readable. It is also far from out of print: it's available as a Dover paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/Variational-Principles-Mechanics-Dover-Physics/dp/0486650677
https://www.amazon.com/Supplying-War-Logistics-Wallenstein-Patton/dp/0521546575
I'm honestly surprised not more people know about this.
The Third Army was a sitting duck multiple times in a row. If the Germans weren't themselves stretched thin at this point by the Russians, the Third would've been decimated. Granted, it's true that the diversion of logistics as a whole was fucked, but Patton knew this and still chose to drive on out of hot-headedness.
>The arrogance and opportunism that had served the Third Army so well in its spectacular break out could just as easily have broken it on the wheel of an increasingly strong German defence. Carlo d'Este has written that Patton's Achilles' heel was that rather than cut his losses he would attempt to storm his way out of a bad situation
But don't let logic and actual history stand in the way, let's continue the circlejerk.
I'm surprised no one learned from the Lone Survivor thread. We have to accept and learn from our mistakes, not treat it like it's some holy relic that can't be criticized.
Wartime logistics is actually an extremely interesting topic, and to anyone else who thinks so, I strongly recommend this book. It's a great resource that the DoD endorses all Logistics Managers for the DLA to read, and with great reason; it's a thorough analysis of great feats of logistical planning, as well as logistical nightmares.
EDIT: This comment below kinda supports me on this. As I said, the man's ego and ambition were too big, at times unrealistically big, and it lead to a lot of preventable mistakes that could've caused the Allies a lot of serious damage, not to mention a lot of preventable deaths.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vulcan-607-Rowland-White/dp/0552152293
Really nice book on the sortie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAoLJkiRuGY
Majestic aircraft, absolutely huge.
Just noted this part of your reply.
>it's his claim that compared with Jesus, the amount of genuine scholarship on the historicity of Mohammed is woefully lacking.
What are you talking about? There are scholars for the revisionist theory, albeit outdated. John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone, Joseph Schacht, Michael Cook. The ones that I'm fond of and they all have impeccable credentials (the number of degrees, and where you obtained them from actually do matter) Fred Donner, Harald Motzki, Jonathon Brown, and Andreas Goerke.
I usually recommend these two books to anyone that's interested in the history of Muhammad and Islam, they're critical of the traditional narrative among others.
Muhammad And The believers: At The Origins of Islam by Fred Donner
Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathon Brown
Really? Check out the history of Zionism and the Nazis...
http://www.amazon.com/51-Documents-Zionist-Collaboration-Nazis/dp/1569804338
http://www.amazon.com/The-Transfer-Agreement-25th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0914153137/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=51pBrljOWRL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR106%2C160_&refRID=0GN1CVGSZNESC2C73HZZ
Hell, Google the history of the Lehi. Or, check out this link and the sources provided... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence
Or downvote facts? Rebel against knowledge. "Ignorance is strength. War is peace. Freedom is slavery."
My point is, if he saw that, no doubt others did too. Of course, it's not like the Wehrmacht was remotely clean anyway. Consider Hannes Heer's "War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II", or Wolfram Wette's "The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality" for further reading.
> Biggest load of shit I've ever heard.
[Well if you want to read it by all means] (https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930), War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II by Hannes Heer is a fantastic book on the subject I find. Gathering valued insight from a collection of historians of the subject of the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth you're trying to perpetuate.
> You do realized the Wehrmacht FEARED the Nazi party and therefore felt like they had to do everything the Nazis requested?
Once again, this is the [Clean Wehrmacht Myth] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Wehrmacht) I just mentioned. The belief that the Wehrmacht were an apolitical organisation that were "pushed around" by the Nazi Party, and considered themselves independent from the Nazi Party's political ideology. This narrative is generally pushed around by far-right authors and a select few activist groups, despite being proven false by the Wehrmacht's own documents. The above mentioned book and provide further insight if you're willing to pick it up.
I specialize in the Eastern Front of WWII, but there are quite a few 'genres' of books that I can recommend.
General accounts:
When Titans Clashed
Russia at War
Thunder in the East
Absolute War
Hitler's War in the East
The Road to Stalingrad
The Road to Berlin
A Writer at War
THE ROLE OF THE SOVIET UNION IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR: A Re-examination
Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World War II
If you're interested in memoirs I'd suggest:
Blood on the Shores
Over the Abyss
Sniper on the Eastern Front
GUNS AGAINST THE REICH: Memoirs of an Artillery Officer on the Eastern Front
PANZER DESTROYER: Memoirs of a Red Army Tank Commander
Through the Maelstrom: A Red Army Soldier's War on the Eastern Front, 1942-1945
Red Road From Stalingrad: Recollections Of A Soviet Infantryman
Red Star Against the Swastika: The Story of a Soviet Pilot over the Eastern Front
Penalty Strike: The Memoirs of a Red Army Penal Company Commander, 1943-45
BUT NOT FOR THE FUEHRER
Through Hell for Hitler
A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War : Russia, 1941-1944
Barbarossa:
War Without Garlands: Barbarossa 1941/42
BARBAROSSA DERAILED: THE BATTLE FOR SMOLENSK 10 JULY-10 SEPTEMBER 1941 VOLUME 1: The German Advance, The Encirclement Battle, and the First and Second Soviet Counteroffensives, 10 July-24 August 1941
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East
Kiev 1941
Operation Typhoon: Hitler's March on Moscow, October 1941
THE VIAZ'MA CATASTROPHE, 1941: The Red Army's Disastrous Stand against Operation Typhoon
What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa
War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941
Germany and the Second World War: Volume IV: The Attack on the Soviet Union
For Stalingrad/Leningrad:
STALINGRAD: How the Red Army Survived the German Onslaught
Leningrad: State of Siege
Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad
To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942
Armageddon in Stalingrad: September-November 1942
Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943
The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad
Kursk:
The Battle of Kursk
Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative
Air War:
Barbarossa: The Air Battle July-December 1941
Stalingrad: The Air Battle: 1942-January 1943
Kursk: The Air Battle, July 1943
Bagration to Berlin: The Final Air Battles in the East 1944-1945
Black Cross/Red Star : Vol. 1, Operation Barbarossa 1941
Black Cross / Red Star: The Air War Over The Eastern Front, Vol. 2 - Resurgence: January - June 1942
Black Cross Red Star: The Air War Over the Eastern Front Volume 3
German Army:
War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II
Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich
The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture
The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality
The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers
Partisans:
Defiance
Stalin's Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II
Holocaust/Genocide:
Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule
Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine
Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine
The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization
The Holocaust in the Soviet Union
Hopefully the above will do for a start.
I don't agree with the basic premise and don't trust those that push it, nothing political at all. In terms of resistance to genocide (which is not what's currently discussed here), figure 10%-15% against and the same number enthusiasticly participating, with the rest following along doing what they are told (source: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G1F0F84)
To be fair, some books are REALLY fucked up and I think it is reasonable to provide some warning so the reader can make informed decision. I've read Ordinary Men and many scenes from the book are still vivid in my memory more than two years later.
You might appreciate reading Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning.
One of the issues the Nazis faced trying to efficiently murder several million people was one of manpower. To help with this they utilized Order Police battalions across Poland as shooters and guards for mass executions and later to hunt, collect, and deliver Jews to the Operation Reinhard death camps. This book is a study of one of these battalions that delves into the difficult area of motivation.
One thing that is made very plain is that some members of the Order Police flatly refused to participate in the mass shootings, and the worst that happened to them, from their perspective, was they were shunned socially, called "unmanly," and didn't get promotions.
What are your comments with regard to the permanency of the triple entente? As I appreciate it from The Sleepwalkers,
there were a number of events that threatened to disrupt the system of alliances before WWI. Russia and France were tied at the hip, but there was no necessity for Britain to be the third leg of the triple entente, and there was contemporary discussion that the British/Russian entente would fail. Clark blames the war in large extent on Russian vacillation toward Europe with regard to Serbia, and on Poincare's vehement policies. Generally, Clark takes the position it was the weaknesses of the alliances, not the strength, that caused the war.
I often find that longer comments regarding most subjects of non-fiction on reddit are filled with faults, errors and are heavily biased.
I therefore recommend that anyone who is interested in the first world war to read up on the subject themselves.
I would recommend the book ''The sleepwalkers'' as a starter for anyone who has no prior knowledge on the subject. The book is extremely interesting and well written. The main problem with the book however is the authors verbose language. Which is another way of saying that the author tends to write needlessly complicated sentences.
Here is a link to the amazon page
http://www.amazon.com/The-Sleepwalkers-Europe-Went-1914/dp/006114665X
Of course anyone who wants to gain serious knowledge on the subject has to read more than the work of just one author. But the book is a great place to start.
"The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914" is my favorite book about World War One. Most people these days have no idea that a Serbian terrorist group called The Black Hand was behind the Sarajevo assassination, and the history of that group. I'm not going to comment further so as not to spoil anything for you, but if you don't know anything about The Black Hand or Serbian history, it's an absolutely fascinating tale of political intrigue that got lost in accounts focused on the devastation of the war itself.
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
https://www.amazon.com/dp/006114665X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_MkY9Bb6FEEJW6
The historian Antony Beevor recounts this event in his book The Second World War.
Beevor writes,
> The gleaming carriages of the Amerika carried on towards the Spanish frontier at Hendaye, where [Hitler] met Franco the next day. The Caudillo’s train had been delayed due to the dilapidated state of the Spanish railways, and the long wait had not put Hitler in a good mood. The two dictators inspected a guard of honour from his personal escort, the Führer-Begleit-Kommando, drawn up on the platform. The black-uniformed troopers towered over the pot-bellied Spanish dictator, whose smile, both complacent and ingratiating, seldom left his face (Beevor 2012, 144).
>When Hitler and Franco began their discussions, the Caudillo’s torrent of words prevented his visitor from speaking, a state of affairs to which the Führer was not accustomed. Franco spoke of their comradeship in arms during the Spanish Civil War and his gratitude for all that Hitler had done, and evoked the ‘alianza espiritual’ which existed between their countries. He then expressed his deep regret for not being able to enter the war immediately on Germany’s side as a result of Spain’s impoverished condition. For much of the three hours, Franco rambled on about his life and experiences, prompting Hitler to say later that he would prefer to have three or four teeth pulled than go through another conversation with the Spanish dictator (Beevor 2012, 145).
Source: Beevor, Antony. The Second World War. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012.
Also, I recommend reading Antony Beevor's book The Battle for Spain.
For those of you that wish to read a great book about this period of Spain's history I recommend this book:
It is written with a fantastic narrative that keeps you engaged and interested without overloading you with bland historical accounts.
I will answer part of your question.
The Spanish Civil War is a fascinating topic. If you want any reading on it, just check out some of the following books:
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. It is a first hand account of Orwell's experience in the war. It was quite fascinating to read about the different political views of people and the various issues which the Republican forces faced internally, as well as externally. It also gives you a first person perspective into the May Days in Barcelona.
The Battle for Spain is by Antony Beevors. I have picked it up and am currently about halfway through it. It is quite good, and it examines the various causes of the war, and the players associated with it.
This website lists other books although I have not read the others which are on that list, so I would not comment on their quality.
Also, don't be afraid to check out Picasso and Frederico Garcia Lorca. Popular artist and poet respectively, their works were heavily influence by the war.
Now, on to other wonderful things. If you still have an interest in the Spanish Civil War, after you read more on the subject, I would recommend the film Tierra y Libertad, or "Land and Freedom". It somewhat mirrors Orwells book, and it is actually a good look at the various people who took part in the war. One scene was particularly interesting, and that was the scene where a town was liberated, and the townspeople had to decide whether or not they would collectivize the farmland (basically a communist revolution, everyone works the land equally and gets the same amount) or to divide up the land and give everyone just a little bit more than what they had previously. This was a major issue during the war and actually caused a rift amongst the Republican forces, leading to (literal) internal fighting. The idea of revolution now vs. revolution later was a huge issue during the war, and this one scene (though fictional) was a good example of it. (I only recommend the film because it was a good cap to the subject. I wouldn't consider citing it as historical fact, as in I cannot say for certain these events happened, however, the scene mentioned was, in my opinion, a good example of the various sentiments which caused divides amongst the Republican Forces.)
As for the questions about WWII, please consult the Popular Questions Page.
The Last Battle - It's the true story of US Army and German Army forces joining together in the last days of WWII in Europe to fight off the SS who were intent on killing high-value hostages taken by Germany early in the war.
This book in English is about the role of the Swiss army in Swiss society:
La place de la Concorde Suisse, by John McPhee. It's from 1994.
This book: Schweizer Armee 2009/2010 seems to be fairly comprehensive about organization, doctrine and equipment, but it's in German.
Modris Eksteins' Rites of Spring covers WWI but goes much further than that. It focuses much more on the cultural changes of the period you're interested in, and national psychologies. It's a great read--I highly recommend it!
You will want to read The rites of spring by Modris Eksteins. A good read and a very good explanation of the British Civilization and the German Kultur and why they (were bound to) clash. http://www.amazon.com/Rites-Spring-Great-Birth-Modern/dp/0395937582
You might appreciate this book https://www.amazon.com/Variational-Principles-Mechanics-Dover-Physics/dp/0486650677
I don't want to top post since you've pretty much answered this. I'd like to add a book suggestion on the topic for OP or any others who would like to better understand what you're describing. It's cheap, and explains things quite well. I'm halfway through it myself.
There seems to often be this sort of tragedy of the commons with the elementary courses in mathematics. Basically the issue is that the subject has too much utility. Be assured that it is very rich in mathematical aesthetic, but courses, specifically those aimed at teaching tools to people who are not in the field, tend to lose that charm. It is quite a shame that it's not taught with all the beautiful geometric interpretations that underlie the theory.
As far as texts, if you like physics, I can not recommend highly enough this book by Lanczos. On the surface it's about classical mechanics(some physics background will be needed), but at its heart it's a course on dynamical systems, Diff EQs, and variational principles. The nice thing about the physics perspective is that you're almost always working with a physically interpretable picture in mind. That is, when you are trying to describe the motion of a physical system, you can always visualize that system in your mind's eye (at least in classical mechanics).
I've also read through some of this book and found it to be very well written. It's highly regarded, and from what I read it did a very good job touching on the stuff that's normally brushed over. But it is a long read for sure.
I can't recommend much in the way of math books, but I can give you some more hints on what you should be looking for and reading about.
The specific problem that you've asked about isn't quite undergrad level material, unfortunately. Here's a document that introduces most of the relevant topics:
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/sasane/ma305.pdf
I can't guarantee that it will be helpful, but everything in that document is relevant to what you're looking for. You might use the table of contents or the introductory section to prime your wikipedia searches.
Basically, you specifically want to learn about optimization theory (which is what a lot of control theory is about).
Optimization, at its most basic, is not hard. An example of an optimization problem is to find the value of x that minimizes (or maximizes) some function f(x).
This is something that's covered in basic calculus. If f(x) has only one minimum/maximum (aka an extremum), then you can solve the problem easy by solving the equation df(x)/dx = 0.
Things get harder when you have constraints - maybe you want the value of x such that a<x<b, that minimizes f(x). In that case you use things like lagrange multipliers and the KKT conditions, which allow you to deal with constraints on your solutions.
I linked to wikipedia there, but the wiki pages aren't necessarily the best resources for learning this stuff. If you search for those things, though, you'll find a lot of good resources, because many people are in the same boat as you about this stuff.
Your problem is a bit trickier than basic optimization, though - in your case, you're trying to minimize a functional, which is a function that takes another function as an argument, and returns a number. The solution to that problem is a function. So, instead of using regular calculus and finding where the derivative is zero, you use variational calculus and find where the derivative is zero.
I can't recommend a specific book about this subject, but I can recommend a book that's very closely related: The Variational Principles of Mechanics. It's an excellent physics book that explains things in terms of variational calculus. The principle of least action is one way of solving physics problems, and it's very similar to the problem that you're asking about.
To recommend a good secondary source on the subject, you should take a look at Supplying War by Martin van Creveld.
Most of the goods were shipped in to France. By 1944 German Naval power was not what it used to be and while there were still attacks on supply convoys the Allies did a decent job of establishing Naval dominance. As they moved forward they also established supply bases on the mainland so as not to stretch supply lines as well as massive logistic backing behind each unit. Especially interesting is their concept of airborne units where the entire unit staff is dropped with supplies.
There's a very good book about the history of military logistics by Martin van Creveld called Supplying War if your interested in that (https://www.amazon.com/Supplying-War-Logistics-Wallenstein-Patton/dp/0521546575).
I encourage you to read Vulcan 607 by Rowland White, a dramatised account of the British response to the conflict. It focuses mostly on the military activity but includes details on the mood of the populace and British thought in general.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vulcan-607-Rowland-White/dp/0552152293
great time to watch this documentary (XM607)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBJ99bIhAVk
found via http://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/2go7hv/xm607_falklands_most_daring_raid_2012_the_vulcans/
(mirror working at time i posted).
if you like this, this is the book it's based on, check used for a cheap copy.
> "I more than enjoyed it, it could have been written specially for me."
^Jeremy ^Clarkson
I also read Rise and Fall and came here to recommend it.
People were spending more due to heavy state encouragement to buy-buy-buy and a job placement program working with major industries that ensured that every worker could find a job. IG Farben, Krupp, Siemens, and other major German companies gladly went along.
My sources are books, I have a decent Hitler library. I recommend Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Hitler's Willing Executioners, Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, and of course Mein Kampf (Among many others.) I distinctly remember one of the reasons for never taking his coat off in public was because he would pour sweat before his speeches. Once he got going he was great, but before he was a nervous wreck. I attempted to look on the internets, but couldn't find a reliable source. Edit: If you really want a great comprehensive read about Germany in World War 2, I HIGHLY recommend Rise and Fall of the Third Reich....its a must read. http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Fall-Third-Reich/dp/0671728687
[Bury Me Standing] (http://www.amazon.com/Bury-Me-Standing-Gypsies-Journey/dp/067973743X) is a very good book about the Roma people.
As badly as I want to beat you over the head with its hardcover edition as a knee-jerk reaction, instead i'm going to take a few deep breaths and implore you to read Bury Me Standing. It's pretty common in most bigger libraries.
Bury Me Standing
I have never read this book, but I've heard good things about it. I have no idea how into the history it gets, and my understanding is that it is more an ethnography/sociological study. I assume it does deal with the history, however.
Looking at your tag, I'm reminded that Romani music is pretty great. Are you writing about it?
https://www.amazon.com/Bury-Me-Standing-Gypsies-Journey/dp/067973743X
Incredible ethnography on the Roma, a very detailed and in depth exploration of their origins etc. highly recommend! Much of what this answer contains is deeeplyy explored in Fonseca's book.
Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought:
https://www.amazon.com/Mussolinis-Intellectuals-Fascist-Political-Thought/dp/0691127905
The Cheese and the Worms. Story about Domenico Scandella, an Italian man from the sixteenth century who came to the belief that the creation of the universe was like 'worms in cheese'. He spoke of these beliefs and the Inquisition conducted a heresy trial. Refusing to renounce, the Pope ultimately ordered his execution and he was burnt at the stake. The book examines sixteenth century religious order through translations of the trial proceedings, a microhistory of a singular event to extrapolate a macrocosm of religious values at that time.
Also: Cheese and Worms. The Universe. Too fucking weird.
You seem to be interested in "microhistory". Believe it or not, since the 1970's, some academics have been asking big questions out of small places, and this has progressed into "New Historicism" and the history of ideologies.
For microhistory, see:
For New Historicism:
EDIT: hhawks12, great post! I like your thinking!
Not sure if it counts as a "firsthand account," but the inquisition records of Domenico Scandella (AKA Menocchio), a heresiarch in 16th C northern Italy, are fascinating.
The guy was fearless in articulating his heretical interpretations of Christian theology to the inquisitors who were interrogating him. You can read about this in The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg.
>Not a single German who refused to kill a Jew was demoted, sent to concentration camp, assigned to a suicide mission or sentenced to death.
>On the contrary: such orders commonly included an offer that "anyone who did not feel up to the upcoming task could come forward." Nevertheless, this occurred only in exceptional cases. Those who did opt out were neither taunted nor pressured, but treated with consideration. They were given different duties, often back home. There were always others willing to take over the murders--the "proven pragmatist" Himmler could be sure of that. Men were generally eager for the job ,as, for example, on a November evening in 1942 in Lukow, Poland, when musicians and performers from the Berlin police department came to entertain Police Battalion 101: "They also learned of the forthcoming shooting," according to witnesses, "and offered, even pleaded emphatically for permission to participate in the execution of these Jews. This strange request was granted by the battalion."(page 395). This means that voluntary mass murder was seen as a social pastime and a thrill - without the necessity of orders.
>The book shows concretely how good the perpetrators felt before, during and after their "operations"; how they humiliated, beat, and tortured defenseless people and then shot them in the back of the neck without the slightest hesitation; how the men posed before their living or dead victims, laughing into the camera - bloodthirsty, sadistic, lascivious. After they had done their day's work, they celebrated with a "death banquet" for the Jews, went to bed with their lovers, or wrote home faithfully that these snapshots and extermination anecdotes would someday be "extremely interesting to our children."
--götz aly, the famous german historian
http://www.yadvashem.org/download/about_holocaust/studies/aly_full.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tz_Aly
Some reccomeneded reading:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators/dp/1568521332
http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265/ref=pd_sim_14_7?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=514AHPryUJL&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&amp;refRID=05Y7VNBGT0ENBSGJ0Y3B
http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Jews-Imagination-Persecution/dp/0300212518/ref=pd_sim_14_8?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=51Ecr%2BivaDL&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_AC_UL160_SR107%2C160_&amp;refRID=08WPD7EPW7WHM64VTB04
You seem enamored of a great myth, that germans were ignorant victims, forced into murdering millions of women and children by a small cabal of evil nazis. All the evidence suggests that's a lie, they gladly supported hitler and wanted "the germ of humanity" (jews in hitler's words) dead.
Good question, exposing Zionist connections with Nazis and going with the original Uganda plan would've saved some problems. State of Israel, ok, Holy Land Belongs To The Jews, not so much.
Ummm....so if one guy is in favor of Nazis, then ALL PALESTINIANS FOR EVER are responsible? LOL
Hate to break the news to you but amongst other people who favored the Nazis were many prominent Americans and American companies, King Edward VIII of Britain, and THE ZIONISTS THEMSELVES WHO COLLABORATED WITH THE NAZIS. lol
http://www.amazon.com/51-Documents-Zionist-Collaboration-Nazis/dp/1569802351
If you're interested in the pre-war diplomatic history of WW1, I highly recommend you read Christopher Clark's "The Sleepwalkers", it's a very good account of the diplomatic shenanigans that was happening in the pre-war days that led up to the eventual outbreak of the war.
The new hotness in WWI history right now is "Sleepwalkers", but that has a lot in common with the scope of Catastrophe 1914. It's mainly focused on the lead-up to the war, beginning with the turmoil in Eastern Europe around the start of the 20th Century and zooming into much more in-depth diplomatic history about why the war actually started. It's excellent (if you're into that sort of thing) and offers a long, gripping tick-tock that is much more up-to-date than the classic "Guns of August".
If you're interested in reading about the military conflict itself, it's hard to go wrong with Keegan's The First World War. It's a broad overview history of the war that is very readable and might give you some ideas of topics worth further diving into.
I'll give the articles a read, but since you seem genuinely interested in the subject, i'll propose something as well: http://www.amazon.ca/The-Sleepwalkers-Europe-Went-1914/dp/006114665X
This book is great, not only in a historical sens, also in the way the author writes it. Nothing at all to do with the usual history book, trust me, give it a read. And if you doubt me, go to the local bookstore, read the first few pages and see for yourself. The author backs everything up with sources and all so you can go verify what he is saying yourself, and he is objective throughout in his wording.
I haven't read Berlin yet (I'm got a reading list taking me from World War I-World War II, I just started a book on the Polish campaign), but I can definitely recommend his book The Battle for Spain. It was a really good read on what I like to call the "pre-season" game of World War II.
[The Battle for Spain]
(https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Spain-Spanish-Civil-1936-1939/dp/014303765X)
It's a great book! Very detailed and extensive though.
Someone who reads about the conflict?
Normally I think Wiki is a good source, but in this case I think it's pretty heavily biased. The Republic didn't have a broad majority, it had just regained power after losing to the right, and it won by something like 2% of the popular vote. Moreover, it acted immediately with not only radical policies, but also against a background of increasing violence in all areas. Just as an example, imagine that the Secret Service, in response to an assasination by a terrorist movement loosely aligned with one of the more extreme parties of the opposition coalition, then, decides on its own to assassinate the leader of the political opposition. It wasn't as simple as 'economic crisis makes people vote for left-leaning government'. For starters, the depression didn't really hit Spain much. The roots of the war were much deeper.
The book I'm reading now on the subject is The Battle For Spain. In the opening pages is a summary of the fourteen different political groupings that made up the main players. It is exhausting to follow the twists and turns of domestic politics, but one thing that shines out is how bloodthirsty both sides were, and how eager to kill off their political opponents. The Spanish civil war was just that - a civil war where people had already decided to kill each other for their own reasons, not some simplistic political just-so story. The later imposition of the ideologies sweeping Europe (Communism and Fascism) are often mistaken as causes of the war, when in reality they were at best minor side characters. Another counter-narrative is that the left wing parties, had they lost the elections, were planning a revolt against the central government, which would also have touched off a civil war.
I liked reading Anthony Beevor's The battle for Spain a lot. It is a very readable and accurate account of the civil war. It does introduce you to Spain, before the war as well.
> I read this comment of yours, and others similar to it, and I have to wonder if you're not clinically insane.
Lol, what were you reading in my history to make you think that? I mostly post about the Green Bay Packers. Unless you're a Vikings or Bears fan, that's not grounds for a diagnosis.
Second of all... you win. I'm crazy. You've applied the dreaded 'clinically insane' label and I have crumbled beneath it.
Now that you've won, maybe you'll listen a little. Looping in /u/Logicalist, /u/RedExplosiveBarrel and /u/Xzow just for the hell of it.
> But it would have been worse for them if, somehow, they had firearms squirreled away?
Think about what the Nazis were doing in a context that's broader than just whether the Jews had guns or didn't. Since the Nazis took power in 1933, they had launched a campaign of dehumanizing the Jewish people by portraying them both as less than human and as enemies of the state. Hitler described Jews as schemers in the shadows who had stabbed Germany in the back during World War I and who had every intention of doing so again.
This is in a state where they were a tiny percentage of the total population. We have an actual example where a Jew picked up a firearm and fought back, and it ignited the worst pogroms of the pre-WWII Third Reich. Not to mention the Nazis passing several anti-Jewish laws that they hadn't previously done. I use the word 'accelerated' because that's what it did.
No one can blame that young man who shot the Nazi official for fighting back, and I sure won't. He and his people were being treated as subhumans by the scum of the earth. Fighting back in that situation is a normal and honorable thing to do. But when we peck over our keyboards eighty years later, maybe we can take his example to illustrate that since Jews were already being portrayed as enemies of the state and persecuted on that basis, actually behaving like enemies of the state did not improve the way the Nazis treated them.
I mean, I can't emphasize this enough - a gun is not a talisman! It is
not some magical deterrent that keeps bullies from picking on you! You want to talk about insanity?
> What made you think this was someone suggesting that it improves individual odds?
You guys on the Internet talk about this like it's some kind of abstract logic problem that we can view at the level of entire populations. Like if we assume a population of Jews, and we assume the Reich, and we add guns to the Jews, then the guns will act as a deterrent to the Reich. A + B = C. Simple, neat, and clear.
It makes me sick. This wasn't an abstract case. It wasn't as if all the Jews of the Reich could have some big town meeting and say, we should resist with guns. Nazi policy was to smash every other political party, turn every organ of the state into a Nazi appendage, and infiltrate every voluntary association with Nazis. See Richard J. Evans' The Coming of the Third Reich. He describes how everything from knitting circles to horseback-riding clubs, every kind of just ordinary thing that people might get together to do, was taken over by the Nazis. You could still have a knitting club, but it would be led by a Nazi Party official who was watching what you said. They did this with every organization in Germany.
Remember, this is the pre-Internet era. You can't go on MeetUp and say, hey, let's all break out the rifles and go shoot some Nazis. Jews in Germany (and all Germans, really) had no place to gather and share their views outside of their homes. Just talking about anything rebellious or anti-Nazi - even making a joke! - could get you accused of treason and shuttled into a farce of a judicial system which included concentration camps by the mid-1930s. In a climate where non-Jews were being told that they had a duty to the state to report anything suspicious that the Jews (or anyone else) might be up to, like too many people visiting a certain household. Want to organize over the phone? Better hope the Nazis aren't listening in. Better hope the telephone company isn't keeping track of who you call and sending it to the government.
You might argue that they could've still organized, if you're still thinking about it in the abstract sense. And they might have. I'm not saying it wasn't possible. I just want you to think about how difficult it would've been for the actual people you're talking about to mount any kind of coordinated resistance movement against a regime that took specific and dictatorial measures to prevent such a movement.
> reality doesn't support this absurd conclusion of yours
Look at the example of the Communist Party, which actually was a resistance movement in prewar Germany and which certainly had access to guns (see Evans, again). Read about how the Nazis cracked down on it, broke up its official organs, arrested thousands, and used the specter of the Communists as justification for arresting people for years afterwards. The Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold was a trained and organized paramilitary Communist group with 250,000 members; they were smashed like the rest of the Communists, their leaders killed or sent to the camps. Those that survived were able to mount only a token resistance afterwards. They certainly didn't stop the Nazis from crushing Communism as a movement in Nazi Germany. The Jews would have fared better? Looking at you, /u/Logicalist, and at you, /u/Xzow.
We're not talking about an occupied country - we're not talking about the French underground, or the Jewish resistance in Warsaw, or the Yugoslav rebels that kept the Germans busy there. We're talking specifically about Jews in Germany in the pre-war era, in a place where the Nazi Party was in almost complete control.
> What made you think this was someone suggesting that it improves individual odds?
Because the Nazis pursued a policy of destroying or subverting all other organizations in Germany - political, religious, governmental, voluntary - that could allow people a place to formulate dangerous ideas, like armed resistance, as a group. And because in the final analysis, we're all individuals and we all make choices as such. I gave you an example of a real situation where a gun absolutely would not have helped. The lived experience of Jews in Germany was made up of those real situations. There was no abstract world where the Jews, as a group, could decide to resist or not. There was no physical or electronic space where that was possible. People had to decide what to do on their own, in an environment where deciding to resist meant not only risking your own life, but the lives of your immediate family as well. You can't look at this stuff in a vacuum - I mean, obviously you can, but it's stupid to try. If you want to understand it, consider the historical context.
The Jews of prewar Germany had to decide what to do in a world where they were treated as pariahs, where the law and society was stacked against them, where violence or the threat of violence backed everything the government did. If the German Jews had all been organized into militias for years before the Nazis came, and everyone from babies to bubbes had had a sidearm in their hand, had been drilling and training for years and were ready to resist, would it have been different? Maybe. Probably. I don't know. If the Jews had acted like the fucking Knights Templar, maybe Hitler wouldn't have come after them. (Then again, what happened to the Knights Templar?)
But that's a fantasy. That thing I just wrote has no connection to history. It's not talking about the real Jews of Germany in 1933-1939, who were just ordinary people thrust into a horrible situation. Things would get a little worse, a little worse, a little worse. Some people said, we are Jews, we've survived millennia of pogroms and harsh treatment, we'll be okay. Some worried - some made plans to leave (there was a time when the Nazis made leaving relatively easy). Some wanted to fight back, although many of the young angry men had already left for Palestine to fight there. Many were old, sick, disabled, or children. There isn't some cinematic moment where everyone reaches their breaking point and makes a decision to resist. They were just people, just ordinary people, trying to get by in a hostile world. Individual will, self-determination, only goes so far. Guns aren't some avatar by which you can control your own destiny, or by which an entire people automatically gets to defy all external odds. They're just a tool, and sometimes they can't help you.
This is very very inaccurate.
Within a year of becoming Chancellor, Hitler took legislative power from Parliament, suspended civil liberties, dissolved, suppressed, and/or banned other parties (including opposition parties like the Social Democrats and Communists as well as the Nazis' former conservative coalition partners - which were necessary because even in the elections they won, they did not receive a majority), and imposed party and state control over voluntary organizations (see the previous link). From March 1933 until the 1949 West German elections, there were no multi-party elections in Germany.
If you want more information on this period, I highly recommend Richard J. Evans' The Coming of the Third Reich for events up to the Enabling Acts and Reichstag Fire Decrees, and The Third Reich in Power from the period from that point until the outbreak of the war.
> he was still a powerful leader and an efficient administrator.
Uhhh, I think you better re-read your Evans!
@ParkerMolloy
> 2016-11-14 03:01 UTC
> This is literally out of Hitler's playbook. https://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-Power-Richard-Evans/dp/0143037900 @anamariecox
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I would have to recommend The Third Reich in Power by Richard Evans, I think it will provide good answers to most if not all of your questions. The book is the second part of a trilogy, with the first book being The Coming of the Third Reich. and the third being The Third Reich at War. All three are excellent, and can be enjoyed on their own, however all three together provide a great history of Nazi Germany from beginning to end.
Great book on that story:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Battle-German-Soldiers/dp/0306822083/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376104111&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=last+battle+of+ww2
But, to be fair, Schloss Itter was more of a resort than a castle, but it still had medieval style walls and gates. Basic story goes: French POWs were being held in the castle. End of war seems close, camp guards leave the prisoners alone in the castle. Diehard SS and Wehrmacht are under orders to kill the POWs. Hodgepodge collection of US tankers, infantry, and anti-Nazi German and Austrian troops rush to the castle to protect them. Battle ensues. Read the book, it's a great read.
This is it, FINALLY a randomactsofgaming question that I'm prepared for.
Battle of Schloss Itter, a castle in Austria that was liberated by American troops and about to be attacked by the overwhelming force of the 17th waffen-SS panzer grenadiers division. The castle held many french VIPS that had been labeled for execution, they needed to hold the castle and defend the french vips. vastly outnumbered, the American troops were then joined by German Wehrmacht troops, as well as the french vips and their wife's to fight the waffen SS. They held out long enough to be reinforced by allied Austrian and American soldiers. It's the only time in WW2 that American troops fought side by side with previously enemiesGerman troops, and the Only recorded time that Americans ever fought in defense of a medieval castle.
It's an incredible true story, written into a book called the last battle by Stephen Harding.
I'm mobile so I'll link you to more info when I get on my computer but here's the addresses(forgot how to link, I'll fix that later) to the amazon page.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0306822083
Thanks for the opportunity!
La Place de la Concorde Suisse by John McPhee is a pretty interesting read on the Swiss Army, if you're interested.
"Switzerland doesn't have an army. Switzerland *is* an army."
As others have mentioned, there's historical reasons for their choice. It's worth noting that there's cultural implications as well, when you know that, especially in earlier years, anyone you ran into or whatever class probably spent time digging a foxhole at one point like you did.
There's a great read on this the Swiss Army and it's impact on the culture by John McPhee. I highly recommend giving it a read: https://www.amazon.com/Place-Concorde-Suisse-John-McPhee/dp/0374519323
To be fair, it kind of was a fucked up decade, as historians have noted.
Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring
The second one reminds me a lot of people's attitudes going into war: believing they could only prove themselves and the superiority of their race in armed conflict. Then all the standing armies of Europe were almost entirely destroyed in a single battle and it got a lot less glamorous. Reading some cultural and social history could make some great grist for the mill. Check out Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins
This should be at the top, as it really helps to rephrase the question. To anyone else interested: energy conservation is a direct consequence of an "action principle" combined with a symmetry, so the question should instead be,
"Why is nature so well-described by action principles, and why is physics invariant if you shift the time coordinate?"
This is stuff that physicists still debate and try to understand, so you're not going to get a definitive answer.
But you can get some intuition about why these things should be true. For the second question, it's pretty natural to think of all times as being "equivalent" in the eyes of physical law. Then it makes sense that shifting in time should be a symmetry.
Unfortunately, the former question is a little harder to dig if you're five. If anybody is interested: one way to understand it is to get a physical intuition for D'Alembert's principle. Doing some work then gets you to Hamilton's principle, which is what the first question is talking about; see e.g. chapter 5.1 of this book for a derivation.
If you look on Amazon, there are a lot of inexpensive physics texts put out by Dover - for example, analytical mechanics or E&M. They're so cheap that I usually pick these up to supplement whatever text is recommended for each of my courses.
This poster is also baller as shit.
Any suggestions on how to approach high-level physics without a formal math background?
I am an engineer with an academic concentration in signals processing and a minor in physics, so I do have a strong quantitative background. However, my training was heavily slanted towards ad-hoc problem solving rather than rigorous analysis, so I find myself lost as I tackle topics grounded in formal mathematics.
Specifically, I have been reading Lanczos' The Variational Principles of Mechanics, a popular analytical mechanics text, with great difficulty.
Is it worth reading a pure math book on differential geometry or something similar? How do most graduate students study advanced physics, when an undergraduate physics education doesn't use much math beyond basic PDEs?
Not exactly trucks, but is this the book your looking for?
https://www.amazon.com/Supplying-War-Logistics-Wallenstein-Patton/dp/0521546575
I remember seeing it sighted as a good source for logistics but not sure where I saw it.
>What is the role and place of a military within the state/society.
My ideal position is as an apolitical force enforcing the will of the State and its interests. The military should not meddle in politics, it usually ends poorly. Democracy is for me trusting citizens to ultimately make the right choice for society. Within a more authoritarian society, the military might be needed in some cases as a control measure to prevent the autocrat from going overboard.
>What is the purpose and goal of war.
Clausewitz describes the purpose of war as being to bend the will of your enemy to your own in order to obtain what you want. War is the second to last on the continuum of force, the only further extremity I could see would be genocide.
>How should one conduct a war.
With maximum aggressiveness and with the aim to strike at points that will break the will of the enemy. This could be the destruction of the enemy's army or it could be the occupation of his capital, or it could be the occupation of a key economic region. It all depends in what kind of conflict one is in and the capabilities of the enemy.
>When is military conflict or intervention either advantageous, justifiable or needed.
Much more rarely than the number of actual wars being fought. Often emotions and human fallibility gets in the way and wars are fought for pride, ideology and so on. Wars should be fought for vital national interests, irreconcilable ideological differences that are actually a risk to your country and so on. Not for minor points of interest.
>How has the nature and conduct of war evolved due to social or technological changes.
I will direct you to the excellent Technology and War by Martin von Creveld. It contains everything you might want on the topic and more.
>Describe to me in excessive and unnecessary detail about the logistics/supplying/staffing/bureaucracy that is needed for a large military.
Let me take a simple example. I had to organize a stalking exercise recently (basically troops hide and camouflage in the grass and attempt to get as close as possible to a set point without being spotted). I briefed my sergeants on my intent, then wrote up a training support request, which went up to my company second in command, who then sent it to the Operations department, who then sent to each department requests for what I needed, not counting the personal requests I had to make. You need a request for transport (a truck as a safety vehicle, if someone gets injured), rations, ammo, staff, training area and I had to show up and lead the exercise myself. Each of these requests goes to different persons/departments.
I also recommend the excellent Supplying War, again by Martin von Creveld.
>What is the ideal soldier?/What is the ideal military?
That rather depends on the attributes of your country. A nation with plentiful manpower but little technological edge and an obedient population will do well with a mass conscript army, whereas a smaller nation with a conscious population must take more care with casualties and will tend more towards a smaller professional force.
>Describe to me relationship between civilian and military command as well benefits or problems that arise.
The prime example of the problems between civilian/military leadership remains the procurement process for weapons. Too often, civilians interfere in the procurement of new weapons/equipment, changing things for political reasons. In Canada the F-35 program is a good example. While civilian oversight of the military is a good thing in general, sometimes too much oversight can hamper our ability to do our job.
>What can I do to better support or understand our soldiers/military up to and possibly enlisting myself.
I only know about the recruitment process in Canada. If you have more specific questions about that, I'd be happy to oblige. Other than that, simply show respect and gratitude, buy a veteran a beer at the bar, show that you care and please oh please don't ask them if they have killed someone. Ask questions, be polite.
https://www.amazon.com/Vulcan-607-Remarkable-British-Attack/dp/0552152293
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Read this book - it's an incredible true story
If you're into WWII, I cannot stress enough what a great book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is.
I saw a lot of documentaries about WWII and specially about Germany (only half of them made in USA btw). but they all together gave less knowledge than single book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
This book changed my view about a lot of things regarding WWII and Nazi Germany. And I stopped thinking about Hitler as crazy maniac who didn't understand what he was doing but rather as representative of time and conditions Germany was in
EDIT: there is one and another film made on this book, first one is crap, don't try to see it, about second one I know nothing
My parents encouraged me to read as a kid. They enrolled me in the Pizza Hut Book It program that incentivised reading by giving you a personal pan pizza after you read so many books. I read mostly Hardy Boys, and Goose Bumps.
I really started reading my freshamn year in college. I got all depressed and a buddy of mine gave me The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to pass the time. I am not sure how, but that book changed my life. Ever since I have been a voraciouse reader. Its like something just clicked.
Read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer (http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Fall-Third-Reich/dp/0671728687) if you want to have adult conversations. But, since you most likely won't do that this is enough to shut you up:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_Hitler_hate_Roman_Catholics
And if you want to know any more history, hire a tutor because you clearly need one.
> The schools of thought, which you decided to use the arabic name for and spelled wrong (it's maddhab, plural madhahib), have no central source for information. I would love to see where you got what you got.
Seriously? They all have clear stipulations on punishments and rules of all kinds.
Let me ask you, what do you think the madhabs say about apostasy?
>No it's not ironic. What god teaches in the qur'an goes for everyone.
Not in this case. You're just using convenient excuses, if I pull up a violent verse for instance you will just say it isn't for everyone but those specific people at that specific time.
Very cliche mental gymnastics that Muslims do.
>I admit, that that was an assumption. It is a good assumption, as no one has labeled christians or jews after the ummayed caliphate. literally no country, other than nazi germany.
So no source? You just made shit up and hoped you wouldn't get called out on it? Muslims seem to do this a lot, you seem to think because Westerners aren't familiar with Islam you can just lie through your teeth.
>Islam was NOT formed after the prophet died.
Yes it was. The Quran was written down under shady cricumstances and standardized by Uthman, he burned the other copies.
4/5 Pillars are from the Hadith, and these were only codified 200 years after Mo's death.
There were wars and conflict immediately after Muhammad died.
All the Arabian tribes left Islam, were forced to come back by Abu Bakr though war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridda_wars
The Muslims fought amongst each other for control of the religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fitna
How do you know the Shi'a aren't right? How do you know Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman weren't treacherous?
Unbiased account of what we REALLY know about Muhammad from real sources: https://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/mohammed_3866.jsp
Professor Fred M. Donner on why Early Islam was completely different from what traditional scholars say: https://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Believers-At-Origins-Islam/dp/0674064143
>Paying the jizya, which is just tax to be honest, is part of the religion yes. However, no where in that quote does it say TO WEAR A YELLOW STAR AND IDENTIFYING CLOTHING. NO. WHERE. Jesus christ are you slow?
I think you're the slow one (I mean you believe in genies after all).
ibn Kathir clearly lays out why dhimmitude is meant to be a humiliation, do you seriously have ZERO response for that?
Sharia doesn't SAY you need to put the Yellow Star on Jews, but it doesn't say you can't without violating their rights either. Because they have less rights - DUH.
>Also, why would you want to fight in a military in the name of a religion you don't worship? The caliphate is literally the Islamic state. If you were really itching to fight and you were a christian, the byzantine empire is always open.
Do you not understand how society back then worked? Serving in the military was a prestigious thing, by banning non-Muslims they were making them second class.
You really don't know anything, do you?
>Mohammed signed treaties with the qurayza tribe, which they broke, so the muslims attacked them. keeping the peace. The constitution of medina was fair and honourable, and treated everyone equally. it was secular.
I love these lies!
There is no proof the Banu Qurayza broke anything, and even if they did, why was it OK to slaughter ALL the men and boys, and take the women + children as slaves to be sold?
Do you understand what collective punishment is? It's what Israel does to Palestine right now. Do you support that?
Muhammad was also finished fighting when he received a "message" from "Gabriel" to go attack the Banu Qurayza. I wonder why? Gabriel obviously doesn't exist so Muhammad just had an ulterior motive. Maybe he wanted spoils of war that he was denied since the Meccans never fought him?
>This is retaliation. The meccans under abou soufyan has attacked the muslims (and jews) in medina multiple times so they had to retaliate somehow. Peaceful, not pacifist. Fun fact about Soufyan, he later accepted islam at the conflict's end.
It was the opposite, the Muslims attacked the Meccans in the sacred month of Rajm. This led to the Battle of Badr.
Fun fact: Sufyan likely converted just to gain power, as we can see from how his family treated Muhammad's family later on.
Muhammad was raiding caravans because he was a thief. He was exiled from Mecca,he had no right to any property whatsoever. He was just a bandit hungry for power.
You are correct. Of course Sunnis follow Abu Bakr because they believe Prophet chose him to be the successor. What I am suggesting above, is a distinction between the type of needs the earliest Muslims had in their expectations of the leadership.
I have shared a reference to a scholarly book which sheds complete insight into this matter. For a quick and easier read, Donner[1] and Hazleton[2] have also written on the same subject. Madelung's[3] is concise and indepth.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Believers-At-Origins-Islam/dp/0674064143
[2] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594632308
[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/religion/comments/2cbzui/are_there_any_real_differences_between_shias_and/cje7wg7
Edit: If you are not a Muslim yourself (or you may be a convert) then you are better off reading external scholarly sources instead of reading from Muslims themselves.
Check out the book : Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey. Excellent.
Bury Me Standing Amazon link is an excellent read about Gypsies, their origins, and their difficulties in Europe. There's a large section on the Porajmos as well.
I'm not saying that they deserve to be mistreated but I read this book and while it tries to defend the Gypsies and their culture, it really makes them sound like a bunch of dirtbags.
https://www.amazon.com/Mussolinis-Intellectuals-Fascist-Political-Thought/dp/0691127905
Look into this book, Spirito is mentioned in one chapter, and there is aslo further reading part for more information.
Currently reading:
My Rise And Fall by Benito Mussolini
I Am the Messenger
Thinking of buying:
Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought
Courting Greta - Not sure about this one.
Some have already pointed out the inconsistency of fascist doctrine across different nations. This is mostly due to the nature of right-wing movements - they’re rooted in culture and tradition, the idea of “peoplehood”, and so the way it manifests is going to vary from culture to culture by definition. This is why even though German National Socialism and Italian Fascism are both (reasonably) lumped in the same category, it’s pretty much universally recognized that they were also in some sense distinct. As was Franco’s Spain, as were the various right-wing groups of South America, etc. This is why it’s hard to pin down a precise definition of “fascism” (one reason, anyway).
If you’re talking about Fascism proper (capital ‘F’), i.e. the political doctrine of Mussolini, there’s a good book that examines the philosophical foundations of Italian Fascism, Gregor’s Mussolini’s Intellectuals. It’s far and away the most thorough and neutral book I’ve found on the topic. He outlines the evolution of Fascist doctrine over the course of the late 1910s till the end of WWII. That can at the very least help you understand Fascism as a historical phenomenon.
If you’re trying to understand “fascism” as a kind of blanket term for the general ethos animating right-wing groups, /u/t644sf12’s answer pretty much hits the nail on the head.
I suggest Mussolini's Intellectuals by A. James Gregor if you want to read up on Italian fascism.
https://www.amazon.ca/NATOs-Secret-Armies-Operation-Terrorism/dp/0714685003/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?keywords=gladio&amp;qid=1563409039&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-6
Let me be the devil's advocate here ... these firebombs where conveniently discovered just when a German hacker group unveiled unconstitutional spying on citizens paid for by tax payer money. It wouldn't be the first time that some incredibly sensationalist headline broke just before or right after discoveries that would get politics into the headlines in an undesirable way. Secret services could easily plant these bombs and create a little fire that would cause uproar and inconvenience to a bunch of people without actually hurting anyone, blame terrorist for it and get people to focus on these headlines other than the things that were just uncovered.
I can't find the link right now but there was a big arms deal that went through in the Summer of 2006 when the whole country was swept up in the euphoria around the soccer world championship. Our government is no exception when it comes to selecting convenient times to go through with stuff when nobody is watching.
Call it paranoia but ever since I read Daniele Ganser's "NATO's Secret Armies - Operation Gladio" I don't trust these kinds of things a single bit. Especially since it's directed against "the left".
2 minutes more digging on wikipedia would have shown you that Gladio was not limited to Italy; but had counter parts in most European countries: Operation Gladio
In any case - and this goes for the other people questioning what I wrote - you cannot quickly google "Gladio", read 3 paragraphs on Wikipedia and suddenly become an "expert".
Instead, I highly recommend this book:
NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe
Daniele goes into significant depth in describing the ties between American intelligence services and various extremist right-wing paramilitary organizations throughout mainland Europe. More importantly: he details how a 2000 Italian senate investigation unveiled the role of Vincenco Vinciguerra in the Bologna bombing. Vinciguerra himself confessed to having ties with the Gladio network and the CIA.
Here is what wikpedia says about him: Vincenzo Vinciguerra. Draw your own conclusions; but having lived through the attrocities committed by the Gang of Nijvel in Belgium (another paramilitary group linked to Gladio) and then seen how, despite a mountain of evidence and the number of casualties involved, the culprits are never apprehended because of government interference (evidence lost, chief investigators fired as soon as they started making progress, the responsibility for the investigation moved from one department to another every 6 months, etc, etc), you would have to be extremely naive to assume this is all just a "conspiracy theory"....
There's conspiracy theory (i.e. Michael Jackson gave Elvis a haircut on a UFO)and there's conspiracy fact:
NATO's Secret Armies
FEMA BPAT
Sol-gel based Nanocomposites Found in WTC Dust
Anthrax from the 911 Attacks linked to US labs
The russians left eastern Germany over 20 years ago, the US-Forces are still here.
And btw. Germany was no third world country but one of the 3 most advanced since the end of the 19th century.
The US didnt present the Marshall plan because they were so nice, but because it was in their interest to have a bulwark and a display window of corporatism against communist russia; furthermore a giant new sales market for their own products. Germany would have found to old economic strenght eventually...
(because thats what happend after WW1 besides the fact the war reparations were so high that they were one factor that lead to WW2.),
...but the advantage of investing in a completely broken market who will reach all time highs in the end is too sweet to not get involved with own capital.
Its a little bit flouting that you really believe the US did build Germany to the strong economy it now is known for. The reason Germany has such a strong economy is first of all its mentality, innovativeness, infrastructure (for example its road network) and knowledge (through its education system and craftsmanship).
Now to the point about fear:
I dont know if you ever heard about "Gladio". If not i recommend you to read the book swiss historian Daniele Ganser : wrote about it
I emphasize that this is NO conspiracy theory book by some weird old man but his dissertation at the university of Basel (Switzerland).
One of my all-time favorite stories is about the trial of a guy named Menocchio, a laborer in Italy during the 16th century.
the TL;DR version is: Menocchio had some, shall we say, unorthodox views about the nature of man and god. After all, he had read 12 books. According to him, "I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."
The Catholic Church at the time wasn't thrilled about this, and so they brought him up on charges of heresy. But during the trial, they realized that his view of the world was quite a bit more substantial (and a bit more zany) than the prosecutors realized, and so sent him away with a warning not to say anything more about his beliefs. Well, guess what, Mennochio didn't listen and actually started spreading the good news about this new understanding of the world of cheese and worms. Which landed him in a second and a third heresy trial.
At the second, he confessed that he might have been influenced by the devil to say such things, and was let off the hook again. But at the third, which was to be his last, Mennochio admitted that he had, big surprise, actually made it all up. That the universe was not, in fact, cheese.
He was burned at the stake for refusing to admit that blasphemy was actually a sin, for, in the words of the historian Carlo Ginzburg, who wrote a really really great book about the episode, he had not realised that he had "a tendency to reduce religion to morality."
You can get the book here for less than a buck: http://www.amazon.com/The-Cheese-Worms-Cosmos-Sixteenth-Century/dp/0801843871
Sorry it took so long to reply, it wasn't for lack of trying just lack of time.
Three books that really stuck out to me were The Cheese and The Worms, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath and Bread of Dreams. What facinated me about the picture they presented was how little influence The Christian Church had in rural Europe (which was most of Europe). Most people in Europe not only knew little to nothing about Christianity, but many rural priests were just as confused. As a result, a very interesting cosmology existed in a time where I assumed most people were Catholic.
In summary: Most people in medieval Europe were not Christian.
when i was doing it in class, there was a lot of emphasis on vico
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vico/
and Carlo Ginzburg
http://www.amazon.com/The-Cheese-Worms-Cosmos-Sixteenth-Century/dp/0801843871?tag=duckduckgo-d-20
I found them both to be interesting reads.
I loved People's History, Salt, The Cheese and the Worms, the Edmond Morris series on TR, Common Women, and Gender and Jim Crow.
Some of this is true except for the whole shield of victimhood bs you posted about the Jews. One of these days they'll acknowledge their responsibility in being kicked out of many nations. If they'd stop their divide and conquer bs they always do and attempts at utter domination of everyone then that might not happen.
People should also consider that Israel just keeps on taking territory.
http://ifamericansknew.org/history/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L42TxsKKPi8
Also, for the real history of Israel look to this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Transfer-Agreement-25th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0914153137
Folks there's a good reason our politicians treasonously campaign in Israel and every single one of them MUST make a speech at AIPAC. The fact that this is treason should give everyone pause but no...it's Israel, their shield of victimhood is too strong and stranglehold on media too great.
thezog.info
I just read through those FAQ points. I dont mean to sound weird but there isn't but the smallest reference to the fact that the Jews had become "over-proportionately represented" (I think "powerful" might even be an appropriate, if loaded, word) in Germany.
It just seems that if you are creating a one-stop solution for these "So what was the deal with Jews and the Nazis?" questions that should receive a bit of a treatment.
It seems that almost all of that information just points back to "historic antisemitism".
But ..
>By 1908, 12 of the 20 richest Berliners were of Jewish ancestry, as were 11 of the 25 richest people in Prussia. In 1923, 150 of the 161 privately-owned banks in Berlin were Jewish;
source
>"In Berlin alone, about 75% of the attorneys, and nearly as many doctors, were Jewish."
source
>By 1823, the Bavarian government owed 23% of its public debt to Jews; as early as 1818, there was growing complaint about excessive Jewish influence in Germany.
source
>Jews were responsible for a great part of German culture. The owners of three of Germany's greatest newspaper houses; the editors of the Vossiche Zeitung and Berliner Tagleblatt; most book publishers; the owners and editors of the Neue Rundschau and other distinguished literary magazines; the owners of Germany's greatest art galleries were all Jews. Jews played a major part in theatre and in the film industry as producers, directors, and actors. Many of Germany's best composers, musicians, artists, sculptors, and architects were Jews. Their participation in literary criticism and in literature were enormous: practically all the great critics and many novelists, poets, dramatists, and essayists of the Weimar Republic were Jews ... If cultural contributions by Jews were far out of proportion to their numerical strength, their participation in left-wing intellectual activities were even more disproportionate.
source
This is a HUGE part of the formula of "So what was all that about the Nazis and the Jews". This not-entirely-unwarranted feeling of "Jewish saturation in German culture". But I dont really see it gone into anywhere there.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
The Transfer Agreement is Edwin Black's compelling, award-winning story of a negotiated arrangement in 1933 between Zionist organizations and the Nazis to transfer some 50,000 Jews, and $100 million of their assets, to Jewish Palestine in exchange for stopping the worldwide Jewish-led boycott threatening to topple the Hitler regime in its first year.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Transfer-Agreement-25th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0914153137
Group 13
Żagiew
Judenrat
Jewish Ghetto Police
Abraham Gancwajch
Stephanie von Hohenlohe
Stella Kübler
Alfred Nossig
Chaim Rumkowski
Henric Streitman
Józef Szeryński
Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln
Hitler's Jewish Soldiers
Uncovered: new evidence of Jewish movie moguls’ extensive collaboration with Nazis in the 1930s
The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler
>"To continue doing business in Germany after Hitler's ascent to power, Hollywood studios agreed not to make films that attacked the Nazis or condemned Germany's persecution of Jews."
The Transfer Agreement
>The Transfer Agreement is Edwin Black's compelling, award-winning story of a negotiated arrangement in 1933 between Zionist organizations and the Nazis to transfer some 50,000 Jews, and $100 million of their assets, to Jewish Palestine in exchange for stopping the worldwide Jewish-led boycott threatening to topple the Hitler regime in its first year.
There are plenty of books about the German populace's complicity in the Holocaust and many do make some controversial and arguable claims, but I think the book that stays closest to historical fact is this one. I understand you're not going to just order this book and read it because I disagree with your claims, but if you really want to understand how the Holocaust happened and why the Germans did it, read this. The book basically documents how the Nazis persuaded the German populace to along with its genocidal ideology. Thuggery, scapegoating, and good old fear were the main tools the party used.
This is also a fascinating read: The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders
[This is more accurate than you think] (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators-Bystanders/dp/1568521332/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419186631&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+good+old+days+the+holocaust+as+seen+by+its+perpetrators+and+bystanders)
The Good Old Days?
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators-Bystanders/dp/1568521332
This book describes a system where the political system hid what it was doing from the people and even most soldiers. This is the real lesson of the Nazi tragedy. A lesson that the rest of the nations are trying to forget.
Here's Roosevelt and Churchill meeting with their ally Joseph Stalin - who murdered and starved far more people than Hitler ever killed. In Auschwitz, the workers feared being being sent to the starvation cells; they considered death by gassing a blessing in comparison:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference
Here's Donald Rumsfeld getting friendly with Saddam Hussein:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUPb-3zkh0c
The USA supplied components of chemical and biological weapons to Hussein in full knowledge of what he was doing with them:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/dec/31/iraq.politics
There is packs of evidence showing how the allies co-operated with Nazis after WW2:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0
Here's a book by one of those "self-hating Jews" that shows Zionists and Nazis working hand-in-hand:
"51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis" - Lenni Brenner
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1569802351/002-2290067-9319233?v=glance
"My enemy's enemy is my friend..."
You can read more about Hajj Amin al-Husseini:
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/hitlers-mufti
A nasty piece of work - but what were the origins of his hatred and why did he get so much support? Hmmmm... Could it have been because the British has invaded his homeland?? Could it have been because the Zionists were plotting to steal his homeland after the British had left?
Does he not have the right to fight for his people and homeland? What lessons would you learn from history about this?
Does Israel not have chemical and biologic weapons millions of times more potent then Zyklon B? Why? To defend itself no? Is it not willing to gas millions of people if an invasion was imminent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
> Why does my roll as a player matter at all? Its a video game and a multiplayer one at that.
I think your inability to see the difference between watching a story in a movie vs participate in it as a player invalidates everything you say automatically. But I digress.
>Nice strawman. Nobody is saying we want to kill jews in game.
??? I wasn't saying that, I'm saying it's the same logic of "if something is in a movie, we should be able to play as characters in that event"
>This is LAUGHABLY wrong. Many german soldiers in the german military did not enjoy what was demanded of them. They weren't all nazi's like you think they were. A lot of them hoped to just defend germany against the allies and never be asked to shoot or gas jews. Very few were willing to risk saying no to the gestapo when they commanded such actions to be done. FEAR is a powerful tool.
That is literally nazi propaganda. Do Some Research. These are the only good german soldiers.
>A lot of them hoped to just defend germany against the allies
You're so historically illiterate, Germany attacked Poland and France first. This isn't even to mention the dehumanization and hate crimes against people before the war began. The average person in Germany in the 1930's was totally racist and okay with terrible things happening to "undesirables" my great grandfather's friend was murdered in frankfurt for being jewish and none of the police would investigate and people said he deserved it. You're so ignorant.
>Alone it wouldn't matter but when stacked upon the unholy mess that of which BFV is its just yet another thing that they fucked up. And for a lot of people here thats enough reasoning.
That doesn't even make sense "If there was nothing wrong with the game no one would care but since the game is in a bad state we need more things to complain about"
>Your argument reminds me of that retarded EXTRA SENSITIVE "Extra Credit" channel on youtube with their most downvoted video yet. "Stop normalizing nazis"
I don't know who that is, but I can take a wild guess who would disagree that normalizing nazis is a good thing.
>HeRe YoU aRe PLaYinG tHe PVp In yOUr FaVoItE Ww2 ViDeO gAmE WiTh ThE NaZi FlAG As yOuR fAcTiOnS SyMbOle. AnD aLL oF a SuDDeN, YoU'Re A nAzI!.
Damn you got me, now spell ICUP
https://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht
https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319
https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930
"He knows his history" seems to work....
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84
The interesting thing about the holocaust, especially in Poland, is that all the senseless killing was the culmination of centuries of racial prejudice. Non-Jewish Poles were greenlit to take life and property in the same way white Georgians were during Andrew Jackson's tenure in America. The point is, Hitler didn't wave a magical wand to make people start murdering. Nor did he send in droves of SS agents to conduct slaughter. Much of the killing occurred organically.
source
> they don't fight for their country, but for the person beside them.
Yeah, well, that is the basic premise of this book.
Archives for the links in comments:
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That's bullshit. The reason ww2 didn't start sooner was because of Hitlers slow rise witch was directly an result of the versailles threaty. Hitler had to kickstart a dead economy, clandenstinely build up his millitary force including the gigantic task of getting the luftwaffe up and running, and secure resources for both the buildup and the coming war. He didn't have power because he burned down a stupid building and made some draconian laws. He accumulated power by securing resources, most importantly oil, coal and liqudified coal, shaping a millitary force under everyones eyes and geopolitical manuvering.
How do you even see that happening without the distracting utter chaos that was the spanish civil war? Francos and Mussolinis efforts where also a big factor in the rise. But ofcource most of what made it possible was the communist russians that where helpfull in being an adversary with clear exspansion plans.
I'm not saying there is a simple direct correlation, but seen as a whole what happened in Spain gave Hitler geopolitical allies and distraction.
Now. If your not an history professor that will rape me with facts I don't have time to reasearch and subsequently construct an refutation. A book that lead me on to this thinking was "The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939" by one of my favorite war writers Anthony Beevor https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Spain-Spanish-Civil-1936-1939/dp/014303765X?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&amp;tag=duckduckgo-ffab-20&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=2025&amp;creative=165953&amp;creativeASIN=014303765X
According to one book Thatcher threatened to nuke argentina: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/22/books.france
And the british warships were carrying nuclear weapons (depth charges at least): https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/dec/06/military.freedomofinformation
Plus the Vulcan fleet (The fleet of nuclear bombers) had the capability of striking the mainland and were doing so with conventional weapons (on military targets): Was mentioned in https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vulcan-607-Rowland-White/dp/0552152293 )
There are many sources for it and you can find the European Parliament's reports/findings on the topic. Also, Swiss historian Daniele Ganser's book NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe covers the topic in-depth, and you can read parts of that book online at the above Amazon.com link.
Amazon describes the book as:
> This fascinating new study shows how the CIA and the British secret service, in collaboration with the military alliance NATO and European military secret services, set up a network of clandestine anti-communist armies in Western Europe...In some countries the secret army linked up with right-wing terrorist who in a secret war engaged in political manipulation, harrassement of left wing parties, massacres, coup d'états and torture.
Needless to say, the news of the European Parliament's findings were spun, downplayed, and de facto buried by our corporate mass media here in the US.
Many Jews want to hide the story, but the Zionists needed a middle class to populate Palestine. The Nazi's needed to end the boycotts that were crippling their country. So the Zionists and Nazi's worked together make this happen. Jewish peasants did not have any value to the new country and were left to die.
Read all about it:
http://www.amazon.com/Transfer-Agreement-25th-Anniversary-Dramatic-Palestine/dp/0914153137
> > You say you've read several books on theme, can you provide a few?
[Theme: "collusion between Zionist parties and Facist regimes in Europe prior to WWII"]
> Books specifically on this subject, no I'm afraid not. To be frank it's such an 'out there' position that it doesn't garner an enormous amount of attention unless you want to look at Protocols of the Elders of Zion level antisemitic propaganda.
Here's one for your reading list:
The Transfer Agreement--25th Anniversary Edition: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine
From Amazon:
> The Transfer Agreement is Edwin Black's compelling, award-winning story of a negotiated arrangement in 1933 between Zionist organizations and the Nazis to transfer some 50,000 Jews, and $100 million of their assets, to Jewish Palestine in exchange for stopping the worldwide Jewish-led boycott threatening to topple the Hitler regime in its first year. 25th Anniversary Edition.
About the author (Wiki):
> Edwin Black is an American syndicated columnist and investigative journalist. He specializes in human rights, the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East [...] Black is the son of Polish Jews who were survivors of the Holocaust. His mother, Ethel "Edjya" Katz, from Białystok, told of narrowly escaping death the Holocaust by escaping a boxcar en route to the Treblinka extermination camp as a 13-year old in August 1943.
More on the topic @ Wikipedia:
Haavara Agreement
> The Haavara (Transfer) Agreement was agreed to by the German government in 1933 to allow the Zionist movement, in the form of the Haavara company to transfer property from Germany to Palestine, for the sole purpose of encouraging Jewish emigration from Germany. The Haavara company operated under a similar plan as the earlier Hanotea company. The Haavara Company required immigrants to pay at least 1000 pounds sterling into the banking company. This money would then be used to buy German exports for import to Palestine.
Zionists and Nazis - "strange bedfellows"?
Perhaps, but Germany had something that the Zionist leaders DESPERATELY NEEDED: Jews - wealthy, educated, cultured and politically savvy Jews to populate the little Zionist Homeland that they had been contriving in Palestine for some 40 years.
Meanwhile, the Nazis were suffering substantially thanks to an international boycott against German made goods - AND had come to view their Jewish population as "personae non gratae".
The Nazis benefited by a achieving measure of relief from the boycott (and, from their perspective, ridding themselves of unwanted Jews), whereas the Zionists benefited because they were blessed with wealthy, talented Jews who, were it not for Nazi persecutions, would likely never have considered moving to Palestine.
You stupid fuck. You need to learn how to differentiate between Jewish people and Zionists. I'm born a product of the former, but I despise the latter.
Zionists collaborated with the Nazi's
There's plenty of evidence for it
Also, there were/ and are a number of Jews who oppose Zionism -- these were the people killed in concentration camps predominantly.
You seriously just tried to justify the mass genocide of jews, gypsies, and gays. FUCK YOU.
I know that USA is no hero, and I don't have any illusions about it. Truman dropped atomic bombs without any military necessity. But I'm certain that Hitler was not a hero, and mass genocide is never something to appreciate.
Start here if you want arguably the best book about the complexities of the Spanish War, written by Antony Beevor, a well regarded historian.
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Spain-Spanish-Civil-1936-1939/dp/014303765X/ref=nodl_
Didn't see this elsewhere, so here :
http://www.amazon.com/Place-Concorde-Suisse-John-McPhee/dp/0374519323
Fascinating (albeit light on detail) look at this very topic.
Adolf Hitler, read the rise and fall of the 3rd reich
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/0671728687
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Fall-Third-Reich/dp/0671728687/ref=cm_lmf_tit_2
this is one of the best books on the topic.
http://www.amazon.com/Mussolinis-Intellectuals-Fascist-Political-Thought/dp/0691127905
it was truly was a new ideology in the 1920s.
the nazis added some populism to it when they brought it to germany.
Rhom added some workers sentiment but was killed in the night of the long knives.
Hitler added the extermination of jews at the end.
But he had become a dictator just 18 months into his appointment to riechchancelor at the beginning he just started by kicking them out and stealing their property, like all the other jewish pogroms that were the sad state of normality Europe for 1,000 years. the UK kicked out all the jews at one point. look up the dreyfus affair for an idea about how deep antisemitism was ingrained in even the heart of paris in the early 20th century. the dreyfus affair, not incidentally, created one original Zionism's most powerful politcal advocates.
you aren't ignorant because there is so much shit on the internet that purports to be well informed, but there is information out there that is readily obtainable. we should attempt to maintain the meanings of some words in a historical context. everyone calls everyone a fascist. it ceases to be useful, is rendered meaningless for those that do know what the word still means.
in all events. these guys weren't right nor left. they were, as always utopianists. they felt the state needed to subordinate the competing classes that were tearing their nations apart, to harness the will towards the greater good. they saw evil in both right and left. hitler railed against american capitalism all the damn time. you can see why both the elite on the right who might be terrified of Bolshevism, and the progressives on the left that desired a firm hand from the state to push people toward their better angels, as it were, saw something promising in this. these people were lionized, by spectrums of the left and the right in the early 1930s.
*why would you fucking downvote this? what kind of fucking totalitarian ideologue could you be? I'm a god damn anarchist. I read these theories because I hate your shit. I can see this clearly, and I bet I know who downvoted this, the cunts on the left that have gained so much by pinning this atrocity on the right. fuck you. read about it and rebut the facts. go to school. do anything. something. god damn. you dispoiler. makes me sick coming here sometimes. you get a vote for I'm an idiot, this guy would like to educate generally. I'm about ready to pull my authority. j/k.
I am able to separate fact from fiction, and make up my own mind about things, and his telling or re-telling of the facts is something that the world needs more of. I could give a shit about what he thinks of Sandy Hook, but I have read some interesting articles about false flags over the years, and the fact that the CIA financed and participated in terrorism and bombings over many decades in order to influence the domestic and foreign policies of many European countries. I have no opinion if Charlie Hebdo was a false flag-CIA orchestrated attack, but it would not surprise me to find out someday that it was and proof was shared. I will say this; More often than not, Paul Craig Robert is a wise man, and he knows what he's talking about. That is not to say that I agree with everything he believes in. Good day.
Operation Gladio And The False Flag Muslim Terror Hoax
TheTruthSeeker. June 10, 2017
--Robert Steele – Former CIA Clandestine Services Officer
--Gladio Operative, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, 2001
“In his 2005 book, “NATO’s Secret Armies:Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe,” Daniel Ganser accused the US and their NATO allies of using Gladio, a decades long campaign of false flag terror Attacks directed by Western Intelligence agencies that were responsible for the murder of hundreds of innocent civilians.”
“Gladio operatives were involved in a silent Coup d’etat in 1969, and multiple bombings in the1960’s, 70’s and 80’s in Italy alone. The Italian Government released a 300 page report on Gladio Operations in 2000. The report, unsurprisingly said that, the massacres, bombings and military operations were planned and executed by men within the Italian Government and the American CIA. In 1980, Italy experienced its worst ever terror attack at a train station in Bologna. 85 died in the attack and over 200 were wounded. The investigation led police to Vincent Vinciguerra.”
https://leaksource.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/operation-gladio-and-the-false-flag-muslim-terror-hoax/
Read 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With The Nazis.
http://www.amazon.com/51-Documents-Zionist-Collaboration-Nazis/dp/1569802351
If someone says 'Muslim Terrorists' that does not mean that they are saying that all Muslims are terrorists. 'Jewish satans' is the same. Some Jews (a small minority) collaborated with the Nazis in carrying out the Holocaust. Pointing this out is not a smear of all Jews.
Stop with this Wehraboo revisionist bullshit. It doesn't matter if they were a good person or a bad person, they were all standing over the same mass graves. The average German civilian knew what was happening, let alone the soldiers carrying out the work. If they didn't defect or resist, they were as guilty as the rest.
&nbsp;
EDIT: Since I'm already catching downvotes, if you're not a Nazi apologist and maybe just misinformed, here are some great resources that go into explicit detail how the average German soldier was far from clean:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/?st=jse6fwxk&amp;sh=c852a62b
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/480hnc/were_the_nazis_encouraged_to_use_terror_as_a_form/?st=jse6fxso&amp;sh=835b61d6
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vc22s/how_much_did_the_wehrmacht_on_the_eastern_front/?st=jse6g0af&amp;sh=7fb522db
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5voi0y/is_it_true_that_the_wehrmacht_generally_treated/?st=jse6g1dz&amp;sh=d2a96c8a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776
http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319
http://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930
Hmmm. Yes, that would kinda be like Jews working for the Nazis, wouldn't it?
That's right Steve. In the same way, Barack Obama is a willing collaborator and sell-out to the White Supremacist American Ruling Class. Dude is an Uncle Tom. A Fascist House Negro.
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/2918
http://reason.com/blog/2009/12/18/nader-obama-is-uncle-tom-not-u
http://www.newswithviews.com/Johnston/patrick123.htm
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/04/29/505817/-Uncle-Tom-Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snzSkny3SZ0
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/11/obama-the-house-negro-pity-the-man-who-walks-on-his-knees-and-the-nation-he-leads-from-that-position.html
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/uncle-tom-harlem-pastor-posts-anti-obama-flyers
http://boudicabpi.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/uncle-tom-obama-slammed-by-new-black-panthers-make-believe-black-man-called-a-nigger-lol/
Even that old racist cracker Ron Paul says end the War on Drugs. The fuck is this guy Barack Obama's problem?
You know who you fucking sound like? The people in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators/dp/1568521332
Check out "Operation Gladio" if you want to know the shady things NATO is used for. http://www.truthmove.org/content/operation-gladio/ "