Schonbolm, an official with the former West German Defense Ministry, recounts a horrific tale of East German plans to invade and conquer West Germany, and of a special army of 100,000 men drilled to hate and attack on command. All this he learned from records he found when he and a team of experts took over the former East Germany army headquarters in 1990. Once again goodness triumphed over evil just in the nick of time. No index or bibliography. Translated from Zwei Armeen und ein Vaterland published in 1992 by Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag in Berlin. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A comprehensive history of the German fighting man

An exploration of military responses to revolutions and how to predict such reactions in the future We know that a revolution's success largely depends on the army's response to it. But can we predict the military's reaction to an uprising? How Armies Respond to Revolutions and Why argues that it is possible to make a highly educated guess—and in some cases even a confident prediction—about the generals' response to a domestic revolt if we know enough about the army, the state it is supposed to serve, the society in which it exists, and the external environment that affects its actions. Through concise case studies of modern uprisings in Iran, China, Eastern Europe, Burma, and the Arab world, Zoltan Barany looks at the reasons for and the logic behind the variety of choices soldiers ultimately make. Barany offers tools—in the form of questions to be asked and answered—that enable analysts to provide the most informed assessment possible regarding an army's likely response to a revolution and, ultimately, the probable fate of the revolution itself. He examines such factors as the military's internal cohesion, the regime's treatment of its armed forces, and the size, composition, and nature of the demonstrations. How Armies Respond to Revolutions and Why explains how generals decide to support or suppress domestic uprisings.

1932: A drowned man is found in a freight elevator in the giant pleasure palace on Potsdamer Platz, far from any standing water. Inspector Gereon Rath’s hunt for a mysterious contract killer has stalled, but this new case will take him to a small town on the Polish border and confrontation with the rising Nazi party.

Looking at how armies supportive of democracy are built, this title argues that the military is the important institution that states maintain, for without military elites who support democratic governance, democracy cannot be consolidated. It demonstrates that building democratic armies is the quintessential task of democratizing regimes.

This book provides Bolt Action players with all of the information they need to field the military forces of Germany. Detailed army lists allow players to construct German armies for any theatre and any year of the war, including the early campaigns in Poland and France, the dusty tank war in the North African desert, the bloody battles on the Eastern Front, and the final defence of Normandy, occupied France and Germany itself. With dozens of different unit types including Fallschirmjager, Waffen-SS, and the dreaded Tiger tank, players can assemble a huge variety of troops with which to battle their opponents.

What would have happened if Hitler had won World War II?

In autumn 1989 the world watched transfixed as East German citizens, demonstrating under the banner ‘We are the people!’, staged the only successful, totally peaceful revolution in German history. By October 1990, the process of reunification was formally concluded, bringing together a nation that had been divided for almost four decades. Now, nearly twenty years later, it is possible to judge the causes and consequences of the revolution more clearly. Was the fall of the Berlin Wall an unexpected fluke, or was it, in fact, the result of a long process of engagement between East and West? And did the momentous events of 1989 really signal the start of a bright new future for a united Germany? In this probing and wide-ranging account, Lothar Kettenacker considers the background behind the division of Germany and explains how the Berlin Wall and its death trap border proved to be the most horrendous manifestation of East-West antagonism. He also looks beyond 1990 to show how the confusion caused by the sudden collapse of the GDR and the fusion of two radically different economies is proving to be a challenge that will preoccupy Germany for generations to come.

THIS IS the story of the search for “Faceless Fritz”—the most difficult and frightening camera-hunt ever undertaken by ace photographer-reporter Margaret Bourke-White. “Fearless Fritz” was cable shorthand for one of several LIFE assignments that brought Miss Bourke-White and her camera to Germany some months before its fall. She was to pin down the private German citizens—to find out what kind of human being it was who, multiplied by millions, made up the Nazi terror. Was he cruel? Was he a villain? Or was he a jolly, gemutlich, beer-drinking, music-loving sentimentalist so many of us remembered, who had really been helpless in the power of a small gang of madmen? By the time Margaret Bourke-White arrived in Germany on this mission, she had seen much death and danger. She had been in Moscow during its fiercest bombings. In Italy she had come closer to the enemy lines than any American woman before her. But it was in Germany that cold horror overtook her. The Germany that Miss Bourke-White saw and recorded in this book puts to shame Dali’s most grotesque nightmares. It is a physical and spiritual chamber of horrors, a cuckoo-cloud land whose inhabitants live in a lost dream. They are the people whose faces are as usual and recognizable as neighbors’, but whose reactions do not seem to make sense. “Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly,” which was first published in 1946, takes its title from the words of the anthem, “Die Wacht am Rhein,” to which German soldiers have marched three times in the memory of many now living. It brings new light to bear on the German people—in the hope that through a more immediate understanding of them, a fourth march may be averted... Richly illustrated throughout with 128 of her photographs, with detailed captions, forming an integral part of Margaret Bourke-White’s important report on conquered Germany.

“This valuable and penetrating little book deals with one of the baffling problems of our age, namely the relation between Nazi and German... The thesis of the book is that the traditional German character is derived from a rigid, authoritarian, static family system which adapted itself readily to the Nazi pattern and remained essentially unaltered when the Nazi layer was stripped away. The implication is that German and Nazi are more nearly identical than is realized by naïve exponents of ‘denazification’... a well-written, sensible book suggestive as to methodology and rich in wisdom...” — The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science “An interesting study of paternal ‘authoritarianism in the German family,’ with implications for the political behavior of the Germans as a people.” — Foreign Affairs “Of the many postwar books now available on Germany and the various phases of its culture, ideologies, and social structure, this book stands out. The approach is scientifically oriented, combining psychiatry with sociology and anthropology.” — American Journal of Orthopsychiatry “This is a book by a social scientist, on a timely subject. It is a pity that more books of this kind are not prepared by the people who have the required insights and the necessary data, and rushed through the presses while there is still time to make use of their results. The author is a psychiatrist who knows how to make his special skill applicable to the wider problems of our day.” — Political Science Quarterly “[F]ascinating reading... Schaffner presents his views with admirable clarity.” — The Public Opinion Quarterly