The New York Times bestselling author of the Bernie Gunther novels reimagines the end of World War 2 in this gripping standalone spy thriller. Autumn 1943. Since Stalingrad, Hitler has known that Germany cannot win the war. The upcoming Allied conference in Teheran will set the ground rules for their second front-and for the peace to come. Realizing that the unconditional surrender FDR has demanded will leave Germany in ruins, Hitler has put out peace feelers. (Unbeknownst to him, so has Himmler, who is ready to stage a coup in order to reach an accord.) FDR and Stalin are willing to negotiate. Only Churchill refuses to listen. At the center of this high-stakes game of deals and doubledealing is Willard Mayer, an OSS operative who has been chosen by FDR to serve as his envoy. A cool, self-absorbed, emotionally distant womanizer with a questionable past, Mayer has embraced the stylish philosophy of the day, in which no values are fixed. He is the perfect foil for the steamy world of deception, betrayals, and assassinations that make up the moral universe of realpolitik. With his sure hand for pacing, his firm grasp of historical detail, and his explosively creative imagination about what might have been, Philip Kerr has fashioned a totally convincing thinking man’s thriller in the great tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.

Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen– Winston Churchill first among them–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations. Among the British and Churchillian errors were: • The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France • The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that mutilated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler • Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo-Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest • The greatest mistake in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939, ensuring the Second World War Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “the Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.

The New York Times bestselling author of the Bernie Gunther novels reimagines the end of World War 2 in this gripping standalone spy thriller. Autumn 1943. Since Stalingrad, Hitler has known that Germany cannot win the war. The upcoming Allied conference in Teheran will set the ground rules for their second front-and for the peace to come. Realizing that the unconditional surrender FDR has demanded will leave Germany in ruins, Hitler has put out peace feelers. (Unbeknownst to him, so has Himmler, who is ready to stage a coup in order to reach an accord.) FDR and Stalin are willing to negotiate. Only Churchill refuses to listen. At the center of this high-stakes game of deals and doubledealing is Willard Mayer, an OSS operative who has been chosen by FDR to serve as his envoy. A cool, self-absorbed, emotionally distant womanizer with a questionable past, Mayer has embraced the stylish philosophy of the day, in which no values are fixed. He is the perfect foil for the steamy world of deception, betrayals, and assassinations that make up the moral universe of realpolitik. With his sure hand for pacing, his firm grasp of historical detail, and his explosively creative imagination about what might have been, Philip Kerr has fashioned a totally convincing thinking man’s thriller in the great tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.

Written by Germany's foremost diplomatic historian of the early twentieth century, this work maps out all the numerous times that Adolf Hitler made unconditional offers of peace to all the nations of Europe--and how the major anti-German belligerents, France and Britain, turned down these offers each and every time. The author lists all of Hitler's offers in detail, complete with quotes, starting with his first offer of May 17, 1933, his second offer of December 18, 1933, his third offer of May 21, 1935, his fourth offer of March 31, 1936, his fifth offer of September 30, 1938, his sixth offer of December 6, 1938, his seventh offer of late 1939 to Poland to settle the Danzig Corridor issue peacefully, and finally, his offer of world peace on October 6, 1939, just over a month after Britain and France had declared war on Germany for invading Poland on September 1 (but not on the Soviet Union, which also invaded Poland on September 17). This edition benefits from four new sections which did not appear in the original publication. These are: - The full text of Hitler's "Appeal for Peace and Sanity" speech, made before the Reichstag on July 19, 1940, following the fall of France. Although nearly half the British cabinet wanted to take up his offer, Churchill's warmongering put an end to this final offer of peace; - Hitler's Political Testament, dictated just hours before his death on April 29, 1945, wherein he spelled out once again how he had tried to avoid the war, and blamed Jewish agitators for the refusal of other nations to accept his peace offers; - Hermann Göring's final letter--from this death cell in Nuremberg--to Winston Churchill, in which he blamed the latter's warmongering on behalf of "Jewish Bolsheviks" for the conflict; and - An extract from The Forrestal Diaries, in which the US Secretary of State William Forrestal quotes British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as complaining that "the world Jews" have forced England into the war. Fully reset and illustrated throughout with 22 rare photographs.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, nearly forty thousand German Catholics were involved in the German Catholic Peace League, a movement that caused many people in various countries to seriously reconsider the dimension of pacifism in their faith. During the course of the War, however, many of these same German Catholics raised no serious objection to serving in Germany's armies or swearing allegiance to Adolph Hitler. First published in 1962, German Catholics and Hitler's Wars created a furor, ultimately causing a serious reevaluation of church-state relationships and, in particular, of the morality of war. This work began as an attempt to understand the demise of the German Catholic Peace League. But because of various factors, including the destruction of vital records, Gordon C. Zahn began to consider the behavior of German Catholics in general and the evidence of their almost total conformity to the war demands of the Nazi regime. Using sociological analysis, he argues convincingly for the existence of a super-effective system of social controls, and of a selection between the competing values of Catholicism and nationalism. Although Zahn never speculates, conclusions are inescapable, chief among them that the traditional Catholic doctrine of the "just war" has ceased to be operative for Catholics in the modern world.

A remarkable cross-cultural history that rescues the swastika, an ancient Buddhist symbol, from its deployment by the forces of hate. The swastika has been used for over three thousand years by billions of people in many cultures and religions—including Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism—as an auspicious symbol of the sun and good fortune. However, beginning with its hijacking and misappropriation by Nazi Germany, it has also been used, and continues to be used, as a symbol of hate in the Western World. Hitler's device is in fact a "hooked cross." Rev. Nakagaki's book explains how and why these symbols got confused, and offers a path to peace, understanding, and reconciliation. Please note: Photographs in the digital edition of the books are in color. Photographs in the print edition are in black and white.

"A new history of the British appeasement of the Third Reich on the eve of World War II"--

Written by Germany's foremost diplomatic historian of the early twentieth century, this work maps out all the numerous times that Adolf Hitler made unconditional offers of peace to all the nations of Europe-and how the major anti-German belligerents, France and Britain, turned down these offers each and every time. The author lists all of Hitler's offers in detail, complete with quotes, starting with his first offer of May 17, 1933, his second offer of December 18, 1933, his third offer of May 21, 1935, his fourth offer of March 31, 1936, his fifth offer of September 30, 1938, his sixth offer of December 6, 1938, his seventh offer of late 1939 to Poland to settle the Danzig Corridor issue peacefully, and finally, his offer of world peace on October 6, 1939, just over a month after Britain and France had declared war on Germany for invading Poland on September 1 (but not on the Soviet Union, which also invaded Poland on September 17). This edition benefits from four new sections which did not appear in the original publication. These are: - The full text of Hitler's "Appeal for Peace and Sanity" speech, made before the Reichstag on July 19, 1940, following the fall of France. In that speech, Hitler once again offered unconditional peace to Britain. This speech was printed in English and dropped by the tens of thousands from German aircraft over Britain. Although nearly half the British cabinet wanted to take up his offer, Churchill's warmongering put an end to this final offer of peace; - Hitler's Political Testament, dictated just hours before his death on April 29, 1945, wherein he spelled out once again how he had tried to avoid the war, and blamed Jewish agitators for the refusal of other nations to accept his peace offers; - Hermann Göring's final letter-from this death cell in Nuremberg-to Winston Churchill, in which he blamed the latter's warmongering on behalf of "Jewish Bolsheviks" for the conflict; and - An extract from The Forrestal Diaries, in which the US Secretary of State William Forrestal quotes British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as complaining that "the world Jews" have forced England into the war. Fully reset and illustrated throughout with 22 rare photographs and reproductions of original documents.

A book examining the strange terrain of Nazi sympathizers, nonintervention campaigners and other voices in America who advocated on behalf of Nazi Germany in the years before World War II. Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided. Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime. Some of these friends were Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führer. Some were as bizarre and hair-raising as the Silver Shirt Legion, run by an eccentric who claimed that Hitler fulfilled a religious prophesy. Some were Midwestern Catholics like Father Charles Coughlin, an early right-wing radio star who broadcast anti-Semitic tirades. They were even members of Congress who used their franking privilege—sending mail at cost to American taxpayers—to distribute German propaganda. And celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh ended up speaking for them all at the America First Committee. We try to tell ourselves it couldn't happen here, but Americans are not immune to the lure of fascism. Hitler's American Friends is a powerful look at how the forces of evil manipulate ordinary people, how we stepped back from the ledge, and the disturbing ease with which we could return to it.