Krieg

In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists organized a picnic on the border of Hungary and Austria. But this was not an ordinary picnic-it was located on the dangerous militarized frontier known as the Iron Curtain. Tacit permission from the highest state authorities could be revoked at any moment. On wisps of rumor, thousands of East German "vacationers" packed Hungarian campgrounds, awaiting an opportunity, fearing prison, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The Pan-European Picnic set the stage for the greatest border breach in Cold War history: hundreds crossed from the Communist East to the longed-for freedom of the West.Drawing on dozens of original interviews-including Hungarian activists and border guards, East German refugees, Stasi secret police, and the last Communist prime minister of Hungary-Matthew Longo tells a gripping and revelatory tale of the unraveling of the Iron Curtain and the birth of a new world order. Just a few months after the Picnic, the Berlin Wall fell, and the freedom for which the activists and refugees had abandoned their homes, risked imprisonment, sacrificed jobs, family, and friends, was suddenly available to everyone. But were they really free? And why, three decades since the Iron Curtain was torn down, have so many sought once again to build walls?Cinematically told, The Picnic recovers a time when it seemed possible for the world to change. With insight and panache, Longo explores the opportunities taken-and the opportunities we failed to take-in that pivotal moment.

Read the book that inspired upcoming major motion picture starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter.'Remarkable' - the Guardian Sir Nicholas Winton rescued 669 Jewish children from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia at the brink of World War II. Most never saw their parents again. This is his story.In 1938, 29-year-old 'Nicky' cancelled a ski holiday and instead spent 9 months masterminding a seemingly impossible plan to rescue hundreds of children and find them homes in the UK. There are around 6000 people who are alive today because of him.What motivated an ordinary man to do something so extraordinary? This book, written by his daughter, Barbara, explores the 106-year life of an incredible humanitarian, a man whose astounding feats only came to public light decades later. His legacy is to encourage us all to act when we see injustice or need, and to remind us that every one of us can change the world for the better.'If something is not impossible, then there must be a way to do it.'

Merchants of death was an epithet used in the USA in the 1930s to attack industries and banks that supplied and funded the First World War (then called the Great War). Originally published in 1934, this book uses the term to expose the international arms industry at the time.

The Sunday Times-bestselling author of Dresden returns with a monumental biography of the city that defined the twentieth century - Berlin'I loved this book . . . apposite and wise . . . To anyone who knows Berlin a little and is fascinated by it, but would like to understand it better, this is a wonderful aid' David Aaronovitch, The Times Throughout the twentieth century, Berlin stood at the centre of a convulsing world. This history is often viewed as separate acts: the suffering of the First World War, the cosmopolitan city of science, culture and sexual freedom Berlin became, steep economic plunges, the rise of the Nazis, the destruction of the Second World War, the psychosis of genocide, and a city rent in two by competing ideologies. But people do not live their lives in fixed eras. An epoch ends, yet the people continue - or try to continue - much as they did before. Berlin tells the story of the city as seen through the eyes not of its rulers, but of those who walked its streets.In this magisterial biography of a city and its inhabitants, bestselling historian Sinclair McKay sheds new light on well-known characters - from idealistic scientist Albert Einstein to Nazi architect Albert Speer - and draws on never-before-seen first-person accounts to introduce us to people of all walks of Berlin life. For example, we meet office worker Mechtild Evers, who in her efforts to escape an oncoming army runs into even more appalling jeopardy, and Reinhart Cruger, a 12-year-old boy in 1941 who witnesses with horror the Gestapo coming for each of his Jewish neighbours in turn. Ever a city of curious contrasts, moments of unbelievable darkness give way to a wry Berliner humour - from banned perms to the often ridiculous tit-for-tat between East and West Berlin - and moments of joyous hope - like forced labourers at a jam factory warmly welcoming their Soviet liberators.How did those ideologies - fascism and communism - come to flower so fully here? And how did their repercussions continue to be felt throughout Europe and the West right up until that extraordinary night in the autumn of 1989 when the Wall - that final expression of totalitarian oppression - was at last breached? You cannot understand the twentieth century without understanding Berlin; and you cannot understand Berlin without understanding the experiences of its people. Drawing on a staggering breadth of culture - from art to film, opera to literature, science to architecture - McKay's latest masterpiece shows us this hypnotic city as never before.

This journal of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine is a collection of Andrey Kurkov's writings and broadcasts from Kyiv.

An intimate, stirring portrait of a country at war and a family's battle to survive

The heart-breaking and inspiring memoir of a 10-year-old Auschwitz twin.

Jeg vil ikke græde endnu – en autentisk beretning om ægteparret Anna og Vilhelm Filges. Vilhelm var grænsegendarm under 2. verdenskrig og blev sammen med sine kolleger taget af tyskerne den 19. september 1944 og senere sendt til Neuengamme koncentrationslejr. Anna skrev dagbog mens Vilhelm sad i lejrene og Vilhelm indtalte mange år efter krigen en mundtlig beretning om tiden i koncentrationslejr på bånd. Både Annas dagbog og Vilhelms mundtlige beretning er gengivet uredigeret som skrevet og sagt, med enkelte udeladte passager. Bogen er blevet til takket være et stort bidrag fra Maria Helleberg, som lagde linjen og skrev det første omfattende og væsentlige udkast. En stor tak til Maria, uden hvem denne bog aldrig var blevet til noget.Familien er enige om ikke at ville profitere på at udgive Anna og Vilhelms historie. Alt overskud, der ellers ville tilfalde forfatterne, gives derfor ubeskåret videre til Ungdomsgården i Vamdrup. Hvorfor valget lige er faldet på Ungdomsgården i Vamdrup, vil være klart for enhver, som giver sig tid til at læse denne bog og høre Annas stemme.