Gordon Craig's history of the Prussian officer corps and its relationship with the state it served is a true classic of military history. The primary focus of the book is on the civil-military relations of the Prussian state beginning with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and tracings its evolution and influence to the Second World War when Hitler and the Nazis crushed the political influence of the officer corps. In addition, the book also addresses a number other issues in exquisite detail, including the formation of the German General Staff, the strategy developed before the First and Second World Wars, and the social conflict of the unified German states.

Craig's conclusions on the Prussian officer corps, their reforms and their performance are rather "standard" as far as historical interpretations go - but that is due in no small part to the fact that the author in many ways set the standard. The most salient theme of the book is that for all the German military got right in planning, strategy and innovation, it was never able to effectively solve the civil-military relationship issue, and it was that failure that led to the disasters of the First and Second World Wars.

In Craig's opinion, the opportunity for success was formulated but squandered early in 19th century. After the devastating defeat at Jena in 1807 at the hands of Napoleon, the once vaunted Prussian military had to assess how and why the disaster had occurred. The solution presented by the great military reformer Scharnhorst was the institutionalization of military genius in a centralized, elite general staff and the accountability of the armed services to the German people through an oath of allegiance to a republican constitution, rather than personal fealty to the monarch. The former was adopted and proved a stunning success, especially in the wars against the Danes, Austrians and French in 1866-1872. However, the conservative officer corps' unwillingness to embrace the more liberal reform set forth by Scharnhorst kept the military at odds with the nation it served and ultimately led to the military's political dominance in World War I and political subjugation in World War II.

If you have a keen interest in civil-military relations, German history, or the development of the General Staff system this book is simply indispensable.

This excellent volume was one of my textbooks in college, and I completely underestimated its importance for years. Being deeply involved and interested in Napoleonic military history and the campaigns of the Grande Armee, I have again started to use this book as there is now a 'revisionist' (read 'excuse')school of Prussian history beginning to emerge, revolving around the disastrous, for the Prussians, Jena campaign of 1806. For this period, and indeed for the periods up to the end of World War II, this book is invaluable.

The author uses myriad German source material for his references, and the story he tells is accurate, lively, and riveting. He knows his material, and his subject, and is unflinching in calling a spade a spade when necessary. While I am only interested in those portions relating to the Napoleonic period and its immediate aftermath, students of the Prussian/German Army will find this book invaluable.

Craig's bona fides are impeccable and he writes with authority, verve, and accuracy. His analysis of the Prussian Army's beginnings in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War set the definition and trends for what the Prussian Army would become, something apart from the people of Prussia and an army supported by a dynastic state. His demonstration of the effectiveness of the instrument under the Great Frederick, and of his policies, and those of his successors after the Seven Years' War, tell the tale of why is became nothing more than a 'parade ground facade', made up of half-foreign mercenary strength, which were two of the many reasons for its defeat and destruction by Napoleon and the Grande Armee in 1806.

The coverage of the Prussian reformers is also excellent, and dispels many myths, some of which unforunately are resurfacing under the guise of 'recent scholarship.' The War of Liberation from Napoleon was in actuality a war of liberating whatever German territory Prussia could grab in the chaos of the aftermath of French hegemony in western Germany (they took the Rhineland, most of Westphalia, and about half of Saxony, keeping the Saxon king, Napoleon's ally, as a prisoner of war). Additionally, force had to be used in Prussia to get the manpower required to fight the Grande Armee. The end of the tale is also excellently told-that of how the reformers, so necessary to Prussian resurgence, were treated and eventually disposed of politically, the Prussian monarchy almost completely retrenching to pre-1806 'values.'

All in all this is an excellent volume for students and historians of the period or of the Prussian/German army in particular. It is highly recommended.

Gordon Craig is the doyen of America's historians of Germany. Now retired from academic life, he is highly respected at home and in Germany, and is sought after for sound and temperate reviews and commentary in the media. No other survey has superceded The Politics of the Prussian Army, although it is now over 40 years old. (However, Gerhard Ritter's important, multi-volume "Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk" covers a lot of the same ground, with a more conservative viewpoint. There's an English translation) There are two basic reasons for this, I think. One is of course the book's very high quality. Craig became throughly familiar with all the most important source material available, and his fundamental conclusions are unquestioned: that the army was the keystone and guardian of the Prussian monarchy and its conservative social order, and always at work to hinder the progress of democracy and the achievement of popular over monarchical sovereignty. The authoritarian (N. B.: as distinct from totalitarian!) sympathies and traditions of the Prussian officer corps survived after the end of the Prussian monarchy in 1918 and carried on in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, and then in the Wehrmacht. Eventually the officer corps sold its soul to the "Austrian corporal" (Hindenburg's disdainful reference), Hitler, believing they could control him for their own ends, and that he was in any case the best available political option. But Hitler was nobody's fool, and his ultimate aim always remained to undermine the social authority and prestige of the regular army and in its place install himself, his party, and an absolutely fanaticized and obedient military force (the Waffen-SS). A sense of duty not to Hitler but to the German people and their civilization flamed up and extinguished in the assasination attempt of Oct 1944, led by Wehrmacht officers of the old Prussian nobility. Recent research (in English, cf. for example Omer Bartov) has tended to see more ideological sympathy for Nazism in the officer corps of the Wehrmacht more than Craig does here, though his focus is less on ideology than on the army's involvement in political machinations at the highest level. German historians and journalists are debating this issue at the moment, as new publications argue that the Wehrmacht committed war crimes on a greater scale, esp. on the Eastern front, than previously admitted, and that it fought unrestrained by professional ethos or conscience. A second reason for the book's longevity is that most of the Prussian military archive was destroyed in a 1945 bombing raid, which makes significant new discoveries impossible for the period before World War II. One has to rely on published sources, and as I noted, Craig read the most important of them. New histories of the Prussian army would be new interpretations of the same sources. One could, for example, to take a more sympathetic view of the army's 19th-century ideology and ethos - that it was defensive - in view of Prussia's vulnerable geographical position, the hostility of its neighbors, and the rise of the socialist movement. But in the early 20th century Germany was far and away the dominant power in Europe, and the question arises of what "went wrong" and led to Germany's (in my view) unprovoked attack and reckless strategy in World War I. Note: Despite the title, the book is really a history of the army after 1806, with an introductory chapter on the period before.

All of Tom Brown's books are written on many different levels. As a just-starting-out naturalist, I read most of Brown's books with interest, but the deeper I go into the naturalist's world, the more powerful messages I get between the lines.

The book offers many insights on modern man- most of all, the notion that if one simply lets the world drift by, with all sorts of damage, trouble, etc. being done (mind you, yourself doing none of the actual damage), the message is clear- Why didn't you do something?

Probably the most powerful message in the book is, "There are no small things." To quote Bruce Lee, if you throw a rock into a pond, you get ripples- soon the ripples cross the whole pond. Every action we do has implications, good and bad. Make your impressions positive and beneficial.

For those lucky enough to attend Tom Brown's school, reading any of his books after taking a class- no matter how many times you read them previously- it's like reading an entirely new book. There are countless messages and powerful teachings in The Quest, and I give it my highest recommendation.

Dear Sirs, I hope you reconsider your decision not to publish this review. On October 7, 1998, the NY Times reported on the biggest Ozone Hole yet seen. To quote the article: "Government scientists said today that the gap in the planet's ozone over Antartica was greater than the size of North America and was the largest ever observed." In addition, on August 13, 2000, a frontpage article in the Sunday NY Times reported on how a formerly benign fungus which has been found in the US from time immemorial was suddenly killing millions of acres of oak trees in California. The article ends on a puzzling note with scientist unable to explain why this disease had become so virulent. However, it is well known that UV radiation affects plants earlier than Humans and one documented effect of UV radiation is a weakening of the immune system. It is not a far stretch of the imagination to theorize that UV radiation may be responsible for this latest plant die-off. I hope you give these issues consideration. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Like many people, I used to read the grim newspaper accounts of environmental destruction and wonder what it all meant. Then, in the late 1980s Tom Brown published The Vision and in the final chapter of that book provided the first glimpse into a future most of us want to deny. Now here in The Quest, he lets out all the stops and makes plain for the first time that mankind may very well be doomed.

Brown reveals that as far back as 1962, Grandfather, his Apache Native American Teacher, had warned that the appearance of holes in the sky would mark the beginning of the end of mankind on Earth. Sunlight would become deadly killing everything it touched. Plants would shrivel up and die, crops would fail and starvation would sweep around the world. People would be hunted like deer for food. Many events would foreshadow the appearance of the holes but finally there would be a time of peace. This would mark mankind's last chance to reverse his endless destruction of the Earth. If instead, he concentrated on material gain, all would be lost and the end would come as surely as the Sun rises.

From this beginning, Brown takes us through a series of personal visions wherein he is transported to the future and sees for himself the horrors that await us. In one account, he visits a city where human limbs hang in shop windows and walking skeletons covered with sores roam the streets. Everything reeks with death and Brown watches as a roving band of armed men hunts down an abandoned child, and without remorse, guts and skins him like an animal. Brown makes it clear that this an America city and not some distant third world nation.

Not all the stories deal with the future. Brown relates his own efforts to deny what he knew and avoid taking up his Vision of teaching the ancient tracking and survival skills. At one point, he witnesses a brutal father rob his young son of a promising future. Grandfather then asks Tom what obstacles will stop him from fulfilling his vision ? The question is clearly not meant for Brown alone and foreseeing an excuse many of us will use to deny our share of responsibility Grandfather points to a graveyard and asks 'what will be the measure of your life Grandson? Will it be a lifetime of meaningless toil or one filled with purpose and meaning?'

This is by far Brown's darkest book but how does one sanitize such a horrifying account? There is no science here and those who believe ozone depletion is a figment of some environmentalist's imagination would be better off reading God's Last Offer, by Ed Ayres. Mr. Ayres presents related doomsday scenarios but with the science to back them. To those who are sensitive to the Earth, however Tom Brown's book needs no proof. Its truth is obvious.

The only question left open by Brown is when all this will take place? The question is important because many people will shrug off this account as part of some distant future. Although this book does not provide a timeframe a little reading in the scientific press will. It takes thirty years for CFCs to waft through the atmosphere and reach the ozone layer. If all CFC production ceased today, and it hasn't, we would still face 30 more years of degradation. According to NASA, there is already enough CFCs in the upper atmosphere to blow away 70% of the ozone layer. Take a equal amounts of ozone and CFCs, expose them to ultraviolet radiation and one can easily measure the rate of breakdown. The answer you will find is that we have a mere score and ten years left.

Grandfather made it clear that once the holes appear there would be no physical way to heal the Earth. Indeed, Time Magazine writing in the early 90s said that 'the entire world's fleet of 747s operating around the clock, 365 days of the year' could not replace a fraction of the ozone that has already been lost. But Brown does leave us with a ray of hope: if enough people become aware of what is happening, combined we can achieve what technology cannot. Brown is a great believer in the combined efforts of many people working together. Seldom does he speak of grand heroic acts. Each of us, doing a little, can achieve a lot. Be forewarned that if you read this book you will never be able to look at your children in the same way again. Most of us adults living today will not bear the brunt of this horrible future but our children and grandchildren will. If you read this book and do nothing, the Time of Peace will pass and you too, like Brown, will have to answer the screams of your children as they clutch at you in the grave yelling "YOU KNEW, YOU KNEW! WHY DIDN'T YOU DO SOMETHING?"

This book presents principles of growth that we find common across time and cultures. Highly recommended both as interesting reading material, as well as an opportunity to reconsider values, meaning (and all that other existential stuff) and our own perspectives through a differant path. In recent popular venacular, "getting out of the box" of western culture.

Nancy Rexin Evans did a wonderful job in this telling story of her Mother's courage. How brave Cecelia was in saving lives at the risk of losing her own, her strength was amazing, to face death every day and evil , an evil we all wish and hope to never see again, is her testament OF courage. I am of German heritage and it makes me sad to think how horrible all of these people were treated. If not for the love and courage of this brave woman, an entire generation and culture would have disappeared from the face of the earth forever. God Bless you Cecelia, up in Heaven and God Bless your daughter, Nancy, for having the courage to re-live this story so we all may learn a valuable lesson.

My name is Lacey and I am sixteen years old. I just finished reading "Testament to Courage" by Cecelia Rexin, translated by her daughter, Nancy Rexin Evans. Being partially of German descent, I felt a kinship with Cecelia and her strength as with my grandmother, but at the same time ashamed of how people could act like that, being of the same heritage, that could be so evil incarnate and have no regard for human life.       As I was reading this I tried to compare my world with Cecelia's, but nothing could compare. We live in a world today where we can go run to the store for soap, milk, bread, anything your money can buy, go to sleep whenever we want, have decent shoes, socks, clothing, toiletry items and much more. All the while Cecelia worked her hands to the bone, with no food, water and hardly any clothing to save not only her life, but others too. As she described what they wore, where and how they slept, what they didn't eat , it made me feel selfish of what I have and all the petty things I fight amoungest my siblings and others about.               As I was reading one night, I had just gotten home from a friends house and I had gotten something to eat, it was towards the end of the book where things got real bad and 2,000 people are crammed in a box with nothing to eat, drink, and no way to bathe and barely had a restroom ( actually it was a bucket ). I got so sick to my stomach. I stopped eating and started crying, as I felt so bad for these people. I felt as if this was partially my fault being from their descent, but it is not. We take life for granted when "Life" is all that some of these people wanted.

I found the memoirs of Cecilia Rexin to be incredibly moving and inspirational. It is heartwarming to read of the depth of soul, conscience and human dignity that can prevail even in the face of unspeakable evil and horror. It is a must for good people of all faiths and creeds.

I chose this book from among a dozen others prior to visiting Berlin (and the rest of Germany) this spring. Whereas the Lonely Planet Germany got us around the country, this guide kept us busy in Berlin. It's witty, well written and informative, kind of like the city itself.

Once again Timeout did not disappoint me. I only used this guide while I was in Berlin, and I was able to go and see everything that I wanted to do kein problem. The underground/metro may give you some headaches if you are not familiar with the German system...but I am currently living in Munich, and Berlin's bahn system is much better with only three zones(A, B, C) and the fact that there is an English(No english in Munich) translation means someone knows what they are doing. Some of my personal recommendations in Berlin...Victoria Park in Kreuzberg reminds me of a more peaceful, hardly any tourist Sacre D'Couer in Paris...Reichstag in the evening(go late, but not too late else they will tell you to come back tomorrow...it happened to me), small little red french fry shack on Orangenburger Str...100 to 150 meters on left side(world's greatest fries), and the east side gallery by Ostbahnhof.

First of all Berlin is my new fave city in the world, and I owe it in part to this great book which really made the whole trip very easy... Better than the other couple of books I bought along, and offered great sugestions.

Tom Heneghan's "UNCHAINED EAGLE" is the first-rate teaching book on contemporary Germany that many of us have been looking for. It is an excellent summary of Germany since unification, well-informed and engagingly written. It is a combination of authoritative writing and accessibility.

In the years and decades ahead, scholars from various disciplines will be writing many heavyweight histories about the huge complexity of issues involved during Germany's reunification process in the last decade of the 20th Century. For those readers who don't want to wait, then Tom Heneghan's book is an outstanding short-cut toward grasping what a turbulent decade this turned out to be, with all the challenges and changes it demanded of German leaders and society as a whole. Heneghan is a first-rate observer. He is concise and accurate in giving the larger picture of the social, economic and political - both internal and foreign - issues during and after reunification. But he also has an eye for the small telling details about how average Germans, east and west, had to scramble to try to understand how their country - and its role in Europe and beyond - was so rapidly changing before their own eyes. One might not agree with every point in Mr. Heneghan's book, but I think that he was right on-target with the underlying theme: that modern Germany has fully grasped the lessons of its recent dark history - Hitler and the Holocaust, the communist dictatorship in the east, the Cold War division - to become, finally, a normal country. In the future, the academics and historians writing about Germany's reunification decade will most likely find themselves referring again and again to Mr. Heneghan's book for pointers.

This is a riveting story about the dramatic happy ending to the 20th century in the European country that did most to shape it. Taking over as Reuters bureau chief for Germany in 1989, American reporter Tom Heneghan soon became an eye witness to the tearing down of the iron curtain and a well-connected chronicler of the fast paced events that are still shaping Europe and the West. With his eye for relevancy and concise reporting skills, Heneghan provides both scholars and the general public with a fascinating story and a shrewd analysis of Germany's ongoing struggle to find the right place for its past and a prosperous future in harmony with its neighbors. The biggest bump on the road to the future - reunification - rattled the country's snug position as Europe's economic growth engine in a caravan led by French and British political visions and a shotgun-riding US military. The author guides us through these developments with the familiarity of an insider and a balanced view honed through years of living and working in a variety of countries and cultures. He enlivens the story with behind-the-scenes anecdotes of the domestic and international schmoozing and scrapping that surrounded the changes he documents. Astute observations such as the tendency of German and Anglo/American post war baby boomers to draw different lessons from history (intolerance of war vs. intolerance of aggression) help us understand where today's generation of German leaders are coming from.

As a new US administration faces a Europe less in need of the old NATO protective canopy, and a more self-assured Germany asserts itself within that new Europe, the implication for future transatlantic ties should be of interest to more than just foreign policy buffs. Americans who grew up on a steady diet of WW II books and movies will find Heneghan's updated German story gripping as well as enlightening.

With that book, George H. Stein has done a great historical work. His conclusions about the Waffen SS are still valuable to this day, even if there are some small errors, generally concerning the military history of some foreign units (ie the 13 SS "handschar", the 14 SS Galizien or the 33 rd SS "Charlemagne").
I must admit that, this well documented book with a large amount of german official documents, gave me a good comprehension about this branch of the german armed forces.
Stein is right when he writes that the vast majority of Waffen SS soldiers weren't compromised in the genocide toward the european jews and, he is also right when he considers that many european 'volunteers' didn't fought for hitler's regime but rather for their homeland.

Probably the most valuable contribution of this book is the list of non-German nationalities represented in the SS, along with the approximate numbers of each nationality thus represented. Irrespective of whether or not all these units were directly involved in anti-Jewish "aktions", they all contributed to the Holocaust by furthering the German war effort and prolonging German rule over Europe. With all of the bad rap Poles get for being almost as anti-Semitic as the Nazi Germans, you would expect that there would be more Poles in the SS than any other non-German nationality. Surprise! There was not a single Polish SS unit in existence! (Though there may have been a few Polish individuals in other SS units, and then mostly Poles of German extraction (Volksdeutsche) as well as those of mixed Polish-German ancestry). Nor is it true that the Germans did not seek Polish collaborators: Early in the war Germans tried to get Polish volunteers as auxilliary staff for the concentration camps, and got not a single applicant. So the Germans could forget about recruiting ethnic Poles for the SS. Although there certainly were "little league" anti-Semites among the Poles, the "big league" anti-Semites were the other European nationalities who supplied volunteers for the SS. It is high time that Holocaust films and popular-level Holocaust educational materials get off the Poles' case and tell it like it ACTUALLY was.

This literary work provides a comprehensive yet concise historical narrative of the Waffen SS - the elite Nazi militarized wing of the vast Armed Forces of Germany. When on the offensive, the Waffen SS spearheaded Nazi Germany's military victories. Subsequently, in Germany's years of defeat, the idealogical fanatics of the Waffen SS fought to the bloody and bitter end to defend their Fuhrer and Fatherland. One dominant fact emerges overall from George Stein's book; and that is the fact of the existence of the thorough military professionalism of the Waffen SS and its soldiers and officers.

This book about Wannsee is a welcome surprise. It begins in the 1800s, with the financial machinations of those who would ultimately build it, the skullduggery of at least one man who inhabited it (and paid the ultimate price), this appears to be a conglomeration of writings by the author...and cleverly assembled into a single tale of people, their frailties, and the Jewish home that became the ultimate scene of the so-called Wannseee Conference (20 Jan 1942) where the Final Solution was announced by SS-Obergrueppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich to others of the government functionaries, the Old Guard, and senior officials of the Wehrmacht. While others have focused on that event, this book provides and illuminating context (written by a man named Lehrer, "teacher" in German, ironically). Any individual interested in the Holocaust, the development of the Third Reich from the decimation of Germany following the Treaty of Versailles, will find deep earth to uncover in this beguiling and deceptively short volume. Most highly recommended!

Hadassah Magazine Review-January 2002

Wannsee House and the Holocaust
by Steven Lehrer (McFarland, 196 pp. $32.50)

For most of the years after January 20, 1942, the three-story villa at Am Grossen Wannsee 56-58, on the shore of Berlin's popular recreation lake, was a footnote in the accounts of the Holocaust. Finally it merits its own book.

Steven Lehrer, a radiation therapist, has documented the history of the infamous site where the Third Reich officially implemented the Final Solution. His book is a companion piece to his forthcoming Hitler Sites (McFarland), which is a historical guide to 150 places in Germany, Austria and France associated with the life of Adolf Hitler.

Wannsee House traces the villa's background from its construction in 1914 by a prosperous Berlin merchant and its sale in 1921 to a right-wing industrialist to its purchase by Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich with plundered Jewish money as a vacation spa for Nazi security police. Ultimately, it was the location for the conference at which genocide was plotted.

"'God will give him blood to drink!' was the curse of a man hanged for witchcraft that fell upon the inhabitants of Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of The Seven Gables," Dr. Lehrer writes in his introduction. "The Wannsee Villa bears a certain eerie resemblance to Hawthorne's fictional creation, its inhabitants cursed by the evil period of German history to which the house stood witness."

The book, organized as a series of tightly written vignettes, emphasizes that the Wannsee Conference was not the administrative genesis of the Nazis' plans to annihilate European Jewry. Rather, it coordinated and consolidated what was already under way. "By the time of the Wannsee Conference...the Einsatz groups, operating behind the army frontlines, had murdered more than half a million people. Thus there was no need of a decision at the conference to commit mass murder. The Wannsee Conference facilitated the killing."

After World War II, the house became a center for political seminars, then a youth hostel. Fifty years later the building was inaugurated as a historical memorial. In its halls are photographs of Nazi persecution; one room is dedicated to Auschwitz.
The German decision to make the Wannsee house a shrine to victims is another part of the society's effort to remember its past. This book ensures that Wannsee will not be forgotten. --Steve Lipman.

by Steve Lipman The New York Jewish Week July 27, 2001. The language brought Dr. Steven Lehrer to Germany nearly 30 years ago. A radiologist, he had studied German in school, had become fluent, and wanted to see the country.

"I just had a fascination with it because of what happened there," says Lehrer. It means the Holocaust.

The Upper West Side resident kept going back because of curiosity. And because of his books.

"Wannsee House and the Holocaust," which describes the background of the villa on a Berlin lake where the Final Solution was plotted by a small group of Nazi leaders in early 1942, was published recently by McFarland & Co., a small firm in North Carolina. "Hitler Sites," a historical guide to some 150 places in Germany, Austria and France associated with Adolf Hitler's life and career, will appear later this year. It's also being published by McFarland.

Lehrer, 56, who works at the VA Hospital in the Bronx and teaches at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, calls both books the first in English on their topics.

His name on the Wannsee book identifies him only as Steven Lehrer - no Dr. "My medical degree didn't exactly relate to this [subject]," he says.

Working first at a typewriter, then later at a computer, Lehrer has written six books since 1979 on such topics as great medical discoveries, cancer treatments, and examining patients by their heart and lung sounds. He also wrote an introduction to a reissued collection of stories by American adventurer-hunter Frank Buck.

"I guess I'm interested in different things," Lehrer, a Los Angeles native, explains.

His interest in the Holocaust, in how a society where Jews apparently were fully integrated could produce the most-systematic genocide in history, sent him back to Germany some 15 times.

How? One answer, the doctor says, is the people. As a Jew - with a German-sounding name - Lehrer says he felt anti-Semitism, in Germans' eyes and in their words, wherever he traveled. "It hasn't changed at all" since World War II, he says.

First Lehrer did the "Hitler Sites" book. He visited the houses and the schools and the homeless shelters and the infamous Munich beer hall and the Berlin bunker where The Fuehrer supposedly died.

"It's difficult for people to understand how he did what he did," Lehrer says. "If you actually go and see these places" - many of them places of poverty - "you see what made him so angry and bitter. You see the level of anti-Semitism that still exists in these places."

The Wannsee book grew out of his research for the sites book. Lehrer toured Wannsee, a government-administered Holocaust memorial since 1992, five times. "Everything there was in German," discouraging foreign visitors. He couldn't find a book in English about the building and its history. So he decided to write one.

"I felt this was a place American Jews should know about," he says.

Based on research from more than a dozen German books and the on-line archives of German newspapers, he relates the history of the villa, the fates of the 15 participants in the Jan. 20, 1942 conference, and the largely unknown story of a Holocaust survivor who lobbied for the site's designation as a national monument.

The book reads like fiction.

"I like to tell a story," Lehrer says. "I've always been a great admirer of Barbara Tuchman," the late Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who related historical events through the eyes of their participants. "I've tried to use her approach."

Lehrer's next project is a study of "Jewish entertainers in the Holocaust." That means more trips back to Germany. "I have a reason," he says.

Lehrer doesn't encourage his readers to visit the places he has visited. "I think reading about it is enough."

This is and excellent text on German Infantry tactics of WWI (1914-1918). The Germans were always innovators when it applied to warfare, in WWI with the trench war at a stale mate the Germans formed these elite infantry "Stormtroop" units to infiltrate and breakthrough the lines to make way for their follow on troops. In this highly detailed account of the tactics employed by these Stormtrooper you will read how they were employed in mountain and fortress warfare, how they were organized and their special assault units. It is amazing to see a lot of these types of tactics are still employed today.

I have read this book three or four times since I first purchased it in 1989, and it never fails to impress me with the attention to detail and meticulously researched origins of modern infantry combat. The book covers events leading up to WWI that cause turmoil in the German High Command regarding the use of infantry, and how scrutiny of specific tactical employments in various battles in the early to mid stages of the war led to the first experimental stormtroop unit. The book goes on to document the unit's successes and the eventual adoption of special stormtroop units to spearhead attacks at the division level, and finally how complete divisions were organized in the stormtroop fashion. All the major personalities, weaponry, and tactics involved are described in detail, and while dramatic descriptions of the gory and macabre business of trench warfare are omitted, one can easily infer from the descriptions of sharpened entrenching tools and flame throwers how violent and terrible it was to be on the receiving end of one of those attacks. Author Gudmundsson's work interjects some objective scholarship on this subject in an age where it is not politically correct to acknowledge the German military's pioneering efforts in both world wars in establishing modern combined arms tactics.

An outstanding dissection of the tactics and organization that the German Army used in order to overcome the stalemate caused by trench warfare. The author clearly shows how the Sturmtruppen, utilizing surface and gap style tactics were able to achieve tactical success. The best book I have read so far this year.

Readers of this book must be going out of their way to avoid its nightmarish implications; even the author sidesteps them. Indeed, the book is mis-titled. It should properly have been called 'The Great Boycott and its Tragic Abandonment.' The transfer agreement was simply the rationale for the staggering historic blunder whereby Jewish organizations in the diaspora allowed themselves to be persuaded by Zionist forces to puncture the spontaneous and swelling worldwide Jewish boycott of German goods taking place in 1933, a movement with enormous and growing non-Jewish support as well, which, had it been supported rather than undercut by major Jewish organizations, could very well have toppled Hitler from power by the spring of 1934. Not only would this have spared 5-6 million Jewish lives, it would have spared another 45 million or so non-Jewish lives lost in the Nazi holocaust. I once believed like many that the Holocaust led to the fulfillment of Zionism; this book shows rather that it was the fulfillment of Zionism which led to the Holocaust. And it was all for nought. Israel would still have come into being and moreover would have had several million extra potential immigrants to draw from. This book is all about a simply horrific wordwide catastrophe that resulted from an incredibly BAD choice based on ethnic nationalism, and it is made instead to appear as merely a somewhat sordid chapter re. a road to nationhood that featured a few nasty bumps along the way. Mind-boggling!

This book is an amazing insight into Israel's tremendous historic drama--one obviously overlooked by others. Anyone who reads this book should be prepared for a whodunit style history, with gripping and tragic moments that stay with you long after the book is put down. No wonder The Transfer Agreement continues to thrill and inform people.

I originally read this book when it came out as a Macmillan hardback some years ago. The new Carrol Graf edition has some fascinating new insights by the author as of 2001. Undoubtedly this re-issue was timed to coincide with Edwin Black's other major book, IBM and the Holocaust. Although I have read both books, I am still gripped by the power and drama of Transfer Agreement--must reading for those who to understand the State of Israel, Zionism and its intersection with the Nazis. Powerful reading, this is history written as no one else can.

During the 1930's it was fashionable to include small photographs of Hitler attached to cigarette packages. You would then paste the photos sequentially into an album that included glowing textual references to Hitler and the Third Reich. I own the original version of this 1936 book and this new offering is considerably less powerful than the German version. Still, this is an effective way for people of our era to understand and grasp the enormous importance of propaganda in the Third Reich.

Goebbels and Hitler were masterminds of this art and the book personifies their mastery of mass persuasion. In the photographs, Hitler is presented as a "normal guy" in civilian clothes, surrounded by adoring children at his retreat on the Obersalzberg. He is also presented as the omniscienet Fuehrer, presiding over mass rallies in Nuremberg, mesmerizing the audience. The photographs, all by Hitler's official photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, are excellent representations of a nation gone collectively mad, seduced by Hitler's paralyzing charisma.

One cautionary note: this book is not written by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The text is incidental and was certainly not penned by Goebbels, who scarcely appears in this book. Despite the misleading title, this is an essential book for anyone with an interest in how Hitler effectively and brutally utilized propaganda in the 30's.

I've had this same book for many years only it was simply entitled "Adolf Hitler." I thought it was no longer in print until I finally found it here on Amazon. This is one of the most fascinating books I've read. It is a reproduction of the 1936 cigarette album many Germans had on their coffee tables during Hitler's years of victory. I have one of the original cigarette cards pictured in this book, and it is an excellent reproduction in detail and size. The book contains tons of photos (some in color) celebrating Hitler and the advancement of the German nation after he came to power. He is shown with children, giving speeches, relaxing (one photo has him peeling an apple), visiting wounded soldiers, at rallies, inspecting a Mercedes Benz racing car, visiting a factory, etc. Chapters celebrating different aspects of Hitler's successes and interests are provided by such important party members as Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels (he penned the preface and four of the 13 chapters, which may be the reason he is listed as the author), Architect Albert Speer (who, of course, would become disillusioned with Hitler during the war), Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach, Four-Year Plan head Fritz Todt, etc. There is no historical commentary, no afterward added from our benefit of hindsight, and no qualifications expect for the line "Lies told to the people" on the back. There is only the raw propaganda Germans were subjected to when the Nazis controlled the press and most of their thoughts and lives. One eerie piece is a memorial written by Rudolf Hess for SS Brigadefurhrer Julius Schreck who died in 1936. Schreck looks like a bloated Hitler with the characteristic mustache (decoy?). Of course, the whole book is eerie knowing where the happy people in these photos were headed. I am glad this book was preserved, translated into English, and put back into print so future generations can learn what powerful and all-encompassing propaganda can do to a nation.

I just got this book yesterday,and stayed up til midnight scan- ning it. The subject matter is repellent, the packaging and mar- keting of Adolf Hitler, for the German nation, but at the same time, it is fascinating to read. Dr. Goebbels utilized some very "modern" ideas to market Hitler, such as using paste-in stickers for booklets, showing Hitler using the then revolutionary concept of flying all over Germany to get to multiple sites for speeches. Giving the impression he was omnipresent, and concerned about all economic and age groups-where ever he popped up.

It is both horrifying to read, because you know what happens even tually, but strangely fascinating, watching how the devil's mar- keter packaged him, complete with glowing testimonies from people coming from all walks of life. In all the photo ops, der fuehrer is shown smiling benevolently, as ecstatic crowds greet him. Yes there are the requisite baby-kissing, attentively listening to children, etc.

So, if you wish to study the black side of marketing and packag- ing a political figure-read this book. And remember it's lessons well when you are asked to vote for someone that is packaged a little too smartly.....there lurks no friend, but a savage mask- ing behind a sheep's clothes.

Well worth the price for it's historical value, as well as the wrenching reality that one has seen such slick packing of polit- ical figures before-remember The Selling of the President?