Just a child during World War II, this poet was obviously affected deeply by the horrors around her. The majority of poetry I have read is from the hearts and souls of the "victims" of the war. Perhaps it is easy to forget that even the children of The Third Reich had no control over their suffering. Never dwelling too much on the misery, she dances us through those years allowing us glimpses at Germany from the other side. A child's vision of what was happening. I never paused reading this book, it flowed beautifully from one poem to another. Thank you Ms. Abikhalad, for the peek into another world.

This is a really excellent book. I took it with me to Germany last summer and found that it was amazingly helpful and full of great information.

The story of the Berlin wall: documented and researched thoroughly, detailing the struggle of the SED to preserve socialism. The book reads like a thriller and gives first-hand insights into the wheelers and schemers of the eastern german political scene. At the same time you can go through the emotional events of the wall coming down again. Why hasn't anybody translated this book in english yet?

This is not a neutral, unbiased review. Even before finishing The Cicero Spy Affair: German Access to British Secrets in World War II, I'd bought second and third copies to forward to author and scholar par excellence Richard Wires for autographing and forwarding to relatives as gifts. How many other reviews posted on this website -- or any other, for that matter -- are based on a copy of the subject volume autographed by the author at his home? I bet very few. This review is an appreciation, really. If you like the numerous excerpts I've included below, you will have to get the book to get more, as this is only a sampling.

I met Dr. Wires at Ball State University in 1975, when I was a European history major working for him as a student assistant when he was chairman of the history department. Four years later, he supervised my senior thesis in European intellectual history on Nietzscke, Malraux and Jaspers. Over the last twenty years, we've stayed in touch though postcards during travels, home visits, phone calls and letters. He is a quintessential intellectual whose history of the most remarkable spy episode during WW II, if not ever, warrants only one - and even that is tongue-in-cheek - criticism: stylistic inconsistency. Specifically, the book is only elegantly written where it is not eloquent. A typical passages of the latter characteristic are:

"In the extensive literature about espionage affairs and intelligence activities during World War II the episode known as Operation "Cicero" has gained prominence and popularity, because of its remarkable character and ironies. For more than four months during the winter of 1943-1944 the valet of Britain's ambassador in neutral Turkey photographed secret papers that his employer failed to safeguard properly; by selling his undeveloped films to a representative of German intelligence in Ankara for a reported total of $1.2 million the servant became history's then most highly paid spy. The access to one of its opponents' most important embassies marked Germany's outstanding achievement in an otherwise poor record of secret service work. But little came of the success. Many of the documents were extremely valuable, but the dictatorship never used the information effectively; the enterprising spy escaped being caught but soon discovered that his money was mostly counterfeit."

The prominence and popularity of the literature about Elyesa Bagna, a Turkish kavass, or valet, who brazenly photographed secret papers of Britain's ambassador to neutral Turkey and sold the rolls of film to a handler at the German embassy for $1.2 million in what mostly turned out to be bogus pounds during the height of WW II is extraordinary and "has become a staple of intelligence lore." Fortunately, the Germans made little effective use of their intelligence lodestar, owing to the intrinsic rivalries, conflicts and jealousies of Nazi totalitarianism, a maze of party, military and career figures, including ambassador and one-time Weimar chancellor Franz von Papen, one of the nearly-purged non-Nazis outmaneuvered at the onset of Hitler's takeover of Germany's interwar democratic attempt in 1933. Cicero even inspired a 1952 movie, Five Fingers, portrayed as a documentary that falsely shows German knowledge of D-Day (in truth, the Germans only learned the word "Overlord," meaning little more than a second Allied front against some target in the northwest part of so-called "Fortress Europe," i.e., the German occupied nations of the continent).

The legacy of the affair is in the lessons learned and the embarrassment of the British reluctantly coming to terms with the scope of the compromises even today, as demonstrated by the sluggish sales of The Cicero Spy Affair in the U.K. In the U.S., however, some stores have sold out their initial stock and each speaking engagement by the author generates further opportunities for spoken history telling, one of the highest praises a historian can receive.

Nearly twenty five years ago, a college history professor sitting next to me at a formal lecture by Dr. Wires said he was the only person he'd ever met who could write a speech, read it verbatim as an oration, and hold the audience's rapt attention as he infused us with knowledge, insight and expansion of whatever we knew, or thought we knew, to newer, higher levels. This reader genuinely "heard" the author on every page of The Cicero Spy Affair.

Writing accurate history requires meeting an exacting standard; Dr. Wires has exceeded it, though. Chief Justice Rehnquist demonstrated the difficulties in meeting this standard when he recently said that, if you think you know a subject, write a book on it and read the reviews. The Chief Justice's referenced book mentioned the dates of admission to the union of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, all wrong! He also referenced a Confederate who kept fighting after Appomattox who, in truth, fell at Shiloh three years earlier. The comment by the Chief Justice, who is certainly not mistake-prone but, rather, is blessed with a wry, dry sense of humor, illustrates the demanding standard of the historian's blend of craft, science and art. Even the most accomplished researcher can still err, but The Cicero Spy Affair appears, by all accounts, to be definitive.

Still not convinced you should read it? Your loss. Say you're not a twentieth century history, military intelligence specialist, read it anyway. Read it for its comprehensive research, documentation, analysis and explanations, and accompanying insightful photographs. Its passages on the vacillations and evasions of Europe's key neutral country, in light of Allied, Nazi and Soviet influences, the (thankfully) inefficient competitiveness of the German intelligence offices and the ineptitude of British security as a result of sleeping pills, piano playing and extremely careless handling of very secret writings all will amaze, enrich, entertain and astonish you. Read it.

A truly outstanding introduction to the politics of the period. Although this is not a recent work, it's interest lies in what it tells us about the general attitudes of the political establishment of the time quite apart from the Appeasement debate.

This book was wonderfully interesting, even for a person with a short attention span. It has the look of a magazine-- large pictures accompanying the text. The author writes about some of the more dramatic escapes from Colditz, the Germans' maximum-security WWII prison camp where all the best POW escape artists were held. The Germans faithfully recorded all escape attempts on film and the result is some great pictures, like the prisoner who dressed in drag to fool the guards (and was very nearly successful) or the prisoner who impersonated the camp electrician and was made to pose beside the real thing (in the picture, they look like twins.) I highly recommend it-- even if you're not interested in WWII escapes (and why not?) this book is fun.

Through most of the last half century, the Allied Strategic Air campaign against Germany has been criticized as ineffective. Alfred C. Mierzejewski suggests that this was only true till late 1944. After that, bombing became devastating.

In 1942 and '43, the U.S. and Britain attacked arms factories and housing respectively. The Germans kept fighting and war production kept going up.

In 1944, the Allies increasingly turned to synthetic petroleum plants and the German transportation system. The result was a catastrophic breakdown in all areas of the German war economy.

We'll never know what would have happened if the railyards serving the Ruhr's coal fields had been hit starting in 1940, but Mierzejewski makes a good case that it would have seriously weakened Germany much sooner, and quite possibly ended the war in 1944.

This is a very good study, well worth reading and thinking about. I recommend it to all my fellow armchair strategists.

I love these stories. One narrator buys a locomotive from a man in a bar. Another slowly crawls inside a guitar. In one story a man's life is celebrated beause of the seeemingly benign things he prevented from happening. These highbrow yarns are quirky beyond quirky. The humor is absurd but usually gentle. The author's voice sustains its power to hold the reader despite the filter of translation. What a shame that this little gem is out of print.

This overview of Third Reich Edged Weapons is a must for all collectors whether you have 1 or 100 in your collection. A very good overview of the different variations of dress daggers with clear and representative pictures of each. Also has chapters on swords, dress-bayonets, engravings, etc. The book also has a number of chapters that should be read by all collectors. Especially the one on counterfeit daggers. It is the sort of book you as a collector just can't put down and as a reference book it is worth its weight in gold. It also has a very useful listing on RZM numbers. Good thing it is card-cover because I can see wearing this book out if it was paper-back. The book could possibly have had more color photographs, and a more updated overview on values.