German Military Memoirs

An enthralling story that vividly resurrects the web of everyday Germans who resisted Nazi rule.

We’ve all had our humble beginnings, and we seemed so innocent as children. However, for some people, given their childhood and circumstances, and then the political or war-driven environment they face, it goes completely wrong. Such was the case for Rudolf Hoess, a cruel, murderous Nazi commander who had been brainwashed by the system that justified his aid in exterminating millions of Jews. Hoess was the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp for the longest time. Learn more about what Rudolf Hoess did and why he has become so infamous.

Dies sind die Tagebuchaufzeichnungen eines Panzersoldaten, welcher von 1944 bis 1945 im Panzer-Regiment 25 gekämpft hat. Schonungslos beschreibt er die Rückzugsgefechte durch Ostpreußen, die Kämpfe im Kurlandkessel und das Leid der Zivilbevölkerung. Der Autor schrieb diese Zeilen anhand seiner Tagebuchaufzeichnungen aus der Kriegszeit im Nachkriegsdeutschland nieder, und machte diese dann dem Kreise der überlebenden Kameraden zugänglich.

Almost all accounts of D-Day are told from the Allied perspective, with the emphasis on how German resistance was overcome on June 6, 1944. But what was it like to be a German soldier in the bunkers and gun emplacements of the Normandy coast, facing the onslaught of the mightiest seaborne invasion in history? What motivated the German defenders, what were their thought processes - and how did they fight from one strong point to another, among the dunes and fields, on that first cataclysmic day?

The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a 10-day journey across the front lines of World War II from Germany back to Paris. Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.

Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann - names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margarete, Lina, Ilse, and Gerda. These are the women behind the infamous men - complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families, and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself.

The first book of D Day Through German Eyes has fascinated listeners around the world with its insight into the German experience of June 6, 1944. Now, book 2 contains a completely different set of astonishing German testimonies from the same archive. These newly translated eyewitness statements by German veterans show the defenders to be determined but psychologically insecure, often deluded in their thinking, and all too human in their shock at the onslaught they faced.

In 1945, Ditha Bruncel was living with her parents in the small town of Lossen, in Upper Silesia. Close Jewish friends had vanished, swastikas hung from every building, and neighbors were disappearing in the middle of the night. At the same time, more than fifteen hundred British and Commonwealth airmen were being marched out of Stalag Luft VII. Twenty-three of these prisoners managed to escape from the marching column—and by chance hobbled into Lossen. One among them, Warrant Officer Gordon Slowey, was the man Ditha was destined to meet and fall in love with.

Written from the "other side" and told as much as possible through the words of the veterans, this is an important book on one of the most controversial campaigns of the Second World War.

Until recent years, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals from Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, and Spain who served voluntarily in the military formations of the German army and the German Waffen-SS. In Kaisergruber's book, the listener discovers important issues of collaboration, the apparent contributions of the volunteers to the German war effort, their varied experiences, their motives, the attitude of the German High Command and bureaucracy, and the reaction to these in the occupied countries.

Heinz Knoke was one of the outstanding German fighter pilots of the Second World War. This vivid firsthand record of his experiences has become a classic among aviation memoirs and is a fascinating counterbalance to the numerous accounts written by Allied pilots.

It is sometimes difficult to remember that in war there are innocents on all sides who suffer. German citizens who had no connection to the atrocities committed by their countrymen nonetheless endured great hardships because of them.

When Guy Sajer joins the infantry full of ideals in the summer of 1942, the German army is enjoying unparalleled success in Russia. However, he quickly finds that for the foot soldier the glory of military success hides a much harsher reality of hunger, fatigue and constant deprivation. Posted to the crack Grosse Deutschland division, with its sadistic instructors who shoot down those who fail to make the grade, he enters a violent and remorseless world where all youthful hope is gradually ground down, and all that matters is the brute will to survive.

Panzer Gunner is a unique memoir of a Canadian serving in a German armored division. Bruno Friesen explains what it was like to fight in a tank on the Eastern Front and provides details on the battlefield performance of the Panzer IV tank. Six months before World War II erupted in 1939, Bruno Friesen was sent to Germany by his father in hopes of a better life. Friesen was drafted into the Wehrmacht three years later and ended up in the 7th Panzer Division. Friesen experienced intense combat against the Soviets in Romania, Lithuania, and West Prussia.

Germany's success in the Second World War was built upon its tank forces; however, many of its leading generals, with the notable exception of Heinz Guderian, are largely unknown. This biographical study of four German panzer army commanders serving on the Eastern Front is based upon their unpublished wartime letters to their wives. David Stahel offers a complete picture of the men conducting Hitler's war in the East, with an emphasis on the private fears and public pressures they operated under.

Erhard Steiniger joined his Wehrmacht unit on October 12, 1940, as a radio operator, a role which required his constant presence with troops at the Front, right in the midst of combat. On June 22, 1941, he accompanied his division to Lithuania where he experienced the catastrophic first day of Operation Barbarossa. He later witnessed intense clashes during the conquest of the Baltic islands and the battles leading up to Leningrad on the Volkhov and Lake Ladoga.

Fueled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to listen to dissenting voices, Adolf Hitler seemed an unlikely leader, and yet he commanded enormous support and was able to exert a powerful influence over those who encountered him. How did Hitler become such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the question at the core of Hitler's Charisma. Acclaimed historian and documentary filmmaker Laurence Rees examines the nature of Hitler's appeal and reveals the role his supposed "charisma" played in his success.

In 1944, Benito Mussolini's daughter, Edda, gave Hitler and her father an ultimatum: release her husband, Galeazzo Ciano, from prison, or risk her leaking her husband's journals to the press. To avoid the peril of exposing Nazi lies, Hitler and Mussolini hunted for the diaries for months, determined to destroy them. Hilde Beetz, a German spy, was deployed to seduce Ciano to learn the diaries' location and take them from Edda. Drawing from in‑depth research and first-person interviews, Mazzeo gives listeners a riveting look into this little‑known moment in history.

This book presents the remarkable personal journals of German soldier Hans Roth. Writing as events transpired, he recorded the mystery and tension as the Germans deployed on the Soviet frontier in June 1941. In these journals, battles are described in "you are there" detail, as Roth wrote privately, as if to keep himself sane, knowing that his honest accounts of the horrors in the East could never pass through Wehrmacht censors.

März 2028: Russische Truppen erobern die estnische Kleinstadt Narwa und die Insel Hiiumaa in der Ostsee. Der Angriff auf das Baltikum hat begonnen. Jetzt rächt sich, dass Europa nach dem Ende des Krieges in der Ukraine nicht aufgerüstet hat und wichtige Fähigkeiten fehlen.