Germany Books

This has to be the best book ever written in english of the subject of the Luftwaffe. This book covers the day by day history of the most famous and sucsessful unit facing the onslaught of the British and American forces during WW2.Included are a complete list of all victories and losses. This alone is worth the price. I only hope future histories are this indepth. Recommended to all. THANX Don.

Whether you are a fan of Don Caldwell's previous works on the Luftwaffe, or a first-time reader, you will not be disappointed by his latest effort. Caldwell is able to provide a wealth of detail and a highly readable narrative at the same time. His research is excellent, and the lives and deaths of the fighter pilots are presented with an unusual depth of realism. Mr. Caldwell continues to be among the top aviation historians writing today.

A Classic on the Luftwaffe! It is without a doubt one of the "must have" books for anyone interested in the fighter operations of the Luftwaffe. It is full of previously unpublished pictures and narratives by surviving Luftwaffe pilots. At its price, it is a bargain

after reading this book you can't help but feel for this man... the tremendous upheavels he went through always worried about religious persecution but escaping it because of his position at court... but it gives a genuine feel of 'escaping by the skin of one's teeth'

then his many moves from city to city, taking family with him, all the deaths of family including children he endured and always religiously devout, believing in God and not one creed or another, always putting his heart and soul into his labors...

a remarkable story or a pious, honest, hard working, brilliant man of his times... it would have been a deep honor to know this man

Kepler is the middle third of the great triumvirate of physicists that led humanity from a point where little was known about planetary motion to where nearly all was known. The first was Galileo Galilei and the last was Isaac Newton. Kepler contributed the three laws of planetary motion that are now named after him. They are:

*) The planets follow elliptical orbits about the sun.
*) The line connecting the planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas over equal times.
*) The square of the period of an orbit divided by the cube of the mean distance is a constant.

While Copernicus published the first convincing heliocentric theory, it was Kepler who gave the theory a mathematical foundation based on the years of accurate observations made by Tycho Brahe. It was his work that convinced the learned world that the planets orbited the sun.
When reading the history of Kepler, it is astonishing that he managed to be successful. He suffered from poor health, petty jealousies, lack of income, the death of some of his children, major religious persecution, plague and a war that devastated central Europe. He lived in a time of major religious conflict as the Reformation had moved strongly forward and the Counter-Reformation was responding violently. Kepler was a Protestant and remained so under the real threat of banishment and even death. Approximately one third of the people in central Europe perished during the widespread destruction of the thirty years war, which went on around Kepler. He was once trapped in a city placed under siege by Protestant forces and when told he must convert to Catholicism or be banished, he chose to leave.
Through it all, Kepler continued his intellectual pursuits, sometimes down false paths, but through perseverance and dedication, he was able to solve the puzzle of planetary motion. This story is not so much about the physicist persona of Kepler, it is a tale of triumph over tremendous obstacles where the result was of great benefit to all of humanity. This is a good, direct story of Kepler, his life and the environment he toiled in. I strongly recommend it as a textbook about Kepler, the history of his times and how modern physics was developed. Very little background in physics is needed to understand the presentation.

This piece does a great job at showing how Kepler changed astronomy and how it changed him.

this was a great book! While you definitely have to be into history a little bit to enjoy the book the amazing glory that is given to God is wonderful! Definitely would recommend it to others.

I am a lover of history. This book is packed full of it. I learned things I never knew had happened. I recommend this book to those who love history and want more knowledge about World War Two and the Holocaust.

I really enjoyed the book, couldn't put it down. God has a purpose for our life, and it was awesome to read how God used Private Galione in World War 2. Mary Nahas did an excellent job writing her dad's story. The ending of the book was my favorite part. To God be all the glory!!

This is a readable series of lectures on Kant by a man who was a genuine anti-philosopher.

As in many texts of the Frankfurt School, the Marxism is recreational. As Rolf Wiggershaus' history of the Frankfurt School indicates, Adorno and especially Horkheimer were always careful to sideline Marxist analysis. References to the "material basis" of apprehension of space and time, and of Kant's system considered historically, seem to be muted.

A key to understanding Adorno on Kant is an understanding of the negative concept of reification.

It is hard to foreground a negative concept, rigourously cancelling out invalid pictures of the world...including the image that arises from the very phrase, picture of the world, which is itself reified and not a little sad, in that the subject becomes a lonely visitor to an otherwise deserted sort of cinema on a senior citizen's discount.

The unconscious habit of reification is a feature of the "educated" elite of a postmodern late capitalism, in that in recent years and since Adorno's death in 1970, this class has shifted from reproducing itself by labor to commodifying, packaging and peddling reified forms of its labor. As opportunities for the so-called "chattering class" to work in media and government have declined in Western societies, increasingly the educated elite must marketize its production.

Of course, this process destroys new opportunities since the dominant form of any one intellectual commodity, while not identical to similar "products", has a tendency through extra-market means to eliminate competition. These extra-market means range from network externalities in the computer business to personal brutality (up to and including force and fraud) on the part of some entrepreneurs.

Nonetheless it is our responsibility to realize that here Adorno is trying to express a truth that is not (as it is pictured by incompetent, which is to say modal, professors of philosophy) at all captured by a reified IMAGE of the mind, a wall straight out of Pyramus and Thisbe (in Adorno's book, the "block"), and the Kantian things in themselves.

For Adorno, subjectivity and objectivity do not represent independent categories (this seems to be a theme of his late work.) Descartes, starting with an extreme subjectivity, felt compelled to logically derive an objective world. This while securing objectivity as far as Descartes, and perhaps his Mom, were concerned, made it in terms of an ontological pecking-order logically derived from the cogito. But the entire edifice's very danger of collapse becomes to the artisan philosopher a source of continued unease.

Adorno instead proposes a negative critique. What if subjectivity and objectivity are neither irreducible the one to the other?

It seems that for Ted, subjectivity's objective content and its synthetic apriori features are a necessary feature of subjectivity, and the continuous apprehension of an objective reality by a mininum of one subject mean that the two categories are both necessary, do not presuppose each other and form an organic unity.

Moreover, another necessary feature of subjectivity is its shareablility as opposed to dreams and other fugue states. Western philosophy has been starting with Descartes has been overly concerned with nondefault states as a sort of clever dodge and one reflects on the fondness of philosophy graduate students, during the collapse of American analytic philosophy during the 1970s, for the bottle. Recent philosophy, perhaps due to muscular feminism, has restored the default state of healthy consciousness to center stage without too much back-talk from surviving members of the analytic tribe, who are too hung-over to come up with any more clever counter-examples.

Furthermore, if we deny that we are talking about an empirical I as studied by cognitive neuroscience, dreams and fugue states automatically become of less interest. For the most part, the phenomenological world consists of me when NOT in any form of fugue state, and my fellow citizens NOT in any form of fugue state. And even if we bracket out considerations of existence the world contains history in the form of multiple generations of people passing through different stages of life.

A difference between discourse about the "I', the ego, the subject, in English-American analytic philosophy, and the way it is discussed in Kant and the philosophers after him including Adorno, is that the "I" of the latter has a normative content. An older era would say a certain amount of healthy-mindedness is found in this "I" as a necessary feature for this is the only way we can generalize this "I" so that statements about it can apply to ALL "I's."

A common feature of fugue states, from the brown study to the full-bore alcoholic toot, is the destruction, first of intersubjectivity and then subjectivity. I am well aware that it would be pernicious to merely assume healthy-mindedness and this entire area is in need of further research.

We can find transcendental arguments in the strangest places as in the case of discourse ethics, and the need for citizens (to be citizens) to be assured of minimal political and economic rights.

For example, a feature of American debates on health insurance happens to be neglect of its transcendental character. If we presuppose a political and independent sphere consisting of Lockean subjects with strong rights and responsibilities, then the physical liquidation (even though gradual, and no-one's responsibility) of these subjects because, transcendentally, our concern.

This is to arrive (I believe) at Husserl's strong protest against the accusation that Husserl was an empirical psychologist when Husserl described shared ideas.

A Continental tradition of which Adorno and Husserl are a part declares that there are, over and above the empirical contents of our minds, intersubjective concepts including ethical and artistic concepts. Husserl was not a psychologist maudit, nor was Kant a cognitive neuroscientist, because in Husserl's case Ideas could not be abstracted from the content and in Kant's case the subject's apprehension of reality was not guaranteed by an empirical nexus.

Kant's world is established by declaring victory; not so much the triumphant cry I am but the greater shout it is.

This work completes Adorno¡¦s metacritique on modern German transcendental idealism for the English speaking world. Taken with Negative Dialectics, The Jargon of Authenticity, The Three Studies on Hegel, and Against Epistemology, this text unlocks the unique tradition of Kant and Hegel and Husserl and Heidegger. Adorno¡¦s reading weaves immanently between positivism, idealism, Neo-Kantianism, phenomenology and ontology to present Kant in a unique manner that is particularly interesting to the postmodern debate. Adorno, who holds to modernity and the notion of reason in Kant (linked to a dynamic use of Hegelian dialectics), brings Kant back into the debate on reason for contemporary understanding. Adorno will show the relation between metaphysics and ideology through metaphysical indifference. An indifference which Kant¡¦s philosophy opposed.

Taking an interest in philosophy in an attempt to characterize the elements of cognition that drive an entire society in directions that it would never contemplate going, if only the always already unthunk could control events as thoroughly as groups maintain strict limits on the options they are willing to consider, I'm having trouble identifying an element of irony that could make my review of KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON by Theodor W. Adorno suitable for the comic times in which we live. First of all, the book is not about politics, however much Adorno wishes to characterize Kant's philosophy as seeking a form of enlightenment that served the interest of "bourgeois resignation," (p. 6) in opposition to the authority of other absolutes while expressing "the enthusiasm of the youthful bourgeoisie which has not yet started its never-ending complaints that reason cannot solve anything, but which still feels confident of its ability to achieve things by virtue of the power of its own reason" (p. 54). At the top of this heap of ideas is autonomy, a situation in which "the judge and the accused are one and the same; that the authority that is free and independent simultaneously represents the law. This is the founding conception of his entire universe." (pp. 54-55).

Then the tradition of bourgeois rationalism forms a contrast with "the irrationality of the whole, that is to say, the blindness of the forces at work, and with that the inability of the individual to determine his own life in accordance with reason, remains intact." (p. 64). Because Kant desires to rid metaphysical thinking of mythologies that have typically been adopted as absolutes, this form of certainty as the ultimate foundation for cognition is blocked. "In this sense Kantian philosophy is one that enshrines the validity of the non-identical in the most emphatic way possible. It is a mode of thought that is not satisfied by reducing everything that exists to itself." (p. 66). Comedy might be more emphatic with some *Excuse*me* regarding offensive pretensions, but this book, with lectures delivered from 12 May 1959 to 30 July 1959, translated from the German by Rodney Livingstone, with Editor's Notes (pp. 238-281) by Rolf Tiedemann, provides a philosophical context for evaluating how well Kant's book, THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON can be understood in our own times.

The English translation of CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON by Norman Kemp Smith (1928) has been used to match the quotes by Adorno, but after mentioning the KANT-LEXICON (ed. Rudolf Eisler) in Lecture Six, notes 7, 8 and 11 for that lecture distinguish which sentences in some quotations "are Eisler's summary of Kant's position." (p. 248). The translation by Norman Kemp Smith has been identified by Raymond B. Blakney in AN IMMANUEL KANT READER (1960) as being literal, which "reproduces the original, as exactly as possible, idiom and all, in the vocabulary of the receiving language." Adorno's lectures are much easier to read than the J. M. D. Meiklejohn translation of THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON at the beginning of Great Books volume 39, Kant. The sections numbered 1 through 23 of the First Division of Transcendental Logic were the easiest to locate for comparison with comments in the lecture. Philosophy is a field that benefits from having many points of view, but Kant is rarely clear when he attempts to use terminology which combine them all in the same sentence. Adorno attempts to explain what Kant was trying to say, "the central concept that his critique of reason is based on, the concept of the transcendental" (p. 16). Other translations might seem to miss the point, or perhaps Meiklkejohn merely paraphrased all of section 16 into this single paragraph:

*The manifold content given in a sensuous intuition comes necessarily under the original synthetical unity of apperception, because thereby alone is the unity of intuition possible (Section 13). But that act of the understanding, by which the manifold content of given representations (whether intuitions or conceptions) is brought under one apperception, is the logical function of judgements (Section 15). All the manifold, therefore, in so far as it is given in one empirical intuition, is determined in relation to one of the logical functions of judgement, by means of which it is brought into union in one consciousness. Now the categories are nothing else than these functions of judgement, so far as the manifold in a given intuition is determined in relation to them (Section 9). Consequently, the manifold in a given intuition is necessarily subject to the categories of understanding.* (GREAT BOOKS, 39, KANT, p. 52).

Maybe that is just missing a Note that was added to the second edition in 1787, from which Adorno stated that Kant "maintains in one of the decisive passages of the book that it (namely the synthetic unity of apperception) is the highest point to which he has `attached' his entire philosophy." (p. 16). The 2001 note on the 1787 note states:

"Adorno has in mind here the Note to Section 16 of the Transcendental Deduction in which Kant states: `The synthetic unity of apperception is therefore the highest point to which we must ascribe [heften = attach. Trans.] all employment of the understanding, even the whole of logic, and conformably therewith, transcendental philosophy.' CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, p. 154, B 134." (n. 6, p. 242).

Reading Kant is not likely to be a pleasure until the reader has some reason to think that we know what it means, but the comic view of all this might be far more advanced than what most readers will find in these lectures. One joke in this book is originally by Nietzsche, with "the pun on the American expression `backwoodsman' when he described Kant as an `otherworldsman' [Hinterweltler]." (p. 109). Another note says Nietzsche might have been thinking of someone else and THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA in The Portable Nietzsche has a less specific, "On the Afterwordly." TPN, p. 142). Adorno ought to get credit for besting Nietzsche's joke.

Kollwitz's lithographs captivate any feeling viewer. Until there's some way to render raw emotion on paper, especially the many different sorrows of war and poverty, her monochrome lithos approach that goal most closely. That makes it easy to forget her mastery of other media and other feelings, too. This book broadens a reader's view of this wonderful artist.

The cover image, "Female Nude with Green Shawl," starts to break the reader free from the easy stereotype of Kollwitz. It adds color to her commonly dark palette, and presents a simple celebration of womanly elegance. "Self-portrait laughing" and "Lovers" show that she could not only express joy, but depict different kinds of it. Woodcuts, etchings, charcoals, ink and wash, and wonderful pastels each display her drawing ability in different ways. "Tower of Mothers," "Mourning Parents," "Lovers," and other sculptures show her skill in bronze, granite, and plaster. Kollwitz's skills range far beyond what she's best known for, and this book helps us appreciate the breadth of that ability.

Given so many reproductions of her work, lovingly printed on bright, dense paper, a reader like me becomes easily distracted away from the helpful and informative text of the book. Three long essays, a catalog, timeline, and bibliography invite the reader to various kind of commentary, both in historical fact and in considered opinions. Her personal story as woman, mother, and artist as well as her work deserve attention; this gorgeous volume is a wonderful way to give her work and life some of the attention they deserve.

-- wiredweird

I am slowly but surely collecting books on Kollwitz. One of my art professors compared what I was doing to her work and I have since become a nicely obsessed student of everything she did and I read everything I can get my hands on.

This book is one of the best. First of all, I didn't have to get out my German lexicon and second, the narratives that go along with the many pictures are full of detail that you don't get in the smaller books. One of the major improvements that you will see is in her work, "Woman with Dead Infant." In many books it appears that the woman's face is melting in to the child, but in Prelinger's narrative, you see much more detail of the nude, vulnerable woman and her child with little covering up his bones.

She has many works-- mostly lithographs-- in colour, which is a delight after havimg only seen her work in other books as black and white.

One of her works, "Man Kneeling before a Female Nude" shocked me by it's erotic overtones, just as "Self Portrait en face, Laughing" shocked me with it's joy.

Kollwitz was very much a versatile artist and this book shows that. Any fan of Kollwitz will appreciate the narratives that go with the pictures, and for anyone who isn't a fan-- this book will make them fans!

This is one of the most beautiful books to look at I have even owned - it is highly recommended. The line drawings are accompanied by text rich in information about this woman's life and inspiration. Plates are excellent.

This is a horror story- not in the cinimatic slasher/monster sense, but in the sense that it is jarring to think that these things REALLY happened to a REAL person. It is a slow-motion documentary of one girl's transformation from a bright and promising child to the walking cadavar of a heroin addict. I read this first when I was fourteen and living in Dortmund, Germany. No anti-drug message in any commercial, movie, or book has ever come close to affecting me to the extent that this novel has.

If you did not read this book yet , read it now.This is one of those book that leaves you without a coment.When I read WIR KINDER VOM BAHNHOF ZOO I tought a lot about it. It is a very good book and it is so not boring.I think this book should be in every school.In nowdays,young people think that drogs are fansy.When you read the book you will see that DROGS CAN KILL YOU!!!

Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo is the best book I have ever read in my life! I think I already read it 8 times! And everytime I read it, I figured out more and more, about Christiane's life! And about the other people! I think it's good to publish books like this one. Its pretty interesting, and you can learn more about drugs! You can see how it affects people, and what some have to do to get the money for their drugs! She sold her body to get the money for her addiction! And it all started with smoking wheat, and then taking pills, ...and then being addicted to heroine. She had a very hard time. When they moved, when her parents divorced,... But she wasn't just a dumb teenager. You can see that very often, when you pay attention to the book! She was actually pretty smart, and cared about people, but while caring a lot about others, she forgot to care about herslef! She always wanted to be a good girl. As well there were times, when she was like most of the kids in her age. Doing stupid stuff! But everybody does/did that, and its not wrong, it's just a hard age! If Christiane wouldn't have found her boyfriend "Detlef", the story might be very different! She did a lot of things just like he did, she talks about that in the book very often! And because he was at the "Bahnhof Zoo", she was there everyday ,too. And that's the place where they get the money for their drugs, and their heroine. She tried a few times to get rid of her addiction. But if you were addicted to it once, you have a hard time to stay away from it! She was "clean" for a long time, but she still could not stay away from it a lot of times! I think everybody should read this book, about that little girl which got addicted to drugs, got money for them by selling her body, and didn't have a real, nice, and most of the times, funny life, like a lot of other teenagers, without being afraid of to look for money for the next "shot" of heroine.

Its not difficult to find numerous books recounting the exploits of allied raiding forces of the second World War. Such units as the British Commandos, Long Range Desert Group, Special Air Service, C.O.P.P., U.S. Army Rangers, and U.S. Marine Corps Raiders are all well represented, many of those histories being first-hand accounts of those who participated.

Many people who are generally well-read on the topic, however, are unaware that Germany and some of the Axis nations, also formed specialized units. In this gem of a volume, Mr. Lucas recounts the most notable missions of Germany's elite formations.

The book is divided into four parts: ground, naval(Kriegsmarine), air(Luftwaffe), and political special forces.

Ground Forces:
You will read about the Brandenburg Division, a Wehrmacht army unit composed of troops having linguistic and cultural expertise from various regions of the world, mainly Europe and Africa. Their primary task was to infiltrate a targeted nation prior to invasion, disguised as foriegn civiilians or military personnel. They conducted sabotage, raids, and reconaissance for the invasion force.

Otto Skorzeny's S.S. group is featured, with emphasis on the famed mission to rescue Mussolini, as well as their Brandenburg-like actions against allied forces in the Ardenne.

Naval forces:
Inspired by Prince Borghese's Italian naval commandos, the Kriegsmarine developed its own capability, featuring frogmen, mini-submarines, and explosive motor-boats.

Luftwaffe:
Most readers are probably familiar with the Fallschirmjaegers (paratroops). They possessed elite aviation units as well. Here we read about Sonderkommando Elbe and KG200. The Germans, in their last desperate defense, made their own attempts at the Kamikaze concept of their Japanese allies.

Political forces:
Lastly, The Werewolf and the Freikorps groups are featured. The Werewolf were primarily fanatical resistance-fighters and terrorists, who exerted a presence in occupied Germany for a few years even after 1945. Membership was composed of unrepentant Nazis, most often former S.S. men.

The Freikorps were generally composed of Nazi party loyalists of varied background and capability. Rarely were their members of the traditional special-operations type, but mostly civilians, carrying out local guerrilla operations against the invading allies.

This book is one of the most deep and intriguing looks at the tantalising 'James Bond' exploits of the German army during WWII. From undercover infantry detatchments, to human torpedoes and midget submarines, to piloted missiles and kamikaze jet fighters, and finally to the German version of the French resistance, Lucas delivers concise, detailed but thrilling accounts of the Germans amazing efforts to stem the tide of the Allied forces. Every branch of the armed forces are looked at, in some form, and the tales of men and machines responsible recounted, often with comic, and tragic results. The ideas presented by the Germans were just as, if not more inventive than the Allied efforts, but against the mighty Allied war machine, could only hope to prolong the war, never win it, despite the maniacal belief and faith put into the programmes by the ailing Fuhrer. This is a great book, even if you're not a fan of military history, and it's interesting just to see the ideas that laid the basis for action movies for years to come. A must read.

This is another of the dozen plus books on my WWII shelf written by the incomparable, James Lucas. When I see his name in a bookstore or catalog, I quickly look to see if I have the book. He and Charles Whiting have become two of my favorite authors where WWII is concerned, each author having themselves served in WWII.

I've had this hardcover volume for several years, purchasing it from The Military Book Club when it was their selection back in 1985. May possibly have been the very first book I found by James Lucas.

In this study James Lucas concentrates his efforts on the elite German troops who played an important part in the early part of the war, especially prior to the invasion of both Poland and Czechoslovakia. These German Special Force's men not only infiltrated these countries but set up pre-invasion bases. Nothing would have gone as smoothly as it did without their service and efforts. As the war continued they were to see use in many other tasks, some late in the war falling into what can only be termed suicide missions.

Two of the more interesting sections of this book for me have to do with Sturmbannfuhrer or SS-Major Otto Skorzeny who led many missions of the special forces of Germany, some that seem beyond belief, even today. He was active, for example, in the rescue of Il Duce, the Ardennes campaign, and most interestingly, the highly secret KG200 activities.

The second item of interest here concerns the Werewolf organizations in the very last months of the war, these were designed as youthful guerrilla/terroist movements to disrupt the allied entry into the heartland of Germany.

Hopefully all of these items mentioned will be of equal interest to you acting as a prompt to take a look at this fine book on German Special Forces of World War Two. The book also contains many charts, tables, and diagrams, fully illustrated with over 50 photographs.

Recommended.

Sehr spannend! Ich habe dieses Buch vor 7 Jahren gelesen und war vom ersten Kapitel beeindruckt. Das Geheimnis der Zauberschule, die sich in der Mühle befindet, und die tödliche Gefahr, die dazu kommt, versichern, dass keine Minute beim Lesen langweilig ist.

This book is a treasure. It is timeless and enchanting. It plays with our imagination and takes our mind to a land of past where superstition was still part of every day life. It is enticing and thrilling and although written for children, it is just as good a read for adults.
I have travelled to the Lausitz on the German-Czech border only because I had to go find the original locations. Due to the poverty suffered by East Germany after the construction of the Berlin wall, some of the rural areas have remained untouched by the gross developments of the sixties and seventies and what one finds today in the Lausitz is a land where time seemed to have stood still. Schwarzkolm and Kamenz are still just as beautiful as described in the book.

This book Krabat was the 1972 German childrens book prize winner. The English Translation entitled: The Satanic Mill published by Macmillian is quite the read. This 14 Year old boy has been enticed to become the apprentice in a school of black magic. The master's star pupil soon becomes determined to escape. Set in seventeenth century Germany this is a tension packed thriller. This is a review of the english translation and I could not put it down . This book is a masterpiece and from the first page it is a wonder of a read. I think that if not for its translated title this book would have been a classic for all Juvenile book collectors.

I've always wondered how the citizenry of Nazi Germany could justify the atrocities of their government. Bill Shumaker has done a masterful job of putting us inside the psyche of several fascinating characters. The story is compelling, suspenseful and full of surprises. I hated to finish "Lost Pulse" and would love to know what happens next... I thought about this story for days.

An avid WWII buff, I was particularly intrigued to learn more about the Hitler Youth, the Lebensborn program, the German clergy, the plight of the Gypsies and much more. Mr. Shumaker loaded this book with a lot of well documented (but seldom explored) historical detail, and wove it into the story in a way that didn't slow the story down at all, but rather made it a more interesting read.

I'd like to read more from Bill Shumaker!

I found this book to be most enjoyable and interesting to read. I could not put it down. It was full of historical facts but also easy to read (sometime I find that not to be true with historical fiction). I sure hope there will be a sequel so I can find out what happenes to the main characters.
Caroline Winfree

This historical fiction set in Germany in 1939 involves us in the early dynamics of Nazi Germany's purge of the Jews and other "undesirables," and the challenge posed to thinking citizens and sincere Christians in that era.

This is the first novel I have read in four or maybe 5 years. I found it engaging as history and culture came alive in this insightful drama. I was glad to see this novel's focus on the plight of the Gypsies, who are generally ignored in history's portrayal of Nazi atrocities.

Gypsies join forces as unknowing partners with a German State Church pastor to save a sick child about to be discarded by the new euthanasia policies of the Third Reich. Pastor Becker faces the reality of what he has become as an agent of the state. He returns to his sense of ethical calling when the immediate fate of a child in his parish forces him out of the safety of his theological meditations into real-life decisions affecting the future of his state and his people.

I was impressed with the richness and consistency of the realistic and believable characters. The internal dialogue of each character seemed to represent realistic thought processes, and pulled us into the vortex of that character's personality and role in the drama.

I learned some historical and cultural details previously unknown to me. I would recommend a movie be made of this story. Reflecting the validity of the drama portrayed, an extensive bibliography is included.

Kevin Conley Ruffner has done a great job with this handy book on Görings Luftwaffe Field Divisions (LwFD). As with all Osprey titles, they give a great overview for both the casual and dedicated reader. Ron Volstadt once again does brilliant work with the colour plates, and the accompanying text, while necessarily brief, non the less gives the reader a good working knowledge of this not so well known aspect of the German war effort. The book gives good insight into the political machinations that brought these formations into existance, and doesn't bog the reader down with masses of facts and figures. From their controversial creation during early 1942, through to the calamity of late '44 and through into 1945, Ruffner takes the reader through the highs and lows of another of Görings 'private armies'. Although often containing good men, they were ultimately sacrificed needlessly on the Eastern Front, in yet another example of the inter-service rivalries and personal egotism that plagued the Third Reich.

A top read!

When I saw this book I knew i had to buy it it was so fact pacted

I'll make a general comment on the increasing utility of the Osprey Men at Arms series in general. Not one of the "older" titles, but still fading into the distant past with a publication date of 1990, this does represent the rise in quality of MAA titles. Volstad's colour plates need not be discussed in detail; these are as good as his always are. Even in 1990 he was raising the bar he himself set with the earlier IN ACTION series of the 1970s.

The text is especially useful in exploring this little known facet of German military history. While the Hermann Goering Division is understandably famous, many historians fail to grasp just how many Luftwaffe ground formations really existed - or what a drain on the German military they represented.

Excellent and concise description of all the divisions, with well written discussion of how they were equipped, why they came to be, and who was responsible for keeping them in the order of battle. Unusual for MAA to concentrate on units that were below average for the most part, but this only speaks to the all-encompasing nature of the entire series as a whole.

A good addition to those interested in this specific area of research; the Feld Divisionen fought on the west, east and southern fronts so anyone wanting to materially add to their understanding of, say, the Eastern Front in particular, will not find this volume a must read.