Tales From Spandau

Publisher description

SPANDAU GUARD is set during December 1979 at the notorious Spandau Prison in West Berlin, Germany. Spandau Prison is home to the last of the Spandau 7; the seven convicted World War II war criminals (Konstantin von Neurath, Erich Raeder, Karl Dönitz, Walther Funk, Albert Speer, Baldur von Schirach, and Rudolf Hess) that were sentenced to spend between 10 years to life at the prison. December is also the month the United States Army in Berlin is in charge of guarding the prison. A very interesting changeover with the Soviets sets the basis for a story that reaches back to the early days of the Third Reich. U.S. Army Infantryman Alfredo Ledesma along with his fellow soldiers, struggle through the 31-day rotation of boredom, cold Berlin nights, and the holiday season they can only see and enjoy from afar. As the month of Spandau Guard duty progresses, some strange things start to happen until they come to a head on Christmas Eve.

I Know This Much – by Gary Kemp, Spandau Ballet's prime mover – is simply the freshest, most exciting and best-written memoir to arrive for years.

In 1937, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King travelled to Nazi Germany in an attempt to prevent a war that, to many observers, seemed inevitable. The men King communed with in Berlin, including Adolf Hitler, assured him of the Nazi regime's peaceful intentions, and King not only found their pledges sincere, but even hoped for personal friendships with many of the regime's top officials. Four Days in Hitler's Germany is a clearly written and engaging story that reveals why King believed that the greatest threat to peace would come from those individuals who intended to thwart the Nazi agenda, which as King saw it, was concerned primarily with justifiable German territorial and diplomatic readjustments. Mackenzie King was certainly not alone in misreading the omens in the 1930s, but it would be difficult to find a democratic leader who missed the mark by a wider margin. This book seeks to explain the sources and outcomes of King's misperceptions and diplomatic failures, and follows him as he returns to Germany to tour the appalling aftermath of the very war he had tried to prevent.

Examines the fate of the seven high-ranking Nazi officers--Hess, Funk, Speer, Schirach, Neurath, Doenitz and Raeder--incarcerated at Spandau Prison after their convictions at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials.

An unflinching thriller that takes us deep into the White Rose resistance movement during World War II. • “Compelling…nonstop action.” —The Baltimore Sun When Nat Turnbull’s mentor, Gordon Wolfe, is arrested for possession of a missing WWII secret service archive and then turns up dead in jail, Nat’s quiet academic life is suddenly thrown into tumult. The archive is a time bomb of sensitive material, but key documents are still missing, and the FBI dispatches Nat to track them down. Following a trail of cryptic clues, Nat's journeys to Germany, where he soon crosses paths with Berta, a gorgeous and mysterious student and Kurt Bauer, an arms billionaire with a dark past. As their tales intersect, long-buried exploits of deceit emerge, and each step becomes more dangerous than the last.

Through the means of four powerful and extraordinary narratives from the 19th-century German underworld, this book deftly explores an intriguing array of questions about criminality, punishment, and social exclusion in modern German history. Drawing on legal documents and police files, historian Richard Evans dramatizes the case histories of four alleged felons to shed light on German penal policy of the time. 25 illustrations.

Kennedy in Berlin examines one of the most spectacular political events of the twentieth century. It tells the story of the enthusiastically celebrated visit that US president John F. Kennedy paid to Berlin, the 'frontline city of the Cold War,' in June 1963. The president's tour resonated around the world, not least on account of Kennedy's famous declaration - 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' Andreas W. Daum sets Kennedy's visit against the background of the special relationship that had developed between the United States and West Berlin in the wake of World War II, and Kennedy in Berlin is an innovative contribution to the study of transatlantic relations, the Cold War, and the conduct of diplomacy in the age of mass media. Using a broad range of sources, this book sheds new light on the interplay between politics and culture in the modern era.