A chilling tale vividly told.
The story of the Nazis’ international bank robberies.
After World War I, Germany was subject to huge reparations to the Allied victors. High unemployment, inflation and fierce anger over the nation’s defeat generated political and social strife that fueled Hitler’s rise to power. As former Time editor and reporter Taber (In Search of Bacchus: Wanderings in the Wonderful World of Wine Tourism, 2009, etc.) shows in this crisp, well-documented history, lust for gold was integral to Hitler’s military ambitions. In 1933, the Germans had six army divisions, a skeleton air force and only one heavy naval cruiser; by 1939, after raiding Austria and Czechoslovakia, the Nazis had built up their military might to 51 army divisions, including four tank units with 6,000 tanks; 21 air squadrons and 7,000 planes; four battleships, 22 destroyers and four submarines. The nation had also trained and equipped 1.25 million soldiers. Before the invasion of Austria in March 1938, Germany had about $149 million in gold, most in hidden assets. By the end of the war, the Nazis’ stores totaled almost $600 million. Once Hitler’s rampage began, European nations rushed to safeguard their gold stores by sending bullion abroad, much of it to the United States. By early 1940, the U.S. harbored more than 60 percent of the world’s gold. Taber recounts the tense, often frenetic process of secreting these hordes on trains, trucks and boats, sometimes only yards away from the invading Nazis. Some countries, like Norway, succeeded in saving their gold; most did not. Taber emphasizes that “the German war machine would have ground to a halt long before May 1945” without cooperation from Romania, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Sweden for materiel, and especially from Swiss bankers, who eagerly sold the Nazis Swiss francs with which to pay for vital war products.
A chilling tale vividly told.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1605986555
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
HISTORY | MILITARY | UNITED STATES | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
A richly descriptive and insightful survey of post-Holocaust European Jewry. Kurlansky (A Continent of Islands, 1992) interviews scores of Holocaust survivors and their children in Germany, Holland, Poland, Slovakia, and other countries to examine how and why Jews still live in Europe. He moves from the end of WW II to the present, showing people just after the war, often in displaced-persons camps, and then later, having survived—opening a bakery in Paris, enrolling in a Jewish school in Budapest, or running a museum in Prague. Kurlansky states that ``Jewry today has a future in Europe, and Hitler at last has been defeated,'' and he gives statistical evidence that European Jewry is rebounding. But the qualitative state of European Jewry remains less clear. Many of the interview subjects have had Jewish identity thrust on them, whether they want it or not, by political opponents or by the biases and prejudices of the majority cultures in which they reside. And the few traditional Jews (in the growing communities of France and the Lowlands) are immigrants from North Africa or Hasidim who have come to ply the diamond trade. Many of the younger people we meet have only been told of their Jewish background when a parent is dying or when a child is found to be on the receiving or giving end of anti- Semitism. Anti-Semitism, in fact, has been a constant over the years, whether it's the rantings of Nazis or the subtle, anti- Zionist sneers of present-day foreign secretaries. This is not a catalogue of fear and shame, however, as Kurlansky, with a novelist's eye for irony and description, offers many moments of transcendence and humor: entertaining culture clashes between communists and capitalists, religious and secular, Zionists and diasporists. The humor darkens when American tourists are greeted at the Warsaw train station with cries of ``Taxi? Hotel? Auschwitz?'' in Poland's new ``world fair of genocide.'' A lively, penetrating follow-up to Holocaust readings that speaks volumes about the resiliency of the Jewish people.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-201-60898-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This glimpse inside the reality of life for current Native Americans will intrigue but also appall in its depiction of their plight. Monroe, a Lakota and Cheyenne, offers his autobiography with the help of Reyer (English and Women's Studies/West Virginia Univ.; Cante Ohitka, not reviewed). He shares childhood memories of his grandfather, who toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and of his many other relations. Monroe was born on the reservation in South Dakota but raised off it, and educated in Catholic mission schools, as his father moved frequently to find work. In the early 1940s, Monroe enlisted in the Army to get away from the racism he experienced in Alliance, Nebr. In the service, he felt an acceptance he had never known before, and Monroe says that had he not been wounded in Korea, he probably would have made a career in the military. Instead, he wound up back in Alliance, where he couldn't even get a drink in the American Legion hall. Drinking, in fact, a problem that afflicted other members of his family as well, began to occupy much of his life. Later, a recovering alcoholic, Monroe worked with other Native alcoholics; he also fought back against racism, first by running for public office and later by founding the American Indian Council, an organization that provides a variety of social and professional services to the Native community. At a time when most Americans don't realize that over 66% of Indians live off the reservation, this book is a powerful witness. Written in simple, direct language and told at a sometimes slow, methodical, pace, it will reward patient readers with an illuminating look into what it means to be a member of America's Native minority.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-56639-234-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Temple Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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