A knowledgeable survey of a specific point in the eastern front and its ramifications for the Baltic region.
A focused history of an intensely held Prussian city on the eastern front during World War II.
While there are numerous surveys of Hitler’s advance into Russia and the hugely sacrificial Russian push back, there is less known about the devastating effect of the war on the German province of East Prussia. In this solid historical account, English journalist and educator Denny focuses on the capital city of Königsberg. Crowned in the 13th century by the imposing castle built by the Teutonic Knights, the city eventually became the seat of the Brandenburg region, and William I was anointed “King of Prussia in the Castle church in 1861.” A land of lakes and small, self-sustaining farms, East Prussia weathered the adversity of seasons and history, most notably being cut off from the rest of Germany by the creation of the Polish Corridor (including Danzig) after the German defeat in World War I, effectively isolating 1.5 million Germans and some 5,000 Jews. The Nazi Party’s promises to restore West Prussia and Danzig to Germany, get rid of the Polish Corridor, and fight communism resonated with large landowners and radical small-scale farmers of the province, and thus Hitler was overwhelmingly elected. The symbolic power of Königsberg was demonstrated when Hitler came in triumph to speak on the eve of the Reichstag election in 1933 and again after the annexation of Austria in 1938. Denny examines how the Jews were gradually routed out, while the German population remained relatively well cared for during the war, with the arrival of Poles as slave labor. By 1942, Königsberg was used as an assembly point for armed services heading to the eastern front. As German might waned and the Russian invasion was imminent, a huge evacuation of civilians took place from April to May 1945. The city’s surrender to the Soviet Army and the Allied bombing campaigns essentially destroyed the city.
A knowledgeable survey of a specific point in the eastern front and its ramifications for the Baltic region.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-1240-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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