Nick Lloyd's Hundred Days: The End of the Great War explores the brutal, heroic and extraordinary final days of the First World War.On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in November 1918, the guns of the Western Front fell silent. The Armistice, which brought the Great War to an end, marked a seminal moment in modern European and World history. Yet the story of how the war ended remains little-known.

In this compelling and ground-breaking new study, Nick Lloyd examines the last days of the war and asks the question: how did it end? Beginning at the heralded turning-point on the Marne in July 1918, Hundred Days traces the epic story of the next four months, which included some of the bloodiest battles of the war. Using unpublished archive material from five countries, this new account reveals how the Allies - British, French, American and Commonwealth - managed to beat the German Army, by now crippled by indiscipline and ravaged by influenza, and force her leaders to seek peace.'This is a powerful and moving book by a rising military historian.

Lloyd's depiction of the great battles of July-November provides compelling evidence of the scale of the Allies' victories and the bitter reality of German defeat' Gary Sheffield (Professor of War Studies)'Lloyd enters the upper tier of Great War historians with this admirable account of the war's final campaign' Publishers Weekly Nick Lloyd is Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies at King's College London, based at the Joint Services Command & Staff College in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire. He specialises in British military and imperial history in the era of the Great War and is the author of two books, Loos 1915 (2006), and The Amritsar Massacre: The Untold Story of One Fateful Day (2011).

Editeur : Viking
Published : 07/11/2013
Collection : VIKING NFIC HB
Langue : Anglais
ISBN-10 : 0670920061
ISBN-13 : 978-0670920068
Author : Nick Lloyd

Gillani est surtout connu pour ses efforts d'introduire le Royaume d'Irak dans la sphère d'influence de l'Allemagne nazie pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Né à Bagdad dans une famille aisée, il est de la famille du premier Premier ministre d'Irak, Abd Al-Rahman al-Gillani. Gillani a débuté sa carrière politique en 1924, dans le premier gouvernement mené par Yassin al-Hachimi, qui l'a nommé ministre de la Justice. Les deux hommes étaient d'ardents nationalistes, opposés à la présence politique britannique dans le pays. Ils ont rejeté le traité anglo-irakien visant à faire de l'Irak un protectorat britannique.

Après que le traité a été signé par le Premier ministre Nouri Saïd, Gillani et Hachimi décident de créer leur propre parti politique, la Confrérie nationale. Ce parti devait favoriser les objectifs des nationalistes. Dans les années 1930, Gillani a été fortement influencé par le grand mufti de Jérusalem, Amin al-Husseini qui avait été exilé de la Palestine mandataire par les autorités britanniques en raison de ses activités nationalistes et de son alliance avec l'Allemagne qui visait entre autres à empêcher l'immigration des Juifs en Palestine. C'est en 1933 que Gillani est nommé pour la première fois à la fonction de Premier ministre.

Il est de nouveau nommé Premier-ministre en 1940, après la mort prématurée du roi Ghazi. Il refuse alors d'obéir aux ordres du régent pro-britannique 'Abd al-Ilah, et exclut de couper les liens diplomatiques de l'Irak avec l'Italie. Par ailleurs, il décide d'envoyer son ministre de la Justice en Turquie pour rencontrer l'ambassadeur allemand Franz von Papen et obtenir le soutien de l'Allemagne. Dans une autre rencontre avec des représentants du gouvernement allemand, Gillani a assuré à l'Allemagne que les ressources naturelles de l'Irak, en particulier pétrolifères, seraient mises à la disposition de l'Axe en échange du soutien des Allemands à l'indépendance des États arabes et à leur unité politique.

Le Royaume-Uni répond par de graves sanctions économiques à l'encontre de l'Irak. Après les premières victoires des britanniques en Afrique du Nord contre les Italiens et en raison des pressions qu'ils exercent, Gillani est contraint à la démission le 31 janvier 1941. Mais cette mise à l'écart n'a fait qu'accentuer sa méfiance vis-à-vis du Royaume-Uni et des éléments pro-britanniques du gouvernement. Avec certains de ses amis pro-Axe, il décide de se lancer dans un coup d'État. À la tête du « Carré d'or », il projette d'assassiner le régent Abdul Illah, mais celui-ci quitte à temps le pays le 31 mars et, le 3 avril, Gillani accède au pouvoir.

Peu de temps après sa prise de pouvoir, l'une de ses premières décisions en tant que chef d'État est de refuser le débarquement à Bassorah de la seconde brigade de la 10e division indienne. Alors que la tension est à son comble avec les autorités britanniques, il décide d'envoyer un régiment d'artillerie affronter des contingents de l'armée britannique qui campaient dans une base de la RAF à Habbaniya. L'affrontement tourne rapidement au désavantage des Irakiens qui sont obligés de lever le siège.

Considérant que leurs intérêts au Moyen-Orient sont gravement menacés par un régime qui affiche si ouvertement ses sympathies à l'égard de l'Allemagne, le Royaume-Uni décide de se lancer dans une intervention militaire en faisant débarquer le 18 avril 1941 des troupes à Bassorah, le grand port pétrolier de l'Irak. Alors que les troupes britanniques arrivent dans les faubourgs de Bagdad, les autorités irakiennes demandent un armistice qui sera signé par les belligérants le 31 mai 1941. Les Britanniques occupent Bagdad le 1er juin 1941, réinstallent le régent et mettent en place un gouvernement pro-britannique. La guerre anglo-irakienne prend fin.

Craignant pour sa vie, Gillani a déjà quitté l'Irak pour se réfugier à Berlin. Il est reçu par Adolf Hitler, qui le reconnait comme le chef du gouvernement irakien en exil. Après la défaite de l'Allemagne, il trouve refuge en Arabie saoudite. Gillani fait son retour en Irak après la révolution qui a renversé la monarchie irakienne en 1958. Il a de nouveau essayé d'accéder au pouvoir en menant une révolte contre le gouvernement prosoviétique d'Abdul Karim Qasim. La révolte est un échec, et il est condamné à mort. Il quitte de nouveau le pays, et après une amnistie, il retourne en Irak. Il meurt en 1965 à Beyrouth.

Pétain, promu maréchal de France en novembre 1918 est auréolé d’un immense prestige au lendemain de la guerre. Vingt ans plus tard le 17 juin 1940, alors à la présidence du Conseil il annonce dans un célèbre discours prononcé à la radio française la capitulation de la France et le début de la collaboration.

Aujourd’hui demeure dans l’opinion publique une certaine indulgence pour le Maréchal Pétain. Pour comprendre cette ambiguïté, rien ne vaut de poser dix questions à son biographe : Marc Ferro. C’est dans cette démarche que l’auteur nous éclaire sur l’ambivalence du personnage, "vainqueur de Verdun" déchu par son engagement dans la collaboration avec le IIIe Reich.

Il nous fait revivre une période sombre de la France à travers celui qui l’incarna pendant 4 ans, et dont l’action à la tête du pays, nous plonge encore dans l’embarras et dans la honte. C’est dans cette démarche que l’auteur nous permet de répondre à la question : que penser réellement de Pétain ?


Editeur : Editions Tallandier
Publié le : 10/10/2013
Collection : CONTEMPO.
ISBN-13 : 979-1021001305
Auteur : Marc Ferro
ASIN: B00D74A5VU

Quel rôle joua le régime de Vichy dans l'application de "la Solution finale de la question juive" ? Depuis trente ans, en France, l'affaire semble entendue : le régime de Vichy a été un complice actif du génocide perpétré par les nazis. Pourtant, face à cette thèse officielle, des pierres d'achoppement subsistent : comment expliquer, en effet, que 75% des Juifs vivant en France pendant la guerre aient pu échapper à la Shoah ? Et comment expliquer, aussi, que la France fut le pays d'Europe où les réseaux de sauvetage juifs furent les plus nombreux, les plus actifs et les plus efficaces ? Autant de "paradoxes français".

Fort d'une première étude sur les Éclaireurs israélites de France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale et fin connaisseur des recherches internationales sur la Shoah, Alain Michel reprend le dossier à sa source. Il présente des chiffres et pose des questions qui dérangent. Ainsi, l'antisémitisme de Vichy, qui distinguait Juifs nationaux et Juifs étrangers, a-t-il vraiment poursuivi les mêmes objectifs que les nazis ? L'existence même du gouvernement de Vichy a-t-elle permis, ou non, de ralentir la machine génocidaire ?

Peut-on expliquer l'ampleur des sauvetages, comme le fit le président Jacques Chirac en juillet 1995, par la seule action courageuse des Français qui auraient ainsi pallié les errements de leur gouvernement ? Des questions souvent ignorées du public français et des réponses qui bouleversent notre connaissance de la Shoah en France.

Editeur : CLD
Publié le : 15/03/2012
Collection : SOCIETE SC HUM
ISBN-10: 2854435494
ISBN-13: 978-2854435498
Auteur : Alain Michel

Voici la première étude exhaustive sur l'attitude de l'Eglise catholique face à la persécution des Juifs de France entre 1940 et 1944. Une recherche fondée sur l'exploitation de documents inédits: fonds de congrégations religieuses, correspondances privées, archives épiscopales, dont les notes intimes du cardinal Suhard, archevêque de Paris sous l'Occupation...

Sylvie Bernay montre que l'Eglise, contrairement à une idée reçue, se montre très réservée face à l'application des premières mesures antijuives. Son rejet des persécutions éclate au grand jour lors des rafles de l'été 1942, marqué par la protestation des évêques contre un régime de plus en plus compromis dans la mise en oeuvre de la "Solution finale".

Les documents découverts révèlent que les protestations des évêques de la zone libre ont été concertées avec le Vatican. Sylvie Bernay décrit pour la première fois les moyens employés par le Saint-Siège et l'épiscopat français pour empêcher la reprise des grandes rafles à l'automne 1942 et protéger les persécutés. Une typologie des sauvetages montre aussi comment se sont formés sept "diocèses refuges" en zone sud, autour du cardinal Gerlier et des évêques qui encouragent le placement des personnes dans les congrégations religieuses. Une somme magistrale qui invite à repenser le rôle de l'Eglise sous l'Occupation.

Editeur : CNRS
Publié le : 10/05/2012
Collection : HORS.COLL.
Langue : Français
ISBN-10 : 2271071534
ISBN-13 : 978-2271071538
Auteur : Sylvie Bernay, Catherine Nicault

Jusqu'où le Front national ira-t-il ? Rarement le parti de Marine Le Pen n'a semblé si près de la dédiabolisation qu'il s'était assignée; jamais il n'est apparu aussi proche du pouvoir. Beaucoup s'en alarment, mais cette dédiabolisation n'a rien d'une nouveauté. Il y a vingt-cinq ans déjà, le FN en semblait proche s'il n'avait été stoppé par l'affaire du "détail", puis par le départ des troupes de Bruno Mégret en 1998.

Né en 1972, le FN ne cesse de se métamorphoser. Il est temps de s'interroger sur son histoire plus mouvementée qu'il n'y paraît, des origines méconnues du parti à la présidentielle de 2012.

Plongeant dans les arcanes du parti, interrogeant des témoins, des sympathisants, des dirigeants du FN, sans oublier leurs adversaires, les deux auteurs retracent quarante ans de la vie politique française. Fruit d'une enquête de trois ans, ce livre révèle les dessous d'un parti qui fascine autant qu'il inquiète.




Editeur : Editions Tallandier
Publié le : 19/09/2013
ISBN-13: 979-1021002715
ASIN: B00C7IV1QU
Auteur : Dominique Albertini, David Doucet, Nicolas Lebourg

Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord ont échappé à l’arithmétique macabre de la déportation de masse, maisnon à l’antisémitisme de la France vichyste. Entre 1940 et 1943, le commissariat général auxquestions juives orchestre de sa propre initiative, et sans intervention allemande, un véritable arsenalrépressif à l’encontre des 400 000 Juifs du Maroc, d’Algérie et de Tunisie : déchéance de nationalité,ségrégation, aryanisation des biens, vexations, emprisonnements… Nourrie d’archives inédites et de nombreux témoignages, la somme de Michel Abitbol questionne cepassé douloureux.

Au-delà de l’analyse factuelle, l’historien explore les sources de cet antisémitisme etretrace minutieusement les luttes juives pour le rétablissement progressif de leurs droits politiques.Revêtant une réelle force testimoniale, l’ouvrage donne un nouvel éclairage sur la réalité de cetteoppression du fait de l’État français, et constitue la première synthèse de l’histoire des judaïcitésmaghrébines pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale.




Editeur : CNRS
Publié le : 22/11/2012
Collection : Biblis
ISBN-10 : 2271075416
ISBN-13 : 978-2271075413
Auteur : Michel Abitbol

L'Auteur

Michel Abitbol est historien, spécialisé dans l’étude des relations judéo-arabes. Actuellementchercheur à l'Université hébraïque de Jérusalem, il a enseigné à l’EHESS et à l’IEP de Paris. Il estnotamment l’auteur de Les Amnésiques – Juifs et Arabes depuis 1967 (Perrin, 2005), et Le passéd'une discorde – Juifs et Arabes depuis le VIIe siècle (Perrin, 1999 - Tempus, 2003).

L'obsession de "l'espace vital" est inséparable, chez Hitler, du délire antisémite. A l'étroit dans ses frontières de 1919, le peuple allemand doit, selon lui, prendre le contrôle de toutes les contrées peu ou prou "germaniques", les "libérer", ainsi que le Reich, de leurs Juifs, y asservir ou y massacrer les Slaves qui s'y trouvent, enfin y implanter des paysans dont le "sang" n'est pas douteux.

Au nom de cette double utopie, raciale et spatiale, l'Allemagne a engagé à l'Est pas moins de 12 millions d'hommes. Outre les millions de victimes des combats, plus de 18 millions de civils polonais et soviétiques, dont plus de 4 millions de Juifs, ont péri. A côté des victimes "ordinaires" des combats, il y eut la mort de millions de prisonniers russes, des massacres de masse "par balles", les camps d'extermination des Juifs (tous se trouvaient à l'Est), l'incendie de milliers de villes et de villages.

C'est bien en Europe orientale que la barbarie nazie a atteint son paroxysme. Plusieurs générations d'historiens, en particulier des Allemands nés après guerre, ont accumulé les travaux savants sur cette question, mais il n'existait pas encore là-dessus de synthèse solide en langue française. Christian Baechler, l'un de nos meilleurs spécialistes de l'Allemagne, donne ici un livre magistral.

Editeur : TALLANDIER
Publié le : 19/04/2012
Collection : HIST.AUJOURD'H.
ISBN-10 : 2847349065
ISBN-13 : 978-2847349061
Auteur : Christian Baechler

Etrange paradoxe, le maréchal Gueorgui Joukov, l'homme qui a battu les armées du IIIe Reich, sans doute l'un des plus brillants capitaines du XXe siècle, ne bénéficiait d'aucune biographie en français. Pourtant, de la défense de Moscou en décembre 1941 aux victoires de Stalingrad et de Koursk, puis à la prise de Berlin, Joukov est partout.

Mais lire la vie de Joukov, c'est aussi vivre quatre décennies à l'intérieur du système soviétique : tout commence quand le jeune soldat, à peine alphabétisé, est ballotté entre la Première Guerre mondiale et la révolution de 1917, avant de faire ses armes durant la guerre civile et d'échapper par miracle aux grandes purges.

C'est lui qui remporte une victoire contre les Japonais en lever de rideau de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, lui encore qui, au milieu du désastre de 1941, prend quelques-unes des décisions qui vont tout sauver. Après guerre, et malgré deux disgrâces sévères, il tentera encore de réformer en profondeur l'armée soviétique.

Cet ouvrage ne dissimule néanmoins rien de ses graves échecs, de ses manques et de sa violence, comme de l'utilisation du terrible appareil répressif stalinien entre 1941 et 1945. Construit à partir de documents inédits issus des archives soviétiques, ce livre brosse enfin un portrait complet, aussi bien militaire et politique qu'intime et familial, d'une figure majeure de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et de l'Union soviétique.

Editeur : Librairie Académique Perrin
Publié le : 05/09/2013
ISBN-10: 2262039224
ISBN-13: 978-2262039226
Auteur : Jean Lopez, Lasha Otkhmezuri

Auteur

Jean Lopez, fondateur et directeur de la rédaction de Guerres et Histoire, s'est signalé par une série d'ouvrages revisitant le front germano-soviétique, dont Koursk. Les quarante jours qui ont ruiné la Wehrmacht ; Stalingrad, la bataille au bord du gouffre ; Berlin, et, avec Lasha Otkhmezuri, Grandeur et misère de l'Armée Rouge. Lasha Otkhmezuri, ancien diplomate, est conseiller de la rédaction de la revue Guerres et Histoire.

Architect in 1940 of Marshal Petain's Vichy French regime and its prime minister from April 1942 to August 1944, at Second World War's end Pierre Laval was promptly arrested on charges of treason. This book tells the story of his trial. It considers the pretrial proceedings, or lack thereof, the evidence, and the arguments of the prosecution.













Publisher : Transaction Publishers
Published : 15/10/2009
ISBN-10 : 141281152X
ISBN-13 : 978-1412811521
Author : J. Kenneth Brody

On April 29th, 1945, General Heinrich Gestapo Muller, head of that feared Nazi organisation, left Hitler's bunker and disappeared. Today over a half a Century later, he is still carried on the books of the German Office of Investigation of Nazi war crimes as their No. 1 wanted man - The question is why ? For nearly five years Muller had the power of life-and-death over 300 million Europeans in Occupied Europe.

In that time not only did he play a major role in the Holocaust but he helped in kidnapping of Payne, Stevens and Best, chiefs of the SIS in Europe; had a hand in the planned abduction of the Duke of Windsor; broke the power of the European-Soviet spy ring the 'Red Orchestra'; terrorised the French resistance; shot British SAS and SOE prisoners and master-minded the executions of the Great Escape POW escapees. But was he all the time working for the Russians, and if so, what happened to him on that April day? His subordinate Eichmann escaped as did other top Gestapo officials.

Did he really die in Berlin? In his search for the truth the Author takes an interesting and exciting stance. He examines, with typical thoroughness, both Muller's career as it progresses from being a simple Bavarian policeman through to becoming a top Third Reich's henchman and the Allies post-war efforts to find out if Muller survived. The Search for Gestapo Muller is a truly intriguing modern mystery story.

Publisher : Pen & Sword Books Ltd;
Published : 12/09/2000
Language : English
ISBN-10 : 0850527740
ISBN-13 : 978-0850527742
Author : Charles Whiting

Continuing our review of military classics, Military Times looks at A J P Taylor’s controversial publication on the causes of the Second World War. For a book about events a quarter of a century in the past, the storm raised by the publication of A J P Taylor’s book on the causes of the Second World War was spectacular. Perhaps, though, it was not surprising. Hundreds of millions of the war’s victims were still alive – the mutilated, the bereaved, the displaced – and here, it seemed, was a leading British historian exonerating the monster everyone blamed for six years of unprecedented slaughter. Adolf Hitler did not mean to start a world war: that was the message. It was really just a gigantic cock-up. Taylor was no stranger to controversy.

Born in 1906, he was a blunt, straight-talking northerner in the radical, nonconformist tradition. A brilliant scholar who had been ensconced at Magdalen in Oxford since 1936, he had established himself as the master of 19th and 20th century diplomatic history with a series of studies famous not only for their detail and insight, but also for wit and literary panache. TV audiences were to be astonished by his ability to talk straight into the camera for half an hour without the aid of notes. It was partly his profound understanding of realpolitik that made him so iconoclastic.

His ‘second thoughts’ foreword, written for the 1963 edition of The Origins of the Second World War, was characteristically unapologetic. The idea that Hitler was aiming at total world domination, and that it was his evil ambition that had caused the war, was, quite simply, nonsense. Powers will be Powers, he wrote (the capitals are his). His point was that great powers behave as they do irrespective of whether they are ruled by Nazi race-fanatics, Stalinist bureaucrats, or parliamentarians like Winston Churchill. What matters are the interests of the great power in question, and the opportunities presented by its interactions with other great powers, both friends and enemies.

Let us be clear: Taylor was an anti-fascist who hated Hitler and everything he stood for (unlike many members of the British Establishment prior to 1939). But he was also an historian committed to the truth, and it seemed obvious to him that however monstrous Hitler’s domestic policies, this was irrelevant to an understanding of German foreign policy between 1933 and 1939. Hitler, he argued, acted in the tradition of Bismarck (the creator of modern Germany) and Bethmann-Hollweg (the German Chancellor during the First World War). Hitler the Führer was a murderous racist; but Hitler the world statesman was just a nationalist. Taylor wrote: In international affairs, there was nothing wrong with Hitler except that he was German; and, having Germany’s great-power interests at uppermost, the one thing he did not plan was the great war often attributed to him. The problem, Taylor argued, was not Hitler, but Germany.

The ‘German Question’ dominated Europe between 1866 and 1945. Once united, the German-speaking heart of Europe became an industrial colossus and a geopolitical powerhouse. How to contain German energy and preserve ‘the balance of power’ (for which read ‘the interests of the other powers’) became the central issue of diplomacy and war. What, then, caused the war? If not Hitler’s megalomania and a succession of threats, aggressions, and annexations, what instead? The war of 1939, says Taylor, far from being welcome, was less wanted by nearly everybody than almost any war in history. In fact, the whole thing was concocted, unwittingly by all concerned, in a diplomatic fog. In Taylor’s world of international relations, the powers engage in a complex interplay of ambition and suspicion, ignorance and misunderstanding, ill-judged moves and unintended consequences.

To rebuild German power after the military defeat of 1918 and the economic crisis of 1929, Hitler needed to dominate Central and Eastern Europe. So he pushed repeatedly against the limits of international tolerance. He had no long-term plan. He was a foreign-policy opportunist. But his impulse was expansionist because German territory had been hacked away at Versailles, and German industry needed raw materials as the economy boomed in the mid to late 1930s.

Taylor is scathing about the incompetence of British and French statesmen. They first backed Czechoslovakia, then told her to surrender. They encouraged the Poles to resist, considering them militarily formidable, but cold-shouldered the Russians, whom they regarded as aggressive but weak: in every case, the opposite of the truth. It was precisely Russia’s desire for peace – and the refusal of the British and the French to offer an alliance that would guarantee her security – that lead to the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact.

A Franco-Russian alliance underwritten by British guarantees to the French was perfectly possible in 1939. The failure to achieve this was one of the greatest diplomatic disasters in world history. It led directly to the fall of Poland, the fall of France, and Britain having to fight alone for a year. Only Hitler’s attack on Russia in June 1941 would make good the damage. Only then, in a sense, would the Second World War truly begin. Until that moment, there was a war in Europe and the Mediterranean, mainly between Britain and Germany.

The outbreak of war revealed further miscalculations. The British and the French had encouraged Polish resistance partly because they anticipated a slow war of trenches and attrition, like the last. In fact, Poland collapsed in three weeks, France in six, and Britain survived only because Hitler could not get his panzers across the Channel. The Nazi conquests were so vast, the economic resources won so great, that it would then take the greatest war in human history to bring down Hitler’s European empire.

Wars are much like road accidents, explains Taylor. They have a general cause and particular causes at the same time. Every road accident is caused, in the last resort, by the invention of the internal combustion engine and by men’s desire to get from one place to another. But a motorist, charged with dangerous driving, would be ill-advised if he pleaded the existence of motor-cars as his sole defence. Taylor’s point is that the Second World War was, in some sense, caused by the ‘international anarchy’ of a world divided between great powers; but it was also, in another sense, caused by the uncertainties, misjudgements, and cock-ups of statesmen in the late 1930s. But it was not, in Taylor’s controversial view, caused by one man’s plan for global domination. This was – and is – a legend fostered by wartime propaganda.

Publisher : Penguin Books
Published : 31/10/1991
ISBN-10 : 014013672X
ISBN-13 : 978-0140136722
Author : A.J.P. Taylor

During the twelve years of Hitler’s Third Reich, very few Germans took the risk of actively opposing his tyranny and terror, and fewer still did so to protect the sanctity of law and faith. In No Ordinary Men, Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern focus on two remarkable, courageous men who did—the pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his close friend and brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi—and offer new insights into the fearsome difficulties that resistance entailed. (Not forgotten is Christine Bonhoeffer Dohnanyi, Hans’s wife and Dietrich’s sister, who was indispensable to them both.)

From the start Bonhoeffer opposed the Nazi efforts to bend Germany’s Protestant churches to Hitler’s will, while Dohnanyi, a lawyer in the Justice Ministry and then in the Wehrmacht’s counterintelligence section, helped victims, kept records of Nazi crimes to be used as evidence once the regime fell, and was an important figure in the various conspiracies to assassinate Hitler. The strength of their shared commitment to these undertakings—and to the people they were helping—endured even after their arrest in April 1943 and until, after great suffering, they were executed on Hitler’s express orders in April 1945, just weeks before the Third Reich collapsed.

Bonhoeffer’s posthumously published Letters and Papers from Prison and other writings found a wide international audience, but Dohnanyi’s work is scarcely known, though it was crucial to the resistance and he was the one who drew Bonhoeffer into the anti-Hitler plots. Sifton and Stern offer dramatic new details and interpretations in their account of the extraordinary efforts in which the two jointly engaged. No Ordinary Men honors both Bonhoeffer’s human decency and his theological legacy, as well as Dohnanyi’s preservation of the highest standard of civic virtue in an utterly corrupted state.

Publication date : 17/09/2013
ISBN : 9781590176818
Author : Elisabeth Sifton, Fritz Stern

Parkland is an extraordinarily exciting, precise and definitive narrative of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald. It is drawn from Reclaiming History, a huge and historic account of the event and all the conspiracy theories it spawned.

For general readers, the carefully documented account presented in Parkland is utterly persuasive: Oswald did it and he acted alone. The Norton title Four Days in November is being made into a film called Parkland so the title of the movie tie-in will be Parkland to match. The movie stars Zac Efron, Jacki Weaver, Brett Stimely, Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton and is directed by Peter Landesman.








Published : 12/11/2013
Publisher : WW Norton & Co
ISBN : 9780393347333
Author : Vincent Bugliosi

Mass-market edition of the first authoritative single-volume biography of John F. Kennedy to be written in nearly four decades. Drawing upon first-hand sources and never-before-opened archives, prize-winning historian Robert Dallek reveals more than we ever knew about Jack Kennedy, forever changing the way we think about his life, his presidency and his legacy.

Dallek also discloses that, while labouring to present an image of robust good health, Kennedy was secretly in and out of hospitals throughout his life, soill that he was administered last rites on several occasions. He never shies away from Kennedy's weaknesses, but also brilliantly explores his strengths. The result is a full portrait of a bold, brave and truly human John F. Kennedy.







Published : 01/07/2004
Publisher : Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN : 9780141015354
Author :  Robert Dallek

Despite being President for only 1,036 days, John F. Kennedy remains arguably the most popular leader in American history. His presidency witnessed the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the development of counterinsurgency in the Vietnam War, key moments in the history of Civil Rights, and the beginning of the space race.

As well as examining these events in detail, John F. Kennedy - The Life, the Presidency, the Assassination explores his acts of heroism during World War II, his work in Congress and the Senate, and the controversial 1960 election. It also reveals Kennedy's fascinating private life - from the turbulent relations of the Kennedy family, to his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier and their family - before closing with an assessment of Kennedy's legacy.

Published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, this book provides a unique look at the 35th President of the United States through its inclusion of 170 illustrations and 15 engaging removable facsimile documents.

Published : 10/10/2013
Publisher : Andre Deutsch Ltd
ISBN : 9780233003979
Author : David Southwell

Who really murdered Mary Pinchot Meyer in the fall of 1964? Why was there a mad rush by CIA counter intelligence chief James Angleton to immediately locate and confiscate her diary? Had Mary Meyer finally put together the intricate pieces of a bewildering, conspiratorial mosaic of information that revealed a plan to assassinate her lover, President Kennedy, with the trail ultimately ending at the doorstep of the Central Intelligence Agency ?

And was it mere coincidence that Mary Meyer was killed less than three weeks after the release of the Warren Commission Report? Based on years of painstaking research and interviews, much of it revealed here for the first time, author Peter Janney traces some of the most important events and influences in the life of Mary Pinchot Meyer - including her explorations with psychedelic drugs and how she supported her secret lover, the president of the United States, as he turned away from the Cold War toward the pursuit of world peace. As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination - and Mary Meyer's - Mary's Mosaic adds to our understanding of why both took place.


Published : 21/11/2013
Publisher : Skyhorse Publishing
ISBN : 9781626361720
Author : Peter Janney

Mary Eno Pinchot Meyer (October 14, 1920 – October 12, 1964) was an American socialite, painter, former wife of Central Intelligence Agency official Cord Meyer and intimate friend of United States president John F. Kennedy, who was often noted for her desirable physique and social skills. Meyer's murder, two days before her 44th birthday, in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., during the fall of 1964 would later stir speculation relating to Kennedy's presidency and assassination. In her 1998 biography, Nina Burleigh wrote, "Mary Meyer was an enigmatic woman in life, and in death her real personality lurks just out of view."

Mary Pinchot was the daughter of Amos Pinchot, a wealthy lawyer and a key figure in the Progressive Party who had helped fund the socialist magazine The Masses. Her mother Ruth was Pinchot's second wife, a journalist who worked for magazines such as The Nation and The New Republic. She was also the niece of Gifford Pinchot, a noted conservationist and two-time Governor of Pennsylvania. Mary was raised at the family's Grey Towers home in Milford, Pennsylvania where as a child she met left-wing intellectuals such as Mabel Dodge, Louis Brandeis, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., and Harold L. Ickes. She attended Brearley School and Vassar College, where she became interested in communism. She dated William Attwood in 1938 and while with him at a dance held at Choate Rosemary Hall she first met John F. Kennedy. She left Vassar and became a journalist, writing for the United Press and Mademoiselle. As a pacifist and member of the American Labor Party she came under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Pinchot met Cord Meyer in 1944 when he was a Marine Corps lieutenant who had lost his left eye because of shrapnel injuries received in combat. The two had similar pacifist views and beliefs in world government and married on April 19, 1945. That spring they both attended the UN Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, during which the United Nations was founded, Cord as an aide of Harold Stassen and Pinchot as a reporter for a newspaper syndication service. She later worked for a time as an editor for Atlantic Monthly. Their eldest child Quentin was born in late 1945, followed by Michael in 1947, after which Pinchot became a homemaker, although she attended classes at the Art Students League of New York.

Cord Meyer became president of the United World Federalists in May 1947 and its membership doubled. Albert Einstein was an enthusiastic supporter and fundraiser. Mary Meyer wrote for the organization's journal. In 1950 their third child, Mark, was born and they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Meanwhile her husband began to re-evaluate his notions of world government as members of the Communist Party USA infiltrated the international organizations he had founded. It is unknown when he first began secretly working with the Central Intelligence Agency, but in 1951 Allen Dulles approached Cord Meyer; he became an employee of the CIA and was soon a "principal operative" of Operation Mockingbird, a covert operation meant to sway American print and broadcast media toward the CIA line. Mary may also have done some work for the CIA during this time but her tendency towards spur-of-the-moment love affairs reportedly made the agency wary of her.

With her husband's CIA appointment they moved to Washington D.C. and became highly visible members of Georgetown society. Their acquaintances included Joseph Alsop, Katharine Graham, Clark Clifford and Washington Post reporter James Truitt along with his wife, noted artist Anne Truitt. Their social circle also included CIA-affiliated people such as Richard M. Bissell, Jr., high ranking counter-intelligence official James Angleton and Mary and Frank Wisner, Meyer's boss at CIA. In 1953 Senator Joseph McCarthy publicly accused Cord Meyer of being a communist and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reported to have looked into Mary's political past. Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner aggressively defended Meyer and he remained with the CIA. However, by early 1954 Pinchot Meyer's husband became unhappy with his CIA career. He used contacts from his covert operations in Operation Mockingbird to approach several New York publishers for a job but was rebuffed. During the summer of 1954 John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy bought a house near that of the Meyers'; Pinchot Meyer and Jackie Kennedy became friends and "they went on walks together." By the end of 1954, Cord Meyer was still with the CIA and often in Europe, running Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and managing millions of dollars of U.S. government funds worldwide to support progressive-seeming foundations and organizations opposing the Soviet Union.

One of Pinchot Meyer's close friends and classmates from Vassar was Cicely d'Autremont, who married James Angleton. In 1955 Meyer's sister Antoinette (Toni) married Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post. On December 18, 1956 the Meyers' middle son Michael was hit by a car near their house and killed at the age of nine. Although this tragedy brought Pinchot Meyer and Cord Meyer closer together for a time, Mary filed for divorce in 1958.

Pinchot Meyer and her two surviving sons remained in the family home. She began painting again in a converted garage studio at the home of her sister Toni and her husband, Ben Bradlee. She also started a close relationship with abstract-minimalist painter Kenneth Noland and became friendly with Robert Kennedy, who had purchased his brother's house, Hickory Hill, in 1957. Nina Burleigh in her book A Very Private Woman writes that after the divorce Meyer became "a well-bred ingenue out looking for fun and getting in trouble along the way." "Mary was bad," a friend recalled. Burleigh claims James Angleton tapped Mary Meyer's telephone after she left her husband. Angleton often visited the family home and took her sons on fishing outings. Pinchot Meyer visited John F. Kennedy at the White House in October 1961 and their relationship became intimate. Pinchot Meyer told Ann and James Truitt she was keeping a diary.

Mary Pinchot Meyer and John F. Kennedy reportedly had "about 30 trysts" and at least one author has claimed she brought marijuana or LSD to almost all of these meetings. In January 1963, Philip Graham disclosed the Kennedy-Pinchot Meyer affair to a meeting of newspaper editors but his claim was not reported by the news media. Timothy Leary later claimed Pinchot Meyer influenced Kennedy's "views on nuclear disarmament and rapprochement with Cuba." In an interview with Nina Burleigh, Kennedy aide Myer Feldman said, "I think he might have thought more of her than some of the other women and discussed things that were on his mind, not just social gossip." Burleigh wrote, "Mary might actually have been a force for peace during some of the most frightening years of the cold war..."

In 1983, former Harvard University psychology lecturer Timothy Leary claimed that in the spring of 1962, Pinchot Meyer, who, according to her biographer Nina Burleigh "wore manners and charm like a second skin", told Leary she was taking part in a plan to avert worldwide nuclear war by convincing powerful male members of the Washington establishment to take mind-altering drugs, which would presumably lead them to conclude that the Cold War was meaningless. According to Leary, Meyer had sought him out for the purpose of learning how to conduct LSD sessions with these powerful men, including, she strongly implied, President John F. Kennedy, who was then her lover. According to Leary, Pinchot Meyer said she had shared in this plan with at least seven other Washington socialite friends who held similar political views and were trying to supply LSD to a small circle of high ranking government officials. Leary also claimed that Pinchot Meyer had asked him for help while in a state of fear for her own life after the assassination of President Kennedy.

In his biography Flashbacks (1983), Leary claimed he had a call from Pinchot Meyer soon after the Kennedy assassination during which she sobbed and said, "They couldn't control him any more. He was changing too fast...They've covered everything up. I gotta come see you. I'm afraid. Be careful." Burleigh does not draw a conclusion as to whether Meyer participated in LSD sessions with President Kennedy or other powerful figures, but also does not dismiss Leary's claims out of hand. Burleigh confirms Pinchot Meyer's own use of LSD, her involvement with Leary during his tenure at Harvard, and that this involvement occurred at the same time as Pinchot Meyer's intimate association with President Kennedy. Burleigh also states that the timing of Pinchot Meyer's visits to Leary coincided with the dates of Meyer's known private meetings with Kennedy.

Burleigh writes: Mary's visits to Timothy Leary during the time she was also Kennedy's lover suggest that Kennedy knew more about hallucinogenic drugs than the CIA might have been telling him. No one has ever confirmed that Kennedy tried LSD with Mary. But the timing of her visits to Timothy Leary do coincide with her known private meetings with the president. LSD was then legal in the US, and its use to facilitate artistic endeavors was common in some of Pinchot Meyer's social circles. On October 12, 1964, Pinchot Meyer finished a painting and went for a walk along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath in Georgetown. Mechanic Henry Wiggins was trying to fix a car on Canal Road and heard a woman cry out, "Someone help me, someone help me." Wiggins heard two gunshots and ran to a low wall looking upon the path where he saw "a black man in a light jacket, dark slacks, and a dark cap standing over the body of a white woman."

Pinchot Meyer's body had two bullet wounds, one at the back of the head and another in her heart. An FBI forensic expert later said "dark haloes on the skin around both entry wounds suggested they had been fired at close-range, possibly point-blank". Minutes later a disheveled, soaking African-American man named Raymond Crump was arrested near the murder scene. No gun was ever found and Crump was never linked to any gun of the type used to murder Mary Pinchot Meyer. Newspaper reports described her former husband only as either an author or government official and did not mention Kennedy, although many journalists apparently were aware of Meyer's past marriage to a high ranking CIA official and her friendship with Kennedy.

When Crump came to trial, judge Howard Corcoran ruled Mary Pinchot Meyer's private life could not be disclosed in the courtroom. Corcoran had recently been appointed by President Lyndon Johnson. Pinchot Meyer’s background was also kept from Dovey Johnson Roundtree, Crump's lawyer, who later recalled she could find out almost nothing about the murder victim: "It was as if she existed only on the towpath on the day she was murdered." Crump was acquitted of all charges on July 29, 1965, and the murder remains unsolved. Crump went on to what has been described as a "horrific" life of crime.

In March 1976, James Truitt told the National Enquirer Meyer was having an affair with Kennedy. Truitt claimed Meyer had told his wife Anne she was keeping a diary and had asked her to safeguard it "if anything ever happened" to her. Anne Truitt, who was living in Tokyo when Meyer was murdered, called Toni (Mary's sister) and Ben Bradlee and told them of the diary and its location. (Ben Bradlee: "We didn't start looking until the next morning, when Toni and I walked around the corner a few blocks to Mary's house. It was locked, as we had expected, but when we got inside, we found James Angleton, and to our complete surprise he told us he, too, was looking for Mary's diary.") James Angleton was a high ranking CIA official; however, Angleton's wife, Cicely Angleton, was another close, personal friend of Mary Meyer. Those who did read the diary reportedly said it confirmed Meyer's intimate friendship with Kennedy, but gave no suggestion it contained any information about his assassination.

Cord Meyer left the CIA in 1977. In his autobiography Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA he wrote, "I was satisfied by the conclusions of the police investigation that Mary had been the victim of a sexually motivated assault by a single individual and that she had been killed in her struggle to escape." However his former personal assistant Carol Delaney later claimed, "Mr. Meyer didn't for a minute think that Ray Crump had murdered his wife or that it had been an attempted rape. But, being an Agency man, he couldn't very well accuse the CIA of the crime, although the murder had all the markings of an in-house rubout."

Historian Helen Rappaport brings the four daughters of the last Tsar to life in their own words, illuminating the opulence of their doomed world and their courage as they faced a terrible endThey were the Princess Dianas of their day-perhaps the most photographed and talked about young royals of the early twentieth century. The four captivating Russian Grand Duchesses-Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anas.













ISBN-13: 9781250020208
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication date : 03/06/2014
Author : Helen Rappaport

La Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Rettung Schiffbrüchiger (littéralement, société allemande de sauvetage des naufragés), abrégée DGzRS, est l'organisme allemand chargé des opérations de recherche et sauvetage dans les eaux territoriales allemandes de la mer Baltique et de la mer du Nord, ainsi que dans la zone économique exclusive associée. Il s'agit d'un organisme financé par dons, à la tête duquel se trouve le Président fédéral.

Son quartier-général est à Brême. La DGzRS a été créée le 29 mai 1865 à Kiel. Elle est propriétaire de 61 bateaux de sauvetage répartis en 54 stations, emploie 185 personnes et dispose de 800 bénévoles. Elle fait en moyenne 2 500 interventions annuelles. De sa création à 2005 elle a sauvé environ 72 000 personnes.