[link=https://historybookchat.blogspot.com/2025/04/hitlers-olympics.html]Book Review[/link]
History Book Chat

I believed this book’s title indicated an account of life in Berlin during the allied bombing of Berlin in WWII. Having served in Berlin in the early 1960s I saw much of the bomb damage and the results which could then still be seen across the city, along with the growing man-made mountain of rubble to the south of the city and I was therefore curious to see how ‘those who were there’ coped under allied bombing . Instead, this book hardly touches on this aspect of the war but it is nevertheless a thoroughly research project into a major aspect of allied bombing of Berlin during WWII until September 1943. Like the author’s earlier work on the same subject, The Battle of Berlin, this book is an excellent chronology of the bombing campaign and clearly details the units and airman involved with illuminating personal insights from pilots and civilians involved, and including experiences of the ‘other side’. Some 9,000 allied bombing sorties were carried out during this period with.. Read more
Dr Adrian Greaves - The Anglo-Zulu War Historical Society

The Devil’s Workshop by Adolf Burger is fantastic. I give 5 stars to many books, but sometimes I wish I could give 6 and this is one of them. Burger was a Slovakian Jew in Auschwitz before being included in the largest counterfeiting operation in the world, in a camp near Berlin. The book is illustrated throughout and that makes it even more interesting. The chapters are short and he talks without embellishments, just presents the situation as it is. I think this is why I’ve enjoyed this book so much. In the last 3 years of the war the Nazi forced over 140 inmates to forge both British and American banknotes, besides stamps, bonds, and some other documents. This extraordinary account tells his story starting before the war, intertwined with mentions of others who experienced the tragedy of being in the concentration camps. He was liberated from Ebensee concentration camp, but, before that, he is presenting clearly how the counterfeiting operation went, which is so interesting to read... Read more
Coffee and Books

This is a most comprehensive and detailed account of the many attempts by Bomber Command in their ultimately unsuccessful efforts to assert such dominance over the capital city of the German Reich during World War 2 that Germany would not be prepared to continue the war. Many readers who are likely to be interested in this title will already have more than a passing knowledge of the role that Bomber Command played in the Second World War, and the evolution of public perception of those who played a part from heroes to something somewhat less glorious as the memory of war recedes. Wherever individual readers’ views lie on that continuum of opinion, this book does justice, at least, to the memory of the young airmen involved and their undoubted heroism in facing appalling odds and the likelihood of death, awful injury or capture and imprisonment. As always in accounts such as these it is difficult to capture in anything like equal terms the suffering of the citizens on the receiving end.. Read more
NetGalley, K Manley

Contrary to their reputation for ethnic purity, the Waffen SS evolved into a surprisingly diverse organisation with numerous divisions formed around volunteers from occupied nations and beyond. The origins of SS Charlemagne began with the Légion des Volontaires Français in 1941, and the disappointingly small number of Frenchmen who volunteered to serve with it on the Eastern Front. It was not until the final months of the war when a Division of 6,000 men was properly formed and thrown into the futile attempts to halt the Russian advance on Berlin, and it was here that the survivors had the dubious honour of being the last troops to defend Hitler in the Fuhrerbunker. This book is largely formed around the first hand accounts of its members who were fortunate enough to survive both the battle and the post-war French legal system, if they were not executed on the spot, and they reveal the unyielding determination of SS Charlemagne as well as the horrendous fighting which took place amongst.. Read more
Pegasus Archive