Search results for ""Author Blaine Taylor""

This book is the first ever illustrated study on the often photographed – but never fully explained – mechanical marvel, the Mercedes-Benz G-4 cross-country touring car, the vehicle that carried Adolf Hitler across much of Europe before and during World War II. Culled from the rich photo archives of Daimler-Benz, as well as from captured German albums in U.S. archives, this work depicts the G-4 in fascinating images and detailed text. Volume 2 will cover the Daimler-Benz 770K Grosser Mercedes.

Read more less

When modern readers think of Hermann Goring, what probably comes to mind is the overweight drug addict and convicted war criminal who cheated the hangman's noose at Nuremberg by committing suicide just hours before he was due to be hanged. Or perhaps there is the image of his powerful German air force in the Second World War---the Luftwaffe---bombing defenceless European cities and towns in the early part of the war, until it was defeated by the British Royal Air Force in the epic Battle of Britain in 1940. Perhaps the reader might think of Goring the debauched art collector who pirated captured collections all over Nazi Europe during the Occupation years. All of these images are correct, but here we see another Hermann Goring: the slim, dashing fighter pilot and combat ace of an earlier struggle, the Great War, or World War I of 1914-18, which he began as an infantry officer fighting the French Army in the 1914 Battle of the Frontiers. During a hospitalization, his friend Bruno Lorzer convinced him to become an aerial observer-photographer, photographing the mighty French fortress of Verdun. He did, and began these never-before-seen personal photo albums of men and aircraft at war: up close.

Read more less

The year 1938–39 was when Hitler set out on the road of pre-war bloodless conquests, which led to the actual shooting combat over Poland in September 1939. Both willing and unwilling, Hermann Goering was his main acolyte in achieving the peaceful military occupations of Austria and the Czech–German Sudetenland in 1938, followed by that of Bohemia and Moravia, plus Memel in 1939.¶ Prior to this, Goering played perhaps the key role in the Nazi overthrow of the Third Reich’s conservative military and foreign services, being named field marshal as his reward. Having helped Franco win the Spanish Civil War, Goering’s Air Force Legion Kondor also returned home victorious, having acquired valuable air war experience in aces, aircraft, and tactics, which served Goering well in the first phase of World War II. A major factor in making the Allies back down to Germany at the infamous Munich Pact Conference, Goering’s Luftwaffe was the key bargaining chip that gained these unprecedented territorial acquisitions for Hitler—all without a shot being fired. He also helped achieve alliances with Fascist Slovakia and Italy.

Read more less

In 1919, Hermann Goering went to Denmark as a stunt flyer, then on to Sweden to fly passengers, one of whom introduced the daredevil to his future first wife, a then married Swedish Countess; they scandalized Stockholm. Goering joined the Nazi Party, as commander of the early SA Stormtroopers. In the celebrated Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Goering was severely wounded, and fled. Thus began a four-year exile in which Goering became a practising morphine addict in Austria, Italy, and Sweden, and was committed to an insane asylum in a straitjacket. Goering returned to Germany under a political amnesty, and blackmailed Hitler into putting him up for election to the Reichstag as a Nazi candidate in 1928. He won, and four years later, was elected its President.He helped convince Germany's power elite to name Hitler Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Taking over Prussia's police force-and during the upheaval of the Reichstag fire and trial-Goering ruthlessly smashed all non-Nazi parties. Then came the inter-Party Blood Purge of the Night of the Long Knives of 30 June 1934 that Goering directed in Berlin.This cemented his position as the Fuhrer's second-in-command, after having been declared insane!

Read more less

Wilhelm II (27 January 1859 - 4 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918. He was the eldest grandson of the British Queen Victoria and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe, three notable contemporary relations being his first cousins King George V of the United Kingdom, Marie of Romania, Queen consort of Romania and second cousin to Tsar Nicholas II of the House of Romanov, the last ruler of the Russian Empire before the Russian Revolution of 1917 which deposed the monarchy.He became monarch in 1888 and ruled in peace for twenty-five years. Wilhelm's father had been the hero of three wars and his mother the Princess Royal of Great Britain. When his father died prematurely of throat cancer, Wilhelm succeeded him at age twenty-nine and became the icon of the new 'Wilhelminian' age. Germany excelled in commerce, agriculture, trade, science, cars, the arts, and medicine. Already having Continental Europe's greatest army, Wilhelm set about winning world power via overseas colonies and the building of a vast Imperial High Seas Fleet that rivalled Britain's.Eventually, he was defeated by the combined forces of the UK, US, France and Russia, and driven into exile by the red revolution. He remained politically active in exile, pressing for a return to the monarchy up to the time of his death in 1941.This is a fresh look at a much maligned figure, including his relationships with Bismarck, Hindenburg, Tirpitz, King Edward VII and Tsar Nicholas II, all on the precipice of global change. Was Wilhelm a visionary, a fool, or both?

Read more less

This is the exciting, fascinating saga of the creation of the world’s most popular car, the famed Volkswagen Beetle, under the Nazi regime ofGerman dictator Adolf Hitler, who played a pivotal role in its design, construction, and marketing during 1933-38. It is also the story of the two Drs. Porsches who created it – Ferdinand, Sr., and his son, Ferry – as well as Dr. Robert Ley’s German Labor Frontthat built it, and Adolf Huhnlein’s Nazi Motor Corps that helped popularize driving and made motoring a reality in the Third Reich.

Read more less

In March 1935, Goering unveiled to the world his formerly "black,' secret German Air Force, the later dreaded Luftwaffe. That April, he married his second wife, a popular German stage actress, and in May solidified Germany's pre-1939 surprisingly good relations with neighbouring Poland. In March 1936, the Luftwaffe took part in the peaceful occupation of the formerly French-occupied Rhineland, and by the end of the year, Goering was also the recognized economic dictator of the Third Reich via heading the Nazi Four Year Plan. A State Visit to Rome in January 1937 made him a main player regarding the future Reich alliance with Fascist Italy and that November, he hosted Europe's largest hunting exposition of 50 years at Berlin. Overshadowing all of this, however, was the top-secret Hossbach war conference, at which Hitler announced his intention go to war by 1943 in order to seize Russian territory for an expanded German empire in the east. In all of the above, Goering was the main player, second only to Hitler, especially regarding the economy and the air force.

Read more less

JFK had won the Presidency in 1960 by a razor thin majority, and his re-election campaign for 1964 was expected to be as close. He began it in November 1963 with a kick-off multi-city, four-day swing across the important state of Texas. It was going unexpectedly well when shots were fired into his triumphant motorcade in downtown Dallas that ripped history apart, changing it forever The assassination of American President John F. Kennedy in 1963 came at the very height of both the Cold War following the Second World War and the Pax Americana that was thought to exist at the war's conclusion in 1945. The United States and its allies possessed a far greater number of nuclear weapons than their Soviet adversaries, but the latter could unleash World War 3 and a nuclear Armageddon that would destroy them all. The sudden and totally unexpected murder in broad daylight in an American city of one of the most popular presidents in history was the murder mystery of the 20th century. The Cold War could have become hot and nuclear within minutes. The murderer had to be found and vital questions had to be answered quickly. Who did it, why and who ordered Kennedy's assassination? Was the deed part of a conspiracy: foreign, domestic or both? Were none of the these questions part of the bloody puzzle and was it entirely possible that only one man was responsible? The questions remain to this very day and Dallas Fifty Years On: The Murder of John F. Kennedy reveals sensational new evidence, eyewitness accounts and top secret documentation.

Read more less

With the Great War (1914-18) Centennial beginning in 2014, this is a comprehensive study of Prussian/German railways in peace and strife, 1825-1918 -men, rails, lines, engines, cars, and stations. They all played a crucial part in Germany's Wars of Unification during 1864-71, the interwar years, and the final catastrophe that toppled many crowns, thrones, and states, all told from a railroad perspective, a unique way of exploring the history of the 19th-20th Centuries. Here the reader will also find the sagas of the other railways aligned both for and against the Second Reich: Berlin-Baghdad, Trans-Siberian, Hejaz, African, Italian, American, and more. Presented also are notable individual historic trains, such as those of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II, hospital conveyances, differing gauges, railroad guns, armored trains, Lenin's infamous "sealed train" through Germany to Russia, and much more. Here, too, are the famous men who made "training" a successful wartime tool: banker Bleichroder, soldiers von Moltke, raider Lawrence of Arabia, Bulow and Hindenburg, and how French Marshal Foch's railroad dining car became the focal point of the Great War's final ending.From the very first German passenger service to the Russian Civil War, this is epic railroading as a military force.

Read more less

This book is the first ever illustrated study devoted exclusively to the famous Mercedes 770K parade car used by Hitler during most of the 1930s, and into the 1940s, both in peace and war. Culled from the rich photo archives of Daimler-Benz – and the Hermann Goring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Heinrich Hoffmann, and Eva Braun Hitler albums on deposit in the U.S. – this study depicts the 770K in fascinating images and detailed text. Volume 1 in this series covered the Mercedes-Benz G-4 cross-country touring car also used by Hitler and other top Nazi leaders.

Read more less

'Teutonic Titans: Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and the Kaiser's Military Elite' covers the era 1847-1955-heavily illustrated with over 500 images of German Emperor Wilhelm II's First World War marshals and generals, emphasizing their lives, careers, battles, and campaigns. The book covers both Western and Eastern Fronts, as well as the Balkans, Baltics, Middle, and Far East. It is also heavily detailed with maps, cartoons, graphics, and photographs, plus descriptions of strategies, tactics, weapons, statistics on all losses, and results. Period cartoons add to the vast array of photographic sources worldwide: United States National Archives and Library of Congress, Washington and College Park, Maryland; Imperial War Museum London: Bundesarchiv, Bonn, and also His Majesty's own albums at Doorn House, Holland, many of them previously unpublished. German Crown Prince Wilhelm and Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht, all German Chiefs of General Staff and War Ministers are detailed as well, plus all top Allied leaders and commanders: Woodrow Wilson, John J. Pershing; David Lloyd George, King George V, Sir Douglas Haig, and Sir John French among them; Tsar Nicholas II, Grand Duke Michael, and more; Frenchmen Henri Petain, Joffre, Foch, and Weygand; as well as those of Serbia, Italy, Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria.

Read more less

German leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was one of the most controversial politicians and military commanders in all recorded history. As such, his life was conspired against by all manner of enemies, both foreign and domestic: German and Russian Communists, political and military opponents, rival Nazi leaders, and the intelligence services of the Allied powers, among them the British SOE. Dozens of attempts were made on his life over the course of two decades, including a bomb explosion in his own headquarters-and yet, he survived them all. This is the story of how he did so, as told via the exciting sagas of Sepp Dietrich and his SS, as well as of German government security leader Johann Rattenhuber and his Reich Security Service, the RSD. Here we see the measures used to protect Hitler in public, his cars, planes, trains, homes, military headquarters scattered across conquered Europe, and during personal appearances. Ironically, of course, in the end Hitler decided to take his own life in the infamous Berlin bunker, but this is the story of how a man that so many people wanted dead managed to stay alive for so long in volatile circumstances.

Read more less

1939 was a glorious year for Hermann Goering. He spent it entertaining dignitaries visiting the Third Reich, attending galas, going on official visits, giving rousing speeches at factories and military parades, and indulging in his love of fine art, rich cuisine and sumptuous clothes and jewels. Ever vain, pompous and ambitious, in 1939 he attained the summit of his power and popularity when Hitler, speaking to a packed Reich Chancellery on 1 September, named him his successor. Goering's rise was inseparable from that of his Luftwaffe. As commander-in-chief, he basked in the glory of the Condor Legion's victory in Spain in April 1939 and the Luftwaffe's decisive role in the Blitzkrieg of Poland in September. From these encounters, the Luftwaffe emerged as the world's most feared and respected air force-but beyond the trappings of victory, there were deep-seated flaws. Fearing their exposure against a more powerful enemy, Goering did not want Germany to go to war with Great Britain and France. Hermann Goering: From Madrid to Warsaw and Beyond, 1939 is a photographic chronicle of a momentous year in the life of the Luftwaffe's commander-in-chief, showing him at his most happy and self-confident, and equally, at his most anxious about what the future might bring.

Read more less