The book makes use of the false document technique, and opens with Higgins describing his discovery of the grave of thirteen German paratroopers in an English graveyard. What follows was inspired by the real life rescue of Hitler's ally Benito Mussolini by Otto Skorzeny, a similar idea is considered by Hitler, with the strong support of Himmler. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr (German military intelligence), is ordered to make a feasibility study of the seemingly impossible task of capturing British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and bringing him to the Reich.
Quite apart from the rather understandable curiosity they incite in viewers, Hitler's water colors offer considerable food for thought. An examination of these works offers some stimulating insights into the aesthetics of Nazism, particularly as to how the emphasis on classicism related to ideas about racial purity.These banal little watercolors also offer a look at Hitler's own personal tastes, reflected in his obsession for paintings that were almost exact reproductions from life, with very little room for imagination or interpretation. With the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II coming up in 2005, this is sure to be a timely and important book.
In this fast-paced history, Kirkpatrick describes the efforts of German-born Walter Horn, a U.S. Army first lieutenant and art historian, to locate the missing crown, orb, scepter, imperial sword, and ceremonial sword of the Holy Roman Empire in Europe at the end of WWII. The objects, along with the Holy Lance of Longinus and many other artifacts, had been stolen by the Nazis from Austria after the Anschluss in 1938 and, conceivably, could have been used by Nazis to motivate Germans in the creation of a Fourth Reich.
In 1938, two men held history in their hands. One was Adolf Hitler. The other was British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who, determined to avoid war at any cost, came to be known as "the great appeaser." But Harry Turtledove, the unrivaled master of alternate history, has launched a gripping saga that springboards from a different fateful act: What if Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler? What would the Nazis' next move have been? And how would the war---which Hitler had always regretted waiting eleven months to start---have unfolded and changed our world?
A stroke of the pen and history is changed. In 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, determined to avoid war at any cost, signed the Munich Accord, ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. But the following spring, Hitler snatched the rest of that country and pushed beyond its borders. World War II had begun, and England, after a fatal act of appeasement, was fighting a war for which it was not prepared. Now, in this thrilling, provocative, and fascinating alternate history by
