Books about Prussian from Amazon.com

Much has been written about World War II, but not often do we hear about the immeasurable suffering of the Germans who wanted no part of Hitler's regime.

Abandoned and Forgotten is the memoir of a young girl growing up in the then-German province of East Prussia by the Baltic Sea. Orphaned at the age of nine and left to fend for herself in a hostile world, Evelyne Tannehill witnessed firsthand what happens when law and order break down and self-preservation becomes the only thing that matters. Her journey is a poignant example of how resilient the human spirit can be, even in the face of war's greatest horrors..
Price: $18.69 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The image of the Baron de Steuben training Washington's ragged, demoralized troops in the snow at Valley Forge is part of the iconography of our Revolutionary heritage, but most history fans know little more about this fascinating figure.

In the first book on Steuben since 1937, Paul Lockhart, an expert in European military history, finally explains the significance of Steuben's military experience in Europe. Steeped in the traditions of the Prussian army of Frederick the Great—the most ruthlessly effective in Europe—he taught the soldiers of the Continental Army how to fight like Europeans. His guiding hand shaped the army that triumphed over the British at Monmouth, Stony Point, and Yorktown. And his influence did not end with the Revolution. Steuben was instrumental in creating West Point, and in writing the "Blue Book"—the first official regulations of the American army. His principles have guided the American armed forces to this day.

Steuben's life is also a classic immigrant story. A failure in midlife, he uprooted himself from his native Europe to seek one last chance at glory and fame in the New World. In America he managed to reinvent himself—making his background quite a bit more glamorous than was the reality—but redeeming himself by his exceptional service and becoming, in a sense, the man he claimed to be.

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Price: $18.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The uprooting of seven million civilians - women, children, and elderly men - from their homes in the German provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia following World War II is largely unknown in the United States. Weeds Like Us is a gripping true adventure story about the author's own East Prussian family. The author's earliest years were spent in relative comfort on his grandfather's farm in East Prussia during World War II. For him, life in Hitler's Germany was the natural order of things. Then, in January 1945, just after the author's seventh birthday, the Russians rolled into East Prussia. Full of unexpected twists and turns, Weeds Like Us tells the story of what happened over the next six years, as the author's family tried to make its way safely to the West..
Price: $18.86 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 violently changed the course of European History. Alarmed by Bismarck's territorial ambitions and the Prussian army's crushing defeats of Denmark in 1864 and Austria in 1866, French Emperor Napoleon III vowed to bring Prussia to heel. Digging into many European and American archives for the first time, Geoffrey Wawro's Franco-Prussian War describes the war that followed in thrilling detail. While the armies mobilized in July 1870, the conflict appeared "too close to call." Prussia and its German allies had twice as many troops as the French. But Marshal Achille Bazaine's grognards ("old grumblers") were the stuff of legend, the most resourceful, battle-hardened, sharp-shooting troops in Europe, and they carried the best rifle in the world. From the political intrigues that began and ended the war to the bloody battles at Gravelotte and Sedan and the last murderous fights on the Loire and in Paris, this is the definitive history of the Franco-Prussian War. Dr. Geoffrey Wawro is Professor of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Wawro has published two books: The Austro-Prussian War (Cambridge, 1996) and Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792-1914 (Routledge, 2000). He has published articles in The Journal of Military History, War in History, The International History Review, The Naval War College Review, American Scholar, and the European History Quarterly, and op-eds in the Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Miami Herald, Hartford Courant, and Providence Journal. Wawro has won several academic prizes including the Austrian Cultural Institute Prize and the Society for Military History Moncado Prize for Excellence in the Writing of Military History. He has lectured widely on military innovation and international security in Europe, the U.S., and Canada and is host of the History Channel program Hardcover History--a weekly book show with leading historians, pundits, critics, statesmen and journalists..
Price: $16.37 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Is reincarnation true, and if so, is karma from past lives controlling the lives we are all living now? The Vortex is a true story of how one man, Maxwel Austin van Lack, was forced to confront just such questions, not once, but repeatedly over an entire lifetime The story begins with Max sitting with his new girlfriend listening to her recite an 800 year old Greek Orthodox prayer reputed to have the power to dispel evil and quiet the mind when she's suddenly plunged into a spontaneous psychic vision of a very old monk dressed in red robes. As soon as she describes the monk Max is immediately struck by his similarity to what a previous psychic had told him years earlier was his very powerful spirit guide. Almost immediately the monk's features begin morphing into a turn-of-the-century Prussian General and then into a Mongolian Warlord from the time of Genghis Khan. Several months later the two of them take a weeklong seminar in psychic healing, and during a class aura reading exercise, in which Max is the subject, the entire class reports seeing everything his girlfriend had seen months earlier. According to the instructor the man in red robes is indeed Max's spirit guide, and the Prussian and Mongolian are personas from two of his past lives. To make matters worse, for the next 25 years Max is continuously plagued by spontaneous encounters with various psychics who seem bent on answering all the questions he is too afraid to ask about the events of these two previous lifetimes. As the evidence mounts Max eventually begins to realize how the tragic events of these prior lifetimes have shaped both the events and the relationships of his life in the present. In fact, almost everyone in his present life, friends, lovers, wives, etc, seem to have played some pivotal role in these former incarnations and have now returned to help him resolve the karmic issues, whether he wants to or not. The Vortex is both a metaphysical mystery and a spiritual autobiography that reads like a riveting novel. It is a tale of tribulation, triumph and healing that will take you on a paranormal roller-coaster ride back through time as you uncover how the events of the past could be shaping your own destiny in ways you can scarcely imagine. Discover how age-old passions fuel our life choices in the present, as one man struggles to unravel the karmic threads that connect all his most intimate relationships, and ultimately free him to embrace his personal mission and destiny..
Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This is a new history of the Austro-Prussian-Italian War of 1866, which paved the way for German and Italian unification. Geoffrey Wawro describes Prussia's successful invasion of Habsburg Bohemia, and the wretched collapse of the Austrian army in July 1866. Blending military and social history, he describes the panic that overtook Austria's regiments in each clash with the Prussians. He reveals the blundering of the Austrian commandant who fumbled away key strategic advantages and ultimately lost a war--crucial to the fortunes of the Habsburg Monarchy--that most European pundits had predicted they would win..
Price: $22.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The penultimate novel of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, La Debacle (1892) concerns the dramatic events of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune of 1870-71. During Zola's lifetime it was the best-selling of all his novels, praised by contemporaries for its epic sweep as well as its attention to historical detail. The novel seeks to explain why the Second Empire ended in crushing military defeat and revolutionary violence. It focuses on ordinary soldiers, showing their bravery and suffering in the midst of circumstances they cannot control. Often War and Peace, La Debacle skilfully integrates the narrative of events and the fictional lives of characters to provide the finest account of this tragic chapter in French history..
Price: $6.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

On September 25, 1944, Hitler attempted to shore up his faltering forces by creating the Volkssturm or People's Army. His new draft called into service all remaining able-bodied men, including those whose civilian labor had previously been deemed indispensable. Among the latter was an East Prussian farmer named Hans Thiel, who suddenly found himself on the Eastern front, fighting not to bring glory to the Nazi Party (for which he felt at best a troubled resignation) but to save his country from destruction. With the defeat of the Germans, Thiel was taken prisoner by the advancing Soviet forces. From the closing days of World War II through three years of postwar captivity, this memoir details the experiences of Hans Thiel. Beginning with the realities of agrarian life during World War II, it then describes Thiel's conscription, his combat experiences, and his life as a postwar prisoner, held first by the Red Army and then transferred to camps under Polish control. The atrocities these prisoners suffered at the hands of their captors--as retaliation for German military war crimes--are discussed in detail. The book includes a glossary (general terms), an appendix commenting on German agrarian policy under the Third Reich, a second appendix discussing the difficulties of tracing Thiel's route through the war-torn countryside, and a third appendix of placenames. Photographs and maps are also included..
Price: $26.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 when Bismarck engineered a war with the French Second Empire under Napoleon III. This was part of his wider political strategy of uniting Prussia with the southern German states, excluding Austria. The war was an overwhelming Prussian victory, and King Wilhelm I was proclaimed Emperor of the new united Germany. The Second Empire collapsed and Napoleon III became an exile in Britain. In the peace settlement with the French Third Republic in 1871 Germany gained the eastern French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, areas that were to provide a bone of contention for years to come..
Price: $6.84 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1870 Bismarck ordered the Prussian Army to invade France, inciting one of the most dramatic conflicts in European history. It transformed not only the states-system of the Continent but the whole climate of European moral and political thought. The overwhelming triumph of German military might, evoking general admiration and imitation, introduced an era of power politics, which was to reach its disastrous climax in 1914.
First published in 1961 and now with a new introduction, The Franco-Prussian War is acknowledged as the definitive history of one of the most dramatic and decisive conflicts in the history of Europe..
Price: $30.53 [Notify me when price goes down.]