Books about Prussians from Amazon.com

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: $13.97 [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: $13.06 [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: $26.95 [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: $5.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Conservative and working-class, Jean Macquart is an experienced, middle-aged soldier in the French army, who has endured deep personal loss. When he first meets the wealthy and mercurial Maurice Levasseur, who never seems to have suffered, his hatred is immediate. But after they are thrown together during the disastrous Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, the pair are compelled to understand one other. Forging a profound friendship, they must struggle together to endure a disorganised and brutal war, the savage destruction of France's Second Empire and the fall of Napoleon III. One of the greatest of all war novels, "The Debacle" is the nineteenth novel in Zola's great Rougon-Macquart cycle. A forceful and deeply moving tale of close friendship, it is also a fascinating chronicle of the events that were to lead, in the words of Zola himself, to the murder of a nation'..
Price: $6.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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: $18.78 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Maupassant is one of the fathers of the modern short story. He delighted in clever plotting, and served as a model for Somerset Maugham and O. Henry in this respect Maupassant's short story Boule De Suif was the inspiration for the classic John Ford movie Stage Coach staring John Wayne.
A number of his stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s.
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Price: $0.99 [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: $24.15 [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: $19.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For anyone familiar with the past life accounts of such writers as Dr. Brian Weiss or Dr Michael Newton, The Vortex is a stark departure from the standard genre. Far from being a clinical report of hypno-therapists recovering unconscious memories of past lives from patients on their couch, The Vortex is a first person narrative of the author s 25 year struggle to come to terms with the karmic threads tying him inescapably to every intensely intimate relationship of his present life. Like a fly on the wall we get to watch as each current life relationship develops and unfolds, only to self-destruct under the stress of the internal karmic forces at work. Then, in the aftermath of each relationship, as the author encounters what seems like an endless stream of unrelated psychics, come the revelations whose searing insights reveal exactly what karmic issues have been playing out before our eyes. In one way or another, the story line of each relationship turns out to be a continuation of two inter-related and tragically brutal past lives; the first in Mongolia when the author was a nephew of Genghis Khan, the second as a Prussian general in the years leading up to World War I. Almost everyone in the author s present life 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. But it 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 each of our destinies in ways we 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 destiny..
Price: $12.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]