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Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Just finished Crucible of War, that was great. I'm reading through a few books right now, I have the habit of juggling stuff. How Rome Fell, The Fatal Shore, The Devil's Gentleman...
I was just wondering to myself if anyone had any good books on Popes? Perhaps one going through them one by one or a particularly interesting book about one or two of them? I was just reading How Rome Fell as it went through the various late era Emperors and I thought to myself, "I wonder if there's an interesting book along these lines that is a Papal history of sorts."

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Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Anyone know any good books about the Diadochi and that whole post-Alexander situation?

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

Deception posted:





I'm reading this now and it's full twists and turns. Being a historian I've never really took a closer look at the drama that unfolded after Alexander's death, mainly because there's not a wealth of primary sources that exist. This book really opened up a window for me to look at the subject deeper. I suggest anyone to take a read.
Yeah, this was a pretty nice read, just finished it since I'd been looking for books on the Diadochi (gonna read Dividing the Spoils next). I was a little disappointed at how short and quick it seemed though, it feels like the book just sort of cut off and ended when things were starting to get really juicy. Antigonus and Demetrius were a really amusing father-son team.



Any recommendations for good histories of the French Revolution? I read Citizens by Simon Schama a while back and enjoyed it well enough despite his obvious biases (I think that's sort of unavoidable when writing on something like this though).

Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Jan 18, 2014

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

radlum posted:

Any recommendations about the last years of the Roman Empire or the early Middle Ages? I love the chaos and the way the empire finally fell with no bang.
In terms of late Roman Empire, off the top of my head I remember fairly recently reading and quite enjoying How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy. Think I found it through some earlier recommendations here.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Any good books on the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and maybe the rise of fascism in Europe in general? I'm more interested in German history, German perspective, and politics rather than yet another random book about the world war. Like, more of a heavy focus on the pre-war events.
I'm reading Iron Kingdom, that history of Prussia, and it's pretty great. Will be moving on to his book on WWI, Sleepwalkers.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
I was definitely satisfied with Christopher Clark's books on Prussia and WW1, any recommendations for Tsarist/pre-Soviet Russian history?

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
The Last Days of the Incas was recommended earlier and I'm really enjoying that despite some repetitiveness in spots. Any other recommendations for good books touching on the Spanish and/or Portuguese in the New World?

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Any good South American histories? It just feels like my knowledge is super fuzzy post-Conquistador stage. Spanish American wars of independence, 20th century dictators, whatever, don't know where to start.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Any good books on the Russo-Japanese War? I feel like that's an era of history I'd like to know more about, having over the years gained a deeper appreciation and interest in similarly sometimes lesser discussed conflicts like the Crimean and Franco-Prussian.

I'd also like to read more on the Korean War perhaps. I've always had an outside grasp of the whole thing, more like how the Korean War fit into the Cold War and how it affected X or Y, not the actual details of the conflict and maybe stuff about the clash between Truman and MacArthur. Having recently read Philip Roth's novel Indignation, set during the Korean War, and having read the awesome novel The Orphan Master's Son, I have been starting to think more on the Korean War and how little I know about the actual events of it (vague things about the Chinese and those POWs who ended up staying with the North Koreans/Chinese).

Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Sep 24, 2014

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

vegaji posted:

I'm finally into the end of WWI in Kotkin's first (of three) volume biography of Stalin. This thing is absolutely amazing and I'd recommend it to all, if you don't mind reading a biography that will end up being as long as all the Game of Thrones books. Kotkin goes way behind just Stalin and does an amazing job at building mini-biographies of other key figures in order to contrast Stalin's character, decisions, and makeup with his contemporaries, such as Trotsky, Stolypin, Kerensky, etc. I'm not even halfway through 1/3 of the entire biography, but I can already tell that it is going to be the standard bearer for Stalin biographies for...maybe ever.


I'll have to check it out after I finish Caro's Johnson series, or at least what he has out so far (I'm saddened by the fact I've caught up and he's still researching the last one, but I guess it's understandable considering the wealth of knowledge/research involved in creating them...I'll just be super annoyed if he dies before he's done).

It kind of bothers me how many repeated pages there are, like I'm on The Passage of Power right now and I'm just skipping page after page. I guess it makes sense to help give people reminders but it's not even the fine lil (brief summary, see volume x) things, just flat out copied and pasted pages. I guess the review is helpful for some people, though I can't imagine people just reading standalone volumes in the series, for me the whole fun is going through the whole arc. Even with repeated sections and reminders I don't think you can, say, fully appreciate reading Master of the Senate if you never bothered reading The Path to Power and Means of Ascent, etc.
I feel like he repeated himself a lot in Master of the Senate that wasn't even repetition of stuff in previous volumes, at one point it was like "I get it, you've expressed this point about Johnson's personality/legislative strategies at least ten times in this book already".

Reading Master of the Senate and Caro briefly touching on Mexican American civil rights movements made me realize I really don't know squat in detail about any rights movements other than the main African American narrative. Any good recommendations on histories regarding Mexican American/other racial minorities/gay/women/ rights movements?

Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jan 8, 2015

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

KomradeX posted:

You get this same feeling from reading Rick Perlstein's trilogy on American Conservatism after getting through Before The Storm his book about Barry Goldwater I got about 100 pages into Nixonland before I had to take a break because of how depressing and aggravating it was reading the exact same racist criticism that were deployed against the Civil Rights Movement being reused on everything after the Ferguson protests.

Hahah, wow, you just reminded me I need to reread/continue Nixonland because basically the exact same thing happened to me. I loved all the stuff on Nixon but the more I read the more pissed and bummed out I was as I realized the roots of the shithole we find ourselves in presently.

Death in the Congo is on my list, and maybe I need to read Before the Storm (since it seems at least you actually managed to finish that one)...I did like Perlstein's writing a lot, and I do want to revisit Nixonland.
Right now I'm just slowly meandering through Stephen Kotkin's first Stalin volume and the first volume of Peter Ackroyd's History of England thing. I'm not sure how this first volume of Stalin shapes up, but I'm starting to think it might be better to leave it aside until there are many more volumes out, I would have been kind of annoyed if I'd started Robert Caro's LBJ series at a point where there were only 1-2 volumes of many planned books out since I like reading that sort of thing as a continuous narrative right after each other. Even then I was kind of bummed out I caught up to The Years of Lyndon Johnson anyway, but Caro does so much "ON THE LAST EPISODE OF LBJ" repeating in each volume (to the point that it's annoying when you're reading them one after another) that I guess it won't matter (plus there's only one volume left).

Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Apr 1, 2015

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
reading DKG's life of Salmon Chase making a nigga tear up :qq:

quote:

If his sister hoped that a warm family life would replace his ambition with love, her hopes were brutally crushed by the fates that brought him to love and lose three young wives.
His first, Catherine “Kitty” Garniss—a warm, outgoing, attractive young woman whom he loved passionately—died in 1835 from complications of childbirth after eighteen months of marriage. She was only twenty-three. Her death was “so overwhelming, so unexpected,” he told his friend Cleveland, that he could barely function.

The child upon whom all his affections then centered, named Catherine in honor of her dead mother, lived only five years. Her death in 1840 during an epidemic of scarlet fever devastated Chase. Losing one’s only child, he told Charles Cleveland, was “one of the heaviest calamities which human experience can know.”

Eventually, Chase fell in love and married again. The young woman, Eliza Ann Smith, had been a good friend of his first wife. Eliza was only twenty when she gave birth to a daughter, Kate, named in memory of both his first wife and his first daughter. For a few short years, Chase found happiness in a warm marriage sustained by a deep religious bond. It would not last, for after the birth and death of a second daughter, Eliza was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which took her life at the age of twenty-five. “I feel as if my heart was broken,” Chase admitted to Cleveland after he placed Eliza’s body in the tomb. “I write weeping. I cannot restrain my tears…. I have no wife, my little Kate has no mother, and we are desolate.”

The following year, Chase married Sarah Belle Ludlow, whose well-to-do father was a leader in Cincinnati society. Belle gave birth to two daughters, Nettie and Zoe. Zoe died at twelve months; two years later, her mother followed her into the grave. Though Chase was only forty-four years old, he would never marry again. “What a vale of misery this world is,” he lamented some years later when his favorite sister, Hannah, suffered a fatal heart attack at the dining room table.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

Hot Dog Day #82 posted:

I am going to quote you but this is a question for everyone! Has anyone hear read Robert Grave's Count Belisarius ? Graves is one of my favorite authors and Belisarius is one of my favorite historical figures, so I imagine that book must be in my wheelhouse.
Indeed I have, and I really quite enjoyed it. Having read both of Grave's Claudius books I immediately tried to hunt down anything else he'd written in the same wheelhouse and found Count Belisarius a fine and enjoyable action-packed read. All of the battles in Italy are pretty badass and exciting and I remember liking all the Justinian-Belisarius-Theodora stuff, though to be fair "Byzantine" history has never been my strongest suit.
Lots of moving and badass moments and some pretty amusing Persian-Byzantine war stuff.

quote:

Belisarius, who had succeeded in getting together an army of 25,000 men (of whom, however, he could not count on more than 3,000 to show hardihood, either in attack or defence) soon heard that a well-trained army of 40,000 men under the command of the Persian generalissimo Firouz was marching against him. Then came a Persian messenger with an arrogant message for Belisarius: 'Firouz of the Golden Fillet spends tomorrow night in the City of Daras. Let a bath be prepared for him.'
To which Belisarius replied with the amiable wit which became his handsome person: ' Belisarius of the Steel Casque assures the Persian Generalissimo that the sweating chamber and the cold douche will both be ready for him.'


After exhausting all I could find of Robert Graves (I mean I couldn't find The Golden Fleece or King Jesus, I wonder if they're any good...) I exhausted Mary Renault (whom I highly recommend to anyone who hasn't gotten into her ancient history/mythology stuff, her Alexander series is extremely excellent and it's the best fictional depiction of the Diadochi stuff) and now I have nothing, noooooothing. :(

Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Apr 19, 2015

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
I like how in most of the Lincoln/political histories of the Civil War era fiction and nonfiction (particularly in Team of Rivals), Salmon P. Chase is basically depicted as a super vain, douchey, often clueless egotistical prick. I mean, awesome abolitionism and super tragic love life aside, he comes off as such a touchy and superior dude.
I mean I was often astonished by how TERRIBLE the dude seems at politics, especially in his silly Republican primary process.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

Tupping Liberty posted:

I have recently become really interested in Japanese-American Internment in WWII. I have "Infamy" "Looking Like the Enemy" and "Farewell to Manzanar" on my to-read list, but does anyone have other recommendations?
This may be kinda weird, and it's historical fiction, but the first thing that came to mind was James Ellroy's Perfidia. It's the first in his new batch of L.A. crime novels and it starts at December 5th, 1941...so yeah, poo poo starts hitting the fan reaaaal rapid . It also has a really likeable Japanese American protagonist for whom the internments are obviously a sizable ongoing plot point and concern, and also just touches on all the paranoia, racial hatred, profiteering, etc. Maybe if you like L.A. Confidential/Noire type stuff. The only part of it I found clunky was the need to include Bette Davis as an actual recurring character, because while Ellroy is usually decent at mixing real life figures in not too awkwardly once in a while this just felt kinda hamfisted. You don't need to make Bette Davis date one of your characters, dude, this isn't fanfiction dot net or w/e.
I'd be interested in a good nonfiction historical account of the internment myself as well, though I'm still looking for some more nice sizable French Revolutionary histories ala Simon Schama's Citizens. I might just reread Citizens since I read it what feels like a billion years ago and remember enjoying it as a kid, but the more I hear people refer to it now it's with talk of how politically biased it is, so maybe it'll have lost its charm for me.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Ah, I'll just dive back into it then. I do remember loving the ride and his writing...
No e-books though?! drat, I'm gonna have to find my original mustyass gigantic hardcover of it, hopefully not reclaimed by a revolutionary committee of spiders in my closet somewhere.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
As someone for whom Chinese history is an enormous blindspot, where do I start with all that Three Kingdoms stuff? Should I just read Romance of the Three Kingdoms? I've heard you need to have an existing knowledge of Chinese history to get into that and that it's more of a legendary mythos anyway.
I really want to get into more pre-1700s Chinese and Japanese history but it's hard to figure how/where to start and a lot of it seems frustratingly mythological.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
That makes me wonder if there were any good books that cover the Etruscans and Roman Kingdom/pre-republic stuff, I assume a lack of good historical sources/accounts other than mythology prevents this

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Ah, thanks for mentioning that, I think I might give that a read simply because I have a distant fond memory of having read a particularly large and excellent book on South Africa and Rhodesia, but I don't think it was that one so this might rekindle it for me. I wonder if that's the book...nah....

I wonder if the Soviet-Afghan situation is covered in any form as thoroughly as say, the Vietnam War? Maybe not because of Russian sources?

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Any good Soviet history books? I've been reading The World Was Going Our Way and enjoying it author biases aside, but I was looking for something more general than specifically KGB

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

mariooncrack posted:

I know this is a broad topic but can anyone recommend any books on the Vietnam War?
There's a lot of stuff out there with varying levels of personal/ideological bias, I like reading em all just to better grasp multiple POVs, but I do remember finding Robert McNamara's stuff on the subject interesting years ago. In Retrospect and Argument Without End.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

Dead Goon posted:

I'm sure this has been asked many times, but could someone recommend me some books about the history of the Israel / Palestine conflicts?

I'd like that as well, it just seems difficult to find any that don't come with a heavy dose of some sort of bias.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

A human heart posted:

Hmm, maybe history can't simply be reduced to objective facts?
Oh, I'm not new to this merry-go-round, I know that aspect and I embrace it. It's really fun reading say like, six books about the same subject with differing POVs and biases, that's one of my favorite points of history. I just mean like, in the sense that some histories are far more more more biased than others. I'd prefer a lighter dose of bias whenever possible, of course it's inescapable.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

Ultimates2 posted:

Anyway, anyone know of any good books on the Wars of the Diadochi?
I read James Romm's Ghost on the Throne a while back and enjoyed it well enough, let me see what I thought about it back then...

quote:

Yeah, this was a pretty nice read, just finished it since I'd been looking for books on the Diadochi (gonna read Dividing the Spoils next). I was a little disappointed at how short and quick it seemed though, it feels like the book just sort of cut off and ended when things were starting to get really juicy. Antigonus and Demetrius were a really amusing father-son team.
I do remember reading Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire and not liking it quite as much as Ghost on the Throne, though I don't think I regretted reading it or anything. A lot of the Diadochi books just seem to cut out or provide not enough detail in certain sections I wanted more of.

Also, this is historical fiction, but I really should mention Mary Renault's stuff. Her Alexander trilogy is masterfully written (like all of her historical fiction) and the final book Funeral Games is a really great fictionalization of the Diadochi stuff.



Anyway I'm still reading Tony Judt's big post-war Europe book. It's pretty great.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Since people were recommending a glenny book on Yugoslavia earlier, is this any good?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Balkans-Nationalism-Powers-1804-1999/dp/0140233776

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Man that reminds me how horrifying I found the denazification chapters of Postwar by Tony Judt (Great read by the way, I recommend it), cuz yeah, that narrative was pushed into all generations afterwards everywhere but then you're faced with the reality of how shallow and weak denazification really was that nobody taught you in school and you're like jesus. so many high society/professionals who were collaborators or straight up card carrying enthusiastic nazis got to stay and guide the postwar futures of their countries. I guess nazi doctors are better than a scarcity of doctors though?

but then you get to the eastern bloc and Greece it's even worse cuz they're unswervingly brutal and use denazification trials to just get whatever motherfuckers executed that they don't happen to like, former nazi or not.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Are there any fairminded biographies/histories of Huey P Long that don't immediately get into tut tutting All the King's Men type bullshit? Love to read more about the man

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
recommendations for a biography of Huey P. Newton?

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
I'd like more French Revolution histories that recognize the truth of the famous Mark Twain quote

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Im really engrossed with Chris Harman's The Lost Revolution and would love to read other sorta-national histories of 20th century non-russian leftist movements along the same lines
Like, for example, an analysis of the successes and mistakes of Italian leftism.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
I learned what showers are from The Sims

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Reading The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge based on the thread's recommendation and while it's fairly interesting it still feels pretty biased in favor of the Franks just based on how he frames certain things and poses some of his arguments. Too bad, but still probably better than most histories on the subject I'd find I guess.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Yeah I remember reading that a while back and enjoying its perspective. This "authoritative history" has still been fairly entertaining I guess.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Any good Mongol histories? I'd like a firmer grasp over Mongol history that isn't just involving say, Genghis or Kublai

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Any good histories on all or any of the caliphates? Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid? I really just want more histories of the Arab and Muslim worlds that aren't like, oriented around the Crusades.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
enjoying David Stahel's writing on the Eastern Front of WW2 so far, particularly Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East and Kiev 1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy.
he does a good job pointing out how much of the written histories seem to just be uncritically based on Nazi sources and memoirs, perpetuating the idea that Soviet victory was more a matter of Hitler's interference/the weather/anything other than determined Soviet resistance. He does a good job pushing the argument that Barbarossa was a doomed and foolish operation in light of Germany's economic/manpower limitations, especially by the summer of 1941.

quote:

Histories lauding the victorious progress of the Wehrmacht in the first two years of the conflict form a characteristic representation of the war. With unprecedented victories and comparatively bloodless battles, the temptation to over-estimate German strength has always been great. In the case of Barbarossa this tendency has been further aided by the poor standing of the Red Army following Stalin's purges26 and its chaotic reorganisation following its disastrous performance in the war against Finland (1939–40).
Russel Stolfi has taken such logic so far as to suggest that historians have largely under-estimated the offensive capabilities of the German army and over-estimated those of the Red Army,27 leading to his revisionist thesis that Operation Barbarossa represented a realistic war-winning alternative for Germany.
Accordingly, Stolfi sees the invasion in glowing terms, allowing him to draw the ill-informed and dangerous conclusion: ‘Hitler showed impressive decisiveness in ordering the attack against the Soviet Union, an indomitable will for which he has not received adequate recognition for the potential consequences.’28
Not all histories which describe Germany's promising state of affairs in the prelude to Barbarossa hold to such radical and misguided views. Nevertheless, they lack a required understanding of Germany's core military and economic institutions that, in relation to the scale of the undertaking and Germany's wider geo-strategic position, offer little cause for optimism.

...

The second study by Russel Stolfi, Hitler's Panzer East – World War II Reinterpreted52 (1991) postulates the contrasting thesis that the German strategy for the conquest of the Soviet Union represented a perfectly realisable plan which was only confounded by Hitler's ruinous insistence on halting the drive on Moscow in August 1941.
In addition to glaring factual errors,53 Stolfi's thesis is laden with contentious assertions and beset by dubious methodology, underlining the difficulty of supporting a largely untenable case. Even if Moscow could have been seized by the autumn of 1941, as Stolfi claims,54 there is no evidence to suggest that this would have precipitated the collapse of the Soviet war effort as he assumes.55
Furthermore, Stolfi's assessments of Soviet losses, materiel strengths and intentions rely often on German wartime intelligence reports, which were naturally prone to prodigious inaccuracies.56 Elements of the study are so erroneous as to make it both unhelpful in understanding the events of summer 1941 and, in many regards, actively misleading especially to readers unfamiliar with the period.
A case in point is Stolfi's inexcusable omission of discussion relating to the widespread German atrocities in the east by both the SS and the German army, particularly given his repeated highlighting of war crimes committed by Soviet forces.57
Indeed the only major point on which Stolfi's thesis renders an accurate judgement is his final conclusion that the summer of 1941 represented a clear shift away from a Blitz-style campaign to one already bogged down in an unwinnable war of attrition.

This dipshit Stolfi's a professor emeritus at a naval postgraduate school in Monterey, of course.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
I lost interest in military history at a certain age, kinda looking down on it, but mostly having overconsumed so much of it as a kid...still got into stuff if it were something I knew less on, like the diadochi or crimean war or something, but I definitely lost complete interest in anything WW2 or American Civil War related.

Lately though I've been reading the gently caress out of David Stahel. Major recommend.
Such an intelligent historian and historiographer, who focuses heavily on countering so many of the cultural perceptions and repeated fallacies in existing histories of WW2 (particularly the extreme fetishization of Nazi military might that takes place among American scholars and pervades the U.S. military, one of the people he's constantly countering as part of the legion of slobbering-over-Nazis professors was a "WHAT IF THE NAZIS WON IN THE EAST HUH HUH THAT'D BE COOL!! YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT NAZI TANKS BRO" type who taught at the US Naval Postgraduate School lol). His book on Barbarossa was actually a revision of his doctoral dissertation at Berlin's Humboldt University, the main thesis being that Barbarossa itself was insane and doomed from its start (as early as summer 1941).

Can definitely recommend all of his stuff, so far i've read
Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Europe
Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East
Kiev 1941. Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East
Operation Typhoon. Hitler's March on Moscow
The Battle for Moscow
Retreat from Moscow

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

Devlan Mud posted:

So I’ve read Black Elk Speaks, Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, Son of the Morning Star, and 1491, and I’m really wanting more Native American historical perspectives of the Indian wars and in general, so looking for recommendations in that vein.

I was recommended An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States so that’s on my list, but there’s gotta be more out there.
Maybe not exactly along these lines but I've enjoyed:
The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie
Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C. Gwynne

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
any good histories of Neo-Nazism, strictly the directly connected to Nazi Germany kind? As in like, the WW2 era Nazi officials and officers who escaped or just smuggled out others, served as scientists and mercenaries for the most brutal Cold War Western/Western-backed governments, founded Neo-Nazi parties, maybe got caught.
It feels like a lot of them just got hired by the Allies or allowed to just churn out memoirs and Wehrmacht propaganda

like I only just learned about this complete "Hitler is Vishnu" psychopath
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitri_Devi

and this one whose sister got executed by the Nazis!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_von_Thadden

or this rear end in a top hat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel

or just like, Klaus Barbie getting hired by the West Germans and Counterintelligence Corps, or Skorzeny supposedly advising Peron and (maybe) working for the Mossad.
just so many horrifying stories and histories of how feeble "Denazification" was that don't really get told, not surprisingly though. I guess it'd also be a history of postwar West German culture and politics.

I do already have Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Need to keep reading that, but I was thinking something more focused.

Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Sep 22, 2022

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Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Thanks for the recs. Grabbing the ones I can. The Myth of the Eastern Front will be a nice read particularly as I'm still getting through some more David Stahel.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Well do you want actual historical accounts of the fundamentally flawed and disingenuous process of Denazification, the proliferation of Neo-Nazis in both government and society in general, the downplaying of Nazi atrocities for propaganda and ideological purposes, and the tacit encouragement for a groundswell of Nazi revanchism or are you interested in stuff not solely focused on East Germany as well?
yeah sorry, i threw out a lot there, i'm down for east germany too. I guess mostly "the fundamentally flawed and disingenuous process of Denazification" and "the proliferation of Neo-Nazis in both government and society in general" but all of the above fascinates me too.

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