Timothy W. Ryback Libri

A Washington Post Notable Book With a new chapter on eugenicist Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race In this brilliant and original exploration of some of the formative influences in Adolf Hitler’s life, Timothy Ryback examines the books that shaped the man and his thinking. Hitler was better known for burning books than collecting them but, as Ryback vividly shows us, books were Hitler’s constant companions throughout his life. They accompanied him from his years as a frontline corporal during the First World War to his final days before his suicide in Berlin. With remarkable attention to detail, Ryback examines the surviving volumes from Hitler’s private book collection, revealing the ideas and obsessions that occupied Hitler in his most private hours and the consequences they had for our world. A feat of scholarly detective work, and a captivating biographical portrait, Hitler’s Private Library is one of the most intimate and chilling works on Hitler yet written.

In The Last Survivor, journalist Timothy Ryback explores the surprising--and often disturbing--ways the citizens of Dachau go about their lives in a city the rest of us associate with gas chambers and mass graves. A grandmother recalls the echo of wooden shoes on cobblestone, the clip-clop of inmates marched from boxcars to barracks under the cover of night. A mother-to-be opts to deliver in a neighboring town, so that her child's birth certificate will not be stamped DACHAU. An "SS baby," now middle-aged, wonders about the father he never knew. And should you visit Dachau, you will meet Martin Zaidenstadt, an 87 year-old who accosts tourists with a first-hand account of the camp before its liberation in 1945. Beautifully written, compassionate, wise, The Last Survivor takes us to a place that bears the mark of Cain--and a people unwilling to be defined by the past, yet painfully unable to forget.

Traces the work of German prosecutor Josef Hartinger to find justice for the first victims of the Holocaust, who died in 1933, as a state detention center for political prisoners turned into the Dachau concentration camp.

A study of Hitler's emotional and intellectual world traces the evolution of his political philosophy, analyzing key phrases and ideas from his personal books as revealed in his own writings, speeches, conversations, and actions.

From the internationally acclaimed author of Hitler's Private Library, a dramatic recounting of the six critical months before Adolf Hitler assumed power, when the Nazi leader teetered between triumph and ruin.In the summer of 1932, the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse. One in three Germans was unemployed. Violence was rampant. Hitler's National Socialists surged at the polls. Paul von Hindenburg, an aging war hero and avowed monarchist, was a reluctant president bound by oath to uphold the constitution. The November elections offered Hitler the prospect of a Reichstag majority and a path to political power. But instead, the Nazis lost two million votes. As membership hemorrhaged and financial backers withdrew, the Nazi Party threatened to fracture. Hitler talked of suicide. The New York Times declared he was finished. Yet somehow, in a few brief weeks, he was chancellor of Germany.In fascinating detail and with previously un-accessed archival materials, Timothy W. Ryback tells the remarkable story of Hitler's dismantling of democracy through the democratic process. He provides a fresh perspective and insights into Hitler's personal and professional lives in these months, in all their complexity and uncertainty-backroom deals, unlikely alliances, stunning betrayals, an ill-timed tax audit, and a fateful weekend that changed our world forever. Above all, Ryback makes clear why a wearied Hindenburg, who disdained the Bohemian corporal, ultimately decided to appoint Hitler chancellor in January 1933.Within weeks, Germany was no longer a democracy.

„Muß man verrückt sein, um in Dachau ein normales Leben zu führen?“ Diese Frage spiegelt die Spannung wider, die alle Bewohner Dachaus empfinden: die Diskrepanz zwischen der malerischen Schönheit der Stadt und dem Grauen, das mit ihrem Namen verbunden ist. Sie zeigt die Sehnsucht nach Normalität und die Geister der Geschichte, die dieses „Epizentrum teutonischer Exzesse“ heimsuchen. Im Mittelpunkt steht Martin Zaidenstadt, ein Überlebender, der seit über fünfzig Jahren täglich an der Gedenkstätte des Konzentrationslagers Dachau Wache hält. Mit seinen Erinnerungen konfrontiert er die Besucher mit der Realität des Lagers. „Ich heiße Martin Zaidenstadt. Ich habe dieses Lager überlebt.“ Mit 87 Jahren, geplagt von den Dämonen seiner Vergangenheit, bleibt er ein Mensch voller Widersprüche und Humor, der sich einer einfachen psychologischen Deutung entzieht. Der Autor, fasziniert von Zaidenstadts Geschichte, begibt sich auf eine Spurensuche, die ihn bis in dessen polnische Heimatstadt führt. Diese Suche offenbart ein komplexes, menschliches Bild von der traumatischen Wirkung der deutschen Vergangenheit und entlarvt die Vorstellung von deutscher „Normalität“ als Illusion. Timothy W. Ryback, Direktor des Salzburg-Seminars und ehemaliger Dozent an der Harvard University, hat für namhafte Publikationen geschrieben und erhielt für sein Werk hervorragende Kritiken.