Tag archives for Germany
Gestapo by Lucas Saul [Book Review]
Gestapo by Lucas Saul My rating: 2 of 5 stars Gestapo by Lucas Saul is a reasonable summary overview of the Gestapo, but didn't quite have enough detail for me. If you didn't know anything about the Gestapo before then it might be an OK place to start, although wikipedia would be cheaper. Gestapo by Lucas Saul Gestapo by Lucas Saul doesn't quite live up to the promise of the blurb. What I was hoping for was some analysis of how the Gestapo was formed, where its staff came from and why they joined up. Plaque on former gestapo and communist secret police building, Łódź 7 Anstadta Street (Photo credit: Wikipedia) What you get with this book is a rough chronological history of the Gestapo, and their involvement in the atrocities commited by the nazi state. You also get a series of dramatis…
Visiting Berlin – first impressions from a family holiday
I've had a fascination with visiting Berlin since my early teens, if not earlier. I did German at secondary school, and the class had a map of Berlin with the wall in 3d. The exchange student, Frauche, was a west Berliner. The city was firmly divided back then, I was at uni when the wall finally came down. Somehow it took me about thirty years to get round to visiting Berlin for the first time. Visiting Berlin Visiting Berlin was a family holiday, so I had both children and my wife with me. The kids are 4 and 10. Berlin isn't that child friendly, it was hard to find things for the little one. My elder was OK most of the time. I think we broke them both with walking about, even though we made an effort to use the…
Book Review – Masaryk Station by David Downing
Masaryk Station by David Downing My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very satisfying end to the series, although still leaving me with a wish for a more detailed epilogue that told us more about the rest of the cast's lives. As with the others there is a lot of history being told here, Downing does his research and then puts it on the page. Although one obvious lack was the bit about copying a film where the story goes straight from copying to playback without going through the development process. This is in an era where chemical processing was needed to view pictures on film after they'd been shot. Given the rest of the research I'd have thought that was known to Downing. I did enjoy this though, and there were a number of different angles. Logo of the…
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Book Review – Stettin Station by David Downing
Stettin Station by David Downing My rating: 4 of 5 stars In the third of the series the focus widens to also include Effi Koenen, John Russell's film star girlfriend. She's been there in the first two as a strong supporting character, but she really comes into her own in this one. This story starts in the Autumn of 1941 leading up to the entry of the Americans into the war. Having been largely left alone for a couple of years following the outbreak of the war by the Germans and the Soviets Russell has been working as a foreign correspondent for some American papers. On the side he's been doing some investigative reporting on the fate of the Jews he's known. As the entry of the US to the war approaches the journalistic work becomes less worthwhile, only authorised…
Book Review – Zoo Station by David Downing
Zoo Station by David Downing My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the first book that I have read entirely in 2015. Amazon had the whole series as a deal of the day for 99p each. I'd had this one, the first in the series, for a little while so I dipped in to see if the rest were worth buying. I got hooked and spent a fiver! I bought this one as an amazon recommendation. I've been buying first hand accounts and histories of the SOE for decades. I picked up the pace a bit a year ago when doing background reading for the short story Hunting Nazis which I used for the end of module on A215. I also read cold war spy fiction too. So amazon recommended me Downing's series. The link is fairly obvious. This…