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Examines the diplomatic career of Curt Prüfer (1881-1959), showing how the pre-World War I generation of German bureaucrats, with its nationalist and antisemitic attitudes, continued to function after the war, eventually giving Nazism support and a cloak of respectability. Based on Prüfer's diaries, demonstrates how his antisemitism and work in the Arab world opposed him to Zionism. His antisemitism drew on stereotypes rather than racial theory. He blamed the Jews for the defeat of 1918, despising them for entering politics at that time. Prüfer's diary for 1942 records knowledge of the Holocaust and his sole concern that it might excite anti-German feeling. In 1943 he fled to Switzerland where, even after the war, his nationalism and antisemitism grew. He continued to admire Hitler and blamed the Holocaust on the SS. He accused the Allies of hypocrisy over the Holocaust as they had done nothing to stop it when they could.
Cover -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Maps -- Abbreviations -- 1. Introduction: Britain, Germany, and the Middle East, 1871-1904 -- 2. The Specter of Muslim Unrest and German Support, 1905-1914 -- 3. Germany as Wartime "Revolutionary," Fall 1914 -- 4. The Thickening Plot and Holy War, Fall 1914 -- 5. Failed Expectations on Both Sides, 1915 -- 6. The German Threat on the Periphery, 1915 -- 7. A Sense of Crisis on Both Sides, Fall 1915 -- 8. Britain as Wartime "Revolutionary": The Arab Revolt, 1916 -- 9. Toward an Allied Victory, 1917 -- 10. Epilogue: The War's End, 1918 -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
The modern Middle East was forged in the crucible of the First World War, but few know the full story of how war actually came to the region. As Sean McMeekin reveals in this startling reinterpretation of the war, it was neither the British nor the French but rather a small clique of Germans and Turks who thrust the Islamic world into the conflict for their own political, economic, and military ends. The Berlin-Baghdad Express tells the fascinating story of how Germany exploited Ottoman pan-Islamism in order to destroy the British Empire, then the largest Islamic power in the world. Meanwhile the Young Turks harnessed themselves to German military might to avenge Turkey’s hereditary enemy,...
The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller 2014 New York Times top ten bestseller 2014 Amazon.com's Top Ten History Books of the Year 2014 New York Times Book of the Year 2014 The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War One was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, 'a sideshow of a sideshow'. Amidst the slaughter in European trenches, the Western combatants paid scant attention to the Middle Eastern theatre. As a result, the conflict was shaped to a remarkable degree by a small handful of adventurers and low-level officers far removed from the corridors of power. At the centre of it all was Lawrence. In early 1914 he was an archaeologist excavating ruins in the sands of Syria; by 1917 he was battling both the enemy and his own government to bring about the vision he had for the Arab people. Operating in the Middle East at the same time, but to wildly different ends, were three other important players: a German attaché, an American oilman and a committed Zionist. The intertwined paths of these four young men - the schemes they put in place, the battles they fought, the betrayals they endured and committed - mirror the grandeur, intrigue and tragedy of the war in the desert.
In this fascinating and enlightening collection of essays, one of the most important historians of our time reflects on the ways our understanding of Nazi Germany have been transformed in the twenty-first century. Richard Evans examines new historical perspectives on the Third Reich, such as showing how it is increasingly viewed in a broader international - even global - context, as part of the age of imperialism. He investigates how Nazi policies in Europe drew on Hitler's image of the American colonisation of the Great Plains, how companies like Volkswagen and Krupp operated on a global scale and - perhaps most controversial of all - how historians have come to see the Holocaust not as a u...
This handbook aims mainly at an analytical documentation of all the known textual remnants and the preserved artifacts of Arabic shadow theatre, a long-lived, and still living, tradition — from the earliest sightings in the tenth century to the turn of the twentieth century. The book consists of three main parts and a cluster of appendixes. Part One presents a history of Arab shadow theatre through a survey of medieval and premodern accounts and modern scholarship on the subject. Part Two takes stock of primary sources (manuscripts), published studies, and the current knowledge of various aspects of Arabic shadow theatre: language, style, terminology, and performance. Part Three offers an inventory of all known Arabic shadow plays. The documentation is based on manuscripts (largely unpublished), printed texts (scripts, excerpts), academic studies (in Arabic and Western languages), journalist reportage, and shadow play artifacts from collections worldwide.
This book consists of a range of essays covering the complex crises, tensions and dilemmas but also the positive potential in the meeting of Jews with Western culture. In numerous contexts and through the work of fascinating individuals and thinkers, the work examines some of the consequences of political, cultural and personal rupture, as well as the manifold ways in which various Jewish intellectuals, politicians (and occasionally spies!) sought to respond to these ruptures and carve out new, sometimes profound, sometimes fanciful, options of thought and action. It also delves critically into the attacks on liberal and Enlightenment humanism. In almost all the essays the fragility of thing...
This series of studies illuminates the nature of the Nazi system and its impact on Germany and the world.
Born into a prominent German Jewish banking family, Baron Max von Oppenheim (1860-1946) was a keen amateur archaeologist and ethnologist. His discovery and excavation of Tell Halaf in Syria marked an important contribution to knowledge of the ancient Middle East, while his massive study of the Bedouins is still consulted by scholars today. He was also an ardent German patriot, eager to support his country's pursuit of its "place in the sun." Excluded by his part-Jewish ancestry from the regular diplomatic service, Oppenheim earned a reputation as "the Kaiser's spy" because of his intriguing against the British in Cairo, as well as his plan, at the start of the First World War, to incite Musl...