Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti -- 176 pages

"I begin with the young. We older ones are used up . . . But my magnificent youngsters! Look at these men and boys! What material! With them, I can create a new world." --Adolf Hitler, Nuremberg 1933

How fascinating that so little of what Hitler did was actually illegal and how readily people followed him! In the breakdown of families and morality, and the inflation of young people, Hitler's rise to power in Germany happened swiftly, leading up to World War II. 

This book details the lives of several young people, some who resisted Hitler, and some who passionately betrayed their own parents to him. It isn't long or tedious, and it's pretty good. 

While reading relating book reviews, I was rather glad that I, among few, did know of the atrocities that this book recalls, but perhaps I didn't know quite the extent of them. I hadn't realized that so much of the violence was done by the Hitler Youth. Neither had I realized that the euthanasia program (briefly talked about in this book) was kept so undercover so that parents had no clue that their children were being murdered. 

I listened to the audio book. 

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas -- 608 pages

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Pastor, wholly dedicated to the true church, enough to stand up against the German Christian movement that Hitler instituted.
He was a Prophet who saw Hitler's mad and sadistic nature before anyone else could, and warned the Germans of the path that they were headed on.
He was a Spy and a critical part of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.
And lastly, he was a Martyr, executed for his actions only days before Hitler committed suicide and the war ended.
This biography is quite long and can be a bit dry, but the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a great one.

Hitler’s Holy Relics: A True Story of Nazi Plunder and the Race to Recover the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire

Hitler’s Holy Relics: A True Story of Nazi Plunder and the Race to Recover the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire

By Sidney D. Kirkpatrick

316 pages

I would recommend this book. It was a delight and well written. It tells of the true story of an art professor, Walter William Horn, turned detective while serving in the aftermath of World War II. He was requested to find the missing crown jewels which the Nazi had plundered.

Elegy for Eddie: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear

Elegy  for Eddie: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear --- 331 pages

In 1933 Great Britain is still gripped by the Depression and the lingering personal and social malaise of the Great War. An entire generation, continuing to pay the terrible toll exacted by that war, watches numbly as the tides of war rise to engulf them once again.

Maisie Dobbs tells herself she is happy. Her hard work is reaping its reward, and her private inquiry agency is established and successful. She has achieved not just financial security but real wealth, now that she has inherited the fortune of her late mentor, Maurice Blanche, and can continue and expand upon his good work among the poor and suffering. Her devoted lover, James Compton, is willing and able to transport her to a life of affluence and privilege; she has only to say the word, and they will be married. Maisie knows she should be happy --- and yet she is not. At odd moments she even feels a panicked sense of suffocation.

When old mates of her father Frankie, costermongers from Lambeth, the neighborhood where she lived as a child, ask Maisie to investigate the suspicious "accident" that killed Eddie Pettit, she is eager to help. Eddie, a guileless, gentle man with an amazing rapport for horses, and his mother Maudie, are treasured friends from Maisie's childhood. Honest, kindly and inoffensive people, without an enemy in the world, she would have said.

But when Maisie begins to look more closely into the circumstances surrounding Eddie's "accident," and his unusual behavior in the weeks just before his death, she begins to suspect that this simple man had been drawn, unwillingly, into a very high stakes game indeed, played by powerful and ruthless men who are convinced that the end they seek justifies any and all means. And, even more troubling, there are people whom Maisie respects and admires, who are willing participants in their conspiracy to sway public opinion.