Tim Heath

Hitler proclaimed that a youth of iron would emerge from his National Socialist society, a youth which would terrify the world. The Hitler Youth generation was born between the years 1922-1930; these would be the German children baptised with blood and fire, entering a world of violence to the sounds of thousands of jackboots, screams of “Sieg Heil”, breaking glass, gunfire and bombs. This was a youth tempered in the flames of National socialism, prerequisites to the creation of the unthinkable, mothers and fathers of the Aryan Race. As a youngster, Wiener Katte, born in Berlin on 30 August 1930, witnessed the violence of the Nazi state in an increasingly racial, political and Anti-Semitic environment. Torn between her own principles and those of her regime-sympathetic family, Wiener was determined to never abandon her moral values and sell her soul to the devil as many of her generation would. Fate placed a fourteen-year-old Wiener in the heart of one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War, Aachen. This is Wiener’s story told for the first time in full in her own words.

Far from being a backwater to the wider events of the Second World War, the Mediterranean theatre of Allied operations was vast in its scale, requiring expert command of materiale and resources in combination with a determined spirit within those tasked with the fighting against not only a highly motivated and very capable enemy, but to do so in what was a challenging environment to both man and machine. The armoured fighting vehicle, namely the tank (alongside that of artillery and air power), would prove vital in the open nature of warfare in North Africa and the Mediterranean, although Nazi Germany held the initiative in many aspects of armoured warfare in WWII. The breed of men who operated tanks throughout the Second World War, honing them into the fearsome weapons we recognise today, became known as ‘Tankers’. Tank warfare by its very nature was unpleasant and claustrophobic. Sergeant Hugh Brian Brazier (2 July 1922/23 - March 2022) joined the British Army on 19 March 1942 at the age of 20\. Posted to the 46th Royal Tank Regiment, he was soon deployed to North Africa, where his experiences of the Second World War would begin.

Germany's defeat in the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles that followed were national disasters, with far-reaching consequences not just for the country but for the world itself. Weaving the stories of three German families from the beginning of Germany’s territorial aspirations of the First World War to the shattered dream of a thousand-year Reich in the Second World War, Tim Heath’s rich narrative explores a multitude of rare and untapped resources to explore the darkest recesses of German social and military history. Creating Hitler’s Germany presents a nation’s journey not only through everyday life and war, but through its own conscience, pain and inevitable search for some form of absolution from its past. It is real, painful and incredibly human – an essential history to further understand the mind-set of Germany during the most tumultuous years of the nation’s history.

From the outbreak of war in 1939, German Luftwaffe armament designers and technicians pioneered many revolutionary concepts in the barrelled armaments of their military aircraft, particularly as the threat posed by the combined US and British Allied strategic bombing campaign grew in intensity from 1943. Desperate solutions were sought in an effort to counter the threat posed by Allied bomber aircraft to German industry and infrastructure, which in turn saw the introduction into service of airborne guns with ever-increasing calibres and impressive levels of lethality. This book examines the use of the humble rifle calibre machine gun as an aircraft weapon along with the efforts to develop suitable cannon with greater destructive power for aircraft use, the advances made during the inter-war years and the various barrelled weaponry either used or proposed by the German Luftwaffe in the Second World War. This work encompasses not only the technical and operational appraisals of the various weapons used by the German Luftwaffe aircrews, which include some of Germany's leading surviving fighter aces of the Second World War, but also the armourers tasked with their day-to-day maintenance, the instructors and technicians on the ground, and those who found themselves at the receiving end of their firepower both in the air and on the ground. This unique work encompasses many new and previously unpublished testimonies as told by those who were there in their own words and for the first time.

Urban Design: The Basics provides a brief but compelling overview and introduction to the theory and practice of the multi-disciplinary field of urban design. It is an ‘easy-to-understand’ and ‘jargon-free’ introduction to the fundamental principles of urban design. By introducing the essentials of urban design, the book is an important starting point for future study of the discipline. Topics include placemaking, sustainable urbanism, the evolution of cities and townscapes, and urban design and governance. Across seven chapters, the book is centred on a holistic understanding of sustainability and the special role of urban design in achieving a high quality of urban life, economic diversification, and less energy consumption. It provides a clear overview of the evolution of urban design, drawing on fundamental principles and critical challenges, and negotiates the complexities and nuances of the discipline. Given the contemporary international importance of urban design, the book uses examples from around the globe to explain its role and impact in different contexts. It also features detailed further reading lists for those wishing to expand their knowledge and understanding further. Urban Design: The Basics will be of keen interest to those fascinated with cities and urban design, students, and practitioners who are looking to supplement their knowledge of key urban design principles.

Urban Design: The Basics provides a brief but compelling overview and introduction to the theory and practice of the multi-disciplinary field of urban design. It is an ‘easy-to-understand’ and ‘jargon-free’ introduction to the fundamental principles of urban design. By introducing the essentials of urban design, the book is an important starting point for future study of the discipline. Topics include placemaking, sustainable urbanism, the evolution of cities and townscapes, and urban design and governance. Across seven chapters, the book is centred on a holistic understanding of sustainability and the special role of urban design in achieving a high quality of urban life, economic diversification, and less energy consumption. It provides a clear overview of the evolution of urban design, drawing on fundamental principles and critical challenges, and negotiates the complexities and nuances of the discipline. Given the contemporary international importance of urban design, the book uses examples from around the globe to explain its role and impact in different contexts. It also features detailed further reading lists for those wishing to expand their knowledge and understanding further. Urban Design: The Basics will be of keen interest to those fascinated with cities and urban design, students, and practitioners who are looking to supplement their knowledge of key urban design principles.

At midnight of 12 August 1961 East Germany became partitioned from the West by an ideological barrier that would remain a chancroid rash upon the political landscape of post WW2 Europe for some forty-five years. Initially little more than rolls of barbed wire, this barrier soon became the concrete monolith known the world over as the Berlin Wall. Prior to the construction of the wall an exodus of some 3.5 million East Germans circumvented the Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions in order to escape the socialist nightmare that many knew was now imminent. For those on the other side of the wall their lives would be characterized by fear, oppression, the denial of basic human rights and an abject paranoia coupled with endless ques of people outside shops with no goods to sell. This book tells the story of those who lived under the German Democratic Republic (GDR) where Marxism-Leninism and Russian language were compulsory for all schoolchildren. Although hatred and resistance towards the regime soon flourished it would take many decades for communism to choke upon its own poison, but would a re-unified Germany and the rest of Europe be any safer in the wake of its demise?

The meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party cowed the masses into a sense of false utopia. During Hitler’s 1932 election campaign over half those who voted for Hitler were women. Germany’s women had witnessed the anarchy of the post-First World War years, and the chaos brought about by the rival political gangs brawling on their streets. When Hitler came to power there was at last a ray of hope that this man of the people would restore not only political stability to Germany but prosperity to its people. As reforms were set in place, Hitler encouraged women to step aside from their jobs and allow men to take their place. As the guardian of the home, the women of Hitler’s Germany were pinned as the very foundation for a future thousand-year Reich. Not every female in Nazi Germany readily embraced the principle of living in a society where two distinct worlds existed, however with the outbreak of the Second World War, Germany’s women would soon find themselves on the frontline. Ultimately Hitler’s housewives experienced mixed fortunes throughout the years of the Second World War. Those whose loved ones went off to war never to return; those who lost children not only to the influences of the Hitler Youth but the Allied bombing; those who sought comfort in the arms of other young men and those who would serve above and beyond of exemplary on the German home front. Their stories form intimate and intricately woven tales of life, love, joy, fear and death. Hitler’s Housewives: German Women on the Home Front is not only an essential document towards better understanding one of the twentieth century’s greatest tragedies where the women became an inextricable link, but also the role played by Germany’s women on the home front which ultimately became blurred within the horrors of total war. This is their story, in their own words, told for the first time.

Among the most appalling cruelties perpetrated throughout the course of the Second World War was undoubtedly that of human medical and military experimentation conducted upon both living and deceased human beings. The various Nazi human experimentation programmes were initially carried out not so much in the pursuit of any particular scientific discipline, but largely as a result of the Third Reich’s obsession with race and eugenics. However, this criminal sub-discipline of the Nazi fascination, with its warped racial ideologies, was excused as little other than collateral damage by many of the Nazi physicians and their assistants. Germany’s Axis ally, the Japanese Empire, notorious for its cruelty and sadism ran its own independent programmes of human experimentation such as Unit 731 where human beings were not only subject to the most appalling abuses but were injected with cocktails of poisons and/or diseases and in some instances were dissected while fully conscious without any anaesthesia being administered beforehand. It can be said that both Third Reich Germany and Imperial Japan had a more or less inexhaustible supply of human Guinea pigs throughout the Second World War for its ghastly enterprise in human medical experimentation. These unfortunate souls consisted largely of concentration camp inmates or in the case of the Japanese the indigenous peoples of the lands they conquered along with British, American, Indian and Australian Allied prisoners of war. Yet what was the true purpose of these so-called experiments and what requisites if any were, they to serve? And does any evidence suggest that mutual cooperation existed between Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire towards the collation of data through the execution of these ghastly endeavours? Another facet examined within this work is why those Japanese physicians involved in human experimentation and medical torture were excused indictments for war crimes when the evidence against them was clearly so overwhelming? And is there any truth to suggest that the Allied powers benefited from the material obtained through questioning at the end of the Second World War? The complicity of both the German and Japanese pharmaceutical companies also has to be brought into question as many cooperated willingly with the military making handsome profits in the process. This work is written in an attempt at analysing all of these factors within the context of a single volume, utilising the testimonies of perpetrator and victim through many new first-hand and archival sources. This volume also serves as a horrifying and sobering reminder of the capability of man’s inhumanity through two of the worst military regimes of twentieth-century history.

Military and battlefield archaeology has always been viewed as a sub-discipline to that of traditional historical archaeology. Once considered the pursuit of learned history professors and their disciples today, military archaeology has flourished around the world into what can only best be described as a hugely popular pastime, and in some instances a multi-million-pound business. With technologies available today, even the student on the most modest of budgets can become an archaeologist (if only in the layman’s term). Yet despite it’s popularity in unearthing answers to the questions of our turbulent past, there are surprisingly few texts available on what is arguably a fascinating and historically important subject. The objective herein is to present an analysis of various battles fought around the world from medieval times to the present, and the archaeology recovered from investigations carried out by professionally sanctioned groups and hobbyists. The context here includes general battlefield recovered artefacts, military aviation crash sites, Second World War pill boxes, air raid shelters, POW Camps and other structures. There is also emphasis on Britain’s ally in both world wars, the United States of America, examining the artefacts, wreckology, structures and dumping grounds left behind by the American military forces at the end of the Second World War both in the UK and Europe. Military Archaeology: How Detectorists and Major Finds Improve our Understanding of History is a valuable addition to the military and literary analysis of the archaeology of warfare from the Boudiccan uprising to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

Sex under the Swastika is a journey through the dark secretive corridors of the Third Reich's powerbase and it's near-pathological sexual obsession with young women, sex, Satanism and the occult. Based on interviews, eye-witness accounts and using newly revealed material from the sons and daughters of former SS officers who were part of Adolf Hitler and Reinhard Heydrich's personal staff, we learn about the sexual conduct, affairs, scandals and fetishes of some of Hitler's most trusted advocates, who used their positions of trust to execute their warped fantasies. It reveals how many leading Nazi's were actively involved in occult rituals and sexual practices, and how the abuse suffered by many young men and women was only permissible through the filtering down from the highest echelons of the regime, which was prepared to turn a blind eye. Learn about the exotic sex and drug-fuelled private cocktail parties of the Nazi political elite that spread far and wide into the society over which it presided. An unapologetically provocative volume, Sex Under the Swastika is an exploration of the Third Reich's darkest secrets, which left blood on the crisp white sheets of a nation and caused many to remain silent for decades after the death of National Socialist Germany. This unique work leaves the reader to make up his or her own mind as to the perverse, warped nature and the guilt and complicity of one of history's most sexually exploitive and evil empires.

As the last flames of the Second World War flickered and died, Germany emerged into an apocalyptic wasteland, where the Hitler Youth generation would be cursed with the running sore of National Socialism. With the uncaged bear of the Soviet Union flexing its muscles and the escalating tensions between East and West providing some distraction from the funeral pyre of the Third Reich, those living in West Germany soon understood that they were the geological bulkhead, a component in the prevention of communism spreading throughout the infantile peace of post-Second World War Europe. Despite all the destruction and political tensions which surrounded them, the young men and women of Germany were keen to experience the world beyond their own precarious borders. In August 1945, Tia Schuster and Lisa Kraus were two fourteen-year-old Berliners, and - like many - they found themselves shoehorned into what was to be the second new era' of their young lives. The first had brought about only death and destruction, yet this second had a cold unfamiliarity about it. As the late 1940s gave way to the 1950s and 60s, a series of new decadent eras - of rock-n-roll, fashion, flower power and sexual revolution - was on the horizon, which posed a threat to the traditional German way of life championed by the Nazi regime and post-Second World War German government. With this heady mixture of new-found freedom, the youth of Germany unwittingly became a feature of everything that both fascism and communism despised. This unique work tells the story of the tentative steps taken by young men and women into the afterlife of Nazi Germany'. Encompassing memoirs along the way, it presents a quirky portrayal of charm, humour, mischief and personal accomplishment along with a vitally important slice of (West) Germany's social history, which has remained hidden from the literary world for decades. As Tia Schuster remarked: The world suddenly became a very big piece of pie, we wouldn't be happy with just taking a slice of this pie, no, we wanted the whole damn thing and we didn't care if it made us sick or not!'

With his sharp wit and poet's eye, Tim Heath writes of a forty-year career, mostly in New Zealand but also in Samoa. He's worked in small country schools, in big city schools, at the Correspondence School, in primary schools and in secondary schools. He's been a principal and a deputy principal. Teaching wasn't his first choice, but once in the classroom he found his calling. Tim is a passionate advocate for children and their learning, and his educational philosophy is illustrated through touching anecdotes of children and their struggles and successes. Written against the backdrop of changing times in New Zealand, this memoir is a deep dive into education and its place in our world.

The jungle war against the Japanese was arguably one of the worst terrors that could be inflicted upon a young soldier who had never been away from home before, let alone be faced with a brutal, sadistic and uncompromising enemy in an alien environment. Based on the accounts of three culturally different veterans, Tim Heath investigates the war against the Japanese, primarily in the jungles of Asia during the Second World War. From the first jungle forays, through to the defeats, the victories, the massacre of indigenous populations, the war crimes and the final elements of the war in the jungle which led to ultimate victory over the Japanese, this volume is a unique attempt at telling the story from a fresh perspective. The way in which the individuals who have contributed to this volume speak might imply a sanitized view toward the act of killing in times of war. Yet to truly understand this mind-set one has to relive their experiences of that claustrophobic hell. The book examines the factors which initially made the Japanese such brutally efficient exponents of warfare in jungle terrain, the natural hazards encountered in the jungle environment, the techniques that the British had to master in order to become at least equal to their enemy and what it was like to have to live and fight knowing your enemy was never far away from you. It was a war where methods and tactics had to be developed through hard experience along with strong leadership, which was initially lacking on the part of the British. The rule became a simple one: the jungle is neutral. It favours neither friend nor foe. It favours only he who is prepared to adapt to it the best and utilize it to his best advantage. You cannot fight the jungle itself; if you do you will almost certainly die trying.

The women of the Third Reich were a vital part in a complex and vilified system. What was their role within its administration, the concentration camps, and the Luftwaffe and militia units and how did it evolve in the way it did? We hear from women who issued typewritten dictates from above through to those who operated telephones, radar systems, fought fires as the cities burned around them, drove concentration camp inmates to their deaths like cattle, fired Anti-Aircraft guns at Allied aircraft and entered the militias when faced with the impending destruction of what should have been a one thousand-year Reich. Every testimony is unique, each person a victim of circumstance entwined within the thorns of an ideological obligation. In an interview with Traudl Junge, Hitler's private secretary, she remembers: There was so much hatred within it's hard to understand how the state functioned I am convinced all this infighting and competition from the males in Hitler's circle was highly detrimental to its downfall'. Women of the Third Reich provides an intriguing, humorous, brutal, shocking and unrelenting narrative journey into the half lights of the hell of human consciousness - sometimes at its worst.

Austria's Anschluss - its 'annexation' - saw no gunfire, no blood-curdling screams of Stukas overhead or the rumble of heavy artillery when German troops marched in on 12 March 1938\. It was no 'Blitzkrieg': on the contrary, some Austrians even welcomed the 'invaders' and the opportunity to unite the ethnic German peoples under the rule of Austria's most infamous son, Adolf Hitler. Austria's wealth of natural and mineral resources were especially useful to support the Third Reich's aggression in Europe. The Nazis were keen to exploit these assets and many Austrians benefited from increased employment. However, any initial euphoria was soon replaced by fear and anxiety as the brutal reality of the new regime became apparent. Here is the remarkable story of Herti Bryan who, as a young child, witnessed the totalitarian nightmare of Hitler's dream for world domination. Standing up for what she believed to be right, Herti acted courageously to frustrate the occupying Nazis. In addition to Herti's story, we learn of the experiences of Milly Keller and Hilde Schubert who shared contempt for the Nazi occupiers. The three girls vividly describe their different experiences during the war, although there is a striking similarity in the even greater terror they were subjected to under the Russian 'liberators'. In this volume the lives of Herti, Milly and Hilde come together to reveal an astonishing picture of life in occupied Austria. Drawing on unimaginable fortitude, these girls defied domination and fought fearlessly, risking their own lives, to carry out their moral obligation to humanity. This is their story, in their own words and told for the first time.

Seen as an agricultural utopia within Hitler's Germany, it is often the view that both East and West Prussia had remained relatively untouched during the Second World War. Yet the violence, prejudice and murder associated with the National Socialist regime that brought most of Europe to ruin were widespread throughout Prussia during its brief existence. When the MV _Wilhelm Gustloff_ was sunk by a Russian submarine just after 9pm on 30 January 1945, 9,343 passengers - 5,000 of them children - would perish. It was the worst loss of life in maritime history, six times greater than the one of the RMS Titanic. Launched by Adolf Hitler on 5 May 1937 and the KdF (Kraft durch Freude = Strength through Joy) as a recreational and propaganda tool, the MV _Wilhelm Gustloff_ would suffer the same fate as the nation it once represented. Yet 75 years later, her tragic story is still unknown to many. Combining existing material and new findings, this book tells the story of Prussia's rise and fall as a military power, the attempts by brave civilians as well as military personnel determined to overturn the evil regime they had made an oath to serve and the desperate evacuation of refugees to the West in one of the greatest exodus ever seen, told by those who were there.

The meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party cowed the masses into a sense of false utopia. During Hitler's 1932 election campaign over half those who voted for Hitler were women. Germany's women had witnessed the anarchy of the post-First World War years, and the chaos brought about by the rival political gangs brawling on their streets. When Hitler came to power there was at last a ray of hope that this man of the people would restore not only political stability to Germany but prosperity to its people. As reforms were set in place, Hitler encouraged women to step aside from their jobs and allow men to take their place. As the guardian of the home, the women of Hitler's Germany were pinned as the very foundation for a future thousand-year Reich. Not every female in Nazi Germany readily embraced the principle of living in a society where two distinct worlds existed, however with the outbreak of the Second World War, Germany's women would soon find themselves on the frontline. Ultimately Hitler's housewives experienced mixed fortunes throughout the years of the Second World War. Those whose loved ones went off to war never to return; those who lost children not only to the influences of the Hitler Youth but the Allied bombing; those who sought comfort in the arms of other young men and those who would serve above and beyond of exemplary on the German home front. Their stories form intimate and intricately woven tales of life, love, joy, fear and death. Hitler's Housewives: German Women on the Home Front is not only an essential document towards better understanding one of the twentieth century's greatest tragedies where the women became an inextricable link, but also the role played by Germany's women on the home front which ultimately became blurred within the horrors of total war. This is their story, in their own words, told for the first time.

The women of the Third Reich were a vital part in a complex and vilified system. What was their role within its administration, the concentration camps, and the Luftwaffe and militia units and how did it evolve in the way it did? We hear from women who issued typewritten dictates from above through to those who operated telephones, radar systems, fought fires as the cities burned around them, drove concentration camp inmates to their deaths like cattle, fired Anti-Aircraft guns at Allied aircraft and entered the militias when faced with the impending destruction of what should have been a one thousand-year Reich. Every testimony is unique, each person a victim of circumstance entwined within the thorns of an ideological obligation. In an interview with Traudl Junge, Hitler's private secretary, she remembers: There was so much hatred within it's hard to understand how the state functioned I am convinced all this infighting and competition from the males in Hitler's circle was highly detrimental to its downfall'. _Women of the Third Reich_ provides an intriguing, humorous, brutal, shocking and unrelenting narrative journey into the half lights of the hell of human consciousness - sometimes at its worst.

Germany's defeat in the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles that followed were national disasters, with far-reaching consequences not just for the country but for the world itself. Weaving the stories of three German families from the beginning of Germany's territorial aspirations of the First World War to the shattered dream of a thousand-year Reich in the Second World War, Tim Heath's rich narrative explores a multitude of rare and untapped resources to explore the darkest recesses of German social and military history. Hitler's Germany presents a nation's journey not only through everyday life and war, but through its own conscience, pain and inevitable search for some form of absolution from its past. It is real, painful and incredibly human - an essential history to further understand the mind-set of Germany during the most tumultuous years of the nation's history.