Night: Nazis

By the time Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, 3.5 million children belonged to the Hitler Youth. It would become the largest youth group in history. Susan Campbell Bartoletti explores how Hitler gained the loyalty, trust, and passion of so many of Germany's young people. Her research includes telling interviews with surviving Hitler Youth members.

People's experience of life in Nazi Germany depended on their perspective. In many ways, those close to Nazi power centers, ordinary Germans and people who were targets of Nazi brutality lived in separate worlds. This anthology covers a variety of viewpoints--from the commandant of an extermination camp to a pair of Jewish musicians who fled Germany to a girl whose father was killed while fighting in the German army.

When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters; all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.

Discusses events leading to the Nazi rise to power after World War I and Hitler's takeover of the German government.

Children were at the center of Nazi ideology; now we have their history of those years. Their stories open a world we have never seen before. War came home to children as a set of events without precedent, spectacular and terrifying by turns. As the Nazis overran Europe, children were saved or damned according to their race. Precious few remained unscathed during the war, and most suffered a moment that overturned their lives.