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  Foundations of the Nazi Police State: The Formation of Sipo and SD

  The abbreviation “Nazi,” the acronym “Gestapo,” and the initials “SS” have become resonant elements of our vocabulary. Less known is “SD,” and hardly anyone recognizes the combination “Sipo and SD.” Although Sipo and SD formed the heart of the National Socialist police state, the phrase carries none of the ominous impact that it should.

  Although no single organization carries full responsibility for the evils of the Third Reich, the SS-police system was the executor of terrorism and “population policy” in the same way the military carried out the Reich’s imperialistic aggression. Within the police state, even the concentration camps could ...Read More

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  Hitler And Spain: The Nazi Role in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

  The Spanish Civil War, begun in July 1936, was a preliminary round of World War II. Hitler’s and Mussolini’s cooperation with General Franco resulted in the Axis agreement of October 1936 and the subsequent Pact of Steel of May 1939, immediately following the end of the Civil War.

  This study presents comprehensive documentation of Hitler’s use of the upheaval in Spain to strengthen the Third Reich diplomatically, ideologically, economically, and militarily. While the last great cause drew all eyes to Western Europe and divided the British and especially the French internally, Hitler could pursue territorial gains in Eastern Europe.

  This ...Read More

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  Ford, A Village in the West Highlands of Scotland: A Case Study of Repopulation and Social Change in a Small Community

  The Highlands of Scotland, like the southern Appalachians of the United States, have long been a problem area in Great Britain, troubled with a fading economy and loss of population. Most books about the region, however, are popular volumes that romanticize a bygone way of life. This study of Ford, a village of some 160 people in western Argyllshire, thus fills a gap in the literature and provides a look at the present realities of Scottish life.

  Although the Highlands are by no means a homogeneous region, Ford in its size and makeup is perhaps a representative rural settlement. John ...Read More

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  For King, Constitution, and Country: The English Loyalists and the French Revolution

  England trembled in 1792. In May, George III issued a proclamation warning his subjects of "diverse wicked and seditious writings" then being circulated which might "excite tumult and disorder." The response to this proclamation—an unprecedented expression of loyalty to crown and constitution—marked the beginnings of a movement that was to influence British political life well into the nineteenth century. For King, Constitution, and Country is the first full-scale exploration of the nature and origins of this loyalist movement.

  The British government had genuine cause for concern. While France was convulsed by revolution across the Channel, the writings of Tom Paine ...Read More

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  Comintern Army: The International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War

  When Spain exploded into civil war in July 1936, a conflict whose roots were deep in the Spanish past became the arena for the violent political passions that divided Europe north of the Pyrenees. Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union intervened actively in the war, using Spain as a testing ground for their military equipment and techniques and their political ideologies.

  In this first in-depth study of the politics of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, R. Dan Richardson views the Brigades in the wider context of both the complex political-military alignments of Loyalist Spain and the broader ...Read More

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  The King's Honor and the King's Cardinal: The War of the Polish Succession

  Early in 1733 Augustus II, elector of Saxony and king of Poland, died in Warsaw from complications of a gangrenous foot. The elective throne of Poland thus fell vacant, and the states of Europe began cautious maneuvers designed to secure for each some national advantage in the choice of a successor. Before the year was out, diplomacy had given way to military force. Yet the Age of Reason fostered a relationship between diplomacy and warfare that limited the violence of military action.

  The War of Polish Succession might have produced widespread carnage. It was a major struggle among the great ...Read More

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  Liberty and Empire: British Radical Solutions to the American Problem, 1774–1776

  Though little known to most students of the American Revolution, the British Radicals of the 1770s championed the rights of Americans while advocating parliamentary reform and denouncing British colonial policies. Outspoken, eloquent, and innovative, the Radicals encouraged the American cause. They voiced ideas on liberty and empire that would echo through American revolutionary documents.

  Liberty and Empire focuses on five British Radicals. The farsighted John Cartwright's ideas of reformation anticipated the Commonwealth of Nations. James Burgh's treatise on parliamentary reform became a classic text for both English and American reformers and an influence on the thinking of successive generations. The ...Read More

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  Belorussia: Under Soviet Rule, 1917–1957

  Few European nations are so little known to the world at large as Belorussia. For centuries this Eastern European country has served as a pawn in the power plays of predatory neighbors. In this, the first detailed study of Belorussia’s recent history, the author depicts the successive invasions of German, Polish, and Russian armies in two world wars and the upheavals stemming from the Russian Revolution.

  The Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, established in 1919, progressed culturally, educationally, and economically during Lenin’s lifetime. Under Stalin, however, her leaders were liquidated in a series of purges, and hundreds of thousands of her ...Read More

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  Prince of Dublin Printers: The Letters of George Faulkner

  Here for the first time are gathered together the extant letters of George Faulkner, Irish printer in eighteenth-century Dublin. These firsthand accounts give an unprecedented view of Anglo-Irish social and political events, as well as a view of an Anglo-Irish printer-publisher at work.

  Faulkner discusses a wide range of subjects, including theatrical events, attacks on political enemies (he himself was often the subject of political attack), and London parties with Lord Chesterfield, Tobias Smollet, and Samuel Johnson.

  In his interesting sketch of the Irish printer, Robert E. Ward has included excerpts from Faulkner’s Dublin Journal which show the ambiguity in ...Read More

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  Itinerant Ambassador: The Life of Sir Thomas Roe

  Thomas Roe, born near London in 1580 or 1581 was a notable and influential figure in the England of Elizabeth and of the early Stuarts. In his wide-ranging career, he came into contact with an array of famous seventeenth-century persons ranging from Sir Walter Raleigh to Archbishop William Laud and from Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia to the Great Mogul Emperor of Hindustan. Roe was one of the most capable diplomats of his time and his career was associated with developments of great importance: colonial and commercial expansion, the beginnings of empire, foreign relations, religious movements, domestic dissent. This sparkling, first ...Read More