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Churchill's American Network: Winston Churchill and the Forging of the Special Relationship
Par Cita Stelzer. 2024
A revelatory portrait showing how the famed British statesman created a network of American colleagues and friends who helped push…
our foreign policy in Britain&’s favor during World War IIWinston Churchill was the consummate networker. Using newly discovered documents and archives, Churchill&’s American Network reveals how the famed British politician found a network of American men and women who would push American foreign policy in Britain&’s direction during World War II—while at the same time producing lucrative speaking fees to support his lavish lifestyle. Stelzer has gathered contemporary local newspaper reports of Churchill&’s lecture tours in many American cities, as well as interactions with leaders of local American communities—what he said in public, what he said at private meetings, how he comported himself. Readers observe Churchill as he is escorted by an armed Scotland Yard detective, aided by local police when Indian nationalists threaten to assassinate him, while he travels in deluxe private rail cars provided by wealthy members of his network; and as he recovers from a near-death automobile crash—with the help of liquor prescribed by a friendly doctor with no use for Prohibition. The links in Churchill&’s network include some of fascinating American figures: the millionaire financier Bernard Baruch; the railroad magnate, Averell Harriman, who became an FDR-Churchill go-between; media moguls William Randolph Hearst (and wife and mistress); Robert R. McCormick—who attacked Churchill&’s policies but enjoyed his company—and Charles Luce, who made him TIME&’s Man of the Year and later Man of the Century; and bit players such as Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, and David Niven. It is no accident that Churchill was able to put these links together into an important network that served to his, and Britain&’s, advantage. He worked at it relentlessly, remaining in close contact with his American friends by letter, signed copies of his many books, and by attending to their needs when they were in Britain. Many of these colleagues were invited to dinners at Chartwell and, later, Downing Street. Perhaps most importantly, Churchill&’s network of American allies had Franklin Roosevelt&’s ear while the president was deciding how to overcome opposition in congress to helping Britain take on the threat from Germany.From Guilt to Shame: Auschwitz and After (20/21 #8)
Par Ruth Leys. 2007
Why has shame recently displaced guilt as a dominant emotional reference in the West? After the Holocaust, survivors often reported…
feeling guilty for living when so many others had died, and in the 1960s psychoanalysts and psychiatrists in the United States helped make survivor guilt a defining feature of the "survivor syndrome." Yet the idea of survivor guilt has always caused trouble, largely because it appears to imply that, by unconsciously identifying with the perpetrator, victims psychically collude with power. In From Guilt to Shame, Ruth Leys has written the first genealogical-critical study of the vicissitudes of the concept of survivor guilt and the momentous but largely unrecognized significance of guilt's replacement by shame. Ultimately, Leys challenges the theoretical and empirical validity of the shame theory proposed by figures such as Silvan Tomkins, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Giorgio Agamben, demonstrating that while the notion of survivor guilt has depended on an intentionalist framework, shame theorists share a problematic commitment to interpreting the emotions, including shame, in antiintentionalist and materialist terms.Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany
Par Atina Grossmann. 2007
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, more than a quarter million Jewish survivors of the Holocaust lived among…
their defeated persecutors in the chaotic society of Allied-occupied Germany. Jews, Germans, and Allies draws upon the wealth of diary and memoir literature by the people who lived through postwar reconstruction to trace the conflicting ways Jews and Germans defined their own victimization and survival, comprehended the trauma of war and genocide, and struggled to rebuild their lives. In gripping and unforgettable detail, Atina Grossmann describes Berlin in the days following Germany's surrender--the mass rape of German women by the Red Army, the liberated slave laborers and homecoming soldiers, returning political exiles, Jews emerging from hiding, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the East. She chronicles the hunger, disease, and homelessness, the fraternization with Allied occupiers, and the complexities of navigating a world where the commonplace mingled with the horrific. Grossmann untangles the stories of Jewish survivors inside and outside the displaced-persons camps of the American zone as they built families and reconstructed identities while awaiting emigration to Palestine or the United States. She examines how Germans and Jews interacted and competed for Allied favor, benefits, and victim status, and how they sought to restore normality--in work, in their relationships, and in their everyday encounters. Jews, Germans, and Allies shows how Jews were integral participants in postwar Germany and bridges the divide that still exists today between German history and Jewish studies.Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort
Par Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, Otto Kirchheimer. 2013
A groundbreaking book that gathers key wartime intelligence reportsDuring the Second World War, three prominent members of the Frankfurt School—Franz…
Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer—worked as intelligence analysts for the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime forerunner of the CIA. This book brings together their most important intelligence reports on Nazi Germany, most of them published here for the first time.These reports provide a fresh perspective on Hitler's regime and the Second World War, and a fascinating window on Frankfurt School critical theory. They develop a detailed analysis of Nazism as a social and economic system and the role of anti-Semitism in Nazism, as well as a coherent plan for the reconstruction of postwar Germany as a democratic political system with a socialist economy. These reports played a significant role in the development of postwar Allied policy, including denazification and the preparation of the Nuremberg Trials. They also reveal how wartime intelligence analysis shaped the intellectual agendas of these three important German-Jewish scholars who fled Nazi persecution prior to the war.Secret Reports on Nazi Germany features a foreword by Raymond Geuss as well as a comprehensive general introduction by Raffaele Laudani that puts these writings in historical and intellectual context.Roosevelt's Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War
Par Frank Costigliola. 2013
How the Grand Alliance of World War II succeeded—and then collapsed—because of personal politicsIn the spring of 1945, as the…
Allied victory in Europe was approaching, the shape of the postwar world hinged on the personal politics and flawed personalities of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Roosevelt's Lost Alliances captures this moment and shows how FDR crafted a winning coalition by overcoming the different habits, upbringings, sympathies, and past experiences of the three leaders. In particular, Roosevelt trained his famous charm on Stalin, lavishing respect on him, salving his insecurities, and rendering him more amenable to compromise on some matters.Yet, even as he pursued a lasting peace, FDR was alienating his own intimate circle of advisers and becoming dangerously isolated. After his death, postwar cooperation depended on Harry Truman, who, with very different sensibilities, heeded the embittered "Soviet experts" his predecessor had kept distant. A Grand Alliance was painstakingly built and carelessly lost. The Cold War was by no means inevitable.This landmark study brings to light key overlooked documents, such as the Yalta diary of Roosevelt's daughter Anna; the intimate letters of Roosevelt's de facto chief of staff, Missy LeHand; and the wiretap transcripts of estranged adviser Harry Hopkins. With a gripping narrative and subtle analysis, Roosevelt's Lost Alliances lays out a new approach to foreign relations history. Frank Costigliola highlights the interplay between national political interests and more contingent factors, such as the personalities of leaders and the culturally conditioned emotions forming their perceptions and driving their actions. Foreign relations flowed from personal politics—a lesson pertinent to historians, diplomats, and citizens alike.Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier's Letters from the Eastern Front
Par Konrad H. Jarausch. 2011
An ordinary German soldier’s letters home from Poland and Russia during World War IIReluctant Accomplice is a volume of the…
wartime letters of Dr. Konrad Jarausch, a German high-school teacher of religion and history who served in a reserve battalion of Hitler's army in Poland and Russia, where he died of typhoid in 1942. He wrote most of these letters to his wife, Elisabeth. His son, acclaimed German historian Konrad H. Jarausch, brings them together here to tell the gripping story of a patriotic soldier of the Third Reich who, through witnessing its atrocities in the East, begins to doubt the war's moral legitimacy. These letters grow increasingly critical, and their vivid descriptions of the mass deaths of Russian POWs are chilling. They reveal the inner conflicts of ordinary Germans who became reluctant accomplices in Hitler's merciless war of annihilation, yet sometimes managed to discover a shared humanity with its suffering victims, a bond that could transcend race, nationalism, and the enmity of war.Reluctant Accomplice is also the powerful story of the son, who for decades refused to come to grips with these letters because he abhorred his father's nationalist politics. Only now, late in his life, is he able to cope with their contents—and he is by no means alone. This book provides rare insight into the so-called children of the war, an entire generation of postwar Germans who grew up resenting their past, but who today must finally face the painful legacy of their parents' complicity in National Socialism.The Hand of Compassion: Portraits of Moral Choice during the Holocaust
Par Kristen Renwick Monroe. 2004
Through moving interviews with five ordinary people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, Kristen Monroe casts new light on a…
question at the heart of ethics: Why do people risk their lives for strangers and what drives such moral choice? Monroe's analysis points not to traditional explanations--such as religion or reason--but to identity. The rescuers' perceptions of themselves in relation to others made their extraordinary acts spontaneous and left the rescuers no choice but to act. To turn away Jews was, for them, literally unimaginable. In the words of one German Czech rescuer, "The hand of compassion was faster than the calculus of reason." At the heart of this unusual book are interviews with the rescuers, complex human beings from all parts of the Third Reich and all walks of life: Margot, a wealthy German who saved Jews while in exile in Holland; Otto, a German living in Prague who saved more than 100 Jews and provides surprising information about the plot to kill Hitler; John, a Dutchman on the Gestapo's "Most Wanted List"; Irene, a Polish student who hid eighteen Jews in the home of the German major for whom she was keeping house; and Knud, a Danish wartime policeman who took part in the extraordinary rescue of 85 percent of his country's Jews. We listen as the rescuers themselves tell the stories of their lives and their efforts to save Jews. Monroe's analysis of these stories draws on philosophy, ethics, and political psychology to suggest why and how identity constrains our choices, both cognitively and ethically. Her work offers a powerful counterpoint to conventional arguments about rational choice and a valuable addition to the literature on ethics and moral psychology. It is a dramatic illumination of the power of identity to shape our most basic political acts, including our treatment of others. But always Monroe returns us to the rescuers, to their strong voices, reminding us that the Holocaust need not have happened and revealing the minds of the ethically exemplary as they negotiated the moral quicksand that was the Holocaust.Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story
Par Ricardo S. Sanchez, Donald T. Phillips. 2008
Amidst all of the criticisms of America's war in Iraq, one essential voice has remained silent . . . until…
now. In his groundbreaking new memoir, Wiser in Battle, LTG (Ret) Ricardo S. Sanchez, former Commander of Coalition Forces in Iraq, reports back from the front lines of the global War on Terror to provide a comprehensive and chilling exploration of America's historic military and foreign policy blunder.November 1942: An Intimate History of the Turning Point of World War II
Par Peter Englund. 2023
The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • An intimate history of the most important month of World War II,…
completely based on the diaries, letters and memoirs of the people who lived through itAt the beginning of November 1942, it looked as if the Axis powers could still win the Second World War; at the end of that month, it was obviously just a matter of time before they would lose. In between were el-Alamein, Guadalcanal, the French North Africa landings, the Japanese retreat in New Guinea and the Soviet encirclement of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. It may have been the most important thirty days of the twentieth century. In this hugely innovative and riveting history, Peter Englund has reduced an epoch-making event to its basic component: the individual experience.Englund&’s narrative is based solely on what he learned from the writings of soldiers and ordinary citizens alike. They comprise a remarkable, deeply personal resource. In thirty memorable days, among those we meet are: a Soviet infantryman at Stalingrad; an American pilot on Guadalcanal; an Italian truck driver in the North African desert; a partisan in the Belarussian forests; a machine gunner in a British bomber; a twelve-year-old girl in Shanghai; a university student in Paris; a housewife on Long Island; a shipwrecked Chinese sailor; a prisoner in Treblinka; a Korean &“comfort woman&” in Mandalay; Albert Camus, Vasily Grossman and Vera Brittain—forty characters in all. In addition, we experience the construction and launching of SS James Oglethorpe, a Liberty ship built in Savannah; the fate of U-604, a German submarine; the building of the first nuclear reactor in Chicago; and the making of Casablanca. Not since the publication of the author&’s last book, The Beauty and the Sorrow, which similarly looked at the First World War, have we had such a mesmerizing work of history.The American Way: A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe
Par Helene Stapinski, Bonnie Siegler. 2023
In this &“necessary and beautifully told story of struggle, compassion and serendipity&” (Forbes), the publisher of DC Comics comes to…
the rescue of a family trying to flee Nazi Berlin, their lives linking up with a dazzling cast of 20th-century icons, all eagerly pursuing the American Dream.Family lore had it that Bonnie Siegler&’s grandfather crossed paths in Midtown Manhattan late one night in 1954 with Marilyn Monroe, her white dress flying up around her as she filmed a scene for The Seven Year Itch. An amateur filmmaker, Jules Schulback had his home movie camera with him, capturing what would become the only surviving footage of that legendary night. Bonnie wasn&’t sure she quite believed her grandfather&’s story…until, cleaning out his apartment, she found the film reel. The discovery would prompt her to investigate all of her grandfather&’s seemingly tall tales—and lead her in pursuit of a remarkable piece of forgotten history that reads like fiction but is all true. A &“fast-moving American epic with a cast of refugees and starlets, publishers and bootleggers, comic-book creators and sports legends&” (The Washington Post), The American Way follows two very different men—Jules Schulback and his unlikely benefactor, DC Comics publisher (and sometimes pornographer) Harry Donenfeld—on an exuberant true-life adventure linking glamorous old Hollywood, the birth of the comic book, and one family&’s experiences during the Holocaust. It&’s an &“amazing&” story told &“with grace, verve, and compassion&” (The Jerusalem Post) of two strivers living through an extraordinary moment in American history, their lives intersecting with a glittering array of stars in a &“colorful&” and &“punchy&” (The New York Times Book Review) tale of hope and reinvention, of daring escapes and fake identities, of big dreams and the magic of movies, and what it means to be a real-life Superman.Through the Morgue Door: One Woman’s Story of Survival and Saving Children in German-Occupied Paris (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)
Par Colette Brull-Ulmann, Jean-Christophe Portes. 2024
In 1934, at the age of fourteen, Colette Brull-Ulmann knew that she wanted to become a pediatrician. By the age…
of twenty-one, she was in her second year of studying medicine. By 1942, Brull-Ulman and her family had become registered Jews under the ever-increasing statutes against them enacted by Petain’s government. Her father had been arrested and interned at the Drancy detention camp and Brull-Ulman had become an intern at the Rothschild Hospital, the only hospital in Paris where Jewish physicians were allowed to practice and Jewish patients could go for treatment.Under Claire Heyman, a charismatic social worker who was a leader of the hospital’s secret escape network, Brull-Ulmann began working tirelessly to rescue Jewish children treated at the Rothschild. Her devotion to the protection of children, her bravery, and her imperviousness in the face of the deadly injustices of the Holocaust were always evident—whether smuggling children to safety through the Paris streets in the dead of night or defying officers and doctors who frighteningly held her fate in their hands. Ultimately, Brull-Ulmann was forced to flee the Rothschild in 1943, when she joined her father’s resistance network, gathering and delivering information for De Gaulle’s secret intelligence agency until the Liberation in 1945.In 1970, Brull-Ulmann finally became a licensed pediatrician. But after the war, like so many others, she sought to bury her memories. It wasn’t until decades later when she finally started to speak publicly—not only about her own work and survival, but about the one child who affected her most deeply. Originally published in French in 2017, Brull-Ulmann’s memoir fearlessly illustrates the horrors of Jewish life under the German Occupation and casts light on the heretofore unknown story of the Rothschild Hospital during this period. But most of all, it chronicles the life of a truly exceptional and courageous woman for whom not acting was never an option.Taking Berlin: The Bloody Race to Defeat the Third Reich
Par Martin Dugard. 2022
From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series, comes a nonfiction thriller about the…
race between the Allies and Soviets to conquer the heart of Nazi Germany.&“Gripping, popular history at its page-turning best.&”—Alex Kershaw • &“With the precision of a smart bomb, Martin Dugard puts the reader directly into the campaign to destroy Hitler.&”—Bill O&’Reilly • &“Spectacular . . . Taking Berlin is certain to be a massive hit with fans of both history and thrillers alike.&”—Mark Greaney, bestselling author of the Gray Man series Fall, 1944. Paris has been liberated, saved from destruction, but this diversion on the road to Berlin has given the Germans time to regroup. The American and British armies press on from the west, facing the enemy time and again in the Hurtgen Forest, during the Market Garden invasion, and at the Battle of the Bulge, all while American general George Patton and British field marshal Bernard Montgomery vie for supremacy as the Allies&’ top battlefield commander. Meanwhile, the Soviets begin to squeeze Hitler&’s crumbling Reich from the east. Led by Generals Zhukov and Konev, the Red Army launches millions of soldiers, backed by tanks, artillery, and warplanes, against the Germans, leaving death and scorched earth in their wake, pushing the Wehrmacht back toward their fatherland. As both the Anglo-American alliance and the Soviets set their sights on claiming the capital city of Nazi Germany, Churchill seeks to ensure Britain&’s place in a new world divided by Roosevelt&’s America and Stalin&’s Soviet Union. With a sweeping cast of historical figures, Taking Berlin is a pulse-pounding race into the final, desperate months of the Second World War and toward the fiery destruction of the Thousand-Year-Reich, chronicling a moment in history when allies become adversaries.John Lisle reveals the untold story of the OSS Research and Development Branch—The Dirty Tricks Department—and its role in World…
War II.In the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, D.C. When he arrived, he was led to a barren room where he waited to meet the man who had summoned him. After a disconcerting amount of time, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), walked in the door. “You know your Sherlock Holmes, of course,” Donovan said as an introduction. “Professor Moriarty is the man I want for my staff…I think you’re it.”Following this life-changing encounter, Lovell became the head of a secret group of scientists who developed dirty tricks for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. Their inventions included Bat Bombs, suicide pills, fighting knives, silent pistols, and camouflaged explosives. Moreover, they forged documents for undercover agents, plotted the assassination of foreign leaders, and performed truth drug experiments on unsuspecting subjects.Based on extensive archival research and personal interviews, The Dirty Tricks Department tells the story of these scheming scientists, explores the moral dilemmas that they faced, and reveals their dark legacy of directly inspiring the most infamous program in CIA history: MKULTRA.The Road to Passchendaele: The Heroic Year in Soldiers' Own Words and Photographs
Par Richard Van Emden. 2017
Passchendaele is the next volume in the highly regarded series of books from the best-selling First World War historian Richard…
van Emden. Once again, using the winning formula of diaries and memoirs, and above all original photographs taken on illegally held cameras by the soldiers themselves, Richard tells the story of 1917, of life both in and out of the line culminating in perhaps the most dreaded battle of them all, the Battle of Passchendaele. His pervious book, The Somme, has now sold nearly 20,000 copies in hardback and softback, proving that the public appetite is undiminished for new, original stories illustrated with over 150 rarely or never-before-seen battlefield images. The author has an outstanding collection of over 5,000 privately taken and overwhelmingly unpublished photographs, revealing the war as it was seen by the men involved, an existence that was sometimes exhilarating, too often terrifying, and occasionally even fun. Richard van Emden interviewed 270 veterans of the Great War, has written extensively about the soldiers' lives, and has worked on many television documentaries, always concentrating on the human aspects of war, its challenge and its cost to the millions of men involved. This book will be published in June 2017, in time for the 100th anniversary of the epic Battle of Passchendaele which began on 31st July 1917 Richard van Emdens books sold over 650,000 books and have appeared in The Times bestseller chart on a number of occasions. He lives in West London and regularly appears on television, mostly recently as BBC1s historian for the national commemorations of the Somme Battle. He has appeared on over forty television documentaries and has written nineteen books on the First World War.The Complete History of the SAS: The World's Most Feared Elite Fighting Force
Par Nigel McCrery. 2021
Specializing in covert reconnaissance, counter-terrorism and hostage rescue, the SAS is one of the world's most famous, feared and respected…
elite fighting forces. This book tells the full, fascinating story of the regiment, from formation in the sand dunes of Africa during World War II to present action in the Middle East, and incorporates jungle, desert and urban warfare, counter-terrorism and an insider's view at the selection and training methods employed by this usually secretive unit.As well as an insightful foreword by Andy McNab – one of the most famous members of the SAS – this revised, updated edition includes completely new chapters, features and information, including Key Missions in WWII, The Battle of Mirbat, Iranian Embassy Siege, Kenyan Hotel Rescue and Victoria Cross Awards.National Bestseller The inside story of how A League of Their Own—one of the most beloved baseball movies of all…
time—developed from an unheralded piece of American history into a perennial cinematic favorite. Featuring exclusive interviews and behind the scenes memories from the original cast and creators, .No Crying in Baseball is a rollicking, revelatory deep dive into a one‑of‑a‑kind film. Before A League of Their Own, few American girls could imagine themselves playing professional ball (and doing it better than the boys). But Penny Marshall's genre outlier became an instant classic and significant aha moment for countless young women who saw that throwing like a girl was far from an insult. Part fly‑on‑the‑wall narrative, part immersive pop nostalgia, No Crying in Baseball is for readers who love stories about subverting gender roles as well as fans of the film who remain passionate thirty years after its release. With key anecdotes from the cast, crew, and diehard fanatics, Carlson presents the definitive, first‑ever history of the making of the treasured film that inspired generations of Dottie Hinsons to dream bigger and aim for the sky.This work is a close examination of the conditions surrounding and precipitating the last gasp of British naval hegemony and…
events that led to its demise. Great Britain undertook a massive naval building program in the late-1930s in order to deter aggression and secure dominance at sea against her nascent enemies, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. But the failure of the policy of Appeasement to deter war or delay it into the early 1940s left the building program only partially complete, and the exigencies of war led to the cancellation of the critical but costly and time-consuming “Lion” class battleships, and the slow delivery of the “1940 battlecruiser” (HMS Vanguard) and two vital fleet carriers. Adding to these issues, the fall of France spurred the USA to initiate her own, even larger, naval building program, and together with the entry of the powerful and capable Imperial Japanese Navy completely overwhelmed Britain’s position as the world’s premier naval power. This book will be of value to those interested in the history of the Second World War, British strategy, and the British navy.This book focuses on the tension between the modernising thrust that places France on a trajectory of convergence with comparable…
liberal democracies and the defence of a national specificity that can act as a brake, complicating France’s relationship with its neighbours, its present and its past. This ambivalence in French political and social life stems from the conscious attempt to rebuild the nation after the trauma of Occupation during World War II and the new beginning provided by the Liberation. The government of the Fourth Republic embraced the pursuit of a modernisation that would enable it to regain its place among the world’s leading democratic states. However, this modernising ambition co-exists with the belief in a specific destiny and a unique sense of mission that are intrinsic to the emergence of a sense of nationhood after the revolution of 1789. Raymond defines a critical perspective that draws together historical, economic, social, and political issues into a coherent understanding of what makes France the way it is today. Written with both academic rigour and a highly accessible clarity of style, this volume is a valuable resource for students, educators, and researchers in French and European Studies.In order to ensure its absolute authority, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (1946–1948), the Japanese counterpart of the Nuremberg Trial,…
adopted a three-tier structure for its interpreting: Japanese nationals interpreted the proceedings, second-generation Japanese-Americans monitored the interpreting, and Caucasian U.S. military officers arbitrated the disputes. The first extensive study on the subject in English, this book explores the historical and political contexts of the trial as well as the social and cultural backgrounds of the linguists through trial transcripts in English and Japanese, archival documents and recordings, and interviews with those who were involved in the interpreting. In addition to a detailed account of the interpreting, the book examines the reasons for the three-tier system, how the interpreting procedures were established over the course of the trial, and the unique difficulties faced by the Japanese-American monitors. This original case study of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal illuminates how complex issues such as trust, power, control and race affect interpreting at international tribunals in times of conflict.The Forgers: The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust's Most Audacious Rescue Operation
Par Roger Moorhouse. 2023
The secret history of one of the largest—and least-known—rescue operations of World War II Between 1940 and 1943, a group…
of Polish diplomats in Switzerland engaged in a wholly remarkable—and until now, completely unknown—humanitarian operation. In concert with Jewish activists, they masterminded a systematic program of forging passports and identity documents for Latin American countries, which were then smuggled into German-occupied Europe to save the lives of thousands of Jews facing extermination in the Holocaust. With the international community failing to act, the operation was one of the largest actions to aid Jews of the entire war. The Forgers tells this extraordinary story for the first time. We follow the desperate bids of Jews to obtain these lifesaving documents as the Nazi death machine draws ever closer. And we witness the quiet heroism of a group of ordinary men who decided to do something rather than nothing and saved thousands of lives.