Here are 100 books that The Nuremberg Women fans have personally recommended if you like
The Nuremberg Women.
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I'm an author, broadcaster and public historian specialising in women’s experiences during the Second World War. While courage and sacrifice are often recognised, the effectiveness of the women who served is less frequently acknowledged. Popular culture tends to focus on glamour, yet these women were motivated by the same patriotism and sense of duty as men, while facing sexism, unequal pay, and fewer protections. Through my books and public history work, I aim to restore recognition of their achievements. This has included securing portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, public sculptures, and an English Heritage Blue Plaque. I regularly contribute to BBC television and radio, and my books have won or been shortlisted for major literary, historical, and biography prizes.
This book restored the stories of the Soviet women who served in the Second World War (Great Patriotic War in Russian history), which had been ignored in the official histories.
Hundreds of veteran and witness testimonies (the book was first published in the 1980s) build a powerful, if sometimes painful, picture of pilots, snipers, and tank drivers as well as medics on the frontline, and their postwar lives.
This is essentially an oral history giving voice to hundreds of women first drafted, then ignored. Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015.
'It would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original' - Viv Groskop, Observer
Extraordinary stories from Soviet women who fought in the Second World War - from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
"Why, having stood up for and held their own place in a once absolutely male world, have women not stood up for their history? Their words and feelings? A whole world is hidden from us. Their war remains unknown... I want to write the history of that war. A women's history."
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I'm an author, broadcaster and public historian specialising in women’s experiences during the Second World War. While courage and sacrifice are often recognised, the effectiveness of the women who served is less frequently acknowledged. Popular culture tends to focus on glamour, yet these women were motivated by the same patriotism and sense of duty as men, while facing sexism, unequal pay, and fewer protections. Through my books and public history work, I aim to restore recognition of their achievements. This has included securing portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, public sculptures, and an English Heritage Blue Plaque. I regularly contribute to BBC television and radio, and my books have won or been shortlisted for major literary, historical, and biography prizes.
The book refutes one of the abiding misconceptions about the Second World War—that the Jews of Europe went passively to their deaths.
In fact, there was fierce and sustained armed resistance operating from many of the ghettos, culminating in uprisings, as well as revolts in concentration and forced labour camps, and a significant, if sometimes covert, Jewish presence in partisan armies. Furthermore, much of this resistance was enabled, organised, and led by women.
This is well-researched, multifaceted history, raising fascinating questions about the nature of agency, resistance, and testimony, as well as being an intense and atmospheric tribute to these women.
'Original and compelling, an untold story of rare and captivating power' Philippe Sands
'A fascinating history about a little-known group who took on the Nazis . . . The individual tales of these courageous young women are remarkable' Independent
'Rescues a long-neglected aspect of history from oblivion, and puts paid to the idea of Jewish, and especially female, passivity during the Holocaust. It is uncompromising, written with passion - and it preserves truly significant knowledge. ... Judy Batalion has uncovered a trove of unknown or forgotten information about the Holocaust of genuine import and impact.'…
I'm an author, broadcaster and public historian specialising in women’s experiences during the Second World War. While courage and sacrifice are often recognised, the effectiveness of the women who served is less frequently acknowledged. Popular culture tends to focus on glamour, yet these women were motivated by the same patriotism and sense of duty as men, while facing sexism, unequal pay, and fewer protections. Through my books and public history work, I aim to restore recognition of their achievements. This has included securing portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, public sculptures, and an English Heritage Blue Plaque. I regularly contribute to BBC television and radio, and my books have won or been shortlisted for major literary, historical, and biography prizes.
Anita Lasker survived the Holocaust because, as a Berlin teenager, she had enjoyed cello lessons. Lily Mathé’s violin performances had once impressed the man who became the Auschwitz commandant. Alma Rosé, the talented niece of Gustav Mahler, became the conductor who kept these young women and forty others alive through ferocious discipline and determination.
The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz recounts not only the lives of the women who were once forced to play melodies in the darkest moments of the twentieth century, but also the ethical questions that haunted the survivors.
'Superb and timely' KATE MOSSE 'Impressive, important, deeply moving' SARAH WATERS 'Brilliant' ANTHONY HOROWITZ
What role could music play in a death camp? What was the effect on those women who owed their survival to their participation in a Nazi propaganda project? And how did it feel to be forced to provide solace to the perpetrators of a genocide that claimed the lives of their family and friends?
In 1943, German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Almost fifty women and girls from eleven nations were assembled to play…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
I'm an author, broadcaster and public historian specialising in women’s experiences during the Second World War. While courage and sacrifice are often recognised, the effectiveness of the women who served is less frequently acknowledged. Popular culture tends to focus on glamour, yet these women were motivated by the same patriotism and sense of duty as men, while facing sexism, unequal pay, and fewer protections. Through my books and public history work, I aim to restore recognition of their achievements. This has included securing portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, public sculptures, and an English Heritage Blue Plaque. I regularly contribute to BBC television and radio, and my books have won or been shortlisted for major literary, historical, and biography prizes.
This book shows how six women out-scooped the men as correspondents during the Second World War because having to navigate sexist newspaper bias and military restrictions often gave the women a professional edge.
Martha Gellhorn, Lee Miller, Clare Hollingworth, Helen Kirkpatrick, Ruth Cowan, and Virginia Cowles' lives all intersected as the war progressed, and, between them, they covered many of the key battles and engagements, often bringing complete scoops and always fresh perspectives.
This is the powerful and compelling book that these intrepid journalists deserve.
'They were not just reporters; they were also pioneers, and Judith Mackrell has done them proud.' Spectator
'This is a book that manages to be thoughtful and edge-of-your-seat thrilling.' Mail on Sunday
'Like the copy filed by her subjects, it is an essential read.' BBC History Magazine
On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle. Barred from combat zones and faced with entrenched prejudice and bureaucratic restrictions, these women were forced to fight for the right to work on equal terms as men.
I am a tired activist and recovering attorney. My professional focus on violence and humanity’s response to it began when, as a seven-year-old, the nuns at my Catholic school showed us newsreels of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. This led me to adopt as my life’s guiding principle Julian Beck’s admonition “to redeem our share of the universal cruelty.” After 20 years in the U.S. Violence Against Women Movement, I absconded to the former Yugoslavia and found myself in the middle of a war during which I ran a war crimes documentation project (memoir in progress). I later reported on the international war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic.
I found Ehrenfreund’s book compelling because he applied his legal expertise as a lawyer and judge to what he personally witnessed at the trial. His research included numerous conversations with Germans who lived through the Nazi regime. I also valued his insights as they were informed by his personal journey to learn his grandfather’s fate many years after he disappeared into the Holocaust. While Ehrenfreund reveals how U.S. law heavily influenced the law applied at Nuremberg, I found his analysis of the trial’s subsequent influence on U.S. law revealing. For example, Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor at Nuremberg and U.S. Supreme Court Justice, was impacted by the racial hatred that underlies the crimes of the Holocaust in Brown v. Board of Education, The U.S. Court’s school desegregation decision.
Sixty years have passed since the Nuremberg trials of the major Nazi war criminals, but that event still stands as the foundation of international justice. Nuremberg not only ignited a revolution in international law but affected domestic law as well with its simple but profound principle that every individual accused of crime is entitled to a full and fair hearing. This book reveals how the precedents set at Nuremberg have affected human rights, race relations, medical practice, big business and even Germany's post-war development. It also examines the Nuremberg trials' influence on the modern war crimes trials of tyrants like…
I’ve had a life-long interest in genocide dating back to my teenage years, when I read Simon Wiesenthal’s book The Murderers Among Us. Wiesenthal introduced me to the idea that governments sometimes murdered innocent people and could elude justice for their crimes. The question of human evil interacted with my theological interest in the problem of evil generally. Both genocide scholars and theologians were posing similar questions: how could people or God permit the occurrence of wanton evil when it was in their power to avoid it? And what should we do about genocide after it has happened? These questions launched my research into genocide and continue to fuel my study of this topic.
The trials of Nazi war criminals are an important but subsidiary theme in Mary Fulbrook’s book. In Francine Hirsch’s study, the most significant trial of top-ranking German officials takes center stage, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Unlike most previous analyses of Nuremberg, which depict the Soviets as minor actors who, if anything, were impediments to the quest for justice, Hirsch insists that Soviet contributions were essential cornerstones of the trial’s success. This may seem an unlikely role for a totalitarian country already responsible for terror famines in Ukraine, the atrocious show trials of the 1930s, and the senseless murder of 20,000 Poles in the Katyn Forest in 1940. Nonetheless, as Hirsch cogently argues, without Soviet participation the trial may never have occurred. The glory of her book is its insistence on the counterintuitive and contradictory nature of reality, in which, against all expectations, an authoritarian regime led by a…
Organized in the immediate aftermath of World War Two by the victorious Allies, the Nuremberg Trials were intended to hold the Nazis to account for their crimes - and to restore a sense of justice to a world devastated by violence. As Francine Hirsch reveals in this immersive, gripping, and ground-breaking book, a major piece of the Nuremberg story has routinely been omitted from standard accounts: the part the Soviet Union played in making the trials happen in the first place.
Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg offers the first complete picture of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), including the many ironies…
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
I grew up in part in Chile, and when the Pinochet dictatorship started killing and torturing people, I wanted to do something about it. Years later, as a professor of international law, I helped countries figure out what to do after mass atrocities. Seeing how trials in other countries – or in international criminal courts – could break through barriers and make it possible to bring those who killed, tortured, or disappeared thousands of people to justice gave me hope. I wanted to tell the stories of the brave people who overcame the odds to do justice, in a readable and exciting way that also explained the legal and political issues involved.
Slobodan Milosevic’s trial by the first post-Cold War international court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, required the creation of a whole new court and set of procedures, and established many of the current rules on trying war crimes and crimes against humanity. There’s a lot written on the ICTY, but I like Scharf’s book because he tells the backstories, explains the different choices that the court could have made, and makes for a fascinating read.
This book is about the First International War Crime Trial since Nuremberg. Balkan Justice provides the inside story of the United Nations Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal charged with conducting the first international war crimes trials since World War11.
As a long-time reader of mysteries, thrillers, and pulp fiction, I’ve lived a double life. By day, a scholar and a serious biographer, tackling heavyweight literary subjects, fighting the good feminist fight. By night, I devoured crime writing as a secret pleasure. Writing my book confirmed my belief that there have always been authors who transform genre fiction into literary magic – and that I could have fun telling their stories. Whether in my writing or mentoring, I want to celebrate neglected creators and explore how literary magic is made. The authors in this list are brave, authentic, and a damn good read. I wish you the joy of them all!
While Eric is not a Queen, I think he is a Prince.
Trains. Many trains. Rail travel has always been a crucial element in crime fiction–which works for me since I truly adore train journeys, real or imagined. Seriously though, there’s so much I love about Eric Ambler’s book.
Known as the creator of the modern thriller (just as Braddon created the murder mystery), Ambler – like all the authors I’ve chosen – offers a whole lot more than thrills. I’ve mentioned the trains, but I love the way in which his heroes are just ordinary guys who discover they can do extraordinary things while defeating Fascism.
I’m fascinated by Ambler’s unobtrusive but telling insights into some of the darkest moments in European history – this is writing that takes a popular genre and turns it into literary gold.
Kenton's career as a journalist depends on his facility with languages, his knowledge of European politics and his quick judgement. Where his judgement sometimes fails him, however, is in his personal life. When he travels to Nuremberg to investigate a story about a top-level meeting of Nazi officials, he inadvertently finds himself on a train bound for Austria after a bad night of gambling. Stranded with no money, Kenton jumps at the chance to earn a fee helping a refugee smuggle securities across the border. Yet he soon discovers that the documents he holds have far more than cash value…
In my graduate studies, I had a fantastic professor who was able to make the politics of international criminal justice one of my favorite subjects. The intersection of law, politics, peace, and conflict pulled me in. But the fact that it also touches on human rights, state sovereignty, and the prevention of mass atrocities got me hooked. I ended up doing extensive research on the International Criminal Court and how it interacts with UN peace operations, and I have subsequently been teaching peace and justice at Leiden University. I publish regularly on these topics as well and am the associate editor of International Peacekeeping, one of the leading journals on international conflict management.
Since international criminal courts and tribunals do not have their own police powers, they’re always dependent on the cooperation of others for the execution of their arrest warrants. Important here is that most of these courts do not allow for trials without the suspect in custody, making arrests a key condition for their effectiveness. I have always found the stories behind why some fugitives get arrested and others do not one of the most fascinating parts of international criminal justice.
This book tells the stories of several high-profile fugitives and how they were ultimately (not) arrested. It not only often reads like a detective thriller but also emphasizes the strong dependence on “the ebb and flow of political will” of states.
Hiding in Plain Sight tells the story of the global effort to apprehend the world's most wanted fugitives. Beginning with the flight of tens of thousands of Nazi war criminals and their collaborators after World War II, then moving on to the question of justice following the recent Balkan wars and the Rwandan genocide, and ending with the establishment of the International Criminal Court and America's pursuit of suspected terrorists in the aftermath of 9/11, the book explores the range of diplomatic and military strategies-both successful and unsuccessful-that states and international courts have adopted to pursue and capture war crimes…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
I am a tired activist and recovering attorney. My professional focus on violence and humanity’s response to it began when, as a seven-year-old, the nuns at my Catholic school showed us newsreels of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. This led me to adopt as my life’s guiding principle Julian Beck’s admonition “to redeem our share of the universal cruelty.” After 20 years in the U.S. Violence Against Women Movement, I absconded to the former Yugoslavia and found myself in the middle of a war during which I ran a war crimes documentation project (memoir in progress). I later reported on the international war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic.
Kochavi’s book gave me a more complete and nuanced understanding of how the Nuremberg war crimes court came to be, how defendants were selected, and what law to apply. Based on copious research, Kochavi uncovers the inside story of how the Allies ultimately agreed to establish an international court to hold Nazi officials accountable for mass atrocities instead of summarily executing them, which Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin favored. Initial U.S. and British resistance to including crimes against German nationals (extermination of the Jews among them) was overcome by strong public, especially Jewish, opposition.
Between November 1945 and October 1946, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg tried some of the most notorious political and military figures of Nazi Germany. The issue of punishing war criminals was widely discussed by the leaders of the Allied nations, however, well before the end of the war. As Arieh Kochavi demonstrates, the policies finally adopted, including the institution of the Nuremberg trials, represented the culmination of a complicated process rooted in the domestic and international politics of the war years.Drawing on extensive research, Kochavi painstakingly reconstructs the deliberations that went on in Washington and London at a time…
