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Historical person
1889–1945
Adolf Hitler was the Austrian-born leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party who became chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then established a totalitarian dictatorship. His regime dismantled democratic institutions, pursued racial persecution and territorial expansion, began the European war in 1939, and organised the Holocaust, in which six million Jews and millions of other victims were murdered. He died by suicide in Berlin in April 1945 as Nazi Germany collapsed.
Historical fiction generally uses Hitler as the embodiment of the Nazi state or as an ominous presence whose decisions shape the lives of other characters. Robert Harris’s alternate-history thriller Fatherland imagines an ageing Hitler presiding over a victorious Reich in 1964, while novels such as Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See depict the society, war and persecution created by his rule rather than making him the central character.
In Christopher Nicole’s The Tiger, in 1944, Harry Curtis is selected for an apparent suicide mission to kill Adolf Hitler. In Rory Clements’s A Prince and a Spy, Prince George, Duke of Kent, meets his cousin Prince Philipp of Hesse, a committed Nazi with close access to Adolf Hitler. Other novels featuring Adolf Hitler include Rory Clements’s The Man in the Bunker, Rory Clements’s Invitation from a Dictator, Robert Harris’s Munich, Wilbur Smith’s War Cry, and Wilbur Smith’s Courtney’s War.
In non-fiction, Adolf Hitler is discussed in James Holland’s The War in the West: A New History, Volume 1, Damien Lewis’s SAS Great Escapes, Damien Lewis’s SAS Brothers in Arms, Ben Macintyre’s Never Surrender, and Ben Macintyre’s Forgotten Fatherland. James Holland’s The War in the West: A New History, Volume 1 approaches the subject through military command and battlefield decision-making and political ambition and government.
Historical context
Series
The Breaking Point series follows RAF fighter pilot Johnnie Shaux and mathematician-turned-military analyst Eleanor Rand, later Eleanor Shaux, through the successive years of the Second World War. Johnnie experiences the conflict from cockpits, airfields and operational units, while Eleanor works in headquarters where intelligence, logistics and strategy determine…
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The Caje Cole series follows an Appalachian hunter serving as an American sniper from the Normandy landings through the final campaigns in Europe and into the Korean War. The Second World War novels place Cole against German marksmen during D-Day, the Falaise fighting, the Ardennes offensive and Operation…
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The Maisie Dobbs series follows a working-class London girl who becomes a nurse, psychologist and private investigator after education and service during the First World War. Beginning with her first independent case in 1929, the novels combine murder investigations with Maisie’s continuing effort to understand the physical and…
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The Assegai Sequence follows Leon Courtney and his daughter Saffron from British East Africa before the First World War through the rise of Nazism, the Second World War and the early post-war struggle over colonial Kenya. The books combine family conflict, espionage and military history across Africa and…
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The Burning Shore Sequence follows Centaine de Thiry and later Courtney generations from the Western Front and the aftermath of the First World War through the Great Depression, the rise of apartheid and the Cold War conflicts of southern Africa. Rage is restored as book 3 between Power…
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The CI Schenke novels follow Berlin criminal inspector Horst Schenke during the Second World War. A professional detective who has avoided joining the Nazi Party, Schenke must solve ordinary crimes inside a dictatorship whose police, party and security organisations protect the powerful and turn private secrets into mortal…
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The Jack Tanner series follows a sergeant in the fictional King’s Own Yorkshire Rangers through the British Army’s changing fortunes between 1940 and 1943. The Odin Mission begins during the retreat from Norway, Darkest Hour moves through the fall of France and Dunkirk, and Blood of Honour places…
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The Legion of the Damned series follows a fictionalised Sven and the recurring soldiers of a German penal armoured regiment across the Second World War. Porta, Tiny, the Legionnaire, the Old Man, Julius Heide and their comrades move between the Eastern Front, Nazi Germany, Italy, occupied France, Warsaw,…
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Duty Calls is James Holland’s young-adult sequence about teenage servicemen caught inside the major British battles of 1940. Duty Calls: Dunkirk follows the under-age Private Johnny Hawke through the collapse of the British campaign in France and the evacuation from Dunkirk, presenting combat from the limited viewpoint of…
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The After Dunkirk series follows the Littlefield family from the evacuation of 1940 through the final campaigns of the Second World War. Separated across occupied France, Britain, North Africa, Italy, Germany and the Pacific, the siblings serve as pilots, soldiers, intelligence officers, codebreakers and resistance operatives while their…
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The Odessa Novels begin in West Germany in 1963, when journalist Peter Miller follows a Holocaust survivor’s diary into a clandestine network protecting fugitive SS officers. More than sixty years later, Revenge of Odessa follows Peter’s grandson Georg as a new generation of extremists uses terrorism, propaganda and…
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The Century Trilogy follows five interconnected families from Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States from the years before the First World War to the collapse of Communist rule in Europe. Across three generations, miners, aristocrats, diplomats, political organisers, soldiers and journalists experience public events through marriages, rivalries…
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The Tom Wilde series follows an American-born Cambridge history professor drawn into British and Allied intelligence work from the crises of 1936 through the Second World War and the early Cold War. The novels combine espionage with political extremism, scientific research, royal scandal, propaganda and contested wartime memory.…
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The Commando trilogy, first published under the Alan Savage pen name, follows Harry Curtis from the retreat at Dunkirk into Britain’s newly formed raiding forces. Early operations combine sabotage, coastal attack and code intelligence, while the losses at Lofoten and St Nazaire establish the physical and psychological cost…
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The Alex Kovacs series follows a Czech-born Viennese businessman who is drawn into espionage during the destruction of interwar Europe. Books one and two place him against the rise of Nazism and the approach of war; books three to seven follow his work in the French Resistance from…
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The Clifton Chronicles follow the Clifton and Barrington families from working-class Bristol in the 1920s through the upheavals of the twentieth century. Harry Clifton’s uncertain parentage, education and friendship with Giles Barrington bind him to a shipping dynasty whose wealth is repeatedly threatened by inheritance disputes, wartime loss,…
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The Detective Sebastian Wolff series follows a Munich police detective attempting to investigate crime as Nazi rule destroys judicial independence. Beginning in the mid-1930s, the novels place disappearances, murder and political violence inside propaganda spectacles, party rivalries and the personal compromises demanded by dictatorship. Wolff’s professional duty repeatedly…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
