Karina Urbach – författare

This is the untold story of how some of Germany's top aristocrats contributed to Hitler's secret diplomacy during the Third Reich, providing a direct line to their influential contacts and relations across Europe - especially in Britain, where their contacts included the press baron and Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and the future King Edward VIII. Using previously unexplored sources from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the USA, Karina Urbach unravels the story of top-level go-betweens such as the Duke of Coburg, grandson of Queen Victoria, and the seductive Stephanie von Hohenlohe, who rose from a life of poverty in Vienna to become a princess and an intimate of Adolf Hitler. As Urbach shows, Coburg and other senior aristocrats were tasked with some of Germany's most secret foreign policy missions from the First World War onwards, culminating in their role as Hitler's trusted go-betweens, as he readied Germany for conflict during the 1930s - and later, in the Second World War. Tracing what became of these high-level go-betweens in the years after the Nazi collapse in 1945 - from prominent media careers to sunny retirements in Marbella - the book concludes with an assessment of their overall significance in the foreign policy of the Third Reich.

This is the untold story of how some of Germany's top aristocrats contributed to Hitler's secret diplomacy during the Third Reich, providing a direct line to their influential contacts and relations across Europe -- especially in Britain, where their contacts included the press baron and Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and the future King Edward VIII. Using previously unexplored sources from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the USA, Karina Urbach unravels the story of top-level go-betweens such as the Duke of Coburg, grandson of Queen Victoria, and the seductive Stephanie von Hohenlohe, who rose from a life of poverty in Vienna to become a princess and an intimate of Adolf Hitler. As Urbach shows, Coburg and other senior aristocrats were tasked with some of Germany's most secret foreign policy missions from the First World War onwards, culminating in their role as Hitler's trusted go-betweens, as he readied Germany for conflict during the 1930s -- and later, in the Second World War. Tracing what became of these high-level go-betweens in the years after the Nazi collapse in 1945 -- from prominent media careers to sunny retirements in Marbella -- the book concludes with an assessment of their overall significance in the foreign policy of the Third Reich.

The history of secret intelligence, like secret intelligence itself, is fraught with difficulties surrounding both the reliability and completeness of the sources, and the motivations behind their release—which can be the product of ongoing propaganda efforts as well as competition among agencies. Indeed, these difficulties lead to the Scylla and Charybdis of overestimating the importance of secret intelligence for foreign policy and statecraft and also underestimating its importance in these same areas—problems that generally beset the actual use of secret intelligence in modern states. But in recent decades, traditional perspectives have given ground and judgments have been revised in light of new evidence.This volume brings together a collection of essays avoiding the traditional pitfalls while carrying out the essential task of analyzing the recent evidence concerning the history of the European state system of the last century. The essays offer an array of insight across countries and across time. Together they highlight the critical importance of the prevailing domestic circumstances—technological, governmental, ideological, cultural, financial—in which intelligence operates. A keen interdisciplinary eye focused on these developments leaves us with a far more complete understanding of secret intelligence in Europe than we've had before.

The Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, leader of the rising German Empire based on Prussian militarism and discipline, and Lord Odo Russell, Britain's Liberal Ambassador when her empire was at its most powerful, serene and confident, were politically and socially worlds apart. Their remarkable friendship, which is examined in this volume, endured intense national rivalry which would change the face of Europe and the world, and end in world war. The author sets out to illustrate major themes of the relationship between Bismarck and Russell: the Franco-Prussian war; Turkey as "the sick man of Europe", and the Eastern Question; relations with France, Russia and other European powers; the beginnings of imperial rivalry; and the clash of ideologies between liberal Anglo-Saxon beliefs and the militarism of the new Germany. Emerging from the text is a picture of the German Imperial court and of British political society at its highest.

"A remarkable and important story" BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour"Unputdownable . . . Urbach has also retold the tragic Holocaust story in quite unforgettable lines" A.N. Wilson"In a remarkable new book, Alice's granddaughter Karina, a noted historian, has traced what happened to her family but also what happened to the cookbook" Daniel Finkelstein"This fascinating book, by Alice's granddaughter Karina Urbach, shines a spotlight on this lesser-known aspect of Nazi looting" The Times"A gripping piece of 20th-century family history but also something much more original: a rare insight into the 'Aryanisation' of Jewish-authored books during the Nazi regime" Financial TimesWhat happened to the books that were too valuable to burn?Alice Urbach had her own cooking school in Vienna, but in 1938 she was forced to flee to England, like so many others. Her younger son was imprisoned in Dachau, and her older son, having emigrated to the United States, became an intelligence officer in the struggle against the Nazis.Returning to the ruins of Vienna in the late 1940s, she discovers that her bestselling cookbook has been published under someone else's name. Now, eighty years later, the historian Karina Urbach - Alice's granddaughter - sets out to uncover the truth behind the stolen cookbook, and tells the story of a family torn apart by the Nazi regime, of a woman who, with her unwavering passion for cooking, survived the horror and losses of the Holocaust to begin a new life in America.Impeccably researched and incredibly moving, Alice's Book sheds light on an untold chapter in the history of Nazi crimes against Jewish authors."As this engaging memoir makes clear, the theft of the cookbook remained for Alice's entire life the symbol of everything that had been taken from her" TLSTranslated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

The Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, leader of the rising German Empire based on Prussian militarism and discipline, and Lord Odo Russell, Britain's Liberal Ambassador when her empire was at its most powerful, serene and confident, were politically and socially worlds apart. Their remarkable friendship, which is examined in this volume, endured intense national rivalry which would change the face of Europe and the world, and end in world war. The author sets out to illustrate major themes of the relationship between Bismarck and Russell: the Franco-Prussian war; Turkey as "the sick man of Europe", and the Eastern Question; relations with France, Russia and other European powers; the beginnings of imperial rivalry; and the clash of ideologies between liberal Anglo-Saxon beliefs and the militarism of the new Germany. Emerging from the text is a picture of the German Imperial court and of British political society at its highest.

In diesem Band werden von namhaften Historikern deutsche und britische Staatsmänner im Krieg vom Siebenjährigen Krieg bis zum zweiten Weltkrieg verglichen. Die biographischen Beiträge reichen von Friedrich dem Großen und William Pitt dem Älteren, William Pitt dem Jüngeren und Joseph II., William Gladstone und Bismarck, David George und Wilhelm II. bis zu Churchill und Hitler. Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten in der Kriegsführung sowie Bezüge zur aktuellen politischen Lage werden eindrucksvoll dargestellt. Damit liefert der Band wichtige Ergebnisse, die weitere Forschungen anregen werden.Mit einem Beitrag von Christopher Clark, Deutscher Historikerpreis 2010: "Supreme Warlord: Kaiser Wilhelm II in Wartime".