Berlin in World War II

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Berlin 1945

World War II: Photos of the Aftermath
By Michael Brettin and Peter Kroh
Translator: Cindy Opitz
Genre: City History
​​Softcover: 218 pages, 177 b/w photos
Dimension: 8.5'' x 11''
Sugg. Retail: $24.95 / 20,- €
ISBN USA: 978-1-935902-02-7
ISBN Germany: 978-3-960260-14-1

Berlin 1945: World War II is over in Europe. The Soviet army has conquered Berlin, a city reduced to rubble, and now under martial law. Soldiers from America, Great Britain, and France will move in a few months later. Broken tanks and makeshift barricades are littering the streets, tenements and churches were turned into bombed-out shells, tunnels have been flooded and train tracks destroyed. German soldiers are been hauled off to POW-camps in Siberia, while old men are cutting up dead horses for food, women are trading clothing for survival, and children are left to their own devices in the ruins. And the victors, Russian soldiers of the Red Army, look as much exhausted as the defeated. These rare pictures have been taken by photographers of the Red Army immediately after the surrender and ended up in the archive of Berliner Verlag. They are published for the first time in the United States, allowing a glimpse into an era of destruction and desperation, but also survival and rebuilding. Christian Science Monitor-Reporter Jason Walsh calls Berlin 1945 a "historical archive that acts as a window on the aftermath of total war. " With 177 black-and-white photos and a preface by Stephen Kinzer, former New York Times Bureau Chief in Berlin.

Michael Brettin, born 1964, studied History, Politics, and Slavistics. He holds a PhD in History from Hamburg University about the nationality question in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. He is also a graduate of the Hamburg School of Journalism. He works as an editor for the daily paper Berliner Kurier. His work on the history of the Berlin Wall was published in twelve issues and as a magazine.

Born in 1950, Peter Kroh has worked as a photo reporter in East Berlin for BZ  am Abend. After the Wall fell, the paper was acquired over by Gruner & Jahr and renamed Berliner Kurier. Kroh became photo editor, a job he held for two decades. Today, he is retired.

Berlin in the Cold War
Author: Thomas Fleming
Translator: Penny Croucher
Genre: City History
​Softcover, 80 pages / 51 pics / 3 maps
​Dimensions: 6.7’’ x 9.6’’
Suggested Retail: $10.95
ISBN 978-1-935902-80-5

Berlin in the Cold War vividly describes the conflict between the two superpowers—the USA and the Soviet Union—as it played out in Berlin, the divided city that was frontier, spy post, and battlefield all in one. The book highlights the dramatic events that affected the entire world: the 1948 blockade by the Soviets that caused the division of the city, the airlift that rescued West-Berlin, the June 1953 uprising against the Communists in East Berlin that was crushed by tanks, the sudden construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, followed by stories of escape and espionage, the visit of John F. Kennedy and, finally, the fall of the Iron Curtain. The daily paper Berliner Morgenpost wrote about the book: “Thomas Flemming managed to tell the whole story of the divided city on just 80 pages, without missing a beat.” The book includes numerous pictures and a map of all the Cold War places in Berlin. 

Thomas Flemming studied history at Free University in West-Berlin. Since then, he has written numerous books and newspaper stories mainly about post-war history in Germany, and he has curated a number of exhibitions on that topic, most importantly “The History of World War I” at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin.

The Berlin Wall Today
Author: Michael Cramer
Translator: Cindy Opitz
Genre: City History
Softcover, 102 color pages
​Dimensions: 8.5'' x 8.5’’
Sugg. Retail: $15.95, 16,00 €
ISBN: 978-1935902-10-2
Release: Spring 2015

The Berlin Wall Today, which features more than one hundred color pictures, takes the reader on a tour of the last traces and fading memories of the Wall—to memorials, parks, back yards, train tracks, factories, churches, and Prussian cemeteries. It tells stories of struggle, desperation, survival, and rebirth and of a history that shaped the post-war world. It also shows how the people of Berlin are reclaiming and memorializing the ground where the Wall once stood: Mauer Park, where young people from all over world gather to party; a guard tower that is now the Museum of Forbidden Art; the Topography of Terror Museum, which includes the former Gestapo headquarters; and landmarks such as the Reichstag, the East Side Gallery, and Checkpoint Charlie. 

Michael Cramer moved to Berlin in the 1970s, where he became a school teacher and got involved with Green Party politics. He became the go-to politician for transportation issues as a member of the Berlin City Council. From 2004 to 2019, he was a member of the European Parliament. His commitment the memory of the Wall goes way back: Visiting Berlin in 1963, he used his first camera that his aunt had given him to take photos of the Wall at Bernauer Straße.

In 2001, Cramer started organizing the Berlin Wall Tours along the former division  and, as a then-member of the parliament of Berlin, convinced the authorities to signpost the trail and build bicycle-friendly infrastructure. He still gives these tours—for cyclists—on a regular basis.

Jews in Berlin

Authors: Andreas Nachama, Julius Schoeps, Hermann Simon

Preface: Carol Kahn Strauss

Genre: City History

Softcover, 310 pages / 372 pics

Dimensions, 6’’ x 9’’

Suggested Retail: $27.95

ISBN: 978-1-935902-60-7

Release: Fall 2013

Jews in Berlin: This richly illustrated book depicts 750 years of Jewish history as well as Jewish life in Berlin today. The Prussian capital was, for many centuries, the center of Jewish life in Germany. Its Jewish citizens strongly influenced the city’s cultural and literary life and led the way in the sciences, from the 18th century salon of Rachel Varnhagen to the cabarets of the Weimar Republic. However, economic crisis, hyper-inflation, and the depression of 1929 provided rich soil for the growth of anti-Semitism and ultimately led to the Holocaust. But today, Jewish life and Jewish culture are flourishing once again, after tens of thousands of immigrants from Russia and Israel have arrived in the capital.  

Andreas Nachama was born in Berlin in 1951. He studied history and Judaic studies and was ordained as a rabbi. He served as head of the Berliner Festspiele and the Jüdische Kulturtage in Berlin and as Director of the Topographie of Terror Foundation.

Julius H. Schoeps, born in Sweden, is a professor of modern history at the University of Potsdam, where he directs the Moses Mendelssohn Center. He has co-edited various publications.

Hermann Simon was born in Berlin; he studied history in Berlin and numismatics in Prague. He has directed the New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum Foundation since 1988. His publications include Das Berliner Jüdische Museum.