Invitation to Valhalla
by Mike Whicker
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mike WhickerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-01-04
ISBN: 0595297390
Number of pages: 404
Publisher: iUniverse Star
Book Reviews of Invitation to Valhalla
Book Review: Erica Lehman
Summary: 5 Stars
Erica Lehman was a top spy for Nazi Germany. And, yet, she was also beautiful, womanly and passionate....
She was selected to spy on the military works located in Evansville during WWII, where the LST's were being engineered and eventually built that would enable the Brits and Americans and Canadians to attack fortress Europe in mass with massive forces and materials.
This is a beautiful story with an amazing amount of background information.
I only wish that someone such as Steven Spielberg would pick up on this book and make an action movie of it as it would be notable.
Someone reading this book and interested in history might also want to know that toward the end of WWII, the Germans got a bit of payback...there was the mass evacuation of Poland, and Eastern Germany of over 2,000,000 germans, mostly civilians, and that at least 25,000 of those were killed by Russian subs.
Over 2,000,000 German women were raped by Russian troops and the following excerpt speaks to this: "It began in mid-October 1944, when Red Army forces first broke into German East Prussia. Spurred on by the hate filled calls to violence against Germans by Soviet Jewish propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg, Red Army troops systematically plundered and murdered Germans unfortunate enough to fall into their hands. [3]
One of the first towns taken by the Soviets was Nemmersdorf, in the Gumbinnen district of East Prussia. It was only because German forces succeeded in recapturing this town a short time later that the world was able to learn how Soviet troops had set about brutally raping females of all ages, and slaughtering the old men, women and children there. The fortunate ones were shot out of hand. Many were clubbed or hacked to death. After being raped, naked women were nailed to doors in crucifix positions. In one case, a group of refugees was crushed under Soviet tanks. [4]"
"Astonishingly, only about 25,000 lives were lost in what one historian has called "the greatest evacuation operation in history," a figure that is all the more remarkable in light of the fact that by this time the remnants of the German air force were almost powerless to fend off attacks by enemy fighter planes and submarines. [5]
This record of success masks human catastrophes of almost inutterable horror -- including the three most terrible ship sinkings, in terms of lives lost, in history. The first of the great German evacuation ships to go down, the Wilhelm Gustloff, was hit by three torpedoes from Soviet submarine S-13 on the night of January 30th. It sank after 70 minutes, taking with it at least 5,700 lives, and perhaps as many as 7,000. Only about 900 could be rescued from the sub-freezing waters of the Baltic by convoy vessels. [6]"
Actually, I've read that the real loss of lives on the Gustloff was more than 9,300, that there were many civilians on board than the official list recorded because of the hurried nature of their departure.
In addition, I would certainly recommend "Hitler's Willing Executioners : Ordinary Germans and The Holocaust" which goes a long way toward showing that Hitler was amongst friends and neighbors when it came to killing their fellow jews.
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