A dramatic true story about Sigmund Freud's last-minute escape to London following the German annexation of Austria and the group of friends who made it possible.
In March 1938, German soldiers crossed the border into Austria and Hitler absorbed the country into the Third Reich. Anticipating these events, many Jews had fled Austria, but the most famous Austrian Jew remained in Vienna, where he had lived since early childhood. Sigmund Freud was 81 years old, ill with cancer, and still unconvinced that his life was in danger.
But several prominent people close to Freud thought otherwise, and they began a coordinated effort to persuade Freud to leave his beloved Vienna and emigrate to England. The group included a Welsh physician, Napoleon's great-grandniece, an American ambassador, Freud's devoted youngest daughter Anna, and his personal doctor.
Saving Freud is the story of how this remarkable collection of people finally succeeded in coaxing Freud, a man who seemingly knew the human mind better than anyone else, to emerge from his deep state of denial about the looming catastrophe, allowing them to extricate him and his family from Austria so that they could settle in London. There Freud would live out the remaining 16 months of his life in freedom.
This book is both an incisive new biography of Freud and a group biography of the extraordinary friends who saved Freud's life.
Based on previously secret documents and eyewitness testimony, this is the shocking account of the most massive and deadliest battle of World War II, which ended in Hitler's defeat and changed the course of the war.
Andrew Nagorski, Newsweek's former Moscow bureau chief, reveals that 2.5 million of the battle's 7 million troops were killed, taken prisoner, or severely wounded. Stalin and Hitler squandered the lives of their own soldiers by second-guessing their generals. And, while Stalin's army was barely armed, Hitler's soldiers had no winter clothing during the Russian winter.
Historically, this was the first time the German blitzkrieg was halted in Europe, shattering Hitler's dream of a swift victory over the Soviet Union. And, although America was not yet in the war, President Roosevelt realized the importance of supporting the Russian war effort. This was the beginning of the Allied wartime alliance and Stalin's push for a postwar empire, which ended in the cold war.
Because Stalin suppressed records of his near-fatal mistakes in this battle, its story has never been fully told. Now, Nagorski has studied recently declassified documents from Soviet archives and includes interviews with many survivors—including the son of the man in charge of removing Lenin's body from the besieged city—to provide the fullest view yet of this key battle.
