Excerpt from Witnesses At War by Nicholas Stargardt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Fearing the Luftwaffe's air supremacy, the British government was not prepared to launch air strikes on German civilian or industrial targets for fear of sparking German retaliation. So, despite all the evidence of German bombing raids on Polish cities, during the first winter of the war, the RAF largely confined itself to dropping millions of leaflets on Germany explaining the causes of the war in the hope of winning over German hearts and minds. As Carola Reissner picked them up in Essen, her bewilderment turned to outrage. "They are apparently trying to inflame the population," she wrote to her relatives, adding meaningfully, "these are obviously Jewish ploys." The thought came naturally, for she had heard for years how the Jews had manipulated and tricked their way to power and influence in Germany. In a barrage of publications, including the lavish photo collection of Die verlorene Insel (The Doomed Island), German propaganda extended these images to Britain, revealing the Jewish huckster, the freshly minted aristocrat of city finance, as the true enemy who was busily winding up the creaking clockwork mechanism of the English class system and exploiting Germany's "blood brothers" across the North Sea.

Excerpted from Witnesses of War by Nicholas Stargardt Copyright © 2006 by Nicholas Stargardt. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.