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To Save a People
To Save a People
Oct 10, 2024 8:27 PM

Author:Alex Kershaw

To Save a People

New York Times bestselling author Alex Kershaw has written the first full biography of one of the most remarkable men to have outwitted Hitler - Raoul Wallenberg, the young Swedish diplomat who almost single-handedly saved the lives of countless Hungarian Jews, at unimaginable risk and great cost to himself. As a Holocaust survivor said, 'Schindler saved hundreds. Wallenberg saved tens of thousands.' This is the story of how he achieved this and of his personal duel with Adolf Eichmann, the SS colonel charged with obliterating Hungarian Jewry, who sent half a million Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz. This confrontation reaches its climax in 1944 when Soviet and German troops are fighting hand-to-hand through the suburbs of Budapest and Eichmann's push for the Final Solution is personally opposed by Wallenberg. The book also sheds new light on Wallenberg's fate - he disappeared into the Soviet Union after the war to a highly controversial and disputed death. (The Americans were so determined to discover what happened to him that they made him an honorary citizen in order to prise information out of the Russians.) It's an inspiring story which moves at the pace of a master thriller-writer, but the truth behind it is heartbreaking.

Reviews

It's to be hoped that, thanks to people like Alex Kershaw, the memory of this true freedom-fighter will be more venerated than he was by Hungary's self-styled "liberators".

—— Sunday Herald

Alex Kershaw has delivered a masterpiece about Raul Wallenberg, as witnessed from every perspective.

—— New York Journal of Books

Alex Kershaw describes in this intensely moving, graphic and skilfully researched study, the extraordinary story of how Wallenberg succeeded on saving 100,000 Jews from certain death.

—— Tribune

Figes is a first class historian... [he] proves an excellent guide to the vagaries of the battlefield, the suffering of the ordinary soldiers and the way in which the war became a crucial part of late-Victorian patriotic mythology, contributing to a new ethos of muscular Christianity

—— Dominic Sandbrook , Daily Telegraph

Orlando Figes ... is back doing what he does best - telling us things about Russia and the world that we did not know, and proving that they are important to our understanding of the world today ... With his deep understanding of Russia and its uncomfortable opposition in the world, Figes elegantly underlines how the cold war of the Soviet era froze over fundamental fault lines that had opened up in the 19th century

—— Angus MacQueen , The Observer

It is a fine stirring account, expertly balancing analysis with a patchwork of quotation from a wide variety of spectators and participants, together with an impressive narrative across the vast panoramic sweep of the war ... However, the book's true originality lies in its unravelling of the Crimean War's religious origins

—— Mark Bostridge , Financial Times

Keenly judged, vivid history of a bloody and pointless conflict

—— Sunday Times Culture

An exhaustively researched, beautifully written book

—— Saul David , BBC History

One of our most engaging narrative historians, Orlando Figes has produced with his latest book a rollickingly good account of a war that shocked mid-Victorian England ... intelligent and reliable history ... Figes is a stylish and compelling narrator

—— Lesley Chamberlain , Literary Review

An impressive piece of scholarship ... a concise portrait of the political situation of the time

—— Telegraph Books of the Year 2010

A stellar historian. As ever, it mixes strong narrative pace, a grand canvas and compelling ideas about current geopolitical tensions

—— Tristram Hunt , Observer Best Books of the Year: 2010

A sparkling and in passages brilliant account ... it stands amply and slendidly on its own two feet

—— David Hearst , Guardian

A first-class historian, as his splendid new book, an epic account of the Crimean War of 1853-56, amply demonstrates

—— Daily Telegraph

A model of wide-lens military history

—— Dan Jones , The Times (Christmas books 2010)

Wonderful ... an amazing panoramic view ... I've rarely read anything like it

—— Claire Tomalin

A masterful account of lost and stolen lives

—— Sunday Times

Awesome ... one of the most unforgettable books I have ever read. I defy anyone to read it without weeping at its human suffering, cruelty and courage ... in this book these righteous heroes have their rightful memorial

—— Simon Sebag Montefiore , Mail on Sunday

Innovative and most important

—— Contemporary Review

Compelling and engaging ... an excellent read

—— Soldier

Edgerton's well-researched volume bursts with data that reveal Britain's true strength even when supposed to be in critical condition

—— Peter Moreira , Military History

Britain's War Machine offers the boldest revisionist argument that seeks to overturn some of our most treasured assumptions about Britain's role in the war ... Edgerton [is] an economic historian with an army of marshalled facts and figures at his fingertips ... This is truly an eye-opening book that explodes the masochistic myth of poor little Britain, revealing the island as a proud power with the resources needed to fight and win a world war

—— Nigel Jones , Spectator

Masterful Britain's War Machine promotes the notion that the United Kingdom of the Forties was a superpower, with access to millions of men across the globe, and forming the heart of a global production network

—— Mail on Sunday
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