The Curtain Falls: Last Days of the Third Reich (1945) is a short firsthand memoir by Count Folke Bernadotte*, the well-known Swedish diplomat and vice-chairman of the Swedish Red Cross.
Bernadotte recounts his negotiations from mid-February to late April 1945 with the highest ranking Nazis in Germany, including Himmler. His initial humanitarian mission was to secure the release and transport of Scandinavian (mainly Danish and Norwegian) prisoners from Nazi concentration camps to neutral Sweden for internment until the war's end.
The book details his repeated missions and meetings amid the collapsing Third Reich. It vividly describes the chaotic, surreal atmosphere in the final weeks before Germany's surrender. What began as a rescue effort took on political weight when Himmler, acting without Hitler's knowledge, used Bernadotte to convey a late, desperate offer of partial surrender to the Allies.
The account is based on Bernadotte's own notes and reports. Such rescues ultimately saved thousands, including Scandinavians, Poles, and others. It was published shortly after the war and remains a notable primary source on this period.
The book is an easy read, small in size and 155 pages long. It is a straightforward wartime memoir rather than a broad history. The book is illustrated with 10 black and white photos of most of the characters involved.
Legends of Dune: The Machine Crusade Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Humanity is finally striking back at the overmind Omnius, who has ruled over a significant portion of humanity for millennia. Unfortunately, they are unable to establish a decisive victory over their AI overlords. Vorian Atreides, the son of the cymek Agamemnon, has defected to the side of humanity and now fights for their freedom, using his knowledge of the Titans to undermine their authority.
Herbert and Anderson are clearly using this war as a backdrop to establish the various factions that play a key role in the original Dune series. We see the seeds of the Mentats, human computers who use their mental abilities to calculate probabilities of events. Norma Cenva immerses herself within "spice gas," which is essential for creating the Navigators that allow ships to travel safely through folded spacetime.
This series is a bit odd in that the "foldspace" drive is essential to the Dune universe, being the main faster-than-light travel mechanism. However, before the foldspace drive is perfected, humans clearly had some alternate form of faster-than-light travel because it only takes weeks or months to travel from planet to planet. Herbert and Anderson are deliberately vague about how this older FTL drive works, which I think undercuts the story a bit.
Legends of Dune: The Battle of Corrin by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Humanity has driven Omnius back to a single planet after humans have bombarded all of the overmind's other world with "atomics," turning them into radioactive cinders. But once again they are at a stalemate as humanity is unable to penetrate Corrin's planetary defenses. Omnius conspires with a human traitor to unleash a virulent plague on the human worlds, which threatens to wipe out humanity.
Once again we see the seeds of the future Dune universe being sown here. This time the women who will one day be known as the Bene Gesserit unlock the keys to the future, which will one day result in the Kwisatz Haderach that will save humanity from itself.
Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Sisterhood of Dune picks up about eighty years after the conclusion of The Battle of Corrin. The overmind Omnius has been defeated once and for all, but the universe is still turbulent. The Butlerian Jihad is still gathering strength and their leader Manford Torondo is determined to wipe out technology, even benign technology such as advences in medical science, because reliance on technology is what led humans to being dominated by artificial intelligence for millennia. Emperor Salvador Corrino is a weak ruler, under the thrall of Manford's Butlerian Jihad, and unable to stand up to the mobs who are tearing his Empire apart. The Sisterhood (which will one day become the Bene Gesserit) have discovered a terrible secret about the Corrino bloodline. But they are also being torn apart by the sisters who have fallen under the sway of the Butlerian Jihad.
This book was better than I thought it would be. Manford Torondo is a zealous fanatic that you love to hate because he's such an insufferable prick. I can't hardly wait to see how he finally gets his comeuppance in later books. This series is meant to show the divide between those who embrace technology and want to see civilization advance and those who prefer to tear it down because they believe that technology/science is the cause of all mankind's woes. It's explicitly mentioned that Manford's group may not be satisfied until they've outlawed fire of all things.
