A World on the Brink of Disaster

August 1939. Simmering heat in Central Europe. The corn is being harvested. Holiday season is in full swing. The stage seems set for a carefree summer, but something unsettling is in the air, as these are also days of intimidation and military marches. Some say another war is coming; others are certain that peace will endure. Hauke Friederichs tells the story of the summer before everything changes – at 5:45 on the morning of 1 September. Sparks fly, triggering a global inferno.

Flying Sparks delves into diaries, notes and newly discovered records to retell history from the perspectives of those who lived through the events and observed them first-hand. People like Winston Churchill, a 19-year-old John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Stalin’s ambassador in London, Ivan Maisky, and Katia Mann, the wife of Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann.

Hauke Friederichs
was born in Hamburg in 1980 and holds a PhD in Social and Economic History from Hamburg University. He works as a journalist and an author, and he writes for various German-language publications, including the weekly paper Zeit and SpiegelGeschichte magazine. His most recent book is entitled Gravediggers: the Last Winter before the Weimar Republic.