The author, a historian and former Swiss Armoured Corp officer, uses primary documents to describe tank tactics during the first two years of World War II, a period in which armour was employed in the Polish, Western and Russian campaigns. The first year of 'Operation Barbarossa' is examined in great detail using the files of the second Panzer Army whose commander, Guderian, who has been called the father of the German armoured force.

Winning the Battle of the Atlantic was critical to Britain's survival in the Second World War. The British Merchant Navy suffered enormous losses of both ships and men, particularly in the early years of the war. Sailing through U-boat wolf-packs across the Atlantic, or on the perilous routes to Malta and Murmansk, took a special kind of courage. Ships often sank within minutes of being torpedoed. Survivors is the history of this epic struggle. It is a graphic account of how the ships were attacked and sunk, how crews reacted, how they attempted to launch their lifeboats and how they ended up swimming or clinging to debris, or making long voyages in lifeboats or on rafts. Death might come at any stage, yet the will to live and the resourcefulness and skill of the seamen enabled a surprising number to survive.
""There was a terrific smash and everything was pandemonium on deck. The wheel house collapsed on top of me and I was trapped by the concrete slabs which had fallen on me and pinned me to the deck. I think that the ship sank in about thirty seconds after breaking in two ... Although I was trapped, I could see everything over my head. The stern burst into flames and I saw flames forward. I could see the water coming up and coming over my head. The ship hit the bottom and turned over, the debris was thrown off me and I was released and I came to the surface.""--Sinking of SS Abukir, 28 May 1940

Winner of both the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. Frank Kermode, in The New York Times Book Review, hailed it as "an important contribution to our understanding of how we came to make World War I part of our minds," and Lionel Trilling called it simply "one of the most deeply moving books I have read in a long time." In its panaramic scope and poetic intensity, it illuminated a war that changed a generation and revolutionized the way we see the world.

Now, in Wartime, Fussell turns to the Second World War, the conflict he himself fought in, to weave a narrative that is both more intensely personal and more wide-ranging. Whereas his former book focused primarily on literary figures, on the image of the Great War in literature, here Fussell examines the immediate impact of the war on common soldiers and civilians. He describes the psychological and emotional atmosphere of World War II. He analyzes the euphemisms people needed to deal with unacceptable reality (the early belief, for instance, that the war could be won by "precision bombing," that is, by long distance); he describes the abnormally intense frustration of desire and some of the means by which desire was satisfied; and, most important, he emphasizes the damage the war did to intellect, discrimination, honesty, individuality, complexity, ambiguity and wit. Of course, no Fussell book would be complete without some serious discussion of the literature of the time. He examines, for instance, how the great privations of wartime (when oranges would be raffled off as valued prizes) resulted in roccoco prose styles that dwelt longingly on lavish dinners, and how the "high-mindedness" of the era and the almost pathological need to "accentuate the positive" led to the downfall of the acerbic H.L. Mencken and the ascent of E.B. White. He also offers astute commentary on Edmund Wilson's argument with Archibald MacLeish, Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine, the war poetry of Randall Jarrell and Louis Simpson, and many other aspects of the wartime literary world.

Fussell conveys the essence of that wartime as no other writer before him. For the past fifty years, the Allied War has been sanitized and romanticized almost beyond recognition by "the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant, and the bloodthirsty." Americans, he says, have never understood what the Second World War was really like. In this stunning volume, he offers such an understanding.

The Great War toppled four empires, cost the world 24 million dead, and sowed the seeds of another worldwide conflict 20 years later. This is the only book in the English language to offer comprehensive coverage of how Germany and Austria-Hungary, two of the key belligerents, conducted the war and what defeat meant to them. This new edition has been thoroughly updated throughout, including new developments in the historiography and, in particular, addressing new work on the cultural history of the war. This edition also includes: - New material on the domestic front, covering Austria-Hungary's internal political frictions and ethnic fissures - More on Austria-Hungary and Germany's position within the wider geopolitical framework - Increased coverage of the Eastern front "The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918" offers an authoritative and well-researched survey of the role of the Central powers that will be an invaluable text for all those studying the First World War and the development of modern warfare.

This is the most comprehensive chronology ever provided on the First World War and how it transformed the world politically, economically, socially, technologically, and culturally. Gerald Herman outlines the military actions and events of the Great War in chronological order, depicting the actions of the belligerents on the Western, Eastern, and Southern Fronts, in the colonies, on sea, and in the air, in the order in which they entered the war. His chronology juxtaposes these military events alongside international actions, showing how the events of the war led to treaties and declarations, conferences and meetings, and various kinds of informal contacts and results. He goes on to outline domestic events in terms of political, economic, social, cultural, and technological activities. A full index is also provided.

The chronology will be of great use to all libraries, institutions, and individuals seriously concerned with military history and modern world history.

This is the complete wartime translation by the U.S. Navy of the 1943 edition of the official handbook given to all U-boat commanders. The original handbook was compiled from combat reports and was regularly updated throughout the war. The handbook was an invaluable reference for every operational U-boat commander. Simply written and highly accessible for a wider audience, the U-boat handbook attempted to anticipate every possible situation and to advise on suitable tactics. This superb war-time primary source is enhanced by a rare series of photographs taken on an actual combat patrol and published during the time of the Third Reich in the book "U-Boot Auf Feindfahrt." Together the handbook and these rare photographs provide a fascinating glimpse into the world of the U-boats from a first hand perspective, and is essential reading for anyone interested in World War II from primary sources. This book is part of the 'Hitler's War Machine' series, a new military history range compiled and edited by Emmy Award winning author and historian Bob Carruthers. The series draws on primary sources and contemporary documents toprovide a new insight into the true nature of Hitler's Wehrmacht. The series consultant is David Mcwhinnie creator of the award winning PBS series 'Battlefield'.

The book explores how Churchill was portrayed in the UK press during the Second World War, comparing his depictions in Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, and provincial English newspapers. By using a variety of newspapers from these areas, it examines local opinions about Churchill at the time he was the wartime prime minister. It analyses how Churchill was received and depicted by newspapers in the UK and why differences in these depictions emerged in each area. It contributes to the study of public opinion in the war and of Churchill's reputation, of the British media, as well as to the study of the notion of Britishness, focusing on local perspectives.

World War I was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 1914 to 1918. Contemporaneously known as the Great War or "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. This series of Eight volumes provides year by year analysis of the war that resulted in the death of more than 17 million deaths worldwide.

With the end of the First World War, the centuries-old social fabric of the Ottoman world an entangled space of religious co-existence throughout the Balkans and the Middle East came to its definitive end. In this new study, Hans-Lukas Kieser argues that while the Ottoman Empire officially ended in 1922, when the Turkish nationalists in Ankara abolished the Sultanate, the essence of its imperial character was destroyed in 1915 when the Young Turk regime eradicated the Armenians from Asia Minor. This book analyses the dynamics and processes that led to genocide and left behind today s crisis-ridden post-Ottoman Middle East. Going beyond Istanbul, the book also studies three different but entangled late Ottoman areas: Palestine, the largely Kurdo-Armenian eastern provinces and the Aegean shores; all of which were confronted with new claims from national movements that questioned the Ottoman state. All would remain regions of conflict up to the present day.Using new primary material, World War I and the End of the Ottoman World brings together analysis of the key forces which undermined an empire, and marks an important new contribution to the study of the Ottoman world and the Middle East. "

Taking as its focus memorials of the First World War in Britain, this book brings a fresh approach to the study of public symbols by exploring how different motives for commemorating the dead were reconciled through the processes of local politics to create a widely valued form of collective expression. It examines how the memorials were produced, what was said about them, how support for them was mobilized and behaviour around them regulated. These memorials were the sites of contested, multiple and ambiguous meanings, yet out of them a united public observance was created. The author argues that this was possible because the interpretation of them as symbols was part of a creative process in which new meanings for traditional forms of memorial were established and circulated. The memorials not only symbolized emotional responses to the war, but also ambitions for the post-war era. Contemporaries adopted new ways of thinking about largely traditional forms of memorial to fit the uncertain social and political climate of the inter-war years.
This book represents a significant contribution to the study of material culture and memory, as well as to the social and cultural history of modern warfare.

An in-depth biography of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel written with the cooperation of Rommel's son, by a renowned military analyst and historian who is himself a general.

This year is the eightieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War. In that year, Lizzy Schwarz was a teenage Jew enjoying life in Boskovice, Czechoslovakia. Far to the east in Poland, teenage Jerzy Dyszkiewicz had recently qualified as an Officer Cadet in the Polish Army. During the war, Lizzy and her family were interned in Nazi concentration camps. Lizzy's mother died from ill health brought on by cruel treatment, her sister and father later died at the Auschwitz death camp. Lizzy however miraculously survived three of those horrendous camps. In September 1939, Jerzy's unit was moving west to meet the invading Germans when they were captured by the Soviet Army advancing east. They were handed over to the Germans and sent to a series of POW camps to work. In 1942, Jerzy and three close comrades escaped from a camp near the Belgian border and, surviving many close shaves, finally made it to England. After the war Lizzy and Jerzy coincidentally met and later married in London on 17th September 1955. This is their incredible story of a double escape from Nazis with an ultimate happy ending.

The Vietnam War was one of the most painful and divisive events in American history. The conflict, which ultimately took the lives of 58,000 Americans and more than three million Vietnamese, became a subject of bitter and impassioned debate. The most dramatic--and frequently the most enduring--efforts to define and articulate America's ill-fated involvement in Vietnam emerged from popular culture. American journalists, novelists, playwrights, poets, songwriters, and filmmakers--many of them eyewitnesses--have created powerful, heartfelt works documenting their thoughts and beliefs about the war. By examining those works, this book provides readers with a fascinating resource that explores America's ongoing struggle to assess the war and its legacies.

This encyclopedia includes 44 essays, each providing detailed information on an important film, song, or literary work about Vietnam. Each essay provides insights into the Vietnam-era experiences and views of the work's primary creative force, historical background on issues or events addressed in the work, discussion of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the work, and sources for further information. This book also includes an appendix listing of more than 275 films, songs, and literary works dealing with the war.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the Nanjing Massacre, together with an in-depth analysis of various aspects of the event and related issues. Drawing on original source materials collected from various national archives, national libraries, church historical society archives, and university libraries in China, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States, it represents the first English-language academic attempt to analyze the Nanjing Massacre in such detail and scope. The book examines massacres and other killings, in addition to other war crimes, such as rape, looting, and burning. These atrocities are then explored further via a historical analysis of Chinese survivors' testimony, Japanese soldiers' diaries, Westerners' eyewitness accounts, the news coverage from American and British correspondents, and American, British and German diplomatic dispatches. Further, the book explores issues such as the role and function of the International Committee for Nanking Safety Zone, burial records of massacre victims, post-war military tribunals, controversies over the Nanjing Massacre, and the 100-Man Killing Contest. This book is intended for all researchers, scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and members of the general public who are interested in Second World War issues, Sino-Japanese conflicts, Sino-Japan relations, war crimes, atrocity and holocaust studies, military tribunals for war crimes, Japanese atrocities in China, and the Nanjing Massacre.

The happy warriors in the green hats
This is the story of the Nigerian Regiment-an imperial regiment led by British officers and manned principally by Hausa tribesmen who formed part of the force that fought the Germans in East Africa during the First World War. The account, written by one of those British officers, describes the earliest activities of the regiment in West Africa before travelling with them, across the continent, to new challenges. The author's affection and pride in these troops shines through every page and they were in his estimation some of the finest troops the British Empire had to offer. The reader is shown their perpetual good humour and outstanding courage and skill as soldiers in the field. Distinguished by their green headdress and machete they became a force with whom the enemy admitted 'they would take no liberties.' Their East African allies good humouredly hailed them with the call 'Yum Yum'-so convinced were they that they were cannibals The pivotal battles of the campaign are described in detail together with many personable anecdotes making this an original and different view of the Great War.