Surveys the one hundred most decisive battles in world history from the Battle of Megiddo in 1469 B.C. to Desert Storm, 1991.

In Once Upon a Time in Biafra, the prolific Nigerian historian Onianwa Oluchukwu Ignatus has produced an unprecedented study of prominent individuals from across the globe who visited the Republic of Biafra and Federal side of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970. This innovative new study contributes much to restoring the memory of the civil war, which has faded in recent decades. There is no better way to take a glimpse of how life was in Biafra as well as the Federal side of the war other than a careful study of reports of those who visited these troubled areas. Apart from those who were on ground and participated actively in the civil war, the reports of those who visited war territories offer another major source for historians to understand wartime life experiences on both sides. Individual reports analyzed in this book include reports presented to both the British and United States governments, some official visitors sent by their nations and others invited guests of either the Biafran government or the Federal military government of Nigeria. They included parliamentarians, journalists, medical personnel, government officials, and religious leaders, among others. Reportage about life on both sides of the Nigerian Civil War, particularly in Biafra, is striking commentary on wartime experiences that have become part of the historiography and memory of the Nigerian Civil War. As Ignatus explains, these experiences of foreigners have helped to define the legacies of that conflict with regard to individual contributions and the roles of both civilians and military personnel. Observation of everyday life serves as a way of understanding how people lived and adapted to conflict situations, and offers an equally worthy guide for efforts towards healing the war's enduring wounds.

Alice Zwicker was the only service woman from Maine to be a prisoner of the enemy in either of the two World Wars. But there is more to the story than that. Across the nation, wherever one of the seventy-seven Angels of Bataan returned home, there was a hero's welcome. Those Army and Navy nurses had shown what American women could do and be, even in times of defeat. This is Alice's story: her growing up in a small Maine town, her commitment to the profession of nursing, and her immersion in World War II. There was Manila, Bataan, Corregidor, and then three long, hungry years when she was held prisoner by the Japanese. For Alice, the terrible legacy of war did not end with her liberation from internment camp, or even with her coming home. When victory finally arrived for Alice, it was achieved in her own soul.

Anzac Labour explores the horror, frustration and exhaustion surrounding working life in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War. Based on letters and diaries of Australian soldiers, it traces the history of work and workplace cultures through Australia, the shores of Gallipoli, the fields of France and Belgium, and the Near East.

We commonly associate the term "Holocaust" with Nuremberg and Kristallnacht, the Warsaw and Vilna ghettos, Auschwitz and Treblinka. Appearing as they do in countless books and films, these symbols of hatred penetrate our consciousness, memory, and history. But, unfortunately, our memory is selective, and, in the case of Romania, our knowledge is scant. In 1939 the Jewish population of Romania exceeded 750,000: the third largest concentration of Jews in Europe. By 1944, some 400,000 had disappeared. Another 150,000 Ukrainian Jews died at the hands of Romanian soldiers. In the quest for a "final solution" Romania proved to be Hitler's most enthusiastic ally. In The Silent Holocaust, Butnaru, himself a survivor of the Romanian labor camps, provides a full account and demonstrates that anti-Semitism was a central force in Romania's history. He begins by examining the precarious status of Romanian Jewry in the years prior to World War I. He then reviews the period to the establishment in September, 1940, of the National Legionary State, a period when anti-Semitism became the unifying force in politics. The remainder of the book covers the Holocaust years, and reveals that Romania's premeditated mass murder of Jews was well underway before the Reich's gas chambers became operational. The Silent Holocaust has been called a "work of epic and historical worth" and it is invaluable for students of World War II, the Holocaust, and Jewish and Eastern European studies.

Flares of Memory is a collection of ninety-two stories written by over forty Jewish survivors and several US Army liberators about their experiences during the Holocaust. The stories collected in this volume were developed in a writing workshop led by Brostoff and Chamovitz for survivors of the Holocaust in the hope of preserving their memories for posterity. The contributors to this collection relate their recollections of being children, teenagers, and young adults during the Holocaust. Their individual experiences testify to the horror of the period as well as the moments of courage and luck that allowed them to survive while offering a tribute to the lives and cultures that were destroyed. The volume organizes the stories thematically into chapters, and includes a detailed timeline of the Holocaust, a map of concentration camps, and photographs of the contributors.

In this book, leading historians of the French, Batavian, Helvetic, Cisalpine, and Neapolitan revolutions bridge the gap between the historiographies of the so-called Sister Republics and explore political culture as a set of discourses or political practices. Parliamentary practices, the comparability of "universal" political concepts, late-eighteenth-century Republicanism, the relationship between press and politics, and the interaction between the Sister Republics and France are all examined from a comparative, transnational perspective.

Civilian into Soldier - A Novel Of The Great War. By John A. Lee. Originally published in 1937. A fictionalised but autobiographical account of a New Zealand man's fighting role in the fighting of World War I, written by a man who became a political force in a post-war New Zealand. Contents Include Sling Insubordination Hel-Fire for Orators-Klink Not so tough after all The road to Estaples Estaples War Logic About it and about Arrival Fatigue and fire-step Adapation Talk, Talk, Talk From Fleux Baix to Le Bezit Le Bezit Torches and Meteors Plugstreet Point De Neippe The Incubation of Chaos Raid on the Left Rehearsal Vicious Appetites Lot of Prepardness Fretfull Argumant Claim Twilight came Gas Nerves Up and Over The Hysterical Hero Enter Fear Any Bearers Look, The Cavalry-Counter Attack Bull Ring Philosophy Eyewash after chaos Rest, disintegration Pagan death but Christian burial Eve of offensive The advance of the refinery The brass hat who was a mad hatter Good sport Comedy or tragedy Tragedy or comedy Rest camp On the road gaily without a crust of bread Nerves nerves nerves The attack on the pay office In which the infantry have a jolly good time parley voo Good-byeee Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwor

Part of a series about principal World War II and post war leaders, this book is about Marshal Tito. This bibliography contains a biographical essay and chronology, a survey of manuscript resources, speeches and writings by the subject, a summary of newspaper coverage and a bibliography of relevant newspapers and a bibliography of historical and biographic works on Marshal Tito and his place in history.

The past is brought to life in this historical epic about a South African family whose lives collided with the biggest event in history: The First World War. The central theme is the largely forgotten east Africa campaign, but by definition a world war has a wide reach. Five members of one family with deep roots in all four corners of the country, served in three different theatres of war. Their lives on active service are all interwoven and inseparable from the home front. Global events are juxtaposed with everyday life on a farm in the eastern Orange Free State. Appropriately, the author constructs linkages that span generations, uncovering individual experiences of an earlier conflict which had engulfed South Africa barely a decade before the eruption of the 1914-18 war. As the sons of early pioneers, this generation witnessed history in the making before writing their own. Riding into action on horseback or in a flying machine, their paths led from the south west African desert, through disease-infested jungles in east Africa to some of the great battles on the western front. Only one of the five came home unscathed although he crash-landed his aircraft behind enemy lines and only made it back through his audacity and brute strength. Another, an intellectual priest, was left for dead at Delville Wood, and his brother was wounded on Messines Ridge. The remaining two suffered from debilitating tropical illnesses. Hazard and hardship lingered on in the form of Spanish in influenza, mining strikes and the Great Depression. The war cast a long shadow. Between them, these consciously literate men left substantial documentary legacies. Using extracts of their letters from the front, the story is to a large extent told in the words of those who were there. Context is provided by referencing existing literature, unpublished memoirs and archival material. It could be called a military history or a social history, but it is a truly South African story which contains much new material for historians, while for the general reader it offers an accessible insight into an unparalleled period of history.

This narrative history tells the story of the German occupation of Normandy (1940-44), and the Allied liberation. Following the fall of France in 1940, Normandy formed part of the Reich's western border and its history for the next four years. On the coast, vast defenses were built up, and large numbers of German troops were stationed throughout the region, all in the midst of the local population. Much of the story is told in the words of French, German, and Allied participants, including last letters of executed hostages and resisters, accounts of everyday life and eyewitness reports of aerial, naval, and ground combat operations during the Liberation. When the Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944, all were witness to the greatest amphibious landing in history. This, then, is the story of the 51-month-nightmare that was Normandy's war, told while it is still possible to record the personal stories of survivors, which very soon will not be the case.

A New York Times bestseller, Norman Ohler's Blitzed is a "fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich" (Washington Post). The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to German soldiers. In fact, troops were encouraged, and in some cases ordered, to take rations of a form of crystal meth--the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to account for the breakneck invasion that sealed the fall of France in 1940, as well as other German military victories. Hitler himself became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs--ultimately including Eukodal, a cousin of heroin--administered by his personal doctor. Thoroughly researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows. "Delightfully nuts."--The New Yorker

Military cemeteries are one of the most prominent cultural landscapes of Israel. Their story reflects largely the main social processes that Israeli society has been undergoing since the War of Independence (1948) until today. Until the end of the 1970s, the military tombstones and their surroundings were uniform and equal, according to rules set by the State. However, since the 1980s families of the fallen soldiers started to add on the tombstone personal expressions, as well as personal objects, photographs, military artifacts etc. Thus the military tombstone and the Israeli military cemetery became one of the expressions of the dramatic transformation, from a society which emphasized the importance of the collective, to a society which intensifies the significance of the individual. The book is based on many archival documents, as well as interviews and photographs, all of which shed light on one of the most sensitive issues in Israeli society and express its importance as a central component of Israeli identity.

In 1779 the fledgling U.S. naval fleet suffered a catastrophic defeat against the British in the waters of the Penobscot Bay, losing forty ships in a battle that was expected to be a sure victory for the Americans. Commodore Dudley Saltonstall was blamed for the debacle and ultimately court-martialed for his ineptitude. In this groundbreaking book George E. Buker defends Saltonstall providing compelling evidence that he was not to blame for the loss and that in fact the court-martial was rigged against him. Buker s conclusions foster a reassessment of Saltonstall s naval strategies and shed new light on the political maneuvers of the time."

How can we understand what caused World War I? What role did Germany play? This book encourages us to re-think the events that led to global conflict in 1914.Historians in recent years have argued that German leaders acted defensively or pre-emptively in 1914, conscious of the Reich's deteriorating military and diplomatic position. Germany and the Causes of the First World War challenges such interpretations, placing new emphasis on the idea that the Reich Chancellor, the German Foreign Office and the Great General Staff were confident that they could win a continental war. This belief in Germany's superiority derived primarily from an assumption of French decline and Russian weakness throughout the period between the turn of the century and the eve of the First World War. Accordingly, Wilhelmine policy-makers pursued offensive policies - at the risk of war at important junctures during the 1900s and 1910s.The author analyses the stereotyping of enemy states, representations of war in peacetime, and conceptualizations of international relations. He uncovers the complex role of ruling elites, political parties, big business and the press, and contends that the decade before the First World War witnessed some critical changes in German foreign policy. By the time of the July crisis of 1914, for example, the perception of enemies had altered, with Russia - the traditional bugbear of the German centre and left - becoming the principal opponent of the Reich. Under these changed conditions, German leaders could now pursue their strategy of brinkmanship, using war as an instrument of policy, to its logical conclusion.