The United States during World War II was unprepared for one of Germany's most destructive war efforts: a U-boat assault on Allied ships in the Caribbean that sank about 400 tankers and merchant ships, with few losses to the German submarine fleet. The Germans had set up a network of spies and had the secret support of some dictators, including the Dominican Republic's Rafael Trujillo, supplying their U-boats with fuel.The Caribbean was of crucial strategic importance to the Allies. Roughly 95 percent of the oil sustaining the East Coast of the United States came from the region, along with bauxite, required to manufacture airplanes. The United States invested billions of dollars to build bases, landing strips, roads, and other military infrastructure on the Puerto Rico and secured a 99-year lease on all the British bases located in the Caribbean. The United States also struck an agreement with neutral Vichy France to keep the French Navy in the harbor of Martinique, preventing it from being turned over to the Germans, in exchange for a food supply for the island. Elsewhere, however, the German blockade was taking a dire human toll. All of the islands experienced a drastic food shortage. The US military buildup created jobs and income, but locals were paid a third as much as continental workers. The military also brought its segregationist policies to the islands, creating further tensions and resentment. The sacrifice of the Caribbean people was bitter, but their participation in the war effort was also decisive: The U-boat menace more or less disappeared from the region in late 1943, thanks to their work building up the US military operation.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, field artillery was a small, separate, unsupported branch of the U.S. Army. By the end of World War I, it had become the 'King of Battle,' a critical component of American military might. Million-Dollar Barrage tracks this transformation. Offering a detailed account of how American artillery crews trained, changed, adapted, and fought between 1907 and 1923, Justin G. Prince tells the story of the development of modern American field artillery - a tale stretching from the period when field artillery became an independent organization to when it became an equal branch of the U.S. Army. The field artillery entered the Great War as a relatively new branch. It separated from the Coast Artillery in 1907 and established a dedicated training school, the School of Fire at Fort Sill, in 1911. Prince describes the challenges this presented as issues of doctrine, technology, weapons development, and combat training intersected with the problems of a peacetime army with no good industrial base. His account, which draws on a wealth of sources, ranges from debates about U.S. artillery practices relative to those of Europe, to discussions of the training, equipping, and performance of the field artillery branch during the war. Prince follows the field artillery from its plunge into combat in April 1917 as an unprepared organization to its emergence that November as an effective fighting force, with the Meuse-Argonne Offensive proving the pivotal point in the branch's fortunes. Million-Dollar Barrage provides an unprecedented analysis of the ascendance of field artillery as a key factor in the nation's military dominance.

There is a vigorous debate on the exact beginnings of the Crusades, as well as a growing conviction that some practices of crusading may have been in existence, at least in part, long before they were identified as such. The Prehistory of the Crusades explores how the Crusades came to be seen as the use of aggressive warfare to Christianise pagan lands and peoples. Reynolds focuses on the Baltic, or Northern, Crusades, an aspect of the Crusades that has been little documented, thus bringing a new perspective to their historical and ideological origins. Baltic Crusades were distinctive because they were not directed at the Holy Land, and they were not against Muslim opponents, but rather against pagan peoples. From the Emperor Charlemagne's wars against the Saxons in the 8th and 9th centuries to the Baltic Crusades of the 12th century, this book explores the sanctification of war in creating the ideal of crusade. In so doing, it shows how crusading ultimately developed in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Prehistory of the Crusades provides a valuable insight into the topic for students of medieval history and the Crusades.

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War - organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place - 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present-day Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with the help of intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was on a mission to work with the partisans who moved like ghosts through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces. How these three men came together - along with the partisans - to plan and execute the escape is told here for the first time. The Greatest Escape, written by Ralph Churches' son Neil, takes us from Ralph and Les's capture in Greece in 1941 and their brutal journey to Maribor, with many POWs dying along the way, to the horror of seeing Russian prisoners starved to death in the camp. The book uncovers the hidden story of Allied intelligence operations in Slovenia, and shows how Ralph became involved. We follow the escapees on a nail-biting 160-mile journey across the Alps, pursued by German soldiers, ambushed and betrayed. And yet, of the 106 men who escaped, 100 made it to safety. Thanks to research across seven countries, The Greatest Escape is no longer a secret. It is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of the last century.

Charts the incredible rise of South Korea, from colonisation and civil war to today's thriving nation. South Korea has a remarkable history. Born from the ashes of imperial domination, partition and a devastating war, back in the 1950s there were real doubts about its survival as an independent state. Yet South Korea endures: today it is a boisterous democracy, a vibrant market economy, a tech powerhouse, and home to the coolest of cultures. In just seventy years, this society has grown from a shrimp into a whale. What explains this extraordinary transformation? For some, it was individual South Koreans who fought to change their country, and still strive to shape it. For others, it was forward-looking political and business leaders with a vision. Either way, it's clear that this is the story of a people who dreamt big, and whose dreams came true. Shrimp to Whale is a lively history of South Korea, from its millennia-old roots, through the division of the Peninsula, dictatorship and economic growth, to today's global powerhouse.

This study examines what led the leaders of Austria-Hungary and Germany to launch major military offensives at the beginning of the First World War. The focus is on understanding why these two countries adopted high-risk offensive strategies during an international confrontation rather than a defensive military stance. The decision to attack or defend did not occur in a political vacuum. The leaders of Austria-Hungary and Germany adopted offensive strategies as a way to achieve their political ambitions. The offensives undertaken by Austria-Hungary and Germany in 1914 thus reflected their political goals as well as the strategic doctrines of war planners. The concluding chapter of this study explores why deterrence failed in 1914.

Belzec was the prototype death camp and precursor of the killing centers of Sobibor and Treblinka. Secretly commissioned by the highest authority of the Nazi State, it acted outside the law of both civil and military conventions of the time. Under the code "Aktion Reinhardt," the death camp was organized, staffed and administered by a leadership of middle-ranking police officers and a specially selected civilian cadre who, in the first instance, had been initiated into group murder within the euthanasia program. Their expertise, under bogus SS insignia, was then transferred to the operational duties to the human factory abattoir of Belzec, where, on a conveyor belt system, thousands of Jews, from daily transports, entered the camp and after just two hours, they lay dead in the Belzec pits, their property sorted and the killing grounds tidied to await the next arrival. Over a period of just nine months, when Belzec was operational Galician Jewry was totally decimated: 500,000 lay buried in the 33 mass graves. The author takes the reader step by step into the background of the "Final Solution" and gives eyewitness testimony, as the mass graves were located and recorded. This is a publication of the "Yizkor Books in Print Project" of JewishGen, Inc 376 pages with Illustrations. Hard Cover

Crime, Regulation and Control during the Blitz looks at the social effect of bombing on urban centres like Liverpool, Coventry and London, critically examining how the wartime authorities struggled to regulate and control crime and offending during the Blitz. Focusing predominantly on Liverpool, it investigates how the authorities and citizens anticipated the aerial war, and how the State and local authorities proposed to contain and protect a population made unruly, potentially deviant and drawn into a new landscape of criminal regulation. Drawing on a range of contemporary sources, the book throws into relief today's experiences of war and terror, the response in crime and deviancy, and the experience and practices of preparedness in anticipation of terrible threats. The authors reveal how everyday activities became criminalised through wartime regulations and explore how other forms of crime such as looting, theft and drunkenness took on a new and frightening aspect. Crime, Regulation and Control during the Blitz offers a critical contribution to how we understand crime, security, and regulation in both the past and the present.

The mid-fifties and early sixties were times when joy and excitement flourished in the hearts of young Americans. With the birth of controversial 'rock n' roll', and the glitter of inescapable Hollywood, teenagers flooded the streets with hot rods and wild attitudes. The generation enjoyed a care free existence and took their lessons of right and wrong from the rugged John Wayne thundering across the silver screen. Unfortunately, the fun times would not last. A cry from the tropical mountains of Vietnam brought the peaceful tranquility in the United States to an abrupt end. The harsh reality of the county's youth being maimed and killed in a foreign land almost destroyed the nation. "The Final Farewell" is a fictional account of how young lives were changed during the violent years of the Vietnam War. It tells the story of two friends Sergeant Cleat Davis and Sergeant John Truman and their journey through some of the most desolate times in our nation's history. Together the war brothers endure the hardships of a brutal post high school life where they are tested beyond measure on the harsh battlefields of Vietnam. This touching and inspiring story brings to life the heart and soul of one of the most influential times in our country's history.