First published in 1918 Whizzbangs and Woodbines presents a candid portrait of life behind the lines on the Western Front by Reverend Durell, then Rector of Rotherhithe, and Chief Commissioner of the Church Army in France.The Church Army, along with its counterparts the YMCA, TOC-H and Salvation Army played an important part in the support and morale of soldiers in war. In addition to providing spiritual support,the Church Army welcomed more than 200,000 men each day to their recreation huts and provided visits and gifts to the wounded, tents and hostels near the front lines, drove ambulances, mobile canteens and kitchen cars.In addition to voluntary Church services, for those who wished to attend, a simple salvation from trench life was offered; music, singing, concerts, card games,billiards and refreshments, all small measures of joy in the midst of dangers and hardships and as vital to the continued war effort as bullets and shells. For a packet of woodbines and a cup of tea was restorative ammunition enough for the average British Tommy.

Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and events on the Eastern Front that same year were pivotal to the history of World War II. It was during this year that the radicalization of Nazi policy -- through both an all-encompassing approach to warfare and the application of genocidal practices -- became most obvious. Germany's military aggression and overtly ideological conduct, culminating in genocide against Soviet Jewry and the decimation of the Soviet population through planned starvation and brutal antipartisan policies, distinguished Operation Barbarossa-the code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union-from all previous military campaigns in modern European history. This collection of essays, written by young scholars of seven different nationalities, provides readers with the most current interpretations of Germany's military, economic, racial, and diplomatic policies in 1941. With its breadth and its thematic focus on total war, genocide, and radicalization, this volume fills a considerable gap in English-language literature on Germany's war of annihilation against the Soviet Union and the radicalization of World War II during this critical year. Alex J. Kay is the author of Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941 and is an independent contractor for the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consequences. Jeff Rutherford is assistant professor of history at Wheeling Jesuit University, where he teaches modern European history. David Stahel is the author of Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East and Kiev 1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East.

First published in 1918, this book is a record of observations and evidence compiled by the then US Consul in Queenstown, Eire. A rare study from first-hand accounts. Contains detailed testimonies of survivors from over fifty vessels attacked and often sunk by German submarines during the Great War.A vivid and accurate picture of the tactics and motives of German submarine warfare is provided in the first part of the book. The second part concentrate son the attack and sinking of RMS Lusitania. The sinking of the Lusitania remains a controversial topic with the loss of 1,198 lives on 7May 1915