The tragedies of World War II are well known. But at least one has been forgotten: in September 1939, four hundred thousand cats and dogs were massacred in Britain. The government, vets, and animal charities all advised against this killing. So why would thousands of British citizens line up to voluntarily euthanize household pets? In The Great Cat and Dog Massacre, Hilda Kean unearths the history, piecing together the compelling story of the life and death of Britain's wartime animal companions. She explains that fear of imminent Nazi bombing and the desire to do something to prepare for war led Britons to sew blackout curtains, dig up flower beds for vegetable patches, send their children away to the countryside and kill the family pet, in theory sparing them the suffering of a bombing raid. Kean's narrative is gripping, unfolding through stories of shared experiences of bombing, food restrictions, sheltering, and mutual support. Soon pets became key to the war effort, providing emotional assistance and helping people to survive a contribution for which the animals gained government recognition. Drawing extensively on new research from animal charities, state archives, diaries, and family stories, Kean does more than tell a virtually forgotten story. She complicates our understanding of World War II as a "good war" fought by a nation of "good" people. Accessibly written and generously illustrated, Kean's account of this forgotten aspect of British history moves animals to center stage forcing us to rethink our assumptions about ourselves and the animals with whom we share our homes.

This book examines how Jewish intellectuals during and after the Second World War reinterpreted Homer's epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, in light of their own wartime experiences, drawing a parallel between the ancient Greek genocide of the Trojans and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. The wartime writings of Theodore Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, Rachel Bespaloff, Hermann Broch, Max Horkheimer, Primo Levi, and others were attempts both to understand the collapse of European civilization and the Enlightenment through critiques of their foundational texts and to imagine the place of the Homeric epics in a new post-War humanism. The book thus also explores the reception of these writers, analyzing how Jewish child-survivors like Geoffrey Hartman and Helene Cixous and writers of the post-Holocaust generation like Daniel Mendelsohn continued to read the epics as narratives of grief, trauma, and woundedness into the twenty-first century..

The first part of the landmark trilogy documenting modern-day Northern Ireland, by the author of Loyalists and Brits This work examines the Provos, from 1969, when the IRA was effectively dead and buried, to within a few short years, when it had resurrected to become the most feared and sophisticated terrorist organization in the world. The book is based on in-depth interviews with key personalities in the Army, Police, British and Irish governments, giving first-hand accounts of the key events. It contains material not included in the television series being broadcast on BBC 1 in autumn 1997. Never before has an outsider had such access to record the remarkable history of the provisional IRA and Sinn Fein, from their dramatic beginnings to the critical juncture they have reached today - on the brink of becoming part of the cabinet in the new government of Northern Ireland. An astonishing story, told as only Peter Taylor could. There are no images in this edition *PRAISE FOR PETER TAYLOR* 'Only a journalist of Peter Taylor's standing could have persuaded people from all sides in the conflict to cooperate in such a manner. The result was a first-rate piece of journalism. It was also first-rate history' Guardian

Advance Praise for Border Crossings from Madeleine Albright:

"Border Crossings" is the well-told and dramatic story of a young man whose comfortable life is abruptly transformed by the savagery of World War II. Forced to rely on primal instincts and his familiarity with the rugged highlands of Moravia, Charles Novacek casts his lot first with the anti-Hitler Underground and then with the resistance to the Nazis Communist successors. My recollections pain me, he writes, still, they have made me who I am. Novacek s experience as a Hungarian-speaking Czecho-Slovak patriot demonstrates the folly of petty nationalism and the resilience of human decency and love. Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State

Description:

"Border Crossings: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance" is the captivating, tender memoir of Charles Novacek, a Czechoslovakian whose idyllic childhood exploring the Tatra Mountains was shattered by the Nazi occupation of his homeland. He spent his youth defending his neighbors, his family, and his country, first from the Nazi atrocities of World War II and then from the Soviet oppression of the ensuing Cold War.

Charles was eleven years old when his father and uncle recruited him into the Czech Resistance. Antonin Novacek not only taught his son to survive in the wild, but also prepared him for wartime: how to resist pain, hunger, and fear and to trust no one. His assignments included delivering messages to soldiers parachuting behind enemy lines and hiding them in caves he equipped for their shelter.

As a young man, Charles was captured and jailed by the Communists and rescued by an underground resistance network. In too much danger to remain in Czechoslovakia, he staged a daring escape only to land in a miserable displaced persons camp. His will to live prevailed once again, and Charles eventually married and built a successful life in America.

Filled with heroic adventures and great bravery, Border Crossingsis one man s remarkable tale of his incredible life and a testament to the human capacity to survive.

Additional Praise for Border Crossings:
"I have been transformed by this honest, extraordinary telling. In"Border Crossings"Charles Novacek shows us, through his personal story (told as if we are right there in the room with him) the true face of totalitarianism; he reminds us of the preciousness, the miracle, of freedom. What a gift he has given us--and what a gift his wife, Sandra, has offered us, as well, in making sure that his brave story is here for the world to read. This is a powerful memoir that crosses all borders and speaks directly to the human heart."Joseph Hurka, author of"Fields of Light: A Son Remembers His Heroic Father"

Here is a story that is meant to survive, just as its teller was. I got to know Charles in his later years but only had hints of what is contained in these pages. They are riveting. I was drawn into the best and worst of humanity and, not incidentally, into the history of the West in the mid-twentieth century. Courage, love, despair, a fierce will are all preserved with the help of one who was not the love of Charles life. . . but his last love. " John Kotre, Ph.D., author of "White Gloves: How We Create Ourselves Through Memory"

"Border Crossings" helps fill the lack of personal accounts of resistance movements amidst a voluminous array of World War II literature. This compelling memoir, written through the eyes of young Charles, shows how circumstances required him to become a shrewd hero. In his opposition first toward Nazism and then Communism, Charles Novacek s personal story illustrates why people sacrifice themselves and their families for an ideal. Intimate, intense, fascinating Christina Vella, coauthor of "The Hitler Kiss"

Behind the celebrated code-breaking at Bletchley Park lies another secret...The men and women of the ' Y' (for Wireless' ) Service were sent out across the world to run listening stations from Gibraltar to Cairo, intercepting the German military's encrypted messages for decoding back at the now-famous Bletchley Park mansion. Such wartime postings were life-changing adventures - travel out by flying boat or Indian railways, snakes in filing cabinets and heat so intense the perspiration ran into your shoes - but many of the secret listeners found lifelong romance in their far-flung corner of the world. Now, drawing on dozens of interviews with surviving veterans, Sinclair McKay tells their remarkable story at last.

In this riveting real-life thriller, Philippe Sands offers a unique account of the daily life of senior Nazi SS Brigadeführer Otto Freiherr von Wächter and his wife, Charlotte. Drawing on a remarkable archive of family letters and diaries, he unveils a fascinating insight into life before and during the war, as a fugitive on the run in the Alps and then in Rome, and into the Cold War. Eventually the door is unlocked to a mystery that haunts Wächter's youngest son, who continues to believe his father was a good man - what happened to Otto Wächter while he was preparing to travel to Argentina on the 'ratline', assisted by a Vatican bishop, and what was the explanation for his sudden and unexpected death?

During World War Two, death and violence permeated all aspects of the everyday lives of ordinary people in Eastern Europe. Throughout the region, the realities of mass murder and incarceration meant that people learnt to live with daily public hangings of civilian hostages and stumbled on corpses of their neighbors. Entire populations were drawn into fierce and uncompromising political and ideological conflicts, and many ended up being more than mere victims or observers: they themselves became perpetrators or facilitators of violence, often to protect their own lives, but also to gain various benefits. Yugoslavia in particular saw a gradual culmination of a complex and brutal civil war, which ultimately killed more civilians than those killed by the foreign occupying armies. Therapeutic Fascism tells a story of the tremendous impact of such pervasive and multi-layered political violence, and looks at ordinary citizens' attempts to negotiate these extraordinary wartime political pressures. It examines Yugoslav psychiatric documents as unique windows into this harrowing history, and provides an original perspective on the effects of wartime violence and occupation through the history of psychiatry, mental illness, and personal experience. Using previously unexplored resources, such as patients' case files, state and institutional archives, and the professional medical literature of the time, this volume explores the socio-cultural history of wartime through the eyes of (mainly lower-class) psychiatric patients. Ana Antic examines how the experiences of observing, suffering, and committing political violence affected the understanding of human psychology, pathology, and normality in wartime and post-war Balkans and Europe.

First Published in 1981. The objective of this study is to reconstruct the difficulty faced by American and British policy-makers in 'determining the capabilities and intentions' of their two main wartime allies regarding the Middle East. Specifically, it seeks to explore the role of great power relations in the Middle East in the breakdown of the wartime alliance and in the origins of the Cold War.

This book, part media history and part group biography, tells the story of the BBC's attempts to reach out to listeners in Nazi Germany at a time when Anglo-German relations were particularly strained. Who were the individuals behind the microphone, whose names could only be mentioned in whispered conversations on the continent? Who wrote the satirical sketches that offered comic relief to housewives struggling to obtain enough food to feed their families? And who made decisions about programme delivery and staffing? Drawing extensively on previously unexamined archival material, The BBC German Service during the Second World War: Broadcasting to the Enemy sheds light on the complex, often difficult working arrangements at the wartime BBC where people from different nationalities and socio-political backgrounds collaborated and argued about the delivery of an effective propaganda programme that would assist the Allies in defeating the Nazis.

*JEWISH CHRONICAL CRITICS' CHOICE: NON-FICTION OF THE YEAR 2022* 'A devastatingly affecting book. . . Bunce Court! I keep saying the name to myself because it encapsulates all that is gentle and comically charming about wartime England' The Times 'Emotionally compelling' Observer 'All the violence I had experienced before felt like a bad dream. It was a paradise. I think most of the children felt it was a paradise.' In 1933, as Hitler came to power, schoolteacher Anna Essinger hatched a daring and courageous plan: to smuggle her entire school out of Nazi Germany. Anna had read Mein Kampf and knew the terrible danger that Hitler's hate-fuelled ideologies posed to her pupils. She knew that to protect them she had to get her pupils to the safety of England. But the safe haven that Anna struggled to create in a rundown manor house in Kent would test her to the limit. As the news from Europe continued to darken, Anna rescued successive waves of fleeing children and, when war broke out, she and her pupils faced a second exodus. One by one countries fell to the Nazis and before long unspeakable rumours began to circulate. Red Cross messages stopped and parents in occupied Europe vanished. In time, Anna would take in orphans who had given up all hope; the survivors of unimaginable horrors. Anna's school offered these scarred children the love and security they needed to rebuild their lives, showing them that, despite everything, there was still a world worth fighting for. Featuring moving first-hand testimony, and drawn from letters, diaries and present-day interviews, The School That Escaped the Nazis is a dramatic human tale that offers a unique child's-eye perspective on Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. It is also the story of one woman's refusal to allow her beliefs in a better, more equitable world to be overtaken by the evil that surrounded her.

A Foreign Affairs Book of the Year A Spectator Book of the Year "Insightful...a deft, textured work of intellectual history." -Foreign Affairs "A timely insight into how memories and ideas about the second world war play a hugely important role in conceptualizations about the past and the present in contemporary China." -Peter Frankopan, The Spectator For most of its history, China frowned on public discussion of the war against Japan. But as the country has grown more powerful, a wide-ranging reassessment of the war years has been central to new confidence abroad and mounting nationalism at home. Encouraged by reforms under Deng Xiaoping, Chinese scholars began to examine the long-taboo Guomindang war effort, and to investigate collaboration with the Japanese and China's role in the post-war global order. Today museums, television shows, magazines, and social media present the war as a founding myth for an ascendant China that emerges as victor rather than victim. One narrative positions Beijing as creator and protector of the international order-a virtuous system that many in China now believe to be under threat from the United States. China's radical reassessment of its own past is a new founding myth for a nation that sees itself as destined to shape the world. "A detailed and fascinating account of how the Chinese leadership's strategy has evolved across eras...At its most interesting when probing Beijing's motives for undertaking such an ambitious retooling of its past." -Wall Street Journal "The range of evidence that Mitter marshals is impressive. The argument he makes about war, memory, and the international order is...original." -The Economist

Virtually the entire Soviet effort on the Eastern Front of World War II bears the stamp of Georgy Zhukov, chief of staff of the Red Army and deputy supreme commander under Stalin. The first volume of his memoirs covers Zhukov's peasant childhood, his prewar military career, and the first phase of World War II.- Fascinating self-portrait of one of the most remarkable generals of the twentieth century- Indispensable source for the Eastern Front, including the early battles for Kiev, Smolensk, and Leningrad

During the final years of the Second World War, a decisive change took place in the Italian left, as the Italian Communist Party (PCI) rose from clandestinity and recast itself as a mass, patriotic force committed to building a new democracy. This book explains how this new party came into being. Using Rome as its focus, it explains that the rebirth of the PCI required that it subdue other, dissident strands of communist thinking. During the nine-month German occupation of Rome in 1943-44, dissident communists would create the capital's largest single resistance formation, the Communist Movement of Italy (MCd'I), which galvanised a social revolt in the capital's borgate slums. Exploring this wartime battle to define the rebirth of Italian communism, the author examines the ways in which a militant minority of communists rooted their activity in the everyday lives of the population under occupation. In particular, this study focuses on the role of draft resistance and the revolt against labour conscription in driving recruitment to partisan bands, and how communist militants sought to mould these recruits through an active effort of political education. Studying the political writing of these dissidents, their autodidact Marxism and the social conditions in which it emerged, this book also sheds light on an often-ignored underground culture in the years that preceded the armed resistance that began in September 1943. Revealing an almost unknown history of dissident communism in Italy, outside of more recognisable traditions like Trotskyism or Bordigism, this book provides an innovative perspective on Italian history. It will be of interest to those researching the broad topics of political and social history, but more specifically, resistance in the Second World War and the post-war European left.

This book analyses the process of 'reshaping' liberated societies in post-1945 Europe. Post-war societies tried to solve three main questions immediately after the dark times of occupation: Who could be considered a patriot and a valuable member of the respective national community? How could relations between men and women be (re-)established? How could the respective society strengthen national cohesion? Violence in rather different forms appeared to be a powerful tool for such a complex reshaping of societies. The chapters are based on present primary research about specific cases and consider the different political, mental, and cultural developments in various nation-states between 1944 and 1948. Examples from Italy, France, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary demonstrate a new comparative and fascinating picture of post-war Europe. This perspective overcomes the notorious East-West dividing line, without covering the manifold differences between individual European countries.

On September 8, 1941, eleven weeks after Hitler's brutal surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Leningrad was surrounded. The German siege was not lifted for two and a half years, by which time some three quarters of a million Leningraders had died of starvation. Stripping away decades of Soviet propaganda, and drawing on newly available diaries and government records, Anna Reid chronicles the Nazis' deliberate decision to starve Leningrad into surrender, the incompetence and cruelty of the Soviet war leadership, the horrors experienced by soldiers on the front lines, and, above all, the ordeal of life in the blockaded city."Leningrad" tackles a raft of unanswered questions: Was the size of the death toll as much the fault of Stalin as of Hitler? Why didn't the Germans capture the city? Why didn't it collapse into anarchy? What decided who lived and who died? Impressive in its originality and literary style, "Leningrad" gives voice to the dead and throws new light on one of the twentieth century's greatest calamities.

Throughout the Second World War, a wide range of people, including political leaders and government officials, experts and armchair internationalists, civil society groups and private citizens talked about and formulated plans to ensure national security and to promote individual well-being in the postwar world. Rebuilding the Postwar Order explains how civil society and governments of the wartime allies conceived of peace and traces the international negotiations and conferences that later resulted in the United Nations system. It adopts a multilateral approach, connects wartime ideas to earlier peacemaking efforts, and reveals support for, as well as resistance and alternatives to, the emerging postwar order. In chapters on the United Nations, UNRRA, the IMF, World Bank and GATT, the FAO and WHO, UNESCO, and human rights, McKenzie explores the tensions between national sovereignty and international responsibility, national security and individual well-being, principles and compromises, morality and power, privilege and justice, all of which influenced the UN system.

Terry s father, Norris Wadsworth, was sent to help start a pineapple plantation and cannery on a new frontier in the Philippines. While the rich, dark soil produced golden fruit, the Wadsworths and other families built their homes on a remote plateau at the edge of the jungle. The compound was eventually called, Del Monte, a namesake to their company. The tropical oasis with a 9 hole golf course and even a grass airstrip became a popular destination for many government and military dignitaries. As a young child, Terry s days were full of happiness and adventure. Life, like the growing pineapple, was sweet. She had a little pony, attended a small school, and enjoyed playing with the other young Del Monte children. The only threats to her edenic life were occasional cobra and python snakes found around, and sometimes even in, their home. That is, until a much fiercer enemy struck 5000 miles away at Pearl Harbor. Within hours of the surprise attack in Hawaii, the Japanese military launched a similar assault on the Philippine islands and began their campaign to overtake the American Protectorate. Just before the war started the Del Monte management had helped the U.S. Army Air Corps build an airbase with two long, grassy runways nearby. Soon, the peaceful skies above their paradisiacal home were swarming with military war machines. Terry and her family found themselves on the dangerous battle front. General Douglas MacArthur, Philippine President Manuel Quezon and their families, plus many other important people hid from the Japanese in Terry s remote home as they waited to secretly fly from Del Monte to Australia. As the fighting intensified, Terry s family abandoned Del Monte to hide in the dense, mountain jungle and wait for an opportunity to also escape to Australia. While the families were in hiding, Del Monte itself became a target of the Japanese military. Bombs and shells rained down, on the homes, cannery, and airfield. Eventually the Japanese pushed the American forces into retreat. Terry and her family found themselves with only one option. Surrender As they surrendered to the Japanese, Terry s father counseled her, Live each day to the best of your ability. Do not get caught up looking so far ahead that, worrying about the future, you get discouraged and lose hope. The advice served her well, as the next three years of her interment as a prisoner of war were full of hardship and suffering. Though stripped of her possessions and freedom, Terry was grateful to be alive and to be with her parents. Together, the family hovered on the brink of starvation, battling deadly infections and disease, and eluding death at the hands of their captors. Yet, despite these conditions, they found purpose in living a meaningful life. Each prisoner had a job to perform and holidays were still observed, even if it meant singing Christmas carols in the hold of a rat infested cargo ship or feasting on wormy prunes for Thanksgiving. Terry s unconquerable spirit, as an eight to eleven year old prisoner of war, is a reminder that even in the most deplorable circumstances, life is what you make of it. Meanwhile, General McArthur and the United States military returned to take back the Philippines from Japan. Military leaders learned of a Japanese plan to execute all prisoners of war before they could be freed. A special American military unit was charged with the dangerous assignment to pass behind enemy lines, 70 miles deep into Japanese territory, and liberate the prisoners. Terry s life and the lives of thousands of other men, women, and children depended on the success of this miraculous rescue mission

'The most significant issue that Dockrill addresses is that of how Japan views the war in retrospect, a question which not only tells us a lot about how events were seen in Japan in 1941 but is also, a matter still of importance in contemporary East Asian politics.' Antony Best, London School of Economics This multi-authored work, edited by Saki Dockrill, is an original, unique, and controversial interpretation of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific. Dr Dockrill, the author of Britain's Policy for West German Rearmament, has skilfully converted the proceedings of an international conference held in London into a stimulating and readable account of the Pacific War. This is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the subject.

Based on detailed archival research and site visits, Scarred Landscapes is the first environmental history of Vichy France. From mountains and marshlands to foresters and resisters, it examines the intricate and often surprising connections between war, history, and the 'natural' environment during these turbulent years.