This work uses Russian archival and previously classified secondary sources to document the experience of the Red Army in conflict with Finland. Van Dyke examines the diplomatic, organizational and social aspects of the Soviet strategic culture by first exploring the Leninist interpretation of violence in international relations, and how this legacy influenced Stalin in his use of diplomacy and threat of force to enhance the Soviet Union's forward defence and to address the Baltic problem in 1939. He documents the Red Army's poor battlefield performances and looks at how it relearned the techniques lost during Stalin's purge in the late 1930s. The book examines the Soviet high command's post-war evaluation of the lessons learned, the debates of the re-professionalization of the officer corps and the effectiveness of the unified military doctrine.

In June 1941 the Ark Royal won one of Britain's most famous naval victories. The German destroyer, Bismarck, had been ravaging the British fleet in the Atlantic. Sailing through a ferocious storm the Ark Royal tracked the Bismarck. A dozen swordfish bombers took off from her deck and pounded shell after shell into the German battleship, sending her to the ocean floor. It was a signal victory that resonated around the world. Hitler, furious at the loss of the German fleet's flagship, demanded that the Ark Royal be destroyed at whatever cost. HMS Ark Royal is one of the Royal Navy's most iconic ships. When she was launched in 1938 she was one of the most sophisticated weapons at the disposal of British military command. The aircraft carrier was the latest, and soon to be one of the most feared, developments in naval warfare. In her first two years of operation the Ark Royal survived countless attacks, and was considered one of the luckiest ships in the Navy. But her air of invincibility was to prove wishful thinking. Within one month of sinking the Bismarck, the Ark Royal too was destroyed while sailing off the coast of Gibraltar. And there she has rested, one kilometre below the surface of the Mediterranean, until her wreck was discovered by Mike Rossiter in 2004. In gripping detail, and using the testimony of survivors of the sinking and men who lived, flew and fought on the Ark Royal, Mike Rossiter tells the remarkable story of the life and legend of this most iconic of ships. Also, and for the first time, he reveals the story of the quest to discover the wreck of this naval legend.

On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking seventeen ships and killing over a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. After young sailors began suddenly dying with mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, which Churchill denied. Undaunted, Alexander defied British officials and persevered with his investigation. His final report on the Bari casualties was immediately classified, but not before his breakthrough observations about the toxic effects of mustard on white blood cells caught the attention of Colonel Cornelius P. Rhoads - a pioneering physician and research scientist as brilliant as he was arrogant and self-destructive - who recognized that the poison was both a killer and a cure, and ushered in a new era of cancer research. Deeply researched and beautifully written, The Great Secret is the remarkable story of how horrific tragedy gave birth to medical triumph.

This volume begins with an investigation of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. It draws upon eye-witness German accounts of what occurred, and supplements these with German archival and detailed Soviet materials. The Soviet government has released extensive amounts of formerly classified archival materials from the period. This material has been incorporated into the maps and text.

To the British in 1945 the images of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp said everything necessary to illustrate and prove the extent of Nazi barbarity, yet the grim newsreel footage and radio reports did not tell the whole story. Over the following decades these potent representations became encrusted with myths and meanings that distorted the actuality of Belsen. Fifty years after the liberation of the camp, scholars and eyewitnesses can finally explore the extraordinary history of the camp, the experiences of the inmates and the work of the liberators. This volume presents the most authoritative recent scholarship on Belsen by British, American, German, French and Israeli historians. Drawing on documentary and oral sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Dutch and French, often for the first time, it challenges many stereotypes about the camp, and reinstates the groups hitherto marginalised or ignored in accounts of the camp and its liberation.

"Beautifully researched and masterfully told" (Alex Kershaw, "New York Times "bestselling author of "Escape from the Deep"), this is the riveting story of the heroic and tragic US submarine force that helped win World War II in the Pacific.
Focusing on the unique stories of three of the war's top submarines--"Silversides," "Drum," and "Tang"--"The War Below "vividly re-creates the camaraderie, exhilaration, and fear of the brave volunteers who took the fight to the enemy's coastline in World War II. Award-winning journalist James Scott recounts incredible feats of courage--from an emergency appendectomy performed with kitchen utensils to sailors' desperate struggle to escape from a flooded submarine--as well as moments of unimaginable tragedy, including an attack on an unmarked enemy freighter carrying 1,800 American prisoners of war.
The casualty rate among submariners topped that of all other military branches. The war claimed almost one out of every five submarines, and a submarine crewman was six times more likely to die than a sailor onboard a surface ship. But this valorous service accomplished its mission; "Silversides," "Drum," and "Tang "sank a combined sixty-two freighters, tankers, and transports. The Japanese were so ravaged from the loss of precious supplies that by the war's end, pilots resorted to suicidal kamikaze missions and hungry civilians ate sawdust while warships had to drop anchor due to lack of fuel. In retaliation, the Japanese often beat, tortured, and starved captured submariners in the atrocious prisoner of war camps.
Based on more than 100 interviews with submarine veterans and thousands of pages of previously unpublished letters and diaries, "The War Below "lets readers experience the battle for the Pacific as never before.

Tracing the development of the fortifications in Europe from the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to the twentieth century, this is the first comprehensive book in English on the forts of the Maginot Line, German espionage, and the German sieges during the 1940 campaign. It analyzes the reasons why the French opted for this type of defensive system, and explains how the Maginot Line presented the French Army with opportunities (mostly wasted) to regroup and mount an effective defense. Shrouded in media myth for 40 years, this study demonstrates both how the media created the myth and the truth behind the myth of the Maginot Line. At the time reporters wildly speculated about these fortifications, German intelligence agents were busy collecting data. Finally, this book relates the heroic battles waged by the forts, large and small: the tragic fall of La Ferte, the surrender of other DEGREESIpetits ouvrages DEGREESR after prolonged and fierce fighting, the triumphant resistance of the larger forts even in the face of the most savage artillery pounding, and the unqualified victory of the Little Maginot Line over invading Italian forces.

To the British in 1945 the images of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp said everything necessary to illustrate and prove the extent of Nazi barbarity, yet the grim newsreel footage and radio reports did not tell the whole story. Over the following decades these potent representations became encrusted with myths and meanings that distorted the actuality of Belsen. Fifty years after the liberation of the camp, scholars and eyewitnesses can finally explore the extraordinary history of the camp, the experiences of the inmates and the work of the liberators. This volume presents the most authoritative recent scholarship on Belsen by British, American, German, French and Israeli historians. Drawing on documentary and oral sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Dutch and French, often for the first time, it challenges many stereotypes about the camp, and reinstates the groups hitherto marginalised or ignored in accounts of the camp and its liberation.

Strategic plans invariably differ from the reality of war. The American experience in the Second World War was no exception. This volume offers an understanding of the gap between American plans and what actually happened. A variety of factors including coalition politics, inter-service disputes, disagreements between field commanders and Washington headquarters, logistical constraints, and the initiatives and reactions of the enemy combined in myriad forms to produce a conflict that was very different from original strategic expectations.

What was the relationship between ordinary Germans and Hitler's government? Why did such a dreadful political system find any popular support at all? Who was brave enough to defy the laws of the Third Reich? This book examines decisions made by different social groups to resist or conform to the Nazi regime. Using accessible language, and drawing on the full range of sources available to historians, Martyn Housden adopts a thematic approach to the subject. He considers, for example, why church-goers failed to reject decisively Hitler's atheistic political movement; what impact the persecution of Germany's Jewish citizens had on the everyday lives of other Germans; why the Hitler Youth held such appeal for young people.

Examining wars from the allied victory in World War II to the conflict in Viet Nam, and finally to the operations in the Gulf and Kosovo, this book presents a comprehensive look at the evolution of strategic air attack theory and doctrine over the years.

In late 1941, President Roosevelt agonized over the rapid advances of the Japanese forces in Asia; they seemed unstoppable. He foresaw their intentions of taking India and linking up with the two other Axis Powers, Germany and Italy, in an attempt to conquer the Eastern Hemisphere. US naval forces had been surprised and diminished in Pearl Harbor and the army was not only outnumbered but also ill-prepared to take on the invading hoards. One of Roosevelt's few options was to form a defensive line on the eastern side of the Patkai and Himalayan Ranges; there, he could look for support from the Chinese and Burmese. It was the only defence to a Japanese invasion of India. To support and supply the troops who were fighting in hostile jungle terrain, where overland routes had been cut off, he desperately needed to set up an air supply from Eastern India. His problem was lack of aircraft and experienced pilots to fly the dangerous 'Hump, over the world's highest mountains. Hence the inception of Operation Seven Alpha, a plan to enlist the aircraft - DC-3s - and the pilots - veterans of World War One - of American Airlines.This newly formed elite Squadron would fly the medium-range aircraft in a series of long-distance hops across the Pacific and Southern Asia to the Assam Valley in India. They would then create and operate the vital supply route, carrying arms, ammunition and food Eastward to the Allied bases, before returning with wounded personnel. This is the story of that little-known operation, carried out in the early days of the Burma Campaign. The book is based on first-hand experiences of those who were involved, and it serves as a fitting tribute to the bravery and inventiveness of a band of men who answered their country's desperate call at the outset of the war against Japan in Asia.

The Nazi invasion of Poland was the first step in an unremittingly brutal occupation, one most infamously represented by the network of death camps constructed on Polish soil. The systematic murder of Jews in the camps has understandably been the focus of much historical attention. Less well-remembered today is the fate of millions of non-Jewish Polish civilians, who-when they were not expelled from their homeland or forced into slave labor-were murdered in vast numbers both within and outside of the camps. Drawing on both German and Polish sources, In the Shadow of Auschwitz gives a definitive account of the depredations inflicted upon Polish society, tracing the ruthless implementation of a racial ideology that cast ethnic Poles as an inferior race.

The Battle of the Bulge was the "last hurrah" for the German Army on the Western Front. With the help of various unpublished sources, Samuel Mitcham sets out to tell the story of that battle and of the Ardennes Offensive from the German point of view. The greatest military disaster the United States suffered in the European Theater of Operations in World War II occurred in the Ardennes Offensive, when most of the U.S. 106th Infantry Division was destroyed in the Schnee Eifel (Snow Mountains). This defeat was not inflicted by the vaulted panzer troops, the elite paratroopers, the hardened SS men, or Skorzeny's commandos. It was administered by a mediocre and unheralded unit-the 18th Volksgrenadier Division. Mitcham covers the Battle of the Schnee Eifel from the German point of view in greater depth than any book has ever done, using unpublished German after-action reports and manuscripts, especially those of Lieutenant Colonel Dietrich Moll, the chief of operations of the 18th Volksgrenadier. Similar unpublished works, as well as the papers of Theodor-Friedrich von Stauffenberg, contribute to a unique account of the Battle of the Bulge. Readers will find the organizational structure of Panzers in Winter different from that of other works on the topic. Mitcham uses the first two chapters to set the stage for the offensive and details the opening day in Chapter Three. Thereafter, the battle is discussed by sector, from north to center to south. This approach allows general readers to achieve a better feel for the engagement overall. Final chapters cover the clearing of the bulge and the lives and careers of the major participants.

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.

On 18 July 1943, one-hundred and twenty Jews were transported from the concentration camp at Drancy to the Levitan furniture store building in the middle of Paris. These were the first detainees of three satellite camps (Levitan, Austerlitz, Bassano) in Paris. Between July 1943 and August 1944, nearly eight hundred prisoners spent a few weeks to a year in one of these buildings, previously been used to store furniture, and were subjected to forced labor. Although the history of the persecution and deportation of France's Jews is well known, the three Parisian satellite camps have been subjected to the silence of both memory and history. This lack of attention by the most authoritative voices on the subject can perhaps be explained by the absence of a collective memory or by the marginal status of the Parisian detainees - the spouses of Aryans, wives of prisoners of war, half-Jews. Still, the Parisian camps did, and continue to this day, lack simple and straightforward descriptions. This book is a much needed study of these camps and is witness to how, sixty years after the events, expressing this memory remains a complex, sometimes painful process, and speaking about it a struggle.

'London Calling Italy offers an expertly researched, thought-provoking analysis of BBC propaganda for Italy during the Second World War, exploring how programmes were put together and what listeners made of them. It will surely become the key work on this topic.' Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History at the University of Bristol London calling Italy is a book about Radio Londra, as the BBC Italian Service was known in Italy, and the company's development as a global leader in the broadcasting industry, starting from the Second World War. Drawing on unexplored archive material collected in Italy and the United Kingdom, it aims to understand how the BBC programmes engaged with ordinary Italians, while concurrently conducting political warfare against fascist Italy. The book also focuses on the relationship between the BBC Italian anti-fascist broadcasters, the British Foreign Office, and Labour Party. Key sources analysed in the book are, among others, the Foreign Office's records, the programmes broadcast by the BBC Italian Service during the Allied campaign, the memoirs of Italian anti-fascist broadcasters, the BBC surveys on the audience and the letters sent by listeners of the Italian Service. -- .

"This stimulating and valuable collection ... does a superb job of demonstrating the intricacies of this acutely troubling problem." . H-Diplo "This excellent volume of essays ... the editor and publisher are to be congratulated on a valuable and handsome volume." . The Journal of Military History ..". makes available a rich offering of the latest research on the defeat of 1940." . The International History Review Why France, the major European continental victor in 1918, suffered total defeat in six weeks at the hands of the vanquished power of 1918 only two decades later remains moot. Why the stunning reversal of fortunes? In this volume thirteen prominent scholars reexamine the French debacle of 1940 in interwar perspectives, utilizing fresh analysis, original approaches, and new sources. Although the tenor of the volume is critical, the contributors also suggest that French preparations for war knew successes as well as failures, that French defeat was not inevitable, and that the Battle of France might have turned out differently if different choices had been made and other paths been followed. Joel Blatt teaches at the University of Connecticut at Stamford.

In August 1941 Churchill and Roosevelt met in a secluded bay off the coast of Newfoundland. It was the first of their wartime meetings and in many respects the most significant. The Atlantic Charter, its result, proclaimed the two leaders' vision of a new world order, a set of principles that would govern international relations with the coming of peace. This remarkable collection of essays is the result of an international conference of American, British, and Canadian scholars held at Memorial University of Newfoundland that marked the 50th anniversary of the historic meeting. The essays discuss both the Charter's formulation and its long-term significance, and provide fascinating perspectives on the Second World War and its aftermath.

Christine Winecki is a Holocaust child survivor. In her book she presents the story of her life, starting with the fond memories of her early childhood in south-eastern Poland, and then taking the reader through the turbulent years of the Second World War under Soviet and then German occupation. She depicts also the story of her future husband Oton a survivor of a labor camp in Siberia and their post-war life in Warsaw until the infamous events in 1968, which forced them to leave Poland and emigrate to Australia. Apart from its biographical content the book is rich in observations on the historical, political, and ethnographic aspects of the changing settings of the author's unfolding story.

1991 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, an event which plunged a basically self-absorbed United States directly into the world's worst conflagration. For years, the United States, which had become a Pacific power almost simultaneously with Japan at the turn of the century, mistrusted Tokyo's intentions in the Far East. Off the international stage, most Americans either ignored Japan or failed to understand the dynamics of a millenium-old culture in the throes of modernization. The almost orderly manner in which U.S.-Japanese relations fell terminally ill in 1941 continues to provide a textbook lesson for those who would work to avoid future catastrophies. In this first book-length, annotated bibliography, Smith provides more than 1,500 citations from eleven languages. Not only is the published literature examined, but care has been taken to cite the main repositories in the United States and abroad holding data necessary for the ongoing reinterpretation of the beginning of the War in the Pacific. The published literature cited covers virtually all factors surrounding the attack and its 1941 background: economic, political, diplomatic, racial, biographical, planning, intelligence, operations, and hardware. Access is augmented by author and name indexes; the latter is keyed to specific personnel and vessels. While aimed primarily at students and scholars, this volume will be useful to teachers, journalists, policymakers, and all concerned with military studies and World War II.