Heda Margolius Kovaly (1919-2010) was a renowned Czech writer and translator born to Jewish parents. Her bestselling memoir, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her crime novel Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street based on her own experiences living under Stalinist oppression was named an NPR Best Book in 2015. In the tradition of Studs Terkel, Hitler, Stalin and I is based on interviews between Kovaly and award-winning filmmaker Helena Trestikova. In it, Kovaly recounts her family history in Czechoslovakia, starving in the deprivations of Lodz Ghetto, how she miraculously left Auschwitz, fled from a death march, failed to find sanctuary amongst former friends in Prague as a concentration camp escapee, and participated in the liberation of Prague. Later under Communist rule, she suffered extreme social isolation as a pariah after her first husband Rudolf Margolius was unjustly accused in the infamous Slansky Trial and executed for treason. Remarkably, Kovaly, exiled in the United States after the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, only had love for her country and continued to believe in its people. She returned to Prague in 1996. Heda had an enormous talent for expressing herself. She spoke with precision and was descriptive and witty in places. I admired her attitude and composure, even after she had such extremely difficult experiences. Nazism and Communism afflicted Heda's life directly with maximum intensity. Nevertheless, she remained an optimist. Helena Trestikova has made over fifty documentary films. Hitler, Stalin and I has garnered several awards in the Czech Republic and Japan. PRAISE FOR KOVALY'S INNOCENCE A luminous testament from a dark time, Innocence is at once a clever homage to Raymond Chandler, and a portrait of a city - Prague - caught and held fast in a state of Kafkaesque paranoia. Only a great survivor could have written such a book. - John Banville Innocence is an extraordinary novel ... in 1985, Kovaly produced a remarkable work of art with the intrigue of a spy puzzle, the irony of a political fable, the shrewdness of a novel of manners, and the toughness of a hard-boiled murder mystery ... Just as few will anticipate the many surprises and artful turns of Innocence, a book sure to dazzle and please a great many readers. - Tom Nolan, The Best New Mysteries, The Wall Street Journal Kovaly's skills as a mystery writer shines, as she uses suspense, hints, and suggestions to literally play with the reader's mind ... Innocence is an excellent novel for readers who are up for a challenging, intelligent, and complex story - one that paints a masterful picture of a bleak, Kafkaesque, and highly intriguing time, place, and cast of characters. - The New York Journal of Books Although not out of love for Hegel, Heda Margolius Kovaly makes a very Hegelian point: actions, as Hegel tells us in the section on Antigone in Phenomenology of Spirit - even seemingly small, meaningless actions - always reach beyond their intent; and the impossibility of foreseeing how the consequences will ripple outwards does not absolve us of guilt. As for innocence, the woman who went to hell twice wants her readers to know that there is no such thing. - The Times Literary Supplement

A bold reinterpretation of some of the most decisive battles of World War II, showing that the outcomes had less to do with popular new technology than old-fashioned, on-the-ground warfare.

The military myths of World War II were based on the assumption that the new technology of the airplane and the tank would cause rapid and massive breakthroughs on the battlefield, or demoralization of the enemy by intensive bombing resulting in destruction, or surrender in a matter of weeks. The two apostles for these new theories were the Englishman J.C.F. Fuller for armoured warfare, and the Italian Emilio Drouhet for airpower. Hitler, Rommel, von Manstein, Montgomery and Patton were all seduced by the breakthrough myth or blitzkrieg as the decisive way to victory.

Mosier shows how the Polish campaign in fall 1939 and the fall of France in spring 1940 were not the blitzkrieg victories as proclaimed. He also reinterprets Rommel's North African campaigns, D-Day and the Normandy campaign, Patton's attempted breakthrough into the Saar and Germany, Montgomery's flawed breakthrough at Arnhem, and Hitler's last desperate breakthrough effort to Antwerp in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. All of these actions saw the clash of the breakthrough theories with the realities of conventional military tactics, and Mosier's novel analysis of these campaigns, the failure of airpower, and the military leaders on both sides, is a challenging reassessment of the military history of World War II. The book includes maps and photos.

Death camps are the most enduring image of the Holocaust, but they were only the final expression of a destruction process that began in 1933. In that year the Nazi regime mobilized members of an entire society to destroy their neighbors. Lawmakers, judges, attorneys, and the rest of the legal system played a crucial role in reassuring good Germans that a war on Jews was legitimate. Nazi Justiz emphasizes the prewar years of a robust Western European nation at peace with all countries. Such emphasis demonstrates that a Holocaust can happen in any country sharing the heritage of Western civilization, and warns of the inevitable outcome once ordinary people are targeted in a destruction process. Using original decrees, court decisions, and first-hand recollections of participants, Nazi Justiz documents how the German legal system transformed itself into a criminal organization. We see not only how the legal system shaped everyday life, but how good Germans and the business community benefited from the Holocaust. Germany in the 1930s-before the war-is emphasized. Such emphasis demonstrates that a Holocaust can happen in any country sharing the heritage of Western civilization, and warns of the inevitable outcome once ordinary people are targeted in a process of destruction. No other book has so much information on the Holocaust in peacetime Germany; indeed, the chapters on property confiscation and residential concentration are unique. With a richness of detail evoking an immediacy normally found in novels, Nazi Justiz offers a chilling portrayal of persons filled with so much goodness that they become oblivious to horrors they cause.

Written by Chinese Jurist Mei Ju-ao, this significant book considers both the process and the impact of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, otherwise known as the Tokyo Trial, which was convened in 1946 to try political military leaders accused of involvement in war crimes. Offering valuable research material on the establishment of the tribunal, it examines the background to the establishment of the International Military Tribunal and the lessons learned from earlier trials of World War One War Criminals. Written from the perspective of a Chinese prosecutor who was both jurist and witness, this unique text engages with the Tokyo Trial from an interdisciplinary perspective bringing in both international law and international relations, measuring over 7 decades later the significance and ongoing legacy of the Tokyo Trial for contemporary international criminal justice in Asia and beyond..

This book discusses the merits of the theory of agonistic memory in relation to the memory of war. After explaining the theory in detail it provides two case studies, one on war museums in contemporary Europe and one on mass graves exhumations, which both focus on analyzing to what extent these memory sites produce different regimes of memory. Furthermore, the book provides insights into the making of an agonistic exhibition at the Ruhr Museum in Essen, Germany. It also analyses audience reaction to a theatre play scripted and performed by the Spanish theatre company Micomicion that was supposed to put agonism on stage. There is also an analysis of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) designed and delivered on the theory of agonistic memory and its impact on the memory of war. Finally, the book provides a personal review of the history, problems and accomplishments of the theory of agonistic memory by the two editors of the volume.

American involvement in World War II greatly transformed U.S. civil-military relations by propelling the U.S. military into a prominent position within the national government. The war established new linkages and a new unity between key civilian and military personnel. And these new civil-military relations became institutionalized with the postwar creation of the national security state. Waddell explores these new developments and examines how they affected the very nature of American governmental power. War is considered the most significant influence on building and transforming government institutions. And yet, scholars interested in American political development tend to ignore World War II while focusing on the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal. In turn, scholars who focus on the war tend to focus on the diplomacy, strategies, battles, and personalities that dominated the war itself. Rarely is the war considered from the perspective of how it changed the fundamental nature of American government as it led to the national security state, the military-industrial complex, and the militarization of foreign policy. This book places these dramatic shifts in the context of the changing civil-military relations of World War II. It examines these relations in terms of the three central areas of modern warfare-production, strategy, and manpower. Chapters focus on the military-corporate relations involved in mobilizing the "arsenal of democracy"; top-level command relations between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his military commanders; and the civil-military tensions and relations involved in mobilizing a mass citizen army. A final chapter analyzes what came of these changesas the U.S. institutionalized a striking new civil-military unity in and through the postwar national security state.

The development of nuclear weapons during the Manhattan Project is one of the most significant scientific events of the twentieth century. This revised and updated 4th edition explores the challenges that faced the scientists and engineers of the Manhattan Project. It gives a clear introduction to fission weapons at the level of an upper-year undergraduate physics student by examining the details of nuclear reactions, their energy release, analytic and numerical models of the fission process, how critical masses can be estimated, how fissile materials are produced, and what factors complicate bomb design. An extensive list of references and a number of exercises for self-study are included. Revisions to this fourth edition include many upgrades and new sections. Improvements are made to, among other things, the analysis of the physics of the fission barrier, the time-dependent simulation of the explosion of a nuclear weapon, and the discussion of tamped bomb cores. New sections cover, for example, composite bomb cores, approximate methods for various of the calculations presented, and the physics of the polonium-beryllium "neutron initiators" used to trigger the bombs. The author delivers in this book an unparalleled, clear and comprehensive treatment of the physics behind the Manhattan project.

The unforgettable true story of two married journalists on an island-hopping run for their lives across the Pacific after the Fall of Manila during World War II-a saga of love, adventure, and danger. On New Year's Eve, 1941, just three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were bombing the Philippine capital of Manila, where journalists Mel and Annalee Jacoby had married just a month earlier. The couple had worked in China as members of a tight community of foreign correspondents with close ties to Chinese leaders; if captured by invading Japanese troops, they were certain to be executed. Racing to the docks just before midnight, they barely escaped on a freighter-the beginning of a tumultuous journey that would take them from one island outpost to another. While keeping ahead of the approaching Japanese, Mel and Annalee covered the harrowing war in the Pacific Theater-two of only a handful of valiant and dedicated journalists reporting from the region. Supported by deep historical research, extensive interviews, and the Jacobys' personal letters, Bill Lascher recreates the Jacobys' thrilling odyssey and their love affair with the Far East and one another. Bringing to light their compelling personal stories and their professional life together, Eve of a Hundred Midnights is a tale of an unquenchable thirst for adventure, of daring reportage at great personal risk, and of an enduring romance that blossomed in the shadow of war.

In this book detailing the social and economic history of Ireland during the Second World War, Bryce Evans reveals the real story of the Irish emergency. Revealing just how precarious the Irish state's economic position was at the time, the book examines the consequences of Winston Churchill's economic war against neutral Ireland. It explores how the Irish government coped with the crisis and how ordinary Irish people reacted to emergency state control of the domestic marketplace. A hidden history of black markets, smugglers, rogues and rebels emerges, providing a fascinating slice of real life in Ireland during a crucial period in world history. As the first comparison of economic and social conditions in Ireland with those of the other European neutral states - Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal - the book, now available in paperback, will make essential reading for the informed general reader, students and academics alike. -- .

This book offers a radically new and definitive reappraisal of Allied responses to Nazi human experiments and the origins of informed consent. It places the victims and Allied medical intelligence officers at center stage, while providing a full reconstruction of policies on war crimes and trials related to Nazi medical atrocities and genocide. The analysis of the Medical Trial considers the prosecution, defense, judges and observers to present a rounded picture of the court and its context, and the aftermath in terms of Cold War politics, compensation and research ethics.

For families of the heroes who fought on the beaches of Normandy during World War II, for fans of Saving Private Ryan, or for traveler interested in history, here is the complete guide to visiting one of the world's most historic battlefields. The D-Day Visitor's Handbook includes everything you need to know to plan and make your visit to the site of the biggest seaborne invasion in history. This compact guidebook not only describes the most significant land invasion of World War II, but provides detailed battlefield maps and tours, identifies monuments and attractions, and locates museums and historical sites to make your planning easier and less stressful. This guide provides everything you need ahead of your visit, including: Easy-to-follow maps and tours Where to stay, dine, and shop Lists of the best D-Day museums How to find war relics still at the battlefield sites Historical context for each site, including a description of military action there A special bonus guide to World War II history and sites in Paris The D-Day Visitor's Handbook contains a wealth of detailed information that is perfect for those considering travelling to France, anyone about to visit these sites, veterans, students of military history, and any others who wish to learn about the history of this legendary battle.

An internationally acclaimed aviation pioneer, Herbert Cukurs, running a hydroplanes rental company out of Sao Paolo, Brazil, liked his new customer: an Austrian businessman, who asked for a short sightseeing flight. The pilot had no idea that his customer was not Austrian but a top agent in the Israeli Mossad, working under cover to set the trap for Cukurs - a criminal personally responsible for the murder of over 30,000 innocent Jews. This was the beginning of the 'war of wits' between the Nazi war criminal and the German-born Israeli (both of whose parents had perished in Nazi death camps). It was a unique duel, played out in the Sao Paolo residence of the Cukurs family, in the jungles of Brazil, by the lagoon of Porto Alegre and on the beautiful beaches of Punta del Este. In this unique book a former senior Mossad agent describes an operation carried out in 1964-65 to identify, locate and execute the notorious Nazi war criminal Herbert Cukurs, who was personally responsible for the murder of over 30,000 Latvian Jews. The main part of the operation was undertaken almost single-handedly by 'Anton Kuenzle'. identity as a successful businessman and offering Cukurs a lucrative deal to entice him away from his secure life in Brazil to a trap laid for him in Uruguay. There Cukurs met his fate at the hands of a Mossad hit team.

The fascinating untold story of how Nazi architects and planners envisioned and began to build a model "Aryan" society in Norway during World War II Between 1940 and 1945, German occupiers transformed Norway into a vast construction zone. This remarkable building campaign, largely unknown today, was designed to extend the Greater German Reich beyond the Arctic Circle and turn the Scandinavian country into a racial utopia. From ideal new cities to a scenic superhighway stretching from Berlin to northern Norway, plans to remake the country into a model "Aryan" society fired the imaginations of Hitler, his architect Albert Speer, and other Nazi leaders. In Hitler's Northern Utopia, Despina Stratigakos provides the first major history of Nazi efforts to build a Nordic empire-one that they believed would improve their genetic stock and confirm their destiny as a new order of Vikings. Drawing on extraordinary unpublished diaries, photographs, and maps, as well as newspapers from the period, Hitler's Northern Utopia tells the story of a broad range of completed and unrealized architectural and infrastructure projects far beyond the well-known German military defenses built on Norway's Atlantic coast. These ventures included maternity centers, cultural and recreational facilities for German soldiers, and a plan to create quintessential National Socialist communities out of twenty-three towns damaged in the German invasion, an overhaul Norwegian architects were expected to lead. The most ambitious scheme-a German cultural capital and naval base-remained a closely guarded secret for fear of provoking Norwegian resistance. A gripping account of the rise of a Nazi landscape in occupied Norway, Hitler's Northern Utopia reveals a haunting vision of what might have been-a world colonized under the swastika.

David Kenyon Webster's memoir is a clear-eyed, emotionally charged chronicle of youth, camaraderie, and the chaos of war. Relying on his own letters home and recollections he penned just after his discharge, Webster gives a first hand account of life in "E Company, 101st Airborne Division," crafting a memoir that resonates with the immediacy of a gripping novel.
From the beaches of Normandy to the blood-dimmed battlefields of Holland, here are acts of courage and cowardice, moments of irritating boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror, and pitched urban warfare. Offering a remarkable snapshot of what it was like to enter Germany in the last days of World War II, Webster presents a vivid, varied cast of young paratroopers from all walks of life, and unforgettable glimpses of enemy soldiers and hapless civilians caught up in the melee. Parachute Infantry is at once harsh and moving, boisterous and tragic, and stands today as an unsurpassed chronicle of war--how men fight it, survive it, and remember it.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

In the Netherlands, a small group of biracial citizens has entered its eighth decade of lives that have been often puzzling and difficult, but which offer a unique insight into the history of race relations in America. Though their African American fathers had brought liberation from Nazi tyranny at the end of World War II, they were in a segregated American military derived from a racially divided American society. Decades later, some of their children could finally know of a father's identity and the life he had led after the war. Just one would be able to find an embrace in his arms, and just one would arrive at her father's American grave after 73 years. But they could now understand their own Dutch lives in the context of their fathers' lives in America.

Hitler's war in the East was the central event of World War II. It was in Eastern Europe where the bloodiest battles took place, and where the Nazis committed their greatest crimes. Hitler intended the conquest, exploitation and settlement of Lebensraum in the East to be the key to final victory and the establishment of Germany as a world power. It was in the East where World War II was finally decided and Hitler's Wehrmacht smashed. As a result of this war, the USSR rose to become a world power. For almost 40 years the myth of the Great Fatherland war was the most important link to binding the Soviet empire together. The myth of Stalin as the saviour of Russia allowed the crimes of the 1930s to be forgotten for many years. Only today are historical events beginning to be remembered as they really were; a process driven forward by the revolutionary changes taking place in the USSR.

Theologian. Conspirator. Martyr. Saint. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was killed in the waning days of World War II, having been implicated in the July 20th assassination attempt on Hitler. Since his death, Bonhoeffer's life and writings have inspired contradictory responses. He is often seen as a model for Christian pacifist resistance, and more recently for violent direct political action. Bonhoeffer's name has been invoked by violent anti-abortion protestors as well as political leaders calling for support on a 'war on terror' in the aftermath of 9/11. Petra Brown critically analyses Bonhoeffer's writing preceding and during his conspiracy involvement, particularly his recurring concept of the 'extraordinary.' Brown examines this idea in light of 'the state of exception,' a concept coined by the one-time Nazi jurist and political theorist, Carl Schmitt. She also draws on the existentialist philosopher Soeren Kierkegaard to consider what happens when discipleship is understood as obedience to a divine command. This book aims to complicate an unreflective admiration of Bonhoeffer's decision for conspiracy, and draws attention to the potentially dangerous implications of his emerging political theology.

Children under the Allied bombs in France provides a unique perspective on the Allied bombing of France during the Second World War which killed around 57,000 French civilians. Using oral history as well as archival research, it provides an insight into children's wartime lives in which bombing often featured prominently, even though it has slipped out of French collective memory. How prepared were the French for this aerial onslaught? What was it like to be bombed? And how did people understand why their 'friends' across the Channel were attacking them? Divided into three parts dealing with expectations, experiences and explanations of bombing, this book considers the child's view of wartime violence, analysing resilience, understanding and trauma. It contributes significantly to scholarship on civilian life in Occupied France, and will appeal to students, academics and general readers interested in the history of Vichy France, oral history and the experiences of children in war. -- .

Hold the Westwall is the dramatic story of Panzer Brigade 105, one of Germany's experimental independent armored brigades, and its formation, deployment (including its defense of the Siegfried Line), and ultimate destruction. Relying heavily on primary documents and interviews, it also presents American accounts of what it was like to fight the brigade. It is the first book in English on Germany's failed experiment with independent armored brigades in World War II.

On 9 November 1939, two unsuspecting British agents of the Special Intelligence Services walked into a trap set by German Spymaster Reinhard Heydrich. Believing that they were meeting a dissident German general for talks about helping German military opposition to bring down Hitler and end the war, they were instead taken captive in the Dutch village of Venlo and whisked away to Germany for interrogation by the Gestapo. The incident was a huge embarrassment for the Dutch government and provided the Germans with significant intelligence about SIS operations throughout Europe. The incident itself was an intelligence catastrophe but it also acts as a prism through which a number of other important narrative strands pass. Fundamental to the subterfuge perpetrated at Venlo were unsubstantiated but insistent rumours of high-ranking Germany generals plotting to overthrow the Nazi regime from within. After the humiliation suffered when Hitler tore up the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was anxious to see just how much truth there was in these stories; keen to rehabilitate his reputation through one last effort to find a peaceful rapprochement with Germany. When Franz Fischer, a small-time petty crook and agent provocateur, persuaded British SIS operatives in the Netherlands that he could act as a go-between for the British government with disaffected German generals, the German Security chief Reinhard Heydrich stepped in and quietly took control of the operation. Heydrich's boss, head of the Gestapo Heinrich Himmler, was anxious to explore the possibility of peace negotiations with Britain and saw an opportunity to exploit the situation for his personal benefit. On the day before a crucial meeting of conspirators and British agents on the Dutch-German border, a bomb exploded in the Burgerbraukeller in Munich in the exact spot where Hitler had stood to deliver a speech only minutes earlier. The perpetrator was quickly arrested, and Hitler demanded that Himmler find evidence to show that the two events were intimately connected-the British agents were snatched hours later. While the world was coming to terms with the fearsome power of German military might the British intelligence capability in northern Europe was consigned to the dustbin in the sleepy Dutch town of Venlo. This first full account of the Venlo incident explores the wider context of this German intelligence coup, and its consequences.

Numerous books on the topic of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been published hitherto. Yet, no one has written about the fire and atomic bombings in the context of the U.S. justification of the crime of indiscriminate bombings and its relationship to Japan's political exploitation of the atomic bombing to cover up Hirohito's war responsibility. Further, no one has analyzed the fundamental contradiction in Japan's peace constitution between the concealment of Hirohito's war crimes and the responsibility of the U.S. Readers will learn how Japanese and U.S. official war memories were crafted to justify their respective wartime performances, exposing the flaws and failing of present-day democracy in Japan and the U.S. This book also explores how Japanese people could potentially create a truly powerful cultural memory of war, utilizing various forms of artwork including Japan's traditional performing art, Noh. It should appeal to many readers-historians (both modern American and Japanese history specialists), constitutional scholars, students, peace and anti-nuclear activists, intellectuals as well as general readers.

This book offers a unique approach to memory studies by focusing on local memory work conducted across the divide of the fall of Communism, whereas other histories have consistently used 1989 as a watershed moment. By examining the ways in which the Holocaust has been exhibited in Krakow, it investigates the impact local memory work has had on Polish collective memory and problematizes the importance of the fall of Communism for memory work. Using the Polish case study, it contributes to international debates on the nature of urban memory. It brings to the fore the role of mid-ranking governmental and municipal activists for local remembrance, investigates the relationship between the form and the content of the exhibitions, and highlights the importance of authenticity and emotional evocations for Holocaust remembrance. In particular, it focuses on the emergence of cosmopolitan memory of the Holocaust, a process with local, Krakow, sources.