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Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > Second World War
Her memoirs cover the pre WWII period of the 1930's in her birth
country, Bulgaria and her growing up in the German and Russian
cultures of her parents and that of Bulgaria. The uprooting of her
family because of WWII and subsequent events tells of the
increasing horrors and dislocations not only of her family but that
of countless others.
This book examines and analyses the relationship between the RAF,
the Free French Movement and the French fighter pilots in WWII. A
highly significant subject, this has been ignored by academics on
both sides of the Channel. This ground-breaking study will fill a
significant gap in the historiography of the War. Bennett's
painstaking research has unearthed primary source material in both
Britain and France including Squadron records, diaries, oral
histories and memoirs. In the post-war period the idea of French
pilots serving with the RAF seemed anachronistic to both sides. For
the French nation the desire to draw a veil over the war years
helped to obscure many aspects of the past, and for the British the
idea of French pilots did not accord with the myths of the Few to
whom so much was owed. Those French pilots who served had to make
daring escapes. Classed as deserters they risked court martial and
execution if caught. They would play a vital role on D-Day and the
battle for control of the skies which followed.
This soldier's pocketbook from 1944, and the tale of its creation,
reveal a fascinating moment of history: a snapshot of prejudices,
expectations, assumptions and fears. It was created in conditions
of secrecy to prepare British and Allied soldiers for entering and
occupying Germany - but at a time when even victory was not
guaranteed. What would they face? How would they be treated? How
would they manage a population they were used to thinking of only
as "enemy combatants"?Part practical guide, part everyman's history
of the German people, part propaganda tool, it is an instantly
absorbing window on an uncertain time. It shows how the Allied
civilian and military command wanted to condition the ordinary
serviceman's thoughts about what he would encounter. Today's reader
will find here opinionated comment and crude stereotype, but also
subtle insights and humor - intentional and unintentional. The
pocketbook says as much about the mindset of its British compilers
as it does about the German people or about the Nazi regime that
eventually the soldiers would topple. An illuminating introduction,
drawing on the National Archives' unique original records, reveals
the intelligence community's misgivings and disagreements about the
content of the pocketbook as it went through its various stages.
Mere decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the promise of
European democracy seems to be out of joint. What has become of the
once-shared memory of victory over fascism? Historical revisionism
and nationalist propaganda in the post-Yugoslav context have tried
to eradicate the legacy of partisan and socialist struggles, while
Yugonostalgia commodifies the partisan/socialist past. It is
against these dominant 'archives' that this book launches the
partisan counter-archive, highlighting the symbolic power of
artistic works that echo and envision partisan legacy and rupture.
It comprises a body of works that emerged either during the
people's liberation struggle or in later socialist periods, tracing
a counter-archival surplus and revolutionary remainder that invents
alternative protocols of remembrance and commemoration. The book
covers rich (counter-)archival material - from partisan poems,
graphic works and photography, to monuments and films - and ends by
describing the recent revisionist un-doing of the partisan past. It
contributes to the Yugoslav politico-aesthetical "history of the
oppressed" as an alternative journey to the partisan past that
retrieves revolutionary resources from the past for the present.
The Donauschwaben, a mostly unknown ethnic group of Germans,
migrated to Yugoslavia in the late 1700s. Endless boundary
conflicts varyingly defined their land as Hungary, Yugoslavia, or
Serbia. During World War II their ethnicity unfairly marked them as
Nazi sympathizers despite their noncombatant status. They found
themselves on the wrong side of every border as a wave of
anti-German resentment legitimized their persecution and
eradication.
"TAKEN: A Lament for a Lost Ethnicity" relates the intimate
memoirs of Joseph Schaeffer, an ethnic Donauschwaben. Joseph's
childhood is stolen the day the Russians march into town. He is
captured and taken from his land and family to a slave labor camp
of endless suffering and years of imprisonment. Hope is restored
after a courageous escape and eventual immigration to the United
States. This enduring tale of survival eventually reunites the
Schaeffer family and life begins anew.
""TAKEN" is a testament to one man's tenacity and courage and
an affirmation of hope and life in a world full of despair and
death. The plight of refugees in post-war central Europe is an
important, yet neglected story. Joseph Schaeffer's life and
memories bring poignancy and immediacy to that story. Kathryn
Schaeffer Pabst ably crafts the memoir and deserves our
appreciation for bringing her father's story of survival to
us."-Eugene Edward Beiriger, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History,
DePaul University
This book offers the first in-depth intellectual and cultural
history of British subversive propaganda during the Second World
War. Focussing on the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), it tells
the story of British efforts to undermine German morale and promote
resistance against Nazi hegemony. Staffed by civil servants,
journalists, academics and anti-fascist European exiles, PWE
oversaw the BBC European Service alongside more than forty unique
clandestine radio stations; they maintained a prolific outpouring
of subversive leaflets and other printed propaganda; and they
trained secret agents in psychological warfare. British policy
during the occupation of Germany stemmed in part from the wartime
insights and experiences of these propagandists. Rather than
analyse military strategy or tactics, British Subversive Propaganda
during the Second World War draws on a wealth of archival material
from collections in Germany and Britain to develop a critical
genealogy of British ideas about Germany and National Socialism.
British propagandists invoked discourses around history, morality,
psychology, sexuality and religion in order to conceive of an
audience susceptible to morale subversion. Revealing much about the
contours of mid-century European thought and the origins of our own
heavily propagandised world, this book provides unique insights for
anyone researching British history, the Second World War, or the
fight against fascism.
View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface.
"Laboras Home Front is an outstanding contribution. Balanced and
fair-minded, Kerstenas richly documented account puts the AFL at
the center of wartime labor relations and domestic history
generally. . . . Kersten also sheds new light on the key role of
the AFL in the emergence of social democratic liberalism during the
era of World War II."
--Robert H. Zieger, University of Florida
"Labor's Home Front is the work of a careful and thorough
historian. Kersten establishes the centrality of the often
neglected American Federation of Labor to the story of labor's
uphill efforts during World War II to breathe life into the lofty
ideals embodied in the Four Freedoms. He skillfully weaves his case
studies--on gender, race, union rivalries, safety, the open shop,
and postwar planning--into a narrative fully attentive to the
evolution of the Federation's ideology and politics, poignantly
conveying the spirit of sacrifice and suffering without
romanticizing his subjects. This is a genuinely important
book."
--Eric Arnesen, author of "Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad
Workers and the Struggle for Equality"
One of the oldest, strongest, and largest labor organizations in
the U.S., the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had 4 million
members in over 20,000 union locals during World War II. The AFL
played a key role in wartime production and was a major actor in
the contentious relationship between the state, organized labor,
and the working class in the 1940s. The war years are pivotal in
the history of American labor, but books on the AFL's experiences
are scant, with far more on the radical Congress of Industrial
Unions(CIO).
Andrew E. Kersten closes this gap with Labor's Home Front,
challenging us to reconsider the AFL and its influence on
twentieth-century history. Kersten details the union's
contributions to wartime labor relations, its opposition to the
open shop movement, divided support for fair employment and equity
for women and African American workers, its constant battles with
the CIO, and its significant efforts to reshape American society,
economics, and politics after the war. Throughout, Kersten frames
his narrative with an original, central theme: that despite its
conservative nature, the AFL was dramatically transformed during
World War II, becoming a more powerful progressive force that
pushed for liberal change.
For six decades, John Knoepfle has been writing poems, and he's
still going strong. Knoepfle writes love poems, among the best we
have, of the joys, loneliness, danger and the infinite
transformations of marriage. He writes narrative poems, surreal,
sardonic and magical about astronauts on the moon or an angry
farmer and a prophetic owl. He recovers the stories of folks who
never made it into the history books. Always he has a respect for
the spoken word and lays his lines out on the page so that you too
can hear it. And a spiritual force runs through his books like the
slow and powerful rivers of the Midwest he inhabits. Both moving
and humorous, Knoepfle's autobiography shows us how by hard work
and lucky accident he came to be the poet he is.
The War for Legitimacy in Politics and Culture 1936-1946 presents
the first investigation of how the phenomenon of political
legitimacy operated within Europe's political cultures during the
period of the Second World War. Amidst the upheavals of that
turbulent period in Europe's twentieth-century history, a wide
variety of contenders for power emerged, each of which claimed to
possess the right to rule.Exploring political discourse, state
propaganda, and high and low culture, the book argues that
legitimacy lay not with rulers, and still less in the barrel of a
gun, but in the values behind differing approaches to "good"
government. An important contribution to the study of the political
culture of wartime Europe, this volume will be essential reading
for both political scientists and twentieth-century historians.
In the bleak and bitter cold of a copper mine in northern Japan,
U.S. Marine Sergeant Major Charles Jackson was allowed to send a
postcard his wife. He was allowed ten words-he used three: "I AM
ALIVE!" This message, classic in its poignancy of suffering and
despair captures only too well what it meant to be a Japanese
prisoner-of-war in World War II. In this riveting book, acclaimed
military historian Major Bruce H. Norton USMC (ret.) brings to life
a long-forgotten memoir by a Marine captured at Corregidor in May
1942 and held in Japanese captivity for three devastating years. In
unflinching prose, Sergeant Major Jackson described the fierce yet
impossible battle for Corregidor, the surrender of thousands of his
comrades, the long forced marches to prison camps, and the lethal
reality of captivity. One of the most important eyewitness accounts
of World War II, this book is a testament to the men who sacrificed
for their country. Jackson's unvarnished account of what his fellow
soldiers endured in the face of enemy inhumanity pays tribute to
the men who served America during the war-and why it ultimately
prevailed.
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