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Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > Second World War
During World War II, author Dale J. Satterthwaite was a B-25
pilot who flew more than seventy missions over Italy and France in
1944. "Truth Flies with Fiction," his memoir, presents a truthful,
firsthand account of the missions and adventures of the real
Catch-22 airmen.
A personal tale full of humor and tragedy, this memoir provides
insight into the life of a B-25 bomber pilot, as well as the
experience of being part of an elite and highly decorated bomb
group. Satterthwaite was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross
twice, the Presidential Unit Citations twice, and the Air Metal
eight times.
Told through journal entries and letters written home to
Satterthwaite's fiancee, Eleanor, "Truth Flies with Fiction"
includes dozens of photos showing the airplanes in action,
including the aftermath of the Vesuvius eruption that destroyed
eight-eight airplanes at the Pompeii airbase. With a unique
perspective, this firsthand account explains the equipment,
missions, and tactics of World War II airmen and brings their
experiences to life."
Controlling Sex in Captivity is the first book to examine the
nature, extent and impact of the sexual activities of Axis
prisoners of war in the United States during the Second World War.
Historians have so far interpreted the interactions between captors
and captives in America as the beginning of the post-war friendship
between the United States, Germany and Italy. Matthias Reiss argues
that this paradigm is too simplistic. Widespread fraternisation
also led to sexual relationships which created significant negative
publicity, and some Axis POWs got caught up in the U.S. Army's new
campaign against homosexuals. By focusing on the fight against
fraternisation and same-sex activities, this study treads new
ground. It stresses that contact between captors and captives was
often loaded with conflict and influenced by perceptions of gender
and race. It highlights the transnational impact of fraternisation
and argues that the prisoners' sojourn in the United States also
influenced American society by fuelling a growing concern about
social disintegration and sexual deviancy, which eventually
triggered a conservative backlash after the war.
An omnibus edition of two collections of deeply eccentric
autobiographical essays by Lord Fisher, the father of the
Dreadnought and of the battle cruiser.
From the preface to the first volume, Memories:
Readers of this book will quickly observe that Admiral of the
Fleet Lord Fisher has small faith in the printed word; and those
who have enjoyed the privilege of having " his fist shaken in their
faces" will readily admit that the printed word, though faithfully
taken down from his dictation, must lack a large measure of the
power-the " aroma," as he calls it-which his personality lends to
his spoken word.
Had Lord Fisher been allowed his own way, there would have been
no Book. Not for the first time in his career, the need of serving
his country and his country's Navy has over-ridden his personal
feeling. These "Memories," therefore, must be regarded as a
compromise ("the beastliest word in the English language"-see "The
Times" of September gth, 1919) between the No-Book of Lord Fisher's
inclination and the orderly, complete Autobiography which the
public wishes to possess.
The book consists in the main of the author's ipsissima verba,
dictated during the month of September, 1919. One or two chapters
have been put together from fugitive writings which Lord Fisher had
collected and printed (in noble and eloquently various type) as a
gift to his friends after his death. The discreeter passages of the
letters which he wrote to Lord Esher between 1903 and 1912
illustrate some portions of the life's work which-caring little for
the past and much for the future, much for the idea and little for
the fact-Lord Fisher has successfully declined to describe in his
own words.
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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Above the Pigsty
(Hardcover)
Peter Van Essen; Illustrated by Miranda Van Essen; Edited by Dela Wilkins
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R1,209
Discovery Miles 12 090
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The Japanese military was responsible for the sexual enslavement of
thousands of women and girls in Asia and the Pacific during the
China and Pacific wars under the guise of providing 'comfort' for
battle-weary troops. Campaigns for justice and reparations for
'comfort women' since the early 1990s have highlighted the
magnitude of the human rights crimes committed against Korean,
Chinese and other Asian women by Japanese soldiers after they
invaded the Chinese mainland in 1937. These campaigns, however, say
little about the origins of the system or its initial victims. The
Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery during the China and
Pacific Wars explores the origins of the Japanese military's system
of sexual slavery and illustrates how Japanese women were its
initial victims.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, began a
war that lasted nearly four years and created by far the bloodiest
theater in World War II. In the conventional narrative of this war,
Hitler was defeated by Stalin because, like Napoleon, he
underestimated the size and resources of his enemy. In fact, says
historian John Mosier, Hitler came very close to winning and lost
only because of the intervention of the western Allies. Stalin's
great triumph was not winning the war, but establishing the
prevailing interpretation of the war. The Great Patriotic War, as
it is known in Russia, would eventually prove fatal, setting in
motion events that would culminate in the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
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Deathride "argues that the Soviet losses in World War II were
unsustainable and would eventually have led to defeat. The Soviet
Union had only twice the population of Germany at the time, but it
was suffering a casualty rate more than two and a half times the
German rate. Because Stalin had a notorious habit of imprisoning or
killing anyone who brought him bad news (and often their families
as well), Soviet battlefield reports were fantasies, and the battle
plans Soviet generals developed seldom responded to actual
circumstances. In this respect the Soviets waged war as they did
everything else: through propaganda rather than actual achievement.
What saved Stalin was the Allied decision to open the Mediterranean
theater. Once the Allies threatened Italy, Hitler was forced to
withdraw his best troops from the eastern front and redeploy them.
In addition, the Allies provided heavy vehicles that the Soviets
desperately needed and were unable to manufacture themselves. It
was not the resources of the Soviet Union that defeated Hitler but
the resources of the West.
In this provocative revisionist analysis of the war between Hitler
and Stalin, Mosier provides a dramatic, vigorous narrative of
events as he shows how most previous histories accepted Stalin's
lies and distortions to produce a false sense of Soviet triumph.
"Deathride "is the real story of the Eastern Front, fresh and
different from what we thought we knew.
With a New Introduction by Benjamin Ferencz, Chief Prosecutor for
the United States at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial Originally
published three years before the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 1973,
this important book was not a polemic, but a sober account of the
Vietnam conflict from the perspective of international law. Framed
in reference to the Nuremberg Trials that followed the Second World
War, it described problems the United States may have to face due
to its involvement in the Vietnam conflict. After presenting a
general history of war crimes and an account of the Nuremberg
Trials, Taylor turns his attention to Vietnam. Among other points,
he examined parallels between actions committed by American troops
during the then-recent My Lai Massacre of 1968 and Hitler's SS in
Nazi-occupied Europe. Commissioned for this edition, Ferencz's
introduction evaluates Taylor's study and its lessons for the
present and future. When this book was published in 1970, Telford
Taylor had concluded that U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam
was an American tragedy: "Somehow we failed ourselves to learn the
lessons we undertook to teach at Nuremberg." What were those
lessons? How acceptable were they? Which laws of war could
realistically be enforced on a raging battlefield against an
implacable foe? Forty years later, it is worth re-examining how it
came about that this powerful and humanitarian country could have
come to be seen by many as a giant "prone to shatter what we try to
save. -From the Introduction by Benjamin B. FerenczTelford Taylor
1908-1998] was chief counsel for the prosecution at the Nuremberg
Trials. Later Professor of Law at Columbia University, he was a
vigorous opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthy and an outspoken
critic of U.S. actions during the Vietnam War. His books include
Sword and Swastika: Generals and Nazis in the Third Reich (1952),
Grand Inquest: The Story of Congressional Investigations (1955) and
The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1992).
Benjamin Ferencz, a member of Taylor's legal staff, was the Chief
Prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial.
He is the author of Defining International Aggression-The Search
for World Peace (1975), Adjunct Professor of International Law,
Pace University and founder of the Pace Peace Center.
Witnessing the Holocaust presents the autobiographical writings,
including diaries and autobiographical fiction, of six Holocaust
survivors who lived through and chronicled the Nazi genocide.
Drawing extensively on the works of Victor Klemperer, Ruth Kluger,
Michal Glowinski, Primo Levi, Imre Kertesz and Bela Zsolt, this
books conveys, with vivid detail, the persecution of the Jews from
the beginning of the Third Reich until its very end. It gives us a
sense both of what the Holocaust meant to the wider community swept
up in the horrors and what it was like for the individual to
weather one of the most shocking events in history. Survivors and
witnesses disappear, and history, not memory, becomes the
instrument for recalling the past. Judith M. Hughes secures a place
for narratives by those who experienced the Holocaust in person.
This compelling text is a vital read for all students of the
Holocaust and Holocaust memory.
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