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.

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.

"Al Ataque" is an excellent book that describes the preparation a bomb group goes through before being deployed overseas as well as the problems of shipping some five thousand men and supplies along with some eighty B-24 aircraft from a stateside base to a foreign country. The book then details the establishment of Torretta Field that was used by the 461st for the duration of the war in Europe. The 461st Bomb Group flew two hundred and twenty-three combat missions between April 1944 and April 1945. Each of these is described in the book. Personal experiences of veterans who were actually part of the 461st are included.