At the end of World War II, over 20,000 French people accused of collaboration with Germany endured a particularly humiliating act of revenge: their heads were shaved in public. Nearly all those punished were women. This episode in French history continues to provoke shame and unease and as a result has never been the subject of a thorough examination.
This groundbreaking book by Fabrice Virgili throws new light on these acts of retribution and reveals that, contrary to popular belief, a vast number of those women accused were innocent of any sexual involvement with Germans. Further, this form of punishment was in evidence well before the Liberation and in fact occurred in most European countries both in the twentieth century and earlier.
Why were these punishments largely directed at women? Was a relationship with a German emblematic of female collaboration and betrayal, or were contemporary feelings of violence towards the enemy subsequently re-directed? Answering these questions and many more, Virgili suggests that the punishment was not only meted out for 'horizontal collaboration' but also for many other forms of involvement, and that the act of shaving the head was itself a form of sexual punishment. For Virgili, the public nature of the punishment was a defence strategy, a response to the German Occupation and a reaction to the suffering and violence that had preceded the Liberation.
This pioneering investigation of one of France's darkest moments will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in World War II, French history or women's studies.

What follows here, just a brief insight into Pain and Purpose in the Pacific. This book did not begin with the idea of a chronology of the battles of the Pacific War, although an overview is included. But instead it was intended to be a brief account of the battles on Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa as I retrace the travels of one Marine from the farmland of Minnesota to Japan and back. Carl J. Johnson spent 30 months in the Pacific. Four of those months were in bitter combat on the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa. He is my uncle. I have been blessed to travel, & to spend time at many of the places he traveled during World War II. My travels didn't stop there.

As a Continental Airlines pilot based in Guam, now retired and having lived on Saipan, I have had the opportunity over a seven year period to visit other islands that were the scene of horrific battles of World War II. In addition to Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa, I will mention a few of them. Included are Guam where I was based during the closing years of my airline career; also Belau, which is Palau, and includes Peleliu. Included too in this book are Iwo Jima, Corregidor and the Philippines. In my travels beyond Hawaii and Pearl Harbor, which was my introduction into the Pacific, were Yap, and Truk, which is Chuuk, and Pohnpei in the Carolines. And I've spent time in Japan.

During my time in the Pacific, I have been presented with the opportunity to speak with several of the veterans of the Pacific War. Doing so has in some cases allowed me in some small way to understand a sense of the hell they had to suffer through. Included in this report are a few of their stories, as well as stories from some of the people of the islands who in one way or another were involved in the conflict.

It is with a depth of gratitude that I acknowledge the Military Historical Tours of Alexandria, Virginia for allowing me to be a part of their tours to the islands of Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, as well as Guam, Tinian and Saipan. I appreciate this organization, dedicated to preserving the memories of the war, and to the honoring of the military personnel who were there at the time. While living on either Guam or Saipan I also was able to visit on my own most of the islands mentioned on this page. But it was the Military Historical Tours, and it's President USMC Colonel Warren Wiedhahn ([email protected]) that made it possible for me to visit Iwo Jima. They allowed me to join them once a year for 4 consecutive years. I have since returned a 5th time in March of 2010. It was through this great organization that over a 7 year period (while living on both Guam and Saipan in the Marianas Islands), I was able to meet most of the WWII veterans mentioned here; and these aging veterans of the War in the Pacific whom I have met, have touched my heart. In addition to my uncle, this book is for them too.

Experience Iwo Jima, arguably the bloodiest battle of the modern era, from the perspective of an extraordinary battlefield medic, George Wahlen. As a Navy corpsman he was targeted by the Japanese, making his job of saving the injured even that much more deadly. How he saved so many lives is among the many mysteries of his incredible story. After earning three purple hearts in a matter of days, witnesses of Wahlen's heroics remain dumbfounded that he actually survived. For his actions he was awarded the Medal of Honor, America's highest military honor. But after the war, he told no one about the medal. Even his wife didn't know he was a national hero for many years after their marriage. For more than six decades he has kept the details of his story to himself, but family and friends have since convinced him to tell the gritty details of his war-time experience. His story is told using over 180 rare and unpublished photographs, many of which were previously censored for being too graphic for public sensitivities. As many now learn of Wahlen's survival, sacrifice and bravery, his story is considered among the most dramatic accounts of heroism in U.S. military history.

From Greenwich Village to Guadalcanal in just over a year, David Zellmer would find piloting a B-24 bomber in the South Pacific a far cry from his life as a fledgling member of the Martha Graham Dance Company. He soon discovered the unimagined thrills of first flights and the astonishment of learning that an aerial spin was merely a vertical pirouette which one spotted on a barn thousands of feet below, instead of on a doorknob in Martha's studio. Reconstructed from letters home, this captivating account traces Zellmer's journey from New York to the islands of the South Pacific as the 13th Air Force battled to push back the Japanese invaders in 1943 and 1944.

Spurred to action by encouraging letters from Martha Graham, who urges him to document his participation in the great tragic play of the Second World War, Zellmer struggles to come to terms with the fears and joys of flying, of killing and being killed. Each stage of the battle takes him farther and farther from those he loves, until the soft night breezes and moon-splashed surf no longer work their magic. From bombing runs against Truk, the infamous headquarters of the Japanese Fleet, to much savored slivers of civilization in Auckland and Sydney, the young pilot bemoans a gnawing concern at a loss of sensation, the prospect of life--not as a performer, but as a spectator. With distant memories of life on the stage, he finds that only the threat of death can bring the same intensity of feeling.

Spies, Supplies and Moonlit Skies, Volume II: The French Connection, April-June 1944: Code Name Neptune During the critical period of World War II leading up to D-Day the United States Army Air Force activated the first Special Operations Group for clandestine activity against the Nazi enemy in Occupied Europe. While the daylight Air Force cleared the skies of Nazi planes in a brutal war of attrition before the invasion, the 801st Bombardment Group, on night operations from their secret base near Harrington in the United Kingdom dropped supplies and agents to the Resistance forces of Europe in preparation for D-Day on the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944. This is their story.

WE ALL MADE HISTORY is a collection of personal stories from people who were in the military. Many military have put their lives on the line for you to be free. The real Heroes never returned. When you see a veteran, shake their hand and thank them for their service.

An examination of the life of General Manton S. Eddy, this study details his experiences in World War II as leader of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division through North Africa, Sicily and France, and subsequently, as commander of XII Corps, into the heart of Germany. While much has been written about the top military leaders of this era, there is little information about corps commanders whose missions were limited to doing battle and whose organizations were tailored exclusively for this task. Eddy's career provides a model for the Army's most ambitious officers, particularly those who, like Eddy, faced the challenge without family connections or the traditional West Point education. He devoted his life to the U.S. Army, enhancing his innate talents through the incorporation of a daily program of self-education.

Eddy had an excellent grasp of the basic principles of military tactics and strategy. He attained this art through home study and assiduous application at the Army's professional education institutions, in particular at the Command and General Staff College, where he served as an instructor for four years. He focused on people, quickly learning and applying basic skills to draw out their best efforts. He came to know what to expect from them in the chaos and under the pressure of combat. This facilitated his development of strong, mission-oriented subordinates. His personal goal was always to maximize all available power at the correct point for crushing his nation's enemies, and to this end, he was extraordinarily successful.

The Holocaust did not introduce the phenomenon of the bystander, but it did illustrate the terrible consequences of indifference and passivity towards the persecution of others. Although the term was initially applied only to the good Germans--the apathetic citizens who made genocide possible through unquestioning obedience to evil leaders--recent Holocaust scholarship has shown that it applies to most of the world, including parts of the population in Nazi-occupied countries, some sectors within the international Christian and Jewish communities, and the Allied governments themselves. This work analyzes why this happened, drawing on the insights of historians, Holocaust survivors, and Christian and Jewish ethicists. The author argues that bystander behavior cannot be attributed to a single cause, such as anti-Semitism, but can only be understood within a complex framework of factors that shape human behavior individually, socially, and politically.

The German Navy - known as the Kriegsmarine - played a crucial role during World War II in disrupting Allied shipping, especially in the early years, when Britain stood alone against Nazi aggression following the fall of France. Broken down by campaign and key encounters within each theatre of war, German Kriegsmarine in World War II illustrates the strengths and organizational structures of the Third Reich's naval forces, building into a detailed compendium of information. Full-colour order of battle tree diagrams at fleet and flotilla level help the reader quickly understand how and where the ships and U-boats of the German Navy were employed at any given time between 1939 and 1945. Reference tables provide fleet strengths while organizational diagrams show the types and numbers of ships involved in specific operations, such as the U-Boat wolfpacks that hunted Allied merchant shipping in the North Atlantic and the invasion fleet used for the assault on Crete. With extensive organizational diagrams and full-colour operations maps, German Kriegsmarine in World War II is an easy-to-use guide to German naval forces. The book is an essential reference for anyone with a serious interest in the naval warfare of World War II.

Eddie Slovik was the most famous American soldier to come out of World War Two. Or was infamous a better description? For 24 year old Slovik, Polish-American, petty thief and ex-con, was the only Allied soldier to be shot for desertion in the course of that long conflict. For nearly ten years the US Dept. of Defence tried to keep the Slovik case secret and even when it was revealed the American military hid the place of the condemned man's burial for a further thirty years. Thus when the details of the Slovik case were finally brought out into the open, there was much talk of an official cover-up. Now veteran military historian, Charles Whiting has attempted to dig up the final truth. He reveals in this fast paced intriguing book that Slovik was not the innocent victim that his advocate had maintained he was. In that year in which he was sentenced to death for desertion in the 'face of the enemy', he played a calculating game with the US Army -and lost. Whiting also reveals another secret: the man who would approve Slovik's death sentence and have him shot in a remote French mountain village, General (and future President) Dwight D. Eisenhower was also under a sentence of death that winter himself.

Despite heavy censorship and sometimes outright control by either Vichy or the Germans, the authorized press is a useful and necessary source for anyone studying the period of German occupation and the Vichy government in France. The daily and weekly political press, the press created by Vichy for its Chantiers de la Jeunesse youth movement, its Legion of War veterans and its Peasant Corporation for agriculture show the regime's ideology and priorities. A wide variety of other periodicals, including religious publications, advertising papers, trade papers, and sports papers, provides insights into the professional and local life of the period. This book provides a guide to the authorized press of the occupation period.

With a list of 2500 periodicals, the book covers the more important daily, weekly, bimonthly, monthly, and quarterly publications in Paris and the departments. The periodicals are listed by subject for Paris, alphabetically for the departments. For each periodical, the book gives city of publication, approximate beginning and ending dates, and library or archive where the periodical is held as well as other available information such as the periodical's prewar political position, what the periodical said about itself, its relationship with Vichy or the Germans, and successor publication. If a book or article has been written about the periodical, it is also included.

The name...oft heard and heralded during and after World War II PAPPY GUNN ordinarily speaks for itself..............however in this book, the unforgettable, untold to this day, human story of the legendary "Pappy Gunn," hero of the Pacific Air War and to his family who knew and loved him ....this story is told with the understanding of one who had the foreknowledge and burning determination to sort out the facts and myths about him, Nathaniel Gunn, the author, fellow lover of flying, and his youngest son, who was with him until his untimely crash in Civilian life doing what he loved to do - flying, flying, flying You'll find the story intriguing in its discoveries, packed with Pappy's own personal original files, long forgotten letters, documents and photographs spanning Pappy's youth into the U.S. Navy, marriage, retirement in Hawaii and move to the Philippine Islands. Then, the untimely entrance of the United States in the WWII bombing and capture of Manila. Most of all, this story draws a perceptive focus on ..the man..as the person and courageous patriot he truly was, joining the U. S.Air Force he was at this time.. Fighting 3 wars at once .His family imprisoned by the Japanese.. .The brass who needed him to accomplish the impossible .And, the enemy who had the upperhand, but not for long Thank God - his was a triumphant battle in all three

How did the French Resistance and Allied forces work together to liberate southern France from the Germans during World War II? Arthur Funk gives the first detailed account of the complex British, French, and American operations in 1944, an account that uses a wealth of original source material on both sides of the Atlantic to evaluate the role of the French Resistance and to assess the problems in coordinating Allied military activities. The study should be of great interest to historians, history buffs, and colleges and universities that wish to fill this gap in the historiography of World War II. The first half of the book deals with preparations for the Allied landings in August 1944, telling about agents first in contact with the French Resistance and about the work of Allied missions, French groups, and British officers and teams directed from London and Algiers. The second half of the book covers the collaboration of French Forces of the Interior with the U.S. Seventh Army in the liberation of Marseilles, Lyon, and other cities in southeastern France. Filled with interesting detail about major figures in the war and little-known agents and officers, the book is unique in weaving together recently declassified OSS sources in Washington with British and French archival information that is rarely noted. Maps and photographs are included in the book, and a useful bibliography is also provided.

Since unification, the Federal Republic of Germany has made vaunted efforts to make amends for the crimes of the Third Reich. Yet it remains the case that the demands for restitution by many countries that were occupied during the Second World War are unresolved, and recent demands from Greece and Poland have only reignited old debates. This book reconstructs the German occupation of Poland and Greece and gives a thorough accounting of these debates. Working from the perspective of international law, it deepens the scholarly discourse around the issue, clarifying the 'never-ending story' of German reparations policy and making a principled call for further action. A compilation of primary sources comprising 125 annotated key texts (512 pages) on the complexity of reparations discussions covering the period between 1941 and the end of 2017 is available for free on the Berghahn Books website, doi: 10.3167/9781800732575.dd.

One of the brightest Canadian scientists of his generation, Omond McKillop Solandt was a physiologist by training, an engineer by disposition, and a manager by necessity. A protege of insulin's co-discoverer, Charles Best, Solandt worked as a scientist for the British government during the Second World War, including as a pioneer of operational research and a manager of scientific establishments. Ending the war as a colonel, he served on the British Mission to Japan, where he studied the effects of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, before returning to Canada to become chairman of the newly created Defence Research Board. There he spearheaded Canada's attempt to create a new and innovative government science infrastructure that served the needs of the Canadian military at the dawn of the nuclear age and worked alongside allies in Britain and the United States. In Maestro of Science, Jason S. Ridler draws on interviews with Solandt and his colleagues and declassified records from Canada and the United Kingdom to paint a vivid picture of the influence and achievements of a Canadian leader in Cold War military research.

Winner of both the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. Frank Kermode, in The New York Times Book Review, hailed it as "an important contribution to our understanding of how we came to make World War I part of our minds," and Lionel Trilling called it simply "one of the most deeply moving books I have read in a long time." In its panaramic scope and poetic intensity, it illuminated a war that changed a generation and revolutionized the way we see the world.

Now, in Wartime, Fussell turns to the Second World War, the conflict he himself fought in, to weave a narrative that is both more intensely personal and more wide-ranging. Whereas his former book focused primarily on literary figures, on the image of the Great War in literature, here Fussell examines the immediate impact of the war on common soldiers and civilians. He describes the psychological and emotional atmosphere of World War II. He analyzes the euphemisms people needed to deal with unacceptable reality (the early belief, for instance, that the war could be won by "precision bombing," that is, by long distance); he describes the abnormally intense frustration of desire and some of the means by which desire was satisfied; and, most important, he emphasizes the damage the war did to intellect, discrimination, honesty, individuality, complexity, ambiguity and wit. Of course, no Fussell book would be complete without some serious discussion of the literature of the time. He examines, for instance, how the great privations of wartime (when oranges would be raffled off as valued prizes) resulted in roccoco prose styles that dwelt longingly on lavish dinners, and how the "high-mindedness" of the era and the almost pathological need to "accentuate the positive" led to the downfall of the acerbic H.L. Mencken and the ascent of E.B. White. He also offers astute commentary on Edmund Wilson's argument with Archibald MacLeish, Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine, the war poetry of Randall Jarrell and Louis Simpson, and many other aspects of the wartime literary world.

Fussell conveys the essence of that wartime as no other writer before him. For the past fifty years, the Allied War has been sanitized and romanticized almost beyond recognition by "the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant, and the bloodthirsty." Americans, he says, have never understood what the Second World War was really like. In this stunning volume, he offers such an understanding.

Wide is the Gate, written in 1943, is the fourth of the epic eleven part classic Lanny Budd Series written by Upton Sinclair. Wide is the Gate followed the 1943 Pulitzer Prize Winning Dragon's Teeth. This book covers the period of 1934-1937 and introduces Lanny as a secret double agent fighting the Nazi's as a supporter of the resistance movement in Germany. Lanny is living primarily in England with his wife of almost five years, Irma Barnes, the 23 million dollar heiress. Irma does not share Lanny's "red" view of the world. Lanny's is conflicted continuously in his heart and soul for the workers and social justice. Lanny attempts to commit to Irma to "behave" himself and lead a normal aristocratic life. But foremost he is committed to ending Nazism, Fascism and the over throw of the democratically elected Spanish government. Irma believes she is entitled to live in the style of the aristocrats of Europe, she having inherited 23 million dollars from her late father, J. Paramount Barnes. She cares not at all for anything Lanny believes in. Lanny is awakened at the end of Dragon's Teeth to the oncoming dangers of the Nazi's. He sees the armament build-up and the militarism building in the Fatherland. Goring is not to be trusted. But both English and French leaders fail to recognize the menacing threat of the new Germany. Leading politician believe the threat of the Bolsheviks and the Red Menace poses a greater threat to European stability, aka, the ruling classes, than do the Nazi's in Germany, and the Fascist in Italy and Spain. Lanny involves himself in a double agent role by helping a new friend, one who will be us through the remaining books, Monck. Monck is a German socialist who is part of the underground and works with the resistance movement to alert the German people to the terrors of the Nazi's. Lanny helps a friend and colleague of the late Fredi Robin, Trudi, through which he meets Monck. Many adventures and dangers present themselves as Lanny travels back into Germany as an Art expert, eventually dealing directly and on a friendship basis with Hermann Goring. He uses the proceeds of the confiscated artwork masterpieces stolen by Goring from Johannes Robin to help finance and support the underground movement from inside the heart of Naziland. Lanny and Irma also have an eventful evening with Hitler, while hiding a hunted resistance worker in their car while visiting Hitler's Berghof estate. Robbie Budd, Lanny's father, has conceived the next great industrial advancement on a grand scale, the airplane. Having lost Budd Gunmakers to the Wall Street tycoons, Robbie sets out to develop the mass production of airplanes. He offers first to England, and then to France, the opportunity to build their air forces as protection in case of another armed conflict, but facing the intransigence of both countries politicians, he next offers his new high speed and potentially deadly product to Goring and they thus become close business associates. This alliance between Robbie and Goring offers Lanny cover for his duplicitous activities against the Nazi's. As alluded to at the end of Dragon's Teeth, Lan