One-of-a-kind retelling of the Normandy campaign Places the 1944 battle for France in its social, economic, scientific, and technological context

GI Ingenuity is in large part an old-fashioned combat narrative, with mayhem and mass slaughter at center stage. But the book goes farther, combining military history with the history of science, technology, and culture to show how the American soldier improvised, innovated, and adapted on the battlefield. Among the improvisations and technologies covered are tanks equipped with hedgerow cutters, the coordination of air and ground attacks, and the use of radios and aircraft to direct artillery fire--all of which contributed to American success on D-Day and afterwards.

Part I is a compendium of World War II service recollections embracing the unusual, bizarre and humorous, most of which never appeared in the news or any publications. However, I do believe readers will be very interested in the other side of war. Part II is an incisive review of Vietnam, and why we failed or should never have been involved militarily. Part III is a current analysis of terrorism and the Iraq war, including a new proposal to address the global aspects of terrorism and the Palestinian issue.

In Polish Hero Roman Rodziewicz: Fate of a Hubal Soldier in Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Postwar England, Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm traces the remarkable and tragic tale of Roman Rodziewicz, a true Polish hero of the Second World War. Roman s childhood was spent in Manchuria where his father, first deported to Siberia, later worked as an engineer for a Chinese company. Following the loss of his parents early in life after returning to free Poland, Roman was trained to manage a self-sufficient estate farming and producing various livestock, vegetables, and honey. Prior to the German invasion of Poland, Roman attended military school at the Suwalki Cavalry Brigade. After the surrender of the Polish army, the partisan forces of Major Hubal continued to fight the Germans. The brave anti-German activities of the Hubal partisans beckoned Roman and he joined them. About eight months later Major Hubal was killed. Roman escaped and joined the underground as an officer fighting the German occupation forces. Captured and tortured, Roman was subsequently imprisoned in Auschwitz and later Buchenwald. After the American army rescued Roman, he joined the Polish army in Italy. At the end of World War II Roman settled in England. One of the greatest misfortunes of his life was losing contact with his fiance Halinka, and later learning she had married believing him to be dead. Two weeks after her marriage, she received a letter from Roman that he had survived the war. They met many years later, and Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm witnessed the meeting of Halinka and Roman in Warsaw. Roman continues to live in England now having reached the age of 100 years in January 2013. Polish Hero Roman Rodziewicz explores the incredible story of one Polish soldier of World War II, and provides an illuminating contribution to the historical record of the period."

An important reevaluation of World War II on the Eastern Front Detailed look at how the Soviet Union created more new divisions in a few months than the U.S. did during the entire war More than 60 tables list losses, tank and weapon production, and unit formation, with special emphasis on rifle and tank divisions and brigades

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the German Army quickly annihilated a major portion of the Red Army. Yet the Red Army rebounded to successfully defend Moscow in late 1941, defeat the Germans at Stalingrad in 1942 and Kursk in 1943, and deliver the deathblow in Belarus in 1944. Dunn examines these 4 battles while explaining how the Soviets lost a third of their prewar army yet returned to beat one of the most highly trained and experienced armies the world has ever seen.

This is the definitive book on the organizational and technical aspects of the German ground forces--the infantry, panzer, panzer grenadier, motorized, Waffen-SS, mountain, parachute, Jaeger, light, Luftwaffe field, and flak divisions--that swept across Europe with such ruthless efficiency in 1939 and 1940 and battled Allied forces until the bloody end. It is the most comprehensive and accessible reference work on the German Army during World War II yet published, unmatched in the information it compiles while tracing each German division from inception to destruction.

Examining Franco's relations with Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War, this book makes use of two major sources: the German Admiralty's archives, stunning in their evidence of Franco's support; and the Spanish press, operating under a totalitarian regime and yearning for an Axis victory to the bitter end.

By September 1944, Allied forces had broken out from the Normandy beachheads, liberated Paris, and found themselves poised on the German border. As this offensive gained momentum, Patton and Montgomery, hoping to exploit the enemy's temporary weakness in the West, concocted their own alternatives to Eisenhower's broad front strategy. Each proposed a single thrust aimed directly into the German heartland, designed to bring the troops home by Christmas. This study examines this so-called broad front-single thrust controversy and concludes that the idea of early victory was wishful thinking--a product of the erroneous and dangerous assumption that the Nazi regime was already tottering on the brink of collapse.

Precisely because of its lightning pace, the Allied advance resulted in severe logistical problems, limiting Patton's proposed operation to only ten combat divisions, while Montgomery's closer proximity to the coast might have allowed for as many as sixteen. But it should have been obvious that either thrust faced certain destruction against the 250 divisions still fielded by the Wehrmacht on all fronts in September. In light of this substantial German military capacity, despite serious losses and strategic setbacks, the single thrust could not have been a decisive war-ending maneuver. In fact, Andidora argues, it could not even have provided for its own security against the forces that would have coalesced against it. Rather than unnecessarily prolonging the war, as some have argued, Eisenhower's decision to stay the strategic course probably averted a military disaster.

Austerity in Britain is the first book to explore the entire episode of rationing, austerity, and fair shares from 1939 until 1955. These policies were central to the British war effort and to post-war reconstruction. The book analyses the connections between government policy, consumption, gender, and party politics during and after the Second World War.

"I could see a carpet of twinkling lights from the ack ack all along the rail sidings which bordered the canal. I dove onto these with my cannons going. Then suddenly, when the attention of all the guns turned on me, I realized how foolhardy I was being. I ran the guns along the row of rail trucks--opened the throttle wide and pulled straight up for the clouds--with tracers crossing in front and on all sides of the plane."

Ron Pottinger started the war as a rifleman in the Royal Fusiliers, then transferred to the Royal Air Force, where he began flying the 7.5-ton Hawker Typhoon. He flew dozens of dangerous ground attack missions over occupied Europe through bad weather, heavy flak, and enemy fighters before being shot down and taken prisoner.

The last place a German soldier wanted to be in 1944 was the Eastern Front. That summer, Stalin hurled millions of men and thousands of tanks and planes against German forces across a broad front. In a series of massive, devastating battles, the Red Army decimated Hitler's Army Group Center in Belorussia, annihilated Army Group South in the Ukraine, and inflicted crushing casualties while taking Rumania and Hungary. By the time Budapest fell to the Soviets in February 1945, the German Army had been slaughtered--and the Third Reich was in its death throes.

Bomb disposal was the most technically demanding and dangerous job outside of combat during World War II. Fewer than five thousand men did it in the American armed forces. During the war their activities were shrouded in secrecy, so that the Axis would not know what techniques the Allies were using. When they came home the citizen soldiers and officers who had done the work preferred anonymity to publicity. Furthermore, the units they had served in, often squads of six enlisted men and one officer, had been too small and independent to attract much notice by American chroniclers, official or unofficial, of the biggest armed conflict in history. Captains of Bomb Disposal, 1942-1946 attempts to bring some long-overdue public attention to this small group of neglected heroes. It chronicles two of their two most significant achievements during the World War II era: the contributions of the thirty-three bomb disposal squads of the Ninth Air Force, and the top-secret intelligence mission code named Operation 'Hidden Documents."In 1944 the Ninth Air Force was the most powerful tactical air force the world had ever seen. In the European Theater of Operations (ETO) it controlled more bomb disposal personnel than any other high command. Part I of Captains of Bomb Disposal, 1942-1946 mainly describes training at the Bomb Disposal School at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, and the support thirty-three bomb disposal squads gave the Ninth Air Force. Interwoven in the narrative covering events after D-Day is the wider context in which those squads, and all of the Ninth Air Force, operated, namely, air and ground forces pioneering a large-scale, close partnership which defeated the Germans in northwest Europe. Also discussed is how Ninth Air Force bomb disposal squads helped handle the problem after V-E Day of up to two million tons of surplus explosive ordnance in the theater.Most of the sources for Part I on bomb disposal operations are unpublished unit histories, Ninth and Eighth Air Force ordnance reports, theater-level reports, and related documents at either the National Archives at College Park, Maryland (NACP), or the Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. Part I is organized around, but definitely not limited to, the World War II experiences of Capt. Thomas R. Reece. Now deceased and the author's father, he was one of the four highest-ranking bomb disposal officers in the Ninth Air Force. Some of his official and personal papers are utilized. Background material on the course of the war in the ETO is taken mainly from published official histories, and for the Ninth Air Force, also from unpublished documents at AFHRA.One of the passages in Part I describes how two men in the 80th Bomb Disposal Squad, Sgt. Russell F. McCarthy and T/5 Walter V. Smith, in 1945 won the Soldier's Medal, America's highest military award for bravery in action not against the enemy. They were not the only bomb disposal personnel to win that award during the World War II era. Part II revolves around Capt. Stephen A. Richards, who was commanding officer of the 123rd Bomb Disposal Squad, attached during the war to General Patton's Third Army. Captain Richards and two combat engineers won the award for disarming a cache of booby-trapped documents outside Stechovice, Czechoslovakia in February 1946, as part of Operation 'Hidden Documents." The trio was apprehended by Czechoslovak authorities while the other mission members took the documents to Germany, and was only released after the documents were returned. Meanwhile, a diplomatic crisis was ignited as Czechoslovakia officially protested the American infringement of its sovereignty. Moreover, the Czechoslovak Communist Party used the controversy for propaganda purposes shortly before the national elections of May 1946.Shortly before the trio was released, the operation received fairly extensive publicity, including an article on page two of Th

Read the little known story of the World War II Army Anti-Aircraft units in the Pacific, and how they helped win the war.

In Music in the Holocaust Shirli Gilbert provides the first large-scale, critical account in English of the role of music amongst communities imprisoned under Nazism. She documents a wide scope of musical activities, ranging from orchestras and chamber groups to choirs, theatres, communal sing-songs, and cabarets, in some of the most important internment centres in Nazi-occupied Europe, including Auschwitz and the Warsaw and Vilna ghettos. Gilbert is also concerned with exploring the ways in which music--particularly the many songs that were preserved--contribute to our broader understanding of the Holocaust and the experiences of its victims. Music in the Holocaust is, at its core, a social history, taking as its focus the lives of individuals and communities imprisoned under Nazism. Music opens a unique window on to the internal world of those communities, offering insight into how they understood, interpreted, and responded to their experiences at the time.

China Ghost is the story of Crew 7, a flight crew attached to VPB-219 VPB-219 was a U.S. Navy bombing squadron in the South Pacific during World Was II. The Navy used long range patrol bombers such as the PB4Y-1, Liberator and the PB4Y-2 Privateer, a Liberator modified for the navy's special missions. These squadrons were based in such places as Guadalcanal, Munda, New Guinea, The Admiralties and The Philippines. The missions were long range patrols into Japanese waters in search of enemy shipping. More important, China Ghost is about the very young boys that were forced into maturity by the dangers and horrors of war before they served life's apprenticeship. It's about their loves, their fears, honor, patriotism and commune with God. The story is compassionate and emotional, a fiction based on actual events that the author and members of his crew and squadron experienced. Beau Rachal, a veteran of a previous tour in the South Pacific, returned to San Diego and reunited with his girlfriend, Frances Maginley. Beau was assigned to a new squadron, VPB-219, were the strength of Crew 7. VPB-219 was based at Clark Field on the island of Luzon in The Philippine Islands. Their missions were into French Indo-China and China. The Japanese targets were plentiful and Crew 7 became known as The China Ghost. It has been said that "wars are started by old men and fought by young men." China Ghost is a tribute to those brave, young warriors that faced the prospect of death each time they climbed into one of those machines.

This is the remarkable story of one of the Second World War's most unusual animal heroes - a 14-stone St Bernard dog who became global mascot for the Royal Norwegian Forces and a symbol of freedom and inspiration for Allied troops throughout Europe. From a happy and carefree puppyhood spent as a family pet in the Norwegian fishing town of Honningsvag, the gentle giant Bamse followed his master at the outbreak of the war to become a registered crew member of the mine-sweeper Thorodd. Often donning his own steel helmet as he took his place in the Thorodd's bow gun turret, Bamse cut an impressive figure and made a huge contribution to the morale of the crew, and he gallantly saved the lives of two of them. After Norway fell to the Germans in 1940, the Thorodd operated from Dundee and Montrose, where Bamse became a well-known and much-loved figure, shepherding the Thorodd's crew-members back to the boat at pub closing time, travelling on the local buses, breaking up fights and even taking part in football matches. Mourned both by locals and Norwegians when he died in 1944, Bamse's memory has been kept alive both in Norway, where he is still regarded as a national hero, and in Montrose, where a larger-than-life statue of him was unveiled in 2006 by HRH Prince Andrew. Written from extensive source material and eyewitness accounts, Sea Dog Bamse is a fitting tribute to the extraordinary life of an extraordinary dog.

The Maginot Line was the last great gun-bearing line of subterranean forts built before World War II. Although it acquired an unjustified reputation as a white elephant, the Maginot Line fulfilled the role for which it was built, allowing the French High Command the opportunity to mass its forces and counter the German invasion. Unfortunately, the French leadership failed to make the most of its assets, with the resulting disastrous outcome. During the 1920s, the French High Command formulated a number of offensive plans to strike at Germany, but by the end of the decade, it switched to defensive plans because of a lack of manpower. Work thus began on the Maginot Line and on other fortifications such as the French Mareth Line in North Africa and the heavy naval coastal defense batteries in Bizerte (Tunisia) and Toulon (France). The authors conclude that the Maginot Line offered the French High Command many opportunities from September 1939 until May 1940. They blame a failed French military doctrine for taking the initiative away from subordinates, laying the groundwork for the disastrous events of 1940 that left the French High Command paralyzed while German forces broke through the weakly held Ardennes.