Christoph Laucht offers the first investigation into the roles played by two German-born emigre atomic scientists, Klaus Fuchs and Rudolf Peierls, in the development of British nuclear culture, especially the practice of nuclear science and the political implications of the atomic scientists' work, from the start of the Second World War until 1959.

Poised on the verge of World War II, America in 1939 was a land of contrasts. The nation was finally pulling out of the Great Depression, but war-clouds gathered on the horizon. Scientific developments offered promising new advances, yet they would soon become the tools of war. This study offers a detailed look at life in this watershed year to determine how Americans understood the conditions of their day and how they turned to escapism when their burdens became too heavy. From the royal visit to the World's Fairs, most Americans looked ahead to a brighter future. Professional athletics, Hollywood films, and the Big Bands were a welcome diversion to hard times and troubling events abroad in Europe and Asia. This account highlights the most important political, economic, and social concerns of 1939. The first part, Documenting America, focuses on the major social and economic concerns of the American people in 1939. Chapter one examines religion, race, and crime, while chapters two and three consider economic difficulties and proposed solutions. Part Two, Some Golden Ages, includes chapters on the Studio era in Hollywood, Big Bands and Broadway musicals, art and architecture of the period, scientific breakthroughs, and sports notables. The final part, It Happened Over There, completes the picture with two chapters on the ominous international situation and early American efforts to deal with the impending war.

The Japanese government disposed of "dangerous animals" (not only carnivores but also herbivores, such as elephants) in zoos and circuses during World War II, including those in Japan's three "colonies"--Korea, Taiwan, and Manchukuo, Japan's puppet state in current Northeast China. Strangely, the "disposal order" was issued in August 1943, more than 15 months before U.S. B-29 air raids on Japan began. While some European zoos also destroyed their animals, none of the authorities in Europe enforced the disposal of zoo animals as systematically as the Japanese Home Ministry. No country conducted as nationwide and systematic a disposal of captive animals as Japan. This policy was an integral part of the Japanese government propaganda to mobilize the whole civilian population into total war, rather than for the ostensible purpose of public safety.

"The Seventh Million" is the first book to show the decisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology, and politics of Israel. Drawing on diaries, interviews, and thousands of declassified documents, Segev reconsiders the major struggles and personalities of Israel's past, including Ben-Gurion, Begin, and Nahum Goldmann, and argues that the nation's legacy has, at critical moments--the "Exodus "affair, the Eichmann trial, the case of John Demjanjuk--have been molded and manipulated in accordance with the ideological requirements of the state. "The Seventh Million" uncovers a vast and complex story and reveals how the bitter events of decades past continue to shape the experiences not just of individuals but of a nation. Translated by Haim Watzman.

Jan Karski's Story of a Secret State stands as one of the most poignant and inspiring memoirs of World War II and the Holocaust. With elements of a spy thriller, documenting his experiences in the Polish Underground, and as one of the first accounts of the systematic slaughter of the Jews by the German Nazis, this volume is a remarkable testimony of one man's courage and a nation's struggle for resistance against overwhelming oppression. Karski was a brilliant young diplomat when war broke out in 1939 with Hitler's invasion of Poland. Taken prisoner by the Soviet Red Army, which had simultaneously invaded from the East, Karski narrowly escaped the subsequent Katyn Forest Massacre. He became a member of the Polish Underground, the most significant resistance movement in occupied Europe, acting as a liaison and courier between the Underground and the Polish government-in-exile. He was twice smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto, and entered the Nazi's Izbica transit camp disguised as a guard, witnessing first-hand the horrors of the Holocaust. Karski's courage and testimony, conveyed in a breathtaking manner in Story of a Secret State, offer the narrative of one of the world's greatest eyewitnesses and an inspiration for all of humanity, emboldening each of us to rise to the challenge of standing up against evil and for human rights. This definitive edition-which includes a foreword by Madeleine Albright, a biographical essay by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an afterword by Zbigniew Brzezinski, previously unpublished photos, notes, further reading, and a glossary-is an apt legacy for this hero of conscience during the most fraught and fragile moment in modern history.

It is increasingly important to understand the complexity of central and southeastern Europe following the enlargement of NATO into Central Europe, the ongoing problems of the Balkans, and the subsequent focus of global attention on the entire region. Gardner brings together exceptional French and Eastern European scholars who present first-hand accounts of their experience and knowledge of the region. Each provides differing political, social, cultural, and economic perspectives on Central and Southeastern Europe.

The volume begins with a general discussion of the place of central and southeastern Europe in the greater scheme of European history. This is followed by an examination of the western European and Russian attitudes toward the Balkans, and the largely ignored affects of the Ottoman empire on the Balkans. The importance of culture and the crucial role it played in undermining both the theory and practice of communism is explored. The impact of the media is then examined in two chapters that look at the process of media liberalization in the context of each country's political situation and the particular problems the media faces in the region. The focus shifts to the role of finance capital and its impact in emerging privatized economies. How the global drug wars affect the Balkan region are also explored. The ecological damage to Central and eastern Europe and Russia caused by the communist system is detailed, and the volume ends with a look at the complexity of factors that led NATO to enlarge into Central Europe and intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo. This wide-ranging collection will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers involved with all facets of contemporary central and eastern European life.

This fascinating millitary history tells the intriguing tale of the bitter and attritional Winter War between the USSR and Finland in the midst of World War II. On 30 November 1939, Soviet bombers unloaded their bombs on Helsinki, the capital of Finland. Stalin's ultimatum, demanding the cession of huge tracts of territory as a buffer zone against Nazi Germany, had been rejected by the Finnish government, and now a small Baltic republic was at war with the giant Soviet military machine. But this forgotten war, fought under brutal, sub-arctic conditions, often with great heroism on both sides, proved one of the most astonishing in military history. Using guerrilla fighters on skis, even reindeer to haul supplies on sleds, heroic single-handed attacks on tanks, and with unfathomable endurance and the charismatic leadership of one of the 20th century's true military geniuses, Finland not only kept at bay but won an epic, if short-lived, victory over the hapless Russian conscripts. Its surreal engagements included the legendary "Sausage Battle", when starving Soviet troops who had over-run a Finnish encampment couldn't resist the cauldrons of hot sausage soup left behind by their opponents - and were ambushed as they stopped to sup. Although by sheer attritional weight of numbers Stalin eventually prevailed over the Finns, their pointed resistance enabled their country to remain free, even as other countries fell one by one. This book gives a telling insight into the military history of Russia, as once again Russian troops march on foreign soil, and a nation at Russia's borders fights to retain its independence.

Following their occupation by the Third Reich, Warsaw and Minsk became home to tens of thousands of Germans. In this exhaustive study, Stephan Lehnstaedt provides a nuanced, eye-opening portrait of the lives of these men and women, who constituted a surprisingly diverse population-including everyone from SS officers to civil servants, as well as ethnically German city residents-united in its self-conception as a "master race." Even as they acclimated to the daily routines and tedium of life in the East, many Germans engaged in acts of shocking brutality against Poles, Belarusians, and Jews, while social conditions became increasingly conducive to systematic mass murder.

The Good War is a book about World War 2. It takes place in 1944 at the time of the Battle of the Bulge. The 981st U.S. Army is encamped in Brussels, Belgium. The 981st is made up of Engineering, Heavy Artillery, and Intelligence. The intelligence unit is sent behind enemy lines to find out what the enemy is up to. The unit is split into two groups, when one group is picked up by Belgian Partisans. The corporal Alex McDowell meets among the partisans a woman that he could fall in love with, but her overprotective brother stands in the way of their happiness. The unit now again in the Ardennes forest to fight the Battle of the Bulge. While war rages through the beautiful European landscape, partisans fight and die for freedom. One in particular Eva Rimmel, a young woman of great courage and compassion helps a unit of lost American soldiers. Her attraction to one of the soldiers is undeniable. Corporal Alex McDowell a soldier of the 981st intelligence unit was far from his home of Dallas, Texas. Separated from his unit he found the beautiful young partisan irresistible. Can their love survive a war?

Despatches in this volume include that on the first and second battles of Narvik in 1940; the despatch on operations in central Norway 1940, by Lieutenant General H.R.S. Massy, Commander-in-Chief, North West Expeditionary Force; Despatch on operations in Northern Norway between April and June 1940; the despatch on carrier-borne aircraft attacks on Kirkenes (Norway) and Petsamo (Finland) in 1941, by Admiral Sir John C. Tovey; the despatch on the raid on military and economic objectives in the Lofoten Islands (Norway) in March 1941, by Admiral Sir John C. Tovey, Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet; and the despatch on the raid on military and economic objectives in the vicinity of Vaagso Island (Norway) in December 1941, by Admiral Sir John C. Tovey. This unique collection of original documents will prove to be an invaluable resource for historians, students and all those interested in what was one of the most significant periods in British military history.

This carefully researched study is the first to chronicle the history of Allied involvement in the defense of British, French, and Dutch possessions in the Caribbean. The study is extremely well researched and well written. . . . The definitive work in this particular area of historical research, based on all available sources in English, French, and Dutch, published and unpublished. Choice Although few military campaigns were fought in the Caribbean, the region had strategic importance throughout World War II for the United States and its allies. This carefully researched study is the first to chronicle the history of Allied involvement in the defense of British, French, and Dutch possessions in the Caribbean. The first chapter examines the events and diplomacy that led in 1939 to Britain's granting the United States permission to base military facilities in Bermuda, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and to the creation of the Caribbean Sea Frontier. Later chapters detail the troubled course of British-American cooperation as U.S. military commitments--and regional dominance--increased. Also described is the role of the Netherlands, with Britain and the United States, in the defense of the oil and bauxite reserves in the Dutch Caribbean territories, and the friction between Britain and the United States over French Caribbean possessions. The final chapters analyze strategic shifts occuring as a result of the war and influencing postwar settlements negotiated for the region.

Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence form the backbone of the Army's operating system. But while much attention has been given in the literature to the other three elements, Communications in the British Army during World War II have been widely ignored. This book rectifies the omission. It shows that failures in front line communications contributed to several of the set backs suffered by the Army but also that ultimate victory was only achieved after a successful communications system was in place. It explains how the outcome of the main campaigns in Europe and North Africa depended on communications, how the system operated and how it evolved from a relatively primitive and inadequately supplied state at Dunkirk to a generally effective system at the time of the Rhine crossings. Problems still occurred however, for example at infantry platoon level and famously with paratrooper communications at Arnhem, often simply due to the shortcomings of existing technology. The book concludes that it is only very recently that advances in technology have allowed those problems to be solved.

The cinema was the most popular form of entertainment during the Second World War. Film was a critically important medium for influencing opinion. Films, such as In Which We Serve and One of Our Aircraft is Missing, shaped the British people's perceptions of the conflict. British War Films, 1939-45 is an account of the feature films produced during the war, rather than government documentaries and official propaganda, making the book an important index of British morale and values at a time of desperate national crisis.

In "George C. Marshall: Servant of the American Nation," a talented cast of historians and social scientists provide fresh insights and perspectives into the exceptional life of a distinguished American soldier-statesman. Marshall's extraordinary career in the first half of the twentieth century paralleled the emergence of the United States as a global power. Indeed, this great servant leader contributed substantively to almost every important event and issue comprising that rise to power. The essays collected here are organized around the major roles assumed by Marshall over those five decades and provide an unusually balanced look at the key issues of the era. As a result, they also shed important light on the legacy of his enigmatic commander in chief, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Battle of Britain lasted for sixteen weeks during later 1940, yet this struggle for air supremacy was vital in thwarting Hitler's invasion threat. The Good Fight discusses wartime propaganda where "The Few," the RAF's fighter and bomber pilots, captivated the world through their combat prowess and valour. Projected through press, film, radio broadcasts and publications, this book assesses the constituencies, organisations, censorship and approaches deployed in exploiting this fortuitous opportunity, and the impact upon British morale. Charting its roots in the run up to war, it discusses the evolving propaganda coverage throughout the war years, and the post-war historiography.

As World War II and the Nazi assault on Europe ended, some 25,000 Jews--entire families in some instances--walked out of the forests of Eastern Europe. Based on numerous interviews with these survivors, "Fugitives of the Forest" tells their harrowing and heroic stories.

The Holocaust was the systematic murder of six million European Jews by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party. The horrors of the Holocaust have documented been many times. Even those that were not killed, mutilated, or starved in concentration camps were stripped of their citizenship and their identities. The Nazis did not stop there, though. Hitler, in his quest to build an empire, planned and executed the most extensive theft of art and cultural treasures in history. A group of art historians, museum curators, scholars, and others with an expertise in art accepted the enormous responsibility of traveling to the front lines of World War II in an effort to protect art before it could be stolen or recover the art that fell into the hands of the Nazis. Even more lent their expertise when the fighting ended, remaining in Europe for years after the war was over. They were called "Venus fixers" by the troops but have since come to be known as the Monuments Men. Acting on orders from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had the backing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, many of the Monuments Men - and women - put their lives on the line for art. By doing so, they preserved not just paintings, sculptures, and tapestries, but a significant portion of the culture that makes life worth living. As Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum in Russia, said, "Art belongs to humanity. Art is what makes us human." This book dives into the fascinating history of one of the greatest treasure hunts of all time HistoryCaps is an imprint of BookCaps Study Guides. With each book, a brief period of history is recapped. We publish a wide array of topics (from baseball and music to science and philosophy), so check our growing catalogue regularly to see our newest books.

This set of previously out-of-print books collects together a host of valuable research spanning the breadth of topics around the Second World War. Areas covered include the air war, land battles, generalship, dictatorship and appeasement, the use of atomic weapons, propaganda, conscription and conscientious objection, civilian evacuation, refugees, resistance under occupation, and much more besides.