A vivid recount of the little known exploits of 17 courageous Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers in Italy during World War II In this inspiring new study of the SOE and Italian Resistance, 17 extraordinary stories of individual SOE officers illustrate the many and varied tasks of SOE missions throughout the different regions of Italy from 1943-1945. Through their gallantry, ingenuity, and determination, a small handful of SOE missions were able to arm and inspire thousands of Italians to fight the occupying German army after 1943 and in the process give invaluable support to the advancing Allied armies as they pushed north towards Austria.

This volume presents a study of the Second World War as a period of crisis which brought about significant changes in the relationship between business and the state. The requirements of the war economy increased the power of the state but also showed the limits of such power. The comparative approach of this volume permits the exploration of such questions as the extent to which corporatist forms of cooperation between business and the state were created in wartime conditions; the effectiveness of the control exerted by such institutions; how far conditions of crisis affected the forms of economic organisation that emerged; and the long-term consequences of the emergence of new forms of economic organisation.

This book explores the role of mayors in navigating the realities of living and governing under Nazi occupation. In Western Europe under Nazi occupation, mayors of villages and cities were forced into strategic cooperation with the occupier. Mayors had to provide good governance, mediate between occupier and populations, maintain personal legitimacy, and build local consensus. However, as national systems underwent authoritarian reform and collaborationists infiltrated administrations, local governments were gradually turned into instruments of Nazi control and repression. Nico Wouters uses rich new archival data to compare the realities of local government in three countries. Looking at topics such as food supply, public order and safety, forced labour, the repression of resistance, the persecution of the Jews and post-war purges, this book redefines our knowledge of collaboration, resistance and accommodation during Nazi occupation.

This volume analyzes the effects of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 on the Baltic States and Eastern Europe. This Nazi-Soviet non-aggression treaty catapulted into worldwide consciousness this summer as a 370-mile human Freedom chain denied its legitimacy. Stretching across Baltic nation-states, the chain's human links proclaimed the password Freedom. Secret protocols contained in this Treaty led to fifty years of Soviet occupation. In the atmosphere of glasnost and peristroika, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians now demand restoration of their human and national rights and decolonization. While the news media focuses upon these events, this volume details the historical causes of the Treaty, its contemporary consequences, and its present day challenge.

With the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia put aside their ideological difference and practiced expedient politics. Eastern Europe and the Baltic States were partitioned into German and Russian spheres of influence. This fifty year old pact continues to effect the Baltic States. It focuses our attention sharply on the consequences of secret deals made without regard to national and human rights. On the frontline of Soviet defense, the Baltic challenge to the Soviet Union has worldwide implications. After decades of denying their existence, the Soviet Union in August, 1989, finally admitted that the secret protocols of 1939 were an historical fact. However, they continued to deny that the protocols had any bearing on the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union. As of this writing, it seems evident that notwithstanding the era of glasnost, the Soviet government still lacks the determination to state the truth: that the incorporation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was an act of aggression, carried out against the will of sovereign peoples.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface.

"This fascinating account, told in relentless detail, deserves a wide readership."--"Choice"

International Acclaim: "Thomas has written a quite enchanting book, magnificently researched, and cleverly and wittily presented. . . . I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Quite outstanding."
--"The Irish Times"

"[This] book is mesmerizing and is an unputdownable and brilliantly researched page-turner. An important and riveting study in social history."
--"The Sunday Times"

"Donald Thomas has chronicled one of the last untold stories of the war, and he does so with scholarship as well as humor."
--"The Spectator"

"Beautifully written, utterly compelling: almost without fault in every respect."
--"The Literary Review"

While the Second World War produced numerous acts of self-sacrifice, it also made many people rich. The criminal activities of the British underworld that extended from the civilian population right through to the armed forces constitute one of the great untold stories of the war. The Blitz of 1940 may have made a nation of heroes, but in the shadows the shelter gangs and looters prowled.

Acclaimed author Donald Thomas draws on extensive archival material for these tales of profiteering. He retells how between 1940 and 1941 a Liverpool ship repairer cheated the government of the modern equivalent of $30 million, while $120 million a month was looted from relief supplies at the port of Trieste. Professional gangs raided British government offices for ration books, and underground presses counterfeited gasoline and clothing coupons by the tens of thousands. Illegal food supplies threatened the nation'shealth--a consignment of black market sausages in Hackney contained tuberculous meat, while the industrial alcohol, or "hooch," served to pilots in London's West End clubs could produce blindness and brain damage.

The Enemy Within also recounts colossal theft within the army. Vehicles would arrive at front line railheads stripped of tools, spare parts, and removable components, and whole consignments of cigarettes and razor blades disappeared.

In addition to these stories, The Enemy Within includes revealing photos of known law-breakers, victims, and illegal transactions. The facts Thomas uncovers are often so preposterous that in a novel they would seem unbelievable. These are the extraordinary and often absurd stories of less-than-heroic Britons.

The former US Army captain Walter I. Farmer was stationed with the American Forces in Germany after WW II. In 1945, he worked hard to protect important European and German cultural heritage artifacts, such as paintings and sculptures, from being transported to the United States. Together with other officers of the U.S. Army, who took on this task, Farmer wrote the "Wiesbadener Manifest" which resulted in the artifacts remaining in Germany and they can still be seen in German museums today. In 1996, Farmer was awarded the "Bundesverdienstkreuz" for his outstanding work. Besides being a personal account, this autobiography presents an important document of present-day history. It is completed by an extensive list of documents and archive material.

This book records the World War II experiences of Captain Elmer E. Haynes, who flew low-altitude night radar strikes against Japanese shipping in the South China Sea, and daylight raids against various enemy land based installations in eastern and central China. Haynes flew secretly developed B-24 Liberator bombers that were equipped with radar which had been integrated with the Norden bombsight for night missions. These B-24's operated with the 14th Air Force--General Chennault's Flying Tigers. The bombing attacks were so accurate and successful that, in a little over a year, Haynes and his fellow pilots had sunk approximately a million tons of Japanese shipping. Due to the Top Secret classification of this equipment, the story of the radar B-24's, operating with the Flying Tigers, has never before been told.

The war in the Pacific was definitely brought to a quicker end by the devastating destruction caused by the sinking of such a tremendous number of Japanese merchant and naval vessels in the South China Sea. In its three years of operation, the 14th Air Force was credited with sinking two and a half million tons of enemy shipping. The radar-equipped B-24's were also used on reconnaissance missions--locating Japanese convoys for U.S. naval ships and submarines. Military historians, and anyone interested in World War II, will find this story highly informative, since it discloses never before published facts about the development of radar systems by the United States. This same radar technique was used by B-17's during the saturation night bombing raids over Germany.

During the Second World War, British and Imperial forces captured more than half a million Italian soldiers, sailors and airmen. Although a symbol of military success, these prisoners created a multitude of problems for the authorities throughout the war. This book looks at how the British addressed these problems and turned liabilities into assets by using the Italians as a labor force, a source of military intelligence and as a political warfare tool before their final repatriation in 1946-47.

This book investigates a Jewish orientation to film culture in interwar Britain. It explores how pleasure, politics and communal solidarity intermingled in the cinemas of Jewish neighbourhoods, and how film was seen as a vessel through which Jewish communal concerns might be carried to a wider public. Addressing an array of related topics, this volume examines the lived expressive cultures of cinemas in Jewish areas and the ethnically specific films consumed within these sites; the reception of film stars as representations of a Jewish social body; and how an antisemitic canard that understood the cinema as a Jewish monopoly complicated its use as a base for anti-fascist activity. In shedding light on an unexplored aspect of British film reception and exhibition, Toffell provides a unique insight into the making of the modern city by migrant communities. The title will be of use to anyone interested in Britain's interwar leisure landscape, the Jewish presence in modernity, and a cinema studies sensitised to the everyday experience of audiences.

Hollywood's South Seas and the Pacific War explores the expectations, experiences, and reactions of Allied servicemen and women who served in the wartime Pacific. Viewing the South Pacific through the lens of Hollywood's South Seas, Americans and their Allies expected to find glamorous women who resembled the famous 'sarong girl, ' Dorothy Lamour. But Dorothy was nowhere to be seen. Despite those disappointments popular images proved resilient, and at war's end the 'old' South Seas re-emerged almost unscathed. Based on extensive archival research, Hollywood's South Seas and the Pacific War explores the intersections between military experiences and cultural history.

The Nazis put a remarkable amount of effort into anti-Semitic propaganda, intending to bring ordinary Germans around to the destructive ideology of the Nazi party. Julius Streicher (1885-1946) spearheaded many of these efforts, publishing anti-Semitic articles and cartoons in his weekly newspaper, Der Sturmer, the most widely read paper in the Third Reich. Streicher won the close personal friendship of Hitler and Himmler, and drew deserved attacks from the world press. Bytwerk's biography examines Streicher's use of propaganda techniques, and the hate literature towards Jews that continued to appear after his death, bearing his influence.

Before the outbreak of WWII, French fashion represented the very pinnacle of style, and French women the epitome of chic. At home and abroad, couturiers' wealthy clients eagerly awaited the latest collections, and design houses throughout the world looked to Paris for inspiration. Unparalleled for glamour and elegance, all things French were noted and emulated - and especially French fashion.One morning in September 1939, into this idyllic world of haute couture and Cafe society came the shattering experience of war, followed by the German Occupation. French women, determined not to give way to the inevitable austerities, sought innovation: hats made from blotting paper or newspapers - the latter signalling political allegiances - and blouses made out of parachute silk, often obtained through dubious means. Not only did life go on, but creativity flourished - culottes, which enabled stylish bicycle journeys, became the vogue, and couturiers capitalized on deprivation with wit - dubbing designs 'Coal' and 'Black Coffee', or naming an entire collection after Metro stops.Fashion under the Occupation provides the only in-depth history of these blackest years in French history, long overlooked by fashion history because of the impoverished industry and deprivations that affected design. Widely acknowledged as the authoritative work on fashion during this period, it is available in English for the first time and will be essential reading for anyone interested in fashion, French cultural history, and particularly the German Occupation of France.

The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewryis a collection of eyewitness testimonies, letters, diaries, affidavits, and other documents on the activities of the Nazis against Jews in the camps, ghettoes, and towns of Eastern Europe. Arguably, the only apt comparism is to The Gulag Archipelago of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This definitive edition of The Black Book, including for the first time materials omitted from previous editions, is a major addition to the literature on the Holocaust. It will be of particular interest to students, teachers, and scholars of the Holocaust and those interested in the history of Europe.

By the end of 1942, 1.4 million Jews had been killed by the Einsatzgruppen that followed the German army eastward; by the end of the war, nearly two million had been murdered in Russia and Eastern Europe. Of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, about one-third fell in the territories of the USSR. The single most important text documenting that slaughter is The Black Book, compiled by two renowned Russian authors Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman. Until now, The Black Book was only available in English in truncated editions. Because of its profound significance, this new and definitive English translation of The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry is a major literary and intellectual event.

From the time of the outbreak of the war, Ehrenburg and Grossman collected the eyewitness testimonies that went into The Black Book. As early as 1943 they were planning its publication; the first edition appeared in 1944. During the years immediately after the war, Grossman assisted Ehrenburg in compiling additional materials for a second edition, which appeared in 1946 (in English as well as Russian).

Since the fall of the Soviet regime, Irina Ehrenburg, the daughter of Ilya Ehrenburg, has recovered the lost portions of the manuscript sent to Yad Vashem. The texts recovered by Ms. Ehrenburg include numerous documents that had been censored from the original manuscript, as well as items that had been hidden by the Grossman family. In addition, she verified and, where appropriate, corrected the accuracy of documents that had already appeared in earlier editions of The Black Book.

This book, coinciding with the sixtieth anniversary of the Liberation of France, takes a unique approach to the events of 1944, by seeing them as shared experiences which brought ordinary Anglo-Americans and French people into contact with each other in a variety of different communities. The book looks at the Liberation through 5 case-studies: Normandy, Cherbourg, Provence, the Pyrbliogenbliogees-Orientales and Reims, and uses the words of participants at the time to describe the developing relationship between Liberators and Liberated.

Using the framework of genocide, this volume analyzes the patterns of persecution of the Roma in Nazi-dominated Europe. Detailed case studies of France, Austria, Romania, Croatia, Ukraine, and Russia generate a critical mass of evidence that indicates criminal intent on the part of the Nazi regime to destroy the Roma as a distinct group. Other chapters examine the failure of the West German State to deliver justice, the Romani collective memory of the genocide, and the current political and historical debates. As this revealing volume shows, however inconsistent or geographically limited, over time, the mass murder acquired a systematic character and came to include ever larger segments of the Romani population regardless of the social status of individual members of the community.