The Nazi occupation of Europe of World War Two is acknowledged as a defining juncture and an important identity-building experience throughout contemporary Europe. Resistance is what 'saves' European societies from an otherwise chequered record of collaboration on the part of their economic, political, cultural and religious elites. Opposition took pride of place as a legitimizing device in the post-war order and has since become an indelible part of the collective consciousness. Yet there is one exception to this trend among previously occupied territories: the British Channel Islands. Collective identity construction in the islands still relies on the notion of 'orderly and correct relations' with the Germans, while talk of 'resistance' earns raised eyebrows. The general attitude to the many witnesses of conscience who existed in the islands remains ambiguous. This book conversely and expertly argues that there was in fact resistance against the Germans in the Channel Islands and is the first text to fully explore the complex relationship that existed between the Germans and the people of the only part of the British Isles to experience occupation.

The robbery and restitution of Jewish property are two inextricably linked social processes. It is not possible to understand the lawsuits and international agreements on the restoration of Jewish property of the late 1990s without examining what was robbed and by whom. In this volume distinguished historians first outline the mechanisms and scope of the European-wide program of plunder and then assess the effectiveness and historical implications of post-war restitution efforts. Everywhere the solution of legal and material problems was intertwined with changing national myths about the war and conflicting interpretations of justice. Even those countries that pursued extensive restitution programs using rigorous legal means were unable to compensate or fully comprehend the scale of Jewish loss. Especially in Eastern Europe, it was not until the collapse of communism that the concept of restoring some Jewish property rights even became a viable option. Integrating the abundance of new research on the material effects of the Holocaust and its aftermath, this comparative perspective examines the developments in Germany, Poland, Italy, France, Belgium, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

The Halbjuden of Hitler's Germany were half Christian and half Jewish but, like the rest of the Mischlinge (or "partial-Jews"), were far too Jewish in the eyes of the Nazis. Thus, while they were allowed for a time to coexist with the rest of German society, they were granted only the most marginal or menial jobs, restricted from marrying Aryans or even leading normal social lives, and sent eventually to forced-labor and concentration camps. More than 70,000 Germans were subjected to these restrictions and indignities, created and fostered by Hitler's morally bankrupt race laws, yet to this day few personal accounts of their experiences exist.

James Tent movingly recounts how these men and women from all over Germany and from all walks of life struggled to survive in an increasingly hostile society, even as their Jewish relatives were disappearing into the East. It draws on extensive interviews with twenty survivors, many of whom were teenagers when Hitler came to power, to show how "half Jews" coped with conditions on a day-to-day basis, and how the legacy of the hatred they suffered has forever lingered in their minds.

Tent provides gripping stories of life beneath the boot-heel of Nazi rule: a woman deemed unsuited for a career in nursing because the shape of her earlobes and breasts indicated she was not "racially suited," a man arrested for "race defilement" because he lived with an Aryan woman, and many others. Writing with a deep and abiding respect for his subjects, Tent shows how Nazi discrimination and persecution affected the lives of the Mischlinge beginning in 1933, and he tells how such treatment intensified through the later years of the war.

These testimonies offer rare insight into how Nazi persecution functioned at a very personal level. Tent's witnesses share experiences in school and problems in the workplace, where the best survival strategy was to find an unobtrusive niche in a nondescript job. They tell of obstacles to personal and romantic relationships. And they soberly remind us that by 1944 they too were rounded up for forced labor, certain to be the next victims of Nazi genocide.

"In the Shadow of the Holocaust" demonstrates the lengths to which the Nazis were willing to go in order to eradicate Judaism-a fanaticism that increased over time and even in the face of impending military defeat. These people mostly survived the Holocaust, yet they paid for their re-assimilation into German society by remaining silent in the face of haunting memories. This book breaks that silence and is a testament to human endurance under the most trying circumstances.

What was the role played by local police volunteers in the Holocaust? Using powerful eye-witness descriptions from the towns and villages of Belorussia and Ukraine, Martin Dean's new book reveals local policemen as hands-on collaborators of the Nazis. They brutally drove Jewish neighbors from their homes and guarded them closely on the way to their deaths. Some distinguished themselves as ruthless murders. Outnumbering German police manpower in these areas, the local police were the foot-soldiers of the Holocaust in the east.

The battle of Kursk was the last major German offensive on the Eastern Front. The battle began well for the Germans, but the Russians delayed them long enough for reserves to come forward. Soon the defenders outnumbered the attackers, and Hitler called off the attack. The Russian victory at Kursk resulted from a massive rebuilding of the Red Army in 1943, which included new unit organizations and weapons designed to counter the German Tiger and Panther tanks. The German defeat signalled the transfer of the initiative to the Russians and demonstrated to the Western Allies that the Soviet Union could defeat the Germans without a second front. Based on recently declassified Russian information and an analysis of captured German records, this book gives a detailed description of both the German and Soviet forces involved and evaluates the quality of the units on both sides.

..".a scholarly yet readable book...pioneering work" Journal of Jewish Studies

Based on numerous in-depth and personal interviews with members of three generations, this is the first comprehensive study of German-Jewish refugees who came to England in the 1930s. The author addresses questions such as perceptions of Germany and Britain and attitudes towards Judaism. On the basis of many case studies, the author shows how the refugees adjusted, often amazingly successfully, to their situation in Britain. While exploring the process of acculturation of the German-Jews in Britain, the author challenges received ideas about the process of Jewish assimilation in general, and that of the Jews in Germany in particular, and offers a new interpretation in the light of her own empirical data and of current anthropological theory.

Marion Berghahn, Independent Scholar and Publisher, studied American Studies, Romance Languages and Philosophy at the universities of Hamburg, Freiburg and Paris. These subjects, together with history, later on formed the basis of her scholarly publishing program.

Convinced before the onset of Operation "Barbarossa" in June 1941 of both the ease, with which the Red Army would be defeated and the likelihood that the Soviet Union would collapse, the Nazi regime envisaged a radical and far-reaching occupation policy which would result in the political, economic and racial reorganization of the occupied Soviet territories and bring about the deaths of 'x million people' through a conscious policy of starvation. This study traces the step-by-step development of high-level planning for the occupation policy in the Soviet territories over a twelve-month period and establishes the extent to which the various political and economic plans were compatible.

A graduate of the Universities of Huddersfield and Sheffield in the UK, Alex J. Kay obtained his doctorate in Modern and Contemporary History in 2005 from Berlin's Humboldt University, where he has also given courses on early modern British history. Based in Berlin, he is currently working on a new book on anti-Semitism in late Weimar parliamentary politics.

Nineteen months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt sent twelve "vice consuls" to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia on a classified assignment. Their objective? To prepare the groundwork for what eventually became Operation TORCH - the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa that repelled the Nazis and also enabled the liberation of Italy.The twelve Americans included an ex-Cartier jewel salesman and wine merchant from a patrician family; a madcap Harvard anthropologist; a Coca-Cola salesman and Paris playboy who ran with Ernest Hemingway and the Lost Generation crowd; a rather Elizabethan adventurer-cum-interpreter; a construction expert; a distinguished lawyer; some American ex-French Foreign Legionnaires and Paris bankers; and an Annapolis graduate and hero of WWI. These vice consuls were soon caught up in a web of espionage and treachery that included double-dealing mistresses, Gaullist and Vichy agents, and a homicidal French monk.Based on recently declassified foreign records, as well as the memoirs of Ridgeway Brewster Knight (one of the twelve "apostles"), FDR'S 12 Apostles is a fascinating account of international intrigue.Set in exotic locales from Paris to Casablanca to Tangier, the story takes us through the pivotal TORCH invasion and the eventual assassination of Vichy French leader Francois Darlan. Hal Vaughan's fast-paced narrative is a potent cocktail of heroic acts and bizarre twists and turns - involving Christians, Muslims, and Jews - in an arena of conspiracy and backstabbing. Hal Vaughan provides the first true look at the intricate and covert planning that planted the seeds of victory in the Mediterranean Theater.

This study explores the role of refugees in international relations by looking at the largest involuntary migration of Ukrainians in history. Using both Western and newly-available Soviet sources it sheds light on Grand Alliance policies towards World War II Ukrainian refugees. It demonstrates how the activities of this particular group of refugees had an impact on international refugee policy and provides insight into the origins of the Cold War.

This book provides students with an understanding of the motives behind the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the consequences of this action on Japan, on the United States, and on the outcome of World War II. This essential reference guide is devoted to one of the most important military events in American history: the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941, "the day of infamy." Distinguished military historian Spencer C. Tucker is the editor of this thorough study of the Japanese attack that contains reference entries as well as primary documents and oral histories describing the circumstances that led up to the attack, the event itself, and its immediate aftermath and consequences, thereby providing readers with the necessary context to understand all aspects of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Readers will understand why Japanese leaders decided to go to war with the United States, what they expected to accomplish in attacking Pearl Harbor, why this key American base was not better defended, and what the aftereffects of the attack were for the outcome of the war. Biographies on major players in the crisis such as Franklin Roosevelt, Chester Nimitz, Isoroku Yamamoto, and Hideki Tojo will provide insight into the individuals who played key roles in the events before, during, and after December 7, 1941. Addresses historical controversies such as whether Roosevelt knowingly allowed the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor in order to bring the United States into World War II and what the consequences of a third Japanese carrier strike might have been Includes primary source documents-including oral histories by participants in and victims of the attack-that help readers to better grasp the motivations behind the Japanese attack, the reasons why Pearl Harbor was not better able to resist, and what it was like to live through the attack itself Provides an ideal resource for high school and college students as well as interesting reading for general audiences seeking authoritative historical information on the Pearl Harbor attacks

Major General Maurice Rose (1899-1945), commander of 3rd Amored, First Army's legendary "Spearhead" division, was the highest-ranking American Jewish officer ever killed in battle, and the only individual casualty to spark a War Crimes Investigation. This, the first and only biography of this important World War II figure, tells the dramatic story of Rose's life--from his childhood as a son of a rabbi, through his experiences in World War I and in the U.S. cavalry, to his meteoric rise as America's answer to Rommel. In 1943, Rose negotiated and accepted the surrender of the German Army in Tunisia, the first large-scale surrender to an American force during World War II. At the Battle of Carentan in June 1944, he saved the 506th Parachute Infantry (of Band of Brothers fame), and might very well have saved the entire Normandy beachhead from a catastrophic German counterattack. His brilliant, daring, and aggressive defensive tactics during the Battle of the Bulge prevented an enemy breakthrough to the Meuse River and beyond, thereby frustrating the German advance. Based on original archival research and exclusive interviews, this biography shatters old myths and factual distortions, and offers a refreshingly inquisitive and critical perspective. Steven L. Ossad and Don R. Marsh reveal new insights into Rose's controversial death--was he killed because he was Jewish or because he went for his weapon?--and about the even more controversial investigations that followed. As compelling and extraordinary as the life that it describes, this biography pays long-overdue tribute to one of America's greatest heroes.

Raoul Wallenberg is widely remembered for his humanitarian activity on behalf of the Hungarian Jews in Budapest at the end of World War II, and known as the Swedish diplomat who disappeared into the Soviet Gulag in 1945. Today, Wallenberg's example is used to communicate humanitarian values and human rights in many democratic societies. His story incorporates a classical hero narrative which has survived the 'un-heroic' 20th century.
In 2008, there exist thirty-one Wallenberg monuments in twelve countries on five continents, from Hungary to Sweden, from Canada to Chile, from Australia to Russia. The rich diversity of the monuments invites to discuss the different concepts of Wallenberg and heroism as expressed in the artists' works. The art-historical focus of this interdisciplinary study makes it a valuable contribution to the discussion of personal monuments, as well as to the socio-historical research on the commemoration of Wallenberg and the concept of the hero.

On 7 November 1938, an impoverished seventeen-year-old Polish Jew living in Paris, obsessed with Nazi persecution of his family in Germany, brooding on revenge - and his own insignificance - bought a handgun, carried it on the Metro to the German Embassy in Paris and, never before having fired a weapon, shot down the first German diplomat he saw. When the official died two days later, Hitler and Goebbels used the event as their pretext for the state-sponsored wave of anti-Semitic violence and terror known as Kristallnacht, the pogrom that was the initiating event of the Holocaust. Overnight this obscure young man, Herschel Grynszpan, found himself world-famous, his face on front pages everywhere, and a pawn in the machinations of power. Instead of being executed, he found himself a privileged prisoner of the Gestapo while Hitler and Goebbels prepared a show-trial. The trial, planned to the last detail, was intended to prove that the Jews had started the Second World War. Alone in his cell, Herschel soon grasped how the Nazis planned to use him, and set out to wage a battle of wits against Hitler and Goebbels, knowing perfectly well that if he succeeded in stopping the trial, he would certainly be murdered. Until very recently, what really happened has remained hazy. Hitler's Scapegoat, based on the most recent research - including access to a heretofore untapped archive compiled by a Nuremberg rapporteur - tells Herschel's extraordinary story in full for the first time.

"Justice at Nuremberg" traces the history of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial held in 1946-47, as seen through the eyes of the Austrian bliogemigrblioge psychiatrist Leo Alexander. His investigations helped the United States to prosecute twenty German doctors and three administrators for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The legacy of Nuremberg was profound. In the Nuremberg code--a landmark in the history of modern medical ethics--the judges laid down, for the first time, international guidelines for permissible experiments on humans. One of those who helped to formulate the code was Alexander. "Justice at Nuremberg" provides a detailed insight into the origins of human rights in medical science and into the changing role of international law, ethics and politics.

Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin offers a novel approach to the memorial and its study through the focus on performances. Based on extensive ethnographic research, and drawing on dramaturgic theory, memory studies and theories of the public sphere, the book offers a fresh theorization of memorial experience by analyzing interaction between guides, memorial workers and visitors. Moving away from models of postmemory and post trauma approaches, the book recognizes the precariousness and variation of memory work done at the memorial through the ways visitors engages with the act of remembrance rather than with its object, namely the history of Jewish persecution and the Holocaust. This engagement explores how visitors present and perform their 'moral career' at the site, whose codes have been shaped by knowledge about and visits in this and other sites of Holocaust remembrance.

"The night before, a Japanese seaplane under cover of darkness, landed on the other side of the harbor - unnoticed. In the early morning, he took off and dove at a liberty ship, a short distance off Sweetbrier's port bow. The area wasn't even alerted - not a single shot was fired. He just came over the top of the mountain, picked out the liberty ship and dove right into it. Men were killed and damage was done. Our lookouts saw it all; it was a single float seaplane."

Radio Tokyo summarizing multiple raids on this date, claimed that they had sunk: one battleship, two cruisers, and two transports in this harbor - it didn't happen.Thus ended a busy month of almost daily air raids. Frequently there were multiple raids each day and night interrupting our scheduled navigational work. During this month of May 1945 there were 68 GQs representing 73 hours and 43 minutes at battle stations.

Includes chapters on devastating enemy attacks at Okinawa on LST 808 and battleship Pennsylvania.

Lee Heide's wartime adventures read like fiction but they are factual, brought to life by skillful characterization and dialogue. Raised in Vancouver, he was trained as a navigator and flew overseas in a Hudson aircraft in June, 1941. In England he joined an RAF crew for training on Beaufort torpedo bombers. Sent to Malta, he survived a year of the blitz on that island, with heavy losses to his squadron. Upon converting to Beaufighters he was twice posted as missing. The first time, he and his pilot were washed ashore, after five days in a dinghy, on enemy-held Elba whence they escaped by boat to Corsica. The second time his aircraft was shot up in the Aegean and forced to land in Turkey where he was interned. A meticulous recorder, Heide's descriptions of places and events in the Middle East are informative and entertaining. The title Whispering Death was the name given by the Germans to the Beaufighter--one of the outstanding attack aircraft of the war. Readers will not lightly put down this autobiography
Review
from Canadian Military History Book Review Supplement, Autumn 2000
This is another small-press memoir that brings us a dimension of war that is not widely known. The author, a Vancouver native, flew overseas in a Hudson bomber in 1941 and then, after further training in England, was posted to the Middle East, where he flew as a navigator on Beaufort and Beaufighter torpedo bombers over the Mediterranean (the title refers to the nickname given to the Beaufighter). He spent a year operating from Malta and, after conversion to Beaufighters, survived two forced landings. The first, in the sea, resulted in a five-day ordeal before he and his pilot washed ashore onthe island of Elba, from which they escaped to Corsica. This was followed by instructional duties on Cyprus, which lasted only until a pilot friend convinced him that it was better to be killed on operations than be killed by a student pilot. Heide and his pilot were posted to an operational squadron on Tobruk, and then went through a second ditching. On this occasion, they managed to reach land, but it was neutral Turkey and they were interned (albeit in quite pleasant conditions) for a short period of time before returning to the squadron. The war in the desert wound up in late 1944, and Heide was back in Canada, newly demobilized and with a DFC and a British wife, by the spring of 1945. A keen observer, Heide spins a good tale; Whispering Death is an informative and entertaining book with lots of good anecdotes and local colour.

This defining work on Hitler's elite fanatical boy soldiers details the creation and training of these teenage warriors and their baptism of fire in the Normandy campaign in World War II. Written by the division's former chief of staff, Volume 1 details all aspects of the division's history with a balanced mix of tactical and strategic accounts.