France's liberation was expected to trigger a decisive break both with the Vichy regime and with the pre-war Third Republic. What happened, over three crucial years (1944-47), was an untidy patchwork of unplanned continuities and false starts - along with fresh departures that defined France's future for the next half-century. Prepared by an international team of specialists, "The Uncertain Foundation" analyses a complex process of regime change, economic renewal, social transformation, and adjustment to a fast-evolving world.

One of the most remarkable stories in the history of Special Forces' operations - Daily Express In the bleak moments after defeat on mainland Europe in winter 1939, Winston Churchill knew that Britain had to strike back hard. So Britain's wartime leader called for the lightning development of a completely new kind of warfare, recruiting a band of eccentric free-thinking warriors to become the first 'deniable' secret operatives to strike behind enemy lines, offering these volunteers nothing but the potential for glory and all-but-certain death. Churchill's Secret Warriors tells the story of the daring victories for this small force of 'freelance pirates', undertaking devastatingly effective missions against the Nazis, often dressed in enemy uniforms and with enemy kit, breaking all previously held rules of warfare. Master storyteller Damien Lewis brings the adventures of the secret unit to life, weaving together the stories of the soldiers' brotherhood in this compelling narrative, from the unit's earliest missions to the death of their leader just weeks before the end of the war.

This work, based on archival research, contests the assumptions that Romania remained pro-Western in the late 1930s and only joined the Axis as a result of Western negligence and German pressure. Instead, Germany was drawn by Romanian politicians into political and economic cooperation with Bucharest. In the event, this proved Romania's undoing. Let down by her German protector, she was forced to cede territory to the Soviet Union, Hungary and Bulgaria. Subsequently, Romania was allowed into the alliance she sought with Germany.

Adolf Eichmann was head of Gestapo Division IV-B4, the Third Reich's notorious Security Service, and he was responsible for implementing the "Final Solution" of the European Jews in the Greater German Reich. Though arrested at the end of the war by the U.S. army, Eichmann succeeded in escaping from U.S. custody in 1946 and lived unnoticed in Germany and Austria until 1950, when he travelled to Argentina. While living in Buenos Aires, Eichmann produced a series of tape recordings, and hand written notes, giving a very open and incriminating account of his role in the Final Solution, and Eichmann declares that this is indeed the only testimony that he wishes to be considered as genuine and not dictated under duress. In 1960 the Israeli Intelligence Service Mossad, succeeded in tracing Eichmann to Argentina. They captured him, and on May 21 he was flown to Israel, where he was tried by the Israeli Court in 1961, found guilty and hanged on May 31, 1962. After his courtroom testimony in Israel, in August 1961, Eichmann wrote an additional testimony that he called "False Gods." The English translation of "False Gods," is also published by Black House Publishing, and is a companion to this volume. This book provides an incriminating account of Eichmann's role in the wholesale murder of the Jews in Europe, and establishes the scope of the anti-Jewish measures undertaken in the Third Reich and the gradual development of these measures from emigration to concentration to large-scale murder. The reader of Eichmann's memoirs will thus obtain not only a vivid impression of the extensive police operations of the Third Reich but also a glimpse into the ideological and political motivations of these actions, motivations that were perhaps not fully shared by Eichmann himself.

This volume begins with an investigation of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. It draws upon eye-witness German accounts of what occurred, and supplements these with German archival and detailed Soviet materials. The Soviet government has released extensive amounts of formerly classified archival materials from the period. This material has been incorporated into the maps and text.

This work uses Russian archival and previously classified secondary sources to document the experience of the Red Army in conflict with Finland. Van Dyke examines the diplomatic, organizational and social aspects of the Soviet strategic culture by first exploring the Leninist interpretation of violence in international relations, and how this legacy influenced Stalin in his use of diplomacy and threat of force to enhance the Soviet Union's forward defence and to address the Baltic problem in 1939. He documents the Red Army's poor battlefield performances and looks at how it relearned the techniques lost during Stalin's purge in the late 1930s. The book examines the Soviet high command's post-war evaluation of the lessons learned, the debates of the re-professionalization of the officer corps and the effectiveness of the unified military doctrine.

To the British in 1945 the images of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp said everything necessary to illustrate and prove the extent of Nazi barbarity, yet the grim newsreel footage and radio reports did not tell the whole story. Over the following decades these potent representations became encrusted with myths and meanings that distorted the actuality of Belsen. Fifty years after the liberation of the camp, scholars and eyewitnesses can finally explore the extraordinary history of the camp, the experiences of the inmates and the work of the liberators. This volume presents the most authoritative recent scholarship on Belsen by British, American, German, French and Israeli historians. Drawing on documentary and oral sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Dutch and French, often for the first time, it challenges many stereotypes about the camp, and reinstates the groups hitherto marginalised or ignored in accounts of the camp and its liberation.

To the British in 1945 the images of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp said everything necessary to illustrate and prove the extent of Nazi barbarity, yet the grim newsreel footage and radio reports did not tell the whole story. Over the following decades these potent representations became encrusted with myths and meanings that distorted the actuality of Belsen. Fifty years after the liberation of the camp, scholars and eyewitnesses can finally explore the extraordinary history of the camp, the experiences of the inmates and the work of the liberators. This volume presents the most authoritative recent scholarship on Belsen by British, American, German, French and Israeli historians. Drawing on documentary and oral sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Dutch and French, often for the first time, it challenges many stereotypes about the camp, and reinstates the groups hitherto marginalised or ignored in accounts of the camp and its liberation.

Tracing the development of the fortifications in Europe from the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to the twentieth century, this is the first comprehensive book in English on the forts of the Maginot Line, German espionage, and the German sieges during the 1940 campaign. It analyzes the reasons why the French opted for this type of defensive system, and explains how the Maginot Line presented the French Army with opportunities (mostly wasted) to regroup and mount an effective defense. Shrouded in media myth for 40 years, this study demonstrates both how the media created the myth and the truth behind the myth of the Maginot Line. At the time reporters wildly speculated about these fortifications, German intelligence agents were busy collecting data. Finally, this book relates the heroic battles waged by the forts, large and small: the tragic fall of La Ferte, the surrender of other DEGREESIpetits ouvrages DEGREESR after prolonged and fierce fighting, the triumphant resistance of the larger forts even in the face of the most savage artillery pounding, and the unqualified victory of the Little Maginot Line over invading Italian forces.

Strategic plans invariably differ from the reality of war. The American experience in the Second World War was no exception. This volume offers an understanding of the gap between American plans and what actually happened. A variety of factors including coalition politics, inter-service disputes, disagreements between field commanders and Washington headquarters, logistical constraints, and the initiatives and reactions of the enemy combined in myriad forms to produce a conflict that was very different from original strategic expectations.

This book discusses the issues underlying contemporary Holocaust fiction. Using Gillian Rose's theory of Holocaust piety, it argues that, rather than enhancing our understanding of the Holocaust, contemporary fiction has instead become overly focused on gratuitous representations of bodies in pain. The book begins by discussing the locations and imagery which have come to define our understanding of the Holocaust, before then highlighting how this gradual simplification has led to an increasing sense of emotional distance from the historical past. Holocaust fiction, the book argues, attempts to close this emotional and temporal distance by creating an emotional connection to bodies in pain. Using different concepts relating to embodied experience - from Sonia Kruks' notion of feeling-with to Alison Landsberg's prosthetic memory - the book analyses several key examples of Holocaust literature and film to establish whether fiction still possesses the capacity to approach the Holocaust impiously.

Black Tulip is the dramatic story of history's top fighter ace, Luftwaffe pilot Erich Hartmann. It's also the story of how his service under Hitler was simplified and elevated to Western mythology during the Cold War. Over 1,404 wartime missions, Hartmann claimed a staggering 352 airborne kills, and his career contains all the dramas you would expect. There were the frostbitten fighter sweeps over the Eastern Front, drunken forays to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, a decade of imprisonment in the wretched Soviet POW camps, and further military service during the Cold War that ended with conflict and angst. Just when Hartmann’s second career was faltering, he was adopted by a network of writers and commentators personally invested in his welfare and reputation. These men, mostly Americans, published elaborate, celebratory stories about Hartmann and his elite fraternity of Luftwaffe pilots. With each dogfight tale put into print, Hartmann’s legacy became loftier and more secure, and his complicated service in support of Nazism faded away. A simplified, one-dimensional account of his life – devoid of the harder questions about allegiance and service under Hitler – has gone unchallenged for almost a generation. Black Tulip locates the ambiguous truth about Hartmann and so much of the German Wehrmacht in general: that many of these men were neither full-blown Nazis nor impeccable knights. They were complex, contradictory, and elusive. This book portrays a complex human rather than the heroic caricature we’re used to, and it argues that the tidy, polished hero stories we’ve inherited about men like Hartmann say as much about those who've crafted them as they do about the heroes themselves.

This book provides a penetrating look into U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's strategy to bait Adolf Hitler into declaring war on America in order to defeat Germany militarily, thus preventing the Nazis from developing the atomic bomb. In late 1939, President Roosevelt learned that Hitler was attempting to develop an atomic bomb to use against the United States. The president responded by directing his own scientific community to develop an atomic bomb and began making plans to go to war with Germany. However, he was hampered by public opinion, with 80 percent of the American people against U.S. involvement in another ground war in Europe. Roosevelt seized an opportunity in 1940, when Japan and Nazi Germany formed a military alliance. To bait Germany into war, FDR shut down Japan's war-making economy, prompting Tokyo to attack Pearl Harbor. A few days later, Hitler declared war on America. Using declassified documents, this book shows how Pearl Harbor was not about Japan; it was about the United States going to war with Germany. It reveals how the U.S. Navy's intelligence gathering system could break virtually any Japanese naval code, but Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, was kept in the dark about the impending Pearl Harbor attack by his own government. Shows how Roosevelt had the courage and insight to see the threat that a Nazi atomic bomb posed to the United States and outlines his strategy to bait Germany into declaring war on America Explains how Japan's Bushido Code, which demands "death before dishonor," influenced Tokyo's decision to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor Demonstrates how the U.S. Navy's intelligence gathering system was second to none in terms of code breaking and locating the Imperial Japanese Navy's warships Uses declassified top-secret documents and other primary sources to prove that Roosevelt could have prevented the Pearl Harbor attack

What was the relationship between ordinary Germans and Hitler's government? Why did such a dreadful political system find any popular support at all? Who was brave enough to defy the laws of the Third Reich? This book examines decisions made by different social groups to resist or conform to the Nazi regime. Using accessible language, and drawing on the full range of sources available to historians, Martyn Housden adopts a thematic approach to the subject. He considers, for example, why church-goers failed to reject decisively Hitler's atheistic political movement; what impact the persecution of Germany's Jewish citizens had on the everyday lives of other Germans; why the Hitler Youth held such appeal for young people.

Examining wars from the allied victory in World War II to the conflict in Viet Nam, and finally to the operations in the Gulf and Kosovo, this book presents a comprehensive look at the evolution of strategic air attack theory and doctrine over the years.

When Erwin Rommel died--by forced suicide at Hitler's command--he left behind in various ingenious hiding places the papers that recorded the story of his dramatic career and the exact details of his masterly campaigns. It was his custom to dictate each evening a running narrative of the day's events and, after each battle, to summarize its course and the lessons to be learned from it. He wrote, almost daily, intimate and outspoken letters to his wife in which his private feelings and--after the tide had turned--forebodings found expression. To this is added by Rommel's son Manfred the story of the field marshall's last weeks and the final day when he was given the choice of an honorable suicide or an ignominious trial for treason. An engrossing human document and a rare look at the mind of the "Desert Fox," "The Rommel Papers" throws an interesting light on the Axis alliance and on the inner workings of Hitler's high command.

In 1942, the United States War Department distributed a handbook to American servicemen that advised them on the peculiarities of the "British, their country, and their ways."

Over sixty years later, this newly published reproduction from the rich archives of the Bodleian Library offers a fascinating glimpse into American military preparations for World War II. The guide was intended to alleviate the culture shock for soldiers taking their first trip to Great Britain, or, for that matter, abroad. The handbook is punctuated with endearingly nostalgic advice and refreshingly candid quips such as: "The British don't know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don't know how to make a good cup of tea. It's an even swap."

By turns hilarious and poignant, many observations featured in the handbook remain relevant even today. Reproduced in a style reminiscent of the era, "Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain" is a powerfully evocative war-time memento that offers a unique perspective on the longstanding American-British relationship and reveals amusingly incisive American perceptions of the British character and country.

The Battle of the Bulge was the "last hurrah" for the German Army on the Western Front. With the help of various unpublished sources, Samuel Mitcham sets out to tell the story of that battle and of the Ardennes Offensive from the German point of view. The greatest military disaster the United States suffered in the European Theater of Operations in World War II occurred in the Ardennes Offensive, when most of the U.S. 106th Infantry Division was destroyed in the Schnee Eifel (Snow Mountains). This defeat was not inflicted by the vaulted panzer troops, the elite paratroopers, the hardened SS men, or Skorzeny's commandos. It was administered by a mediocre and unheralded unit-the 18th Volksgrenadier Division. Mitcham covers the Battle of the Schnee Eifel from the German point of view in greater depth than any book has ever done, using unpublished German after-action reports and manuscripts, especially those of Lieutenant Colonel Dietrich Moll, the chief of operations of the 18th Volksgrenadier. Similar unpublished works, as well as the papers of Theodor-Friedrich von Stauffenberg, contribute to a unique account of the Battle of the Bulge. Readers will find the organizational structure of Panzers in Winter different from that of other works on the topic. Mitcham uses the first two chapters to set the stage for the offensive and details the opening day in Chapter Three. Thereafter, the battle is discussed by sector, from north to center to south. This approach allows general readers to achieve a better feel for the engagement overall. Final chapters cover the clearing of the bulge and the lives and careers of the major participants.

1991 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, an event which plunged a basically self-absorbed United States directly into the world's worst conflagration. For years, the United States, which had become a Pacific power almost simultaneously with Japan at the turn of the century, mistrusted Tokyo's intentions in the Far East. Off the international stage, most Americans either ignored Japan or failed to understand the dynamics of a millenium-old culture in the throes of modernization. The almost orderly manner in which U.S.-Japanese relations fell terminally ill in 1941 continues to provide a textbook lesson for those who would work to avoid future catastrophies. In this first book-length, annotated bibliography, Smith provides more than 1,500 citations from eleven languages. Not only is the published literature examined, but care has been taken to cite the main repositories in the United States and abroad holding data necessary for the ongoing reinterpretation of the beginning of the War in the Pacific. The published literature cited covers virtually all factors surrounding the attack and its 1941 background: economic, political, diplomatic, racial, biographical, planning, intelligence, operations, and hardware. Access is augmented by author and name indexes; the latter is keyed to specific personnel and vessels. While aimed primarily at students and scholars, this volume will be useful to teachers, journalists, policymakers, and all concerned with military studies and World War II.