This book looks at WWII from a largely British perspective, based upon approximately 350 photographs from the archives of Mirrorpix. It takes a look at the legacies of the war, including the establishment of the United Nations and the European Union. The Second World War was the deadliest conflict in human history. The Second World War broke out in Europe in 1939 and spread rapidly around the globe, involving most of the world's nations and all of the great powers. The most widespread war in history, the Second World War involved more than 100 million people who served in military units. Moreover, the major participants adopted a state of 'total war' whereby the nation's entire economic, industrial and scientific capabilities were dedicated to the war effort, removing the distinction between military and civilian resources. It was the deadliest conflict in human history. Legacies of the war include the establishment of the United Nations and the European Union to encourage international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. This book looks at the Second World War from a largely British perspective, based on approximately 350 photographs from the archives of "Mirrorpix".

This book argues that American strategists in the Joint Chiefs of Staff were keenly aware of the inseparability of political and military aspects of strategy in the fight against Japan in World War II. They understood that war not only has political sources, it also has political purposes that establish the war's objectives and help to define the nature of the peace to follow. They understood that policy was the 'guiding intelligence' for war, in Clausewitzian terms, and that to attempt to approach strategic problems was nonsensical.

This collection by leading British and American scholars on twentieth century international history covers the strategy, diplomacy and intelligence of the Anglo-American-Soviet alliance during the Second World War. It includes the evolution of allied war aims in both the European and Pacific theatres, the policies surrounding the development and use of the atomic bomb and the evolution of the international intelligence community. It also considers the origins and consequences of inter-allied economic relations as they emerged during the war and the personal relationship between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

First published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The suffering of the Jewish people during WWII has been well documented, but be have heard little about the lives of others during the war. Anna was an ordinary citizen growing up in prewar Poland. She graduated from a teaching seminary and was married shortly thereafter. The bliss of married life ended August 1939 when Polish troops requested that her husband report to the local armory immediately. She would not see him again for nine years. By early September bombs began dropping and food was scarce for her and her two-year-old son. Russian troops soon invaded and travel was restricted. Farmers were not allowed to bring their goods to market. Anna barely escaped getting sent to Siberia. Then the Germans became the occupiers and Anna for the first time became involved with the Polish Underground. She gets work at a German prison, but often cannot find bread to buy and she must live with the atrocities that are committed around her. The tide turns and the Russians pushed the Germans West and she must escape before they find out that she worked for the Germans. Finally the War ends but Poland is still not free.

The Battle of Britain has held an enchanted place in British popular history and memory throughout the modern era. Its transition from history to heritage since 1965 confirms that the 1940 narrative shaped by the State has been sustained by historians, the media, popular culture, and through non-governmental heritage sites, often with financing from the National Lottery Heritage Lottery Fund. Garry Campion evaluates the Battle's revered place in British society and its influence on national identity, considering its historiography and revisionism; the postwar lives of the Few, their leaders and memorialization; its depictions on screen and in commercial products; the RAF Museum's Battle of Britain Hall; third-sector heritage attractions; and finally, fighter airfields, including RAF Hawkinge as a case study. A follow-up to Campion's The Battle of Britain, 1945-1965 (Palgrave, 2015), this book offers an engaging, accessible study of the Battle's afterlives in scholarship, memorialization, and popular culture.

This powerful study offers a vivid and often disturbing account of the Italian army's violent occupation of Slovenia during World War II. Beginning with the decision of the Fascist regime to annex Slovenia as an Italian province in 1941, it moves from the Fascist's naive attempts to Italianize the population, through local resistance and brutal reaction against civilians, to the army's spectacular tactical and organizational failures and its ultimate collapse following Italy's defection from the Axis in 1943. It thus restores an often forgotten, frequently misunderstood chapter of the savage history of World War II.

The international bestselling author returns with an exploration of one of the grandest obsessions of the twentieth century

'The Bomber Mafia is a case study in how dreams go awry. When some shiny new idea drops from the heavens, it does not land softly in our laps. It lands hard, on the ground, and shatters.'

In the years before the Second World War, in a sleepy air force base in central Alabama, a small group of renegade pilots put forth a radical idea. What if we made bombing so accurate that wars could be fought entirely from the air? What if we could make the brutal clashes between armies on the ground a thing of the past?

This book tells the story of what happened when that dream was put to the test. The Bomber Mafia follows the stories of a reclusive Dutch genius and his homemade computer, Winston Churchill's forbidding best friend, a team of pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard, a brilliant pilot who sang vaudeville tunes to his crew, and the bomber commander, Curtis Emerson LeMay, who would order the bloodiest attack of the Second World War.

In this tale of innovation and obsession, Gladwell asks: what happens when technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war? And what is the price of progress?

The essays which appear in this book for the most part originated as papers delivered at a conference on Britain and the cinema in the Second World War held in London in May 1985.

"Choice" Outstanding Academic Title

Even in the midst of World War II, Americans could not help thinking of the lands across the Pacific as a continuation of the American Western frontier. But this perception only heightened American soldiers' frustration as the hostile region ferociously resisted their attempts at control.

The GI War Against Japan recounts the harrowing experiences of American soldiers in Asia and the Pacific. Based on countless diaries and letters, it sweeps across the battlefields, from the early desperate stand at Guadalcanal to the tragic sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis at war's very end. From the daunting spaces of the China-India theater to the fortress islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Schrijvers brings to life the GIs' struggle with suffocating wilderness, devastating diseases, and Japanese soldiers who preferred death over life. Amidst the frustration and despair of this war, American soldiers abandoned themselves to an escalating rage that presaged Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The GI's story is, first and foremost, the story of America's resounding victory over Japan. At the same time, however, the reader will recognize in the extraordinarily high price paid for this victory chilling forebodings of the West's ultimate defeat in Asia'and America's in Vietnam.

This unique book presents an accurate and reliable assessment of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). It brings together leading authors to examine the organization from a range of key angles. This study shows how historians have built on the first international conference on the SOE at the Imperial War Museum in 1998. The release of many records then allowed historians to develop the first authoritative analyses of the organization's activities and several of its agents and staff officers were able to participate. Since this groundbreaking conference, fresh research has continued and its original papers are here amended to take account of the full range of SOE documents that have been released to the National Archives. The fascinating stories they tell range from overviews of work in a single country to particular operations and the impact of key personalities. SOE was a remarkably innovative organization. It played a significant part in the Allied victory while its theories of clandestine warfare and specialised equipment had a major impact upon the post-war world. SOE proved that war need not be fought by conventional methods and by soldiers in uniform. The organization laid much of the groundwork for the development of irregular warfare that characterized the second half of the twentieth century and that is still here, more potent than ever, at the beginning of the twenty-first. This book will be of great interest to students of World War II history, intelligence studies and special operations, as well as general readers with an interest in SOE and World War II.

A New York Times bestseller, Norman Ohler's Blitzed is a "fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich" (Washington Post). The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to German soldiers. In fact, troops were encouraged, and in some cases ordered, to take rations of a form of crystal meth--the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to account for the breakneck invasion that sealed the fall of France in 1940, as well as other German military victories. Hitler himself became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs--ultimately including Eukodal, a cousin of heroin--administered by his personal doctor. Thoroughly researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows. "Delightfully nuts."--The New Yorker

In collaboration with the Imperial War Museum, go back in time and experience history with this picture-led guide to the Second World War. A war history book for children that will take them through the events of World War II in a simple, illustrated, and fascinating way! The answers to the most pressing questions about the second world war are encapsulated in the pages of this children's book. DK Eyewitness World War II captures the imaginations of children aged 9-12 years and teaches them about the main battles, key players, technological advances, and everyday people caught in the middle of WWII. This World War II book for kids includes: - The perfect introduction to a subject that fascinates children and ties in with a key school topic - Fresh new look with updated photography, fun diagrams, and new "eyewitness" features - Updated information by expert consultants in the field - A unique visual approach that immerses children on every page and an added wall chart is full of facts and images In 1939 the world was in turmoil - Europe had declared war, and in the years to come, countries like Japan and the United States would also join the global conflict. In collaboration with the Imperial War Museum, readers can take a trip back in time and learn about the factors that lead up Pearl Harbour, the Battle of Britain, the D-day invasion, and how the atomic bomb almost wiped out Japan. World War II also gave rise to many advancements in science and technology and saw women work outside of the home. Children will learn about the industries developed during the war, code-breakers, important leaders, facts about warfare, weaponry, vehicles, maps, secret documents, and atrocities such as the Holocaust. Filled with simple text and eye-catching photographs and illustrations, kids will come to understand how WWII reshaped the world. With a groundbreaking visual approach and clear, child-friendly text, DK Eyewitness books have been a trusted favourite for parents, teachers, and school-age children since 1985. Now with an exciting makeover, this popular series has been reinvigorated for the next generation of information-seekers and stay-at-home explorers!

This is the story of an international forced labour camp for women, the largest of the auxiliary women's camps attached to KZ Buchenwald in Germany. It was the place that the Jewish prisoners sang the satiric camp anthem: Hasag is our father, the best father there is / He promises us - long years of happiness / In Leipzig - a paradise on earth. Was Hasag-Leipzig really a paradise compared to other Nazi installations, in terms of the treatment of prisoners and their living conditions? This study provides answers to this question as it depicts the camp for 5500 from 18 countries, among them 1200 Jewish prisoners brought there from Poland. Special attention is paid here to the cultural activities. The author has collected a large number of verses penned in the camp. They add a refreshing new dimension to the scholarly work, bringing the reader closer to the alien, unfamiliar world known as the Hasag-Leipzig Women's Camp.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy started a crash program, gathering information and educating personnel to deal with enemy bombs, land mines, and other explosive ordnance. Figuring lawyers make the best cannon fodder, recent law school graduate J. Frank Durham was among early volunteers for this dangerous and highly-classified work. Graduating with a perfect grade from the navy's new Bomb Disposal School, he was retained on staff to help the operation expand, then dispatched to Guadalcanal, where Americans were fighting the pivotal battle of World War Two. While learning how to handle explosive devices, Durham endured bombing, shelling, and an unexpected encounter with the enemy, but tales of suspense and danger are balanced by a humorous perspective on everyday life as an enlisted man. He describes unofficial enterprises, manufacturing souvenirs from brass shells in the captured Japanese ammo dump, and making moonshine from anything available, to sell to the troops. Eleanor Roosevelt's visit to the field hospital inspired a pithy comment about a painful loss from a wounded marine, and a classic riposte from the First Lady. side of the conflict.

American church-related liberal arts colleges are dedicated to two traditions: Christian thought and liberal learning. According to Haynes, the moral continuity of these traditions was severed by the Holocaust. Because so many representations of these traditions contributed to the Nazis' ideological and physical efforts to annihilate millions of men, women, and children, it is unclear whether these traditions can any longer be said to facilitate human flourishing. Haynes presents a convincing argument that the post-Holocaust church-related college can participate in the restoration of these ruptured traditions through a commitment to Holocaust Education. This book provides valuable information for teachers who already offer a Holocaust course or for those who are considering doing so. In addition, the author presents an accurate picture of Holocaust Education at church-related colleges through an analysis of his nationwide survey. This book will be an important resource for scholars, teachers, and administrators.

This book examines the plight of British and Allied civilians as their troops fought with the Japanese Army for the control of Singapore. This is the story of the desperate efforts made to escape, by ocean-going ships, small craft or on foot through the Malayan jungle.

The communists of East Central Europe came to power promising to bring about genuine equality, paying special attention to achieving gender equality, to build up industry and create prosperous societies, and to use music, art, and literature to promote socialist ideals. Instead, they never succeeded in filling more than a third of their legislatures with women and were unable to make significant headway against entrenched patriarchal views; they considered it necessary (with the sole exception of Albania) to rely heavily on credits to build up their economies, eventually driving them into bankruptcy; and the effort to instrumentalize the arts ran aground in most of the region already by 1956, and, in Yugoslavia, by 1949. Communism was all about planning, control, and politicization. Except for Yugoslavia after 1949, the communists sought to plan and control not only politics and the economy, but also the media and information, religious organizations, culture, and the promotion of women, which they understood in the first place as involving putting women to work. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of Robert K. Merton on functionalist theory, this book shows how communist policies were repeatedly undermined by unintended consequences and outright dysfunctions.