The B-24 Liberator remains to this day the world's most-produced heavy bomber and multi-engine aircraft, and the most produced military aircraft in US history, with almost 19,000 examples leaving the assembly lines of five plants. Through a broad range of photos gathered from around the world, this book chronicles the design, development, and wartime use of the iconic early models of the B-24-those featuring the so-called "glass nose"-from the assembly line to their use in the famous raid on the refineries at Ploesti, Romania, in 1943. The story of these iconic early WWII aircraft is told through carefully researched photos, many of which have never before been published, which are reproduced in remarkable clarity. Large clear photos, coupled with descriptive and informative captions, unlock the secrets of this aircraft. Part of the Legends of Warfare series.

When a German victory became impossible in WWII, the July 1944 conspirators plotted to bring a quick end to the war, hoping to negotiate a peace with the Western allies and possibly to join them in a war against Russia. Because the Allies would not negotiate with Hitler, the plotters planned to assassinate him and seize control of the government, using the Replacement Army to overcome the S.S. and the Nazi Party. more than half-a-million trained men. The conspirators convinced key Replacement Army officers to withhold men from the Field Army in the spring of 1944 in preparation for taking over the country. The result was a German army that lacked enough reserve divisions to counter the invasion of France and the Red Army attack in Russia. Although the plotters failed to kill Hitler, they hastened the war's end by weakening the German army. Dunn examines the 1944 July Plot from a manpower and logistics perspective to demonstrate that the conspirators did, in fact, achieve their goal of hastening the war's end. 1944, and the methods they used to keep half a million men from the battlefields of France and Russia. Without the efforts of these high ranking German officers, the war against Hitler might have had a completely different outcome.

WINNER OF THE MILITARY HISTORY MATTERS AWARD 'Hart is a historian and author at the peak of his powers' Richard van Emden The best way to understand what it was like to fight in the Second World War is to see it through the eyes of the soldiers who fought it. The South Notts Hussars fought at almost every major battle of the Second World War, from the Siege of Tobruk to the Battle of El Alamein and the D-Day Landings. Here, Peter Hart draws on detailed interviews conducted with members of the regiment, to provide both a comprehensive account of the conflict and reconstruct its most thrilling moments in the words of the men who experienced it. This is military history at its best: outlining the path from despair to victory, and allowing us to share in soldiers' hopes and fears; the deafening explosions of the shells, the scream of the diving Stukas and the wounded; the pleasures of good comrades and the devastating despair at lost friends.

Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied examines transwar political, military and social transitions in Japan and various territories that it controlled, including Korea, Borneo, Singapore, Manchuria and China, before and after August 1945. This approach allows a more nuanced understanding of Japan's role as occupier and occupied to emerge.

Fearing an imminent Nazi invasion, the British government interned 28,000 men and women of enemy nationality living in Britain in the spring of 1940. Most were Jewish refugees who, having fled Nazi persecution, were appalled to find themselves imprisoned as potential Nazi spies. Using oral histories, unpublished letters and memoirs, artifacts and newspapers from the camps, and government documents, " We Built Up Our Lives" tells the compelling story of sixty-three of these internees. It is a seldom-told part of the history of World War II and the Holocaust and a classic tale of human courage and resilience.

"We Built Up Our Lives" describes the survival mechanisms relied upon by the Jewish refugees. Although the internees, imprisoned in Britain, the Isle of Man, Canada, and Australia, were adequately housed and fed and rarely mistreated, they were cut off from family, friends, school, and work--everything that had given meaning to their lives. Resisting boredom, anger, and despair, the internees made the best of a bad situation by creating education, culture, and community within the camps. Before and after as well as during the internment--in Nazi Germany and in Britain--educational resources and social networks were essential to the refugees' efforts to build up their lives. Equally important were personal qualities of courage, ingenuity, assertiveness, and resilience.

Death in war matters. It matters to the individual, threatened with their own death, or the death of loved ones. It matters to groups and communities who have to find ways to manage death, to support the bereaved and to dispose of bodies amidst the confusion of conflict. It matters to the state, which has to find ways of coping with mass death that convey a sense of gratitude and respect for the sacrifice of both the victims of war, and those that mourn in their wake. This social and cultural history of Britain in the Second World War places death at the heart of our understanding of the British experience of conflict. Drawing on a range of material, Dying for the nation demonstrates just how much death matters in wartime and examines the experience, management and memory of death. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in the social and cultural history of Britain in the Second World War. -- .

Marianne or Germania is the first comprehensive study of modern Alsatian history using gender as a category of historical analysis, and the first to record the experiences of the region's women from 1870 to 1946. Relying on an extensive array of documentary, visual and literary material, national and regional publications, oral testimonies, and previously unused archival sources gathered in France, Germany, and Britain, the book contributes to the growing literature on the relationship between gender, the nation and citizenship, and between nationalism and feminism. It does so by focusing on the roles, both passive and active, that women played in the process of German and French nation-building in Alsace.
The work also critiques and corrects the long-held assumptions that Alsatian women were the preservers, after 1871, of a French national heritage in the region, and that women were neglected or disregarded by policy-makers concerned with the consolidation of German, and later French, loyalties. Women were in fact seen as important agents of nation-formation and treated as such. In addition, all the categories of social action implicated in the nation-building process - confession, education, socialization, the public sphere, the domestic setting, the iconography of regional and national belonging - were themselves gendered. Thus nation-building projects impacted asymmetrically on men and women, with far-reaching consequences. Having been 'nationalized' through different 'rounds of restructuring' than men, the women of Alsace were, and continue to be, excluded from national and regional histories, as well as from public memory and official commemoration. Marianne or Germania questions, and ultimately challenges, these practices.

Organised chronologically by type, Russian Tanks of World War II offers a highly-illustrated guide to the main armoured fighting vehicles used by the Red Army during World War II. The book offers a comprehensive survey of Soviet AFVs, from the pre-war T-18 light tank and BT fast tank series to the heavy Joseph Stalin tanks and self- propelled guns of the final months of the war. All the major and many minor tanks are featured, including every significant variation of the T-26 light tank, KV series and T-34 to see action on the Eastern Front. There are also chapters on the many types of self-propelled guns developed by Soviet industry, as well as Allied Lend-Lease AFVs, such as the British Churchill and Valentine tanks and American Sherman and Stuart tanks. Each featured profile includes authentic markings and colour schemes, while every separate model is accompanied by exhaustive specifications. Packed with 120 newly-commissioned, full-colour artworks with exhaustive specifications, Russian Tanks of World War II is a key reference guide for military modellers and World War II enthusiasts.

Historians have long noted that Jews often appear at the storm center of European history. Nowhere is this more true than when dealing with the tumultuous years between the Nazi seizure of power in Germany on January 30, 1933 and the proclamation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. Yet, the events of Jewish history must also be viewed within the broader contexts of European, American, and global history. Spanning sixteen years of destruction and rebirth, A World in Turmoil is the first book of its kind, an integrated chronology which attempts to provide the researcher with clear and concise data describing the events as they unfolded. From the murder pits of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, to the battlefields in all the major theatres of operation, to the home fronts of all the major and minor combatants, A World in Turmoil covers a broad spectrum of events. Although major events throughout the world are noted, the volume concentrates on events in Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. While the volume deals primarily with politics, significant social and intellectual trends are woven into the chronology. Augmented by an introductory essay and postscript to help place events in their historical context, by a bibliography, and by name, place, and subject indexes, the volume provides scholars and researchers alike a basic reference tool on sixteen of the most important years in modern history.

Great Men in the Second World War provides a new perspective on the role of the individual in history. Paul Dukes selects five Great Men, each in his turn one of the leaders of the three victorious powers, the UK, the USA and the USSR. The identity of the Big Three changed significantly during the last months of the conflict. Roosevelt died in April 1945 and was succeeded by Truman. Churchill lost the general election to Attlee in July. Stalin alone provided continuity throughout the conferences of the Big Three, and immediately beyond. The book explores the power of these individuals, asking such questions as: -To what extent did the leaders exert their own influence and to what extent could they be considered to be spokesmen for their countries? -How significant was it that Truman and Attlee had less colourful personalities than Roosevelt and Churchill? -Was Stalin uniquely bad while the others were good? Drawing in particular on the record of their interaction at the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, but also making use of other sources including novels as well as works of history, Paul Dukes sheds light on both the major statesmen involved and the nature of the Second World War. This is a book that will be useful for students of the Second World War and anyone with an interest in the role of individuals in history.

The Holocaust is an attempt to explain the inexplicable - the systematic murder of millions of Europe's Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. It includes facsimile documents that have been carefully selected to remind readers that the horrifying statistics represent not numbers but people. This illustrated volume describes Jewish life before the spread of Nazism in Europe and Nazi ideologies. The author discusses the mass murder, the death camps such as Auschwitz, the perpetrators, the witnesses, the escapees, the refugee havens and the 10,000 Kindertransport youngsters who were given safe haven in Britain. The Holocaust records stories of resistance and acts of heroism, and tells us of the survivors and those who risked their lives to save the Jews. Finally, it describes the liberation of the camps, the resettlement of the Jews and how the events are remembered now. Published in partnership with the Memorial de la Shoah, which contains the biggest collection of documents on the subject in Europe and is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and educating future generations.

Mimi Rubin had fond memories of growing up in Novy Bohumin, Czechoslovakia, a place that ten thousand people called home. It was a tranquil town until September 1, 1939, when the German army invaded the city. From that day forward, eighteen-yearold Mimi would face some of the harshest moments of her life.

This memoir follows Mimi's story-from her idyllic life in Novy Bohumin before the invasion, to being transported to a Jewish ghetto, to living in three different German concentration camps, and finally, to liberation. It tells of the heartbreaking loss of her parents, grandmother, and countless other friends and relatives. It tells of the tempered joys of being reunited with her sister and of finding love, marrying, and raising a family.

A compelling firsthand account, "Mimi of Novy Bohumin, Czechoslovakia: A Young Woman's Survival of the Holocaust" weaves the personal, yet horrifying, details of Mimi's experience with historical facts about this era in history. This story helps keep alive the memory of the millions of innocent men, women, and children who died in the German concentration camps during the 1930s and 1940s.

Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award, 2014 Selected by General Raymond Odierno, 38th Army Chief of Staff, for the U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Professional Reading List, February 2014. Pacific Blitzkrieg closely examines the planning, preparation, and execution of ground operations for five major invasions in the Central Pacific (Guadalcanal, Tarawa, the Marshalls, Saipan, and Okinawa). The commanders on the ground had to integrate the US Army and Marine Corps into a single striking force, something that would have been difficult in peacetime, but in the midst of a great global war, it was a monumental task. Yet, ultimate success in the Pacific rested on this crucial, if somewhat strained, partnership and its accomplishments. Despite the thousands of works covering almost every aspect of World War II in the Pacific, until now no one has examined the detailed mechanics behind this transformation at the corps and division level. Sharon Tosi Lacey makes extensive use of previously untapped primary research material to re-examine the development of joint ground operations, the rapid transformation of tactics and equipment, and the evolution of command relationships between army and marine leadership. This joint venture was the result of difficult and patient work by commanders and evolving staffs who acted upon the lessons of each engagement with remarkable speed. For every brilliant strategic and operational decision of the war, there were thousands of minute actions and adaptations that made such brilliance possible. Lacey examines the Smith vs. Smith controversy during the Saipan invasion using newly discovered primary source material. Saipan was not the first time General "Howlin' Mad" Smith had created friction. Lacey reveals how Smith's blatant partisanship and inability to get along with others nearly brought the American march across the Pacific to a halt. Pacific Blitzkrieg explores the combat in each invasion to show how the battles were planned, how raw recruits were turned into efficient combat forces, how battle doctrine was created on the fly, and how every service remade itself as new and more deadly weapons continuously changed the character of the war.

The Third Reich and Yugoslavia focuses on economic and political affairs between the Third Reich and Yugoslavia before Germany attacked in April 1941. It observes the relations between the two countries primarily from an economic perspective, with the political dimension forming a backdrop within which the economy operated. Perica Hadzi-Jovancic challenges the conventional scholarly wisdom which recognises economics as mainly being a tool of German foreign policy towards Yugoslavia. Instead, he successfully places economic dealings on both sides within the broader context of both the German economic and financial plans and policies of the 1930s, as well as the existing trading ties between the two countries as they had been developing since the 1920s. At the same time, through detailed analysis of unpublished archival material, Hadzi-Jovancic explores the shared political relations from a new perspective; one from which there is a much deeper understanding of Yugoslavia's motives and the resulting implications for the other great powers and the wider regional framework. The book concludes that, contrary to the traditional view in historiography and despite the dependency of Yugoslavia's foreign trade on the German market at the dawn of the Second World War, Yugoslavia maintained both its economic and political agency in the shadow of the Third Reich. It was only international political developments beyond Yugoslavia's control in the years ahead that lead to a more receptive stance towards German demands.

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.

No place symbolized the cold war more than Berlin, and no event illustrates how East-West conflict developed more than the Berlin blockade. The blockade (June 24, 1948-May 12, 1949) was one of the first international crises of the cold war. During the occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied control. Their aim was to force the western powers to allow the Soviets to supply Berlin with food and fuel, thus enabling the Soviets to control the entire city. In response, the Allies organized the Berlin airlift to carry supplies to the people in West Berlin. Scholars in recent years have tended to ignore the blockade in the belief that "we now know" all that can be said about it. The success of the airlift in breaking the blockade has led many-after the fact-to see the airlift as the execution of a well-conceived plan of a few diplomats, rather than as a brilliant improvisation by many people, influenced by time and chance. In Time and Chance: A History of the Berlin Blockade, Daniel F. Harrington examines "the Berlin question" from its origin in wartime plans for the occupation of Germany through the Paris Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in 1949. Harrington draws on previously untapped archival sources to challenge standard accounts of the postwar division of Germany, the origins of the blockade, the original purpose of the airlift, and the leadership and decision-making of President Harry S Truman. While thoroughly examining American, British, French, and Soviet diplomacy at the top levels, Harrington also pays careful attention to events on the ground in postwar Berlin and to details of the that led to its success. He demonstrates how the airlift owed its success less to decisions at the top than to the ingenuity and hard work of people at the bottom-pilots, mechanics, and Berliners. Time and Chance reshapes the conventional understanding of a critical event of cold war history and promises to be the definitive book on the Berlin blockade. Daniel F. Harrington is deputy command historian at United States Strategic Command and has published many essays in journals such as Diplomacy & Statecraft, International History Review, and Diplomatic History.

Sgt. Steve Maharidge, like many of his generation, hardly ever talked about the war. The only sign of it was a single black and white photograph that he pinned to the wall of his basement, where, in his spare time, he would grind steel. The picture showed Maharidge with one of his comrades---he never said who. In front of his son, Maharidge once yelled over the sound of his steel grinders at the photograph: "They said I killed him, and it wasn't my fault!" After Steve Maharidge's death, his son Dale, an adult now, began a quest to understand his father's outburst: What had happened during the battle for Okinawa, and why his father had remained haunted and all but silent about his experience and the unnamed man. In his quest for the soldier, Maharidge sought out the survivors of Love Company, men in their late 70s and 80s, many of whom had never before spoken so openly and emotionally about what they saw and experienced on Okinawa. The Battle of Okinawa of World War II began in April 1945---in the following four months, an estimated 250,000 Japanese soldiers and native Okinawans would perish, as would 12,000 American soldiers. Americans called the battle Operation Iceberg, while the Japanese called it tetsu no ame, or the rain of steel. In Bringing Mulligan Home, Maharidge delivers an affecting narrative of war and its aftermath, of fathers and sons, of the generation that survives the shell-shocked men who fought on Okinawa. In a small way, Bringing Mulligan Home fills the silence that has haunted the post-war generation. An established scholar of the American working class, Maharidge also masterfully paints a picture of the industrial working-class landscape that drove men to enlist, and the United States that awaited them upon return.

This book explores the contours of civic identity in the town of Vichy, France. Over the course of its history, Vichy has been known for three things: its thermal spa resort; its products (especially Vichy water and Vichy cosmetics); and its role in hosting the Etat Francais, France's collaborationist government in the Second World War. This last association has become an obsession for the residents of Vichy, who feel stigmatized and victimized by the widespread habit of referring to France's wartime government as the 'Vichy regime'. This book argues that the stigma, victimhood, and decline suffered by Vichyssois are best understood by placing Vichy's politics of identity in a broader historical context that considers corporate, as well as social and cultural, history.

Philosophy typically ignores biographical, historical, and cultural aspects of theoriss' lives in an attempt to take a supposedly abstract and objective view of their work. This book makes some new conclusions about Arendt's theory by emphasizing how her experience of the world as displayed in her archival materials impacted her thought. Some aspects of Arendt's life have been examined in detail before, including the fact she was stateless as well as her affair with Heidegger. Instead, this work explores different topics including the biographical and narrative moments of Arendt's own work, the role of archiving in her thought, pivotal events that have not been archived, her understanding of her own identities, and how it affected the role of identity politics in her work. Typically, group action is underemphasized in Arendt scholarship in comparison to individual action and often identity politics questions are considered to lie within the realm of the private. Although Arendt's theory is problematic when discussing issues concerning identity politics, she did think identity politics could be public and political and that effective political actions may occur within groups. What makes this project unique are the innovative conclusions made by moving the archival and biographical evidence to the center in order to understand her theory more accurately and within its historical and cultural context. This volume will be of interest to professional scholars in Arendt's work, but also to those who have a more general interest in her life and theory.

In 1946, legendary broadcaster Norman Corwin traveled to 17 countries to document the postwar world for the radio series, One World Flight. Here, recently discovered and now published for the first time, is his personal journal of that historic trip. A towering figure in broadcast history, Norman Corwin has long been known as "Radio's Poet Laureate." In the late 1930s, a creative revolution was underway in the medium. What some people still called "the wireless" was maturing from a novelty into an art form. After a ten-year career as a newspaperman, columnist, and critic--which began at the age of 17--Corwin joined the ranks of aural provocateurs such as Archibald MacLeish, Arch Oboler, and Orson Welles. Toward the end of 1944, with an Allied victory in Europe apparently assured, CBS asked Corwin to prepare a program celebrating the anticipated event. On May 8, 1945, just after the collapse of Germany, CBS aired "On a Note of Triumph," an epic aural mosaic. This program is considered to be the climax of the luminous period in radio history when writing of high merit, produced with consummate skill was nurtured and protected from commercial interference. After the broadcast, phone calls and letters of praise flooded the network, including a letter from Carl Sandburg calling "On a Note of Triumph ""one of the all the all-time great American poems." Corwin went on to win the first Wendell Willkie Award--a trip around the world sponsored by Freedom House and the Common Council for American Unity. Corwin accepted the Willkie Award on the condition it would be a working trip. He wanted the opportunity to record people in various countries and develop a series of documentaries on the state of the postwar world. CBS offered full support. The thirteen-part series, "One World Flight," aired in 1947. "Norman Corwin's One World Flight "provides the reader with an unrivaled perspective. During Corwin's travels to 17 countries in 1946, he kept a journal of his personal thoughts and observations. It was put in a drawer where it remained for decades. More than sixty years after the trip, media historian Michael Keith asked Corwin--who is now in his nineties--if he had kept a log or journal of his One World travels. He had, and his analysis of international communications still rings true today.>

Operation Market Garden was the name given to the US, UK and Polish airborne assault on the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Eindhoven bridges and the ill-fated 30 Corps advance to relieve the hard-pressed paras. While everyone knows that Arnhem was 'a bridge too far', few understand the true reasons for the catastrophic failure to link up. There have been numerous guide books to the fighting around Arnhem in particular but this is the first to tell the whole story as it happened. As the many thousands of satisfied Holt's Guide readers know, the authors have an uncanny knack of getting to the nub of the story, explaining the action clearly and directing the visitor to the key sites in order that he/she gets the most from any visit. With its full colour touring map The Holt's Battlefield Guide to Market Garden will prove as big a success as its forerunners, on both sides of the Atlantic and the Channel.

*JEWISH CHRONICAL CRITICS' CHOICE: NON-FICTION OF THE YEAR 2022* 'A devastatingly affecting book. . . Bunce Court! I keep saying the name to myself because it encapsulates all that is gentle and comically charming about wartime England' The Times 'Emotionally compelling' Observer 'All the violence I had experienced before felt like a bad dream. It was a paradise. I think most of the children felt it was a paradise.' In 1933, as Hitler came to power, schoolteacher Anna Essinger hatched a daring and courageous plan: to smuggle her entire school out of Nazi Germany. Anna had read Mein Kampf and knew the terrible danger that Hitler's hate-fuelled ideologies posed to her pupils. She knew that to protect them she had to get her pupils to the safety of England. But the safe haven that Anna struggled to create in a rundown manor house in Kent would test her to the limit. As the news from Europe continued to darken, Anna rescued successive waves of fleeing children and, when war broke out, she and her pupils faced a second exodus. One by one countries fell to the Nazis and before long unspeakable rumours began to circulate. Red Cross messages stopped and parents in occupied Europe vanished. In time, Anna would take in orphans who had given up all hope; the survivors of unimaginable horrors. Anna's school offered these scarred children the love and security they needed to rebuild their lives, showing them that, despite everything, there was still a world worth fighting for. Featuring moving first-hand testimony, and drawn from letters, diaries and present-day interviews, The School That Escaped the Nazis is a dramatic human tale that offers a unique child's-eye perspective on Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. It is also the story of one woman's refusal to allow her beliefs in a better, more equitable world to be overtaken by the evil that surrounded her.