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Books > History > World history > From 1900 > Second World War
The true story of a woman's incredible journey into the heart of
the Third Reich to find the man she loves. When the Gestapo seize
20-year-old Olga Czepf's fiance she is determined to find him and
sets off on an extraordinary 2,000-mile search across Nazi-occupied
Europe risking betrayal, arrest and death. As the Second World War
heads towards its bloody climax, she refuses to give up - even when
her mission leads her to the gates of Dachau and Buchenwald
concentration camps...Now 88 and living in London, Olga tells with
remarkable clarity of the courage and determination that drove her
across war-torn Europe, to find the man she loved. The greatest
untold true love story of World War Two.
This book focuses on the social voids that were the result of
occupation, genocide, mass killings, and population movements in
Europe during and after the Second World War. Historians,
sociologists, and anthropologists adopt comparative perspectives on
those who now lived in 'cleansed' borderlands. Its contributors
explore local subjectivities of social change through the concept
of 'No Neighbors' Lands': How does it feel to wear the dress of
your murdered neighbor? How does one get used to friends,
colleagues, and neighbors no longer being part of everyday life?
How is moral, social, and legal order reinstated after one part of
the community participated in the ethnic cleansing of another? How
is order restored psychologically in the wake of neighbors watching
others being slaughtered by external enemies? This book sheds light
on how destroyed European communities, once multi-ethnic and
multi-religious, experienced postwar reconstruction, attempted to
come to terms with what had happened, and negotiated remembrance.
Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France
by Nicholas Shakespeare is a transcendent work of narrative
nonfiction in the vein of The Hare with Amber Eyes.
When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a trunk full of his
late aunt's personal belongings, he was unaware of where this
discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden
past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his
childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman
who emerged from the trove of love letters, journals and
photographs, surrounded by suitors and living the precarious
existence of a British citizen in a country controlled by the enemy
during World War II.
As a young boy, Shakespeare had always believed that his aunt
was a member of the Resistance and had been tortured by the
Germans. The truth turned out to be far more complicated.
Piecing together fragments of his aunt's remarkable and tragic
story, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving
portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and
a spellbinding slice of history.
Originally published in 1940, Why England Slept was written by
then-Harvard student and future American president John F. Kennedy.
It was Kennedy's senior thesis that analyzed the tremendous
miscalculations of the British leaders in facing Germany on the
advent of World War II, and in doing so, also addressed the
challenges that democracies face when confronted directly with
fascist states. In Why England Slept, at the book's core, John F.
Kennedy asks: Why was England so poorly prepared for the war? He
provides a comprehensive analysis of the tremendous miscalculations
of the British leadership when it came to dealing with Germany and
leads readers into considering other questions: Was the poor state
of the British army the reason Chamberlain capitulated at Munich,
or were there other, less-obvious elements at work that allowed
this to happen? Kennedy also looks at similarities to America's
position of unpreparedness and makes astute observations about the
implications involved. This re-publication of the classic book
contains excerpts from the foreword to the 1940 original edition by
Henry R. Luce, an American magazine magnate during that era; the
foreword to the 1961 edition, also written by Luce; and a new
foreword by Stephen C. Schlesinger, written in 2015. Provides
fascinating insights into the young mind and worldview of
then-Harvard senior John F. Kennedy via his thesis, for which he'd
toured Europe, the Balkans, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia in
the late 1930s Presents both a pointed indictment of British policy
leading up to World War II as well as an examination of the
weaknesses, merits, and pitfalls for democratic governments based
on capitalist economies Features a new foreword written by Stephen
C. Schlesinger, senior fellow at the Century Foundation in New
York; author of Act of Creation: The Founding of The United
Nations, winner of the 2004 Harry S. Truman Book Award; former
director of the World Policy Institute at the New School
(1997-2006); and former publisher of the magazine The World Policy
Journal
'Lucid and damning ... an absorbing - and infuriating - tale of
complicity, coverup and denial' PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, author of
EMPIRE OF PAIN A groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis
helped German tycoons make billions from the horrors of the Third
Reich and World War II - and how the world allowed them to get away
with it. In 1946, Gunther Quandt - patriarch of Germany's most
iconic industrial empire, a dynasty that today controls BMW - was
arrested for suspected Nazi collaboration. Quandt claimed that he
had been forced to join the party by his arch-rival, propaganda
minister Joseph Goebbels, and the courts acquitted him. But Quandt
lied. And his heirs, and those of other Nazi billionaires, have
only grown wealthier in the generations since, while their
reckoning with this dark past remains incomplete at best. Many of
them continue to control swaths of the world economy, owning iconic
brands whose products blanket the globe. The brutal legacy of the
dynasties that dominated Daimler-Benz, cofounded Allianz and still
control Porsche, Volkswagen and BMW has remained hidden in plain
sight - until now. In this landmark work, investigative journalist
David de Jong reveals the true story of how Germany's wealthiest
business dynasties amassed untold money and power by abetting the
atrocities of the Third Reich. Using a wealth of untapped sources,
de Jong shows how these tycoons seized Jewish businesses, procured
slave labourers and ramped up weapons production to equip Hitler's
army as Europe burnt around them. Most shocking of all, de Jong
exposes how the wider world's political expediency enabled these
billionaires to get away with their crimes, covering up a
bloodstain that defiles the German and global economy to this day.
When American troops arrived in Paris to help maintain order at the
end of the Second World War they were, at first, received by the
local population with a sense of euphoria. However, the French soon
began to resent the Americans for their display of wealth and
brashness, while the US soldiers found the French and their habits
irritating and incomprehensible. To bridge the cultural divide, the
American generals came up with an innovative solution. They
commissioned a surprisingly candid book which collated the GIs'
'gripes' and reproduced them with answers aimed at promoting
understanding of the French and their country. The 'gripes' reveal
much about American preconceptions: 'The French drink too much',
'French women are immoral', 'The French drive like lunatics ', 'The
French don't bathe', 'The French aren't friendly' are just some of
the many complaints. Putting the record straight, the answers cover
topics as diverse as night-clubs, fashion, agriculture and
sanitation. They also offer an unusual insight into the reality of
daily life immediately after the war, evoking the shortage of food
and supplies, the acute poverty and the scale of the casualties and
destruction suffered by France during six years of conflict.
Illustrated with delightfully evocative cartoons and written in a
direct, colloquial style, this gem from 1945 is by turns amusing,
shocking and thought-provoking in its valiant stand against
prejudice and stereotype.
Despite the wealth of historical literature on the Second World
War, the subject of religion and churches in occupied Europe has
been undervalued - until now. This critical European history is
unique in delivering a rich and detailed analysis of churches and
religion during the Second World War, looking at the Christian
religions of occupied Europe: Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism,
and Orthodoxy. The authors engage with key themes such as relations
between religious institutions and the occupying forces; religion
as a key factor in national identity and resistance; theological
answers to the Fascist and National Socialist ideologies,
especially in terms of the persecution of the Jews; Christians as
bystanders or protectors in the Holocaust; and religious life
during the war. Churches and Religion in the Second World War will
be of great value to students and scholars of European history, the
Second World War and religion and theology.
"Holocaust Remembrance Between the National and the Transnational"
provides a key study of the remembrance of the Jewish Catastrophe
and the Nazi-era past in the world arena. It uses a range of
primary documentation from the restitution conferences, speeches
and presentations made at the Stockholm International Forum of 2000
(SIF 2000), a global event and an attempt to mark a defining moment
in the inter-cultural construction of the political and
institutional memory of the Holocaust in the USA, Europe and
Israel. Containing oral history interviews with British delegates
to the conference and contemporary press reports, this book
explores the inter-relationships between global and national
Holocaust remembrances.The causes, consequences and 'cosmopolitan'
intellectual context for understanding the SIF 2000 are discussed
in great detail. Larissa Allwork examines this seminal moment in
efforts to globally promote the important, if ever controversial,
topics of Holocaust remembrance, worldwide Genocide prevention and
the commemoration of the Nazi past. Providing a balanced assessment
of the Stockholm Project, this book is an important study for those
interested in the remembrance of the Holocaust and the Third Reich,
as well as the recent global direction in memory studies.""
In the face of an outpouring of research on Holocaust history,
Holocaust Angst takes an innovative approach. It explores how
Germans perceived and reacted to how Americans publicly
commemorated the Holocaust. It argues that a network of mostly
conservative West German officials and their associates in private
organizations and foundations, with Chancellor Kohl located at its
center, perceived themselves as the "victims" of the afterlife of
the Holocaust in America. They were concerned that public
manifestations of Holocaust memory, such as museums, monuments, and
movies, could severely damage the Federal Republic's reputation and
even cause Americans to question the Federal Republic's status as
an ally. From their perspective, American Holocaust memorial
culture constituted a stumbling block for (West) German-American
relations since the late 1970s. Providing the first comprehensive,
archival study of German efforts to cope with the Nazi past
vis-a-vis the United States up to the 1990s, this book uncovers the
fears of German officials - some of whom were former Nazis or World
War II veterans - about the impact of Holocaust memory on the
reputation of the Federal Republic and reveals their at times
negative perceptions of American Jews. Focusing on a variety of
fields of interaction, ranging from the diplomatic to the scholarly
and public spheres, the book unearths the complicated and often
contradictory process of managing the legacies of genocide on an
international stage. West German decision makers realized that
American Holocaust memory was not an "anti-German plot" by American
Jews and acknowledged that they could not significantly change
American Holocaust discourse. In the end, German confrontation with
American Holocaust memory contributed to a more open engagement on
the part of the West German government with this memory and
eventually rendered it a "positive resource" for German
self-representation abroad. Holocaust Angst offers new perspectives
on postwar Germany's place in the world system as well as the
Holocaust culture in the United States and the role of
transnational organizations.
To mark the end of the war in Europe the flag was hoisted in front
of the School, and on 8 May and 9 May 1945 there was a holiday to
celebrate VE Day. On 10 May there was a short ceremony at Morning
Assembly to celebrate the Allied victory. This book is not only
about those 463 ex-pupils and staff who were in the Armed Forces,
forty-one of whom were killed in the War, or about those who were
wounded, or those who were prisoners of war in German, Italian or
Japanese hands. It is also about the life of the school in the
years 1939 - 1945 and the 998 pupils who were there at the time,
forty-one of whom were at Prince Henry's for the length of the war.
It is dedicated to everybody associated with Prince Henry's Grammar
School before and during the Second World War. Lest we forget.
From the foreword: WHEN JAPAN ATTACKED PEARL HARBOR on December 7,
1941, and Germany and Italy joined Japan four days later in
declaring war against the United States, intelligence essential for
the Army Air Forces to conduct effective warfare in the European
and Pacific theaters did not exist. Piercing the Fog tells the
intriguing story of how airmen built intelligence organizations to
collect and process information about the enemy and to produce and
disseminate intelligence to decisionmakers and warfighters in the
bloody, horrific crucible of war. Because the problems confronting
and confounding air intelligence officers, planners, and operators
fifty years ago still resonate, Piercing the Fog is particularly
valuable for intelligence officers, planners, and operators today
and for anyone concerned with acquiring and exploiting intelligence
for successful air warfare. More than organizational history, this
book reveals the indispensable and necessarily secret role
intelligence plays in effectively waging war. It examines how World
War II was a watershed period for Air Force Intelligence and for
the acquisition and use of signals intelligence, photo
reconnaissance intelligence, human resources intelligence, and
scientific and technical intelligence. Piercing the Fog discusses
the development of new sources and methods of intelligence
collection; requirements for intelligence at the strategic,
operational, and tactical levels of warfare; intelligence to
support missions for air superiority, interdiction, strategic
bombardment, and air defense; the sharing of intelligence in a
coalition and joint service environment; the acquisition of
intelligence to assess bomb damage on a target-by-target basis and
to measure progress in achieving campaign and war objecti ves; and
the ability of military leaders to understand the intentions and
capabilities of the enemy and to appreciate the pressures on
intelligence officers to sometimes tell commanders what they think
the commanders want to hear instead of what the intelligence
discloses. The complex problems associated with intelligence to
support strategic bombardment in the 1940s will strike some readers
as uncannily prescient to global Air Force operations in the 1990s.
Escape from Corregidor is the harrowing account of Edgar Whitcomb,
a B-17 navigator who arrives in World War II Philippines just
before its invasion by the Japanese. Whitcomb evades the enemy on
Bataan by fleeing to Corregidor Island in a small boat. He is
captured but later manages to escape at night in an hours-long swim
to safety. Captured once again weeks later, Whitcomb is imprisoned,
tortured and starved, before being transferred to China and
eventual freedom.
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