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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
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.
The United States during World War II was unprepared for one of
Germany's most destructive war efforts: a U-boat assault on Allied
ships in the Caribbean that sank about 400 tankers and merchant
ships, with few losses to the German submarine fleet. The Germans
had set up a network of spies and had the secret support of some
dictators, including the Dominican Republic's Rafael Trujillo,
supplying their U-boats with fuel.The Caribbean was of crucial
strategic importance to the Allies. Roughly 95 percent of the oil
sustaining the East Coast of the United States came from the
region, along with bauxite, required to manufacture airplanes. The
United States invested billions of dollars to build bases, landing
strips, roads, and other military infrastructure on the Puerto Rico
and secured a 99-year lease on all the British bases located in the
Caribbean. The United States also struck an agreement with neutral
Vichy France to keep the French Navy in the harbor of Martinique,
preventing it from being turned over to the Germans, in exchange
for a food supply for the island. Elsewhere, however, the German
blockade was taking a dire human toll. All of the islands
experienced a drastic food shortage. The US military buildup
created jobs and income, but locals were paid a third as much as
continental workers. The military also brought its segregationist
policies to the islands, creating further tensions and resentment.
The sacrifice of the Caribbean people was bitter, but their
participation in the war effort was also decisive: The U-boat
menace more or less disappeared from the region in late 1943,
thanks to their work building up the US military operation.
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.
'The epic story of an iconic aircraft and the breathtaking courage
of those who flew her' Andy McNab, bestselling author of Bravo Two
Zero 'Compelling, thrilling and rooted in quite extraordinary human
drama' James Holland, author of Normandy 44 From John Nichol, the
Sunday Times bestselling author of Spitfire, comes a passionate and
profoundly moving tribute to the Lancaster bomber, its heroic crews
and the men and women who kept her airborne during the country's
greatest hour of need. 'The Avro Lancaster is an aviation icon;
revered, romanticised, loved. Without her, and the bravery of those
who flew her, the freedom we enjoy today would not exist.' Sir
Arthur Harris, the controversial chief of Royal Air Force Bomber
Command, described the Lancaster as his 'shining sword' and the
'greatest single factor in winning the war'. RAF bomber squadrons
carried out offensive operations from the first day of the Second
World War until the very last, more than five and a half years
later. They flew nearly 300,000 sorties and dropped around a
million tons of explosives, as well as life-saving supplies. Over
10,000 of their aircraft never returned. Of the 7,377 Lancasters
built during the conflict, more than half were lost to enemy action
or training accidents. The human cost was staggering. Of the
125,000 men who served in Bomber Command, over 55,000 were killed
and another 8,400 were wounded. Some 10,000 survived being shot
down, only to become prisoners of war. In simple, brutal terms,
Harris's aircrew had only a 40 per cent chance of surviving the war
unscathed. Former RAF Tornado Navigator, Gulf War veteran and
bestselling author John Nichol now tells the inspiring and moving
story of this legendary aircraft that took the fight deep into the
heart of Nazi Germany.
The United States during World War II was unprepared for one of
Germany's most destructive war efforts: a U-boat assault on Allied
ships in the Caribbean that sank about 400 tankers and merchant
ships, with few losses to the German submarine fleet. The Germans
had set up a network of spies and had the secret support of some
dictators, including the Dominican Republic's Rafael Trujillo,
supplying their U-boats with fuel.The Caribbean was of crucial
strategic importance to the Allies. Roughly 95 percent of the oil
sustaining the East Coast of the United States came from the
region, along with bauxite, required to manufacture airplanes. The
United States invested billions of dollars to build bases, landing
strips, roads, and other military infrastructure on the Puerto Rico
and secured a 99-year lease on all the British bases located in the
Caribbean. The United States also struck an agreement with neutral
Vichy France to keep the French Navy in the harbor of Martinique,
preventing it from being turned over to the Germans, in exchange
for a food supply for the island. Elsewhere, however, the German
blockade was taking a dire human toll. All of the islands
experienced a drastic food shortage. The US military buildup
created jobs and income, but locals were paid a third as much as
continental workers. The military also brought its segregationist
policies to the islands, creating further tensions and resentment.
The sacrifice of the Caribbean people was bitter, but their
participation in the war effort was also decisive: The U-boat
menace more or less disappeared from the region in late 1943,
thanks to their work building up the US military operation.
"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.""
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