This book examines the experience of two British Infantry Divisions, the 43rd (Wessex) and 53rd (Welsh), during the Overlord campaign in Northwest Europe. To understand the way the British fought during Operation Overlord, the book considers the political and military factors between 1918 and 1943 before addressing the major battles and many of the minor engagements and day-to-day experiences of the campaign. Through detailed exploration of unit war diaries and first-hand accounts, Louis Devine demonstrates how Montgomery's way of war translated to the divisions and their sub units. While previous literature has suggested that the British Army fought a cautious war in order to avoid the heavy casualties of the First World War, Devine challenges this concept by showing that the Overlord Campaign fought at sub-divisional levels was characterised by command pressure to achieve results quickly, hasty planning and a reliance on massive artillery and mortar contributions to compensate for deficiencies in anti-tank and armoured support. By following two British infantry divisions over a continuous period and focusing on soldiers' experience to offer a perspective 'from below', as well as challenging the consensus of a 'cautious' British campaign, this book provides a much-needed re-examination of the Overlord campaign which will be of great interest to students and scholars of the Second World War and modern military history in general.

World War II saw the first generation of young men that had grown up comfortable with modern industrial technology go into combat. As kids, the GIs had built jalopies in their garage and poured over glossy, full-color issues of Popular Mechanics; they had read Buck Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century comic books, listened to his adventures on the radio, and watched him pilot rocket ships in the Saturday morning serials at the Bijou. Tinkerers, problem-solvers, risk-takers, and day-dreamers, they were curious and outspoken--a generation well prepared to improvise, innovate, and adapt technology on the battlefield. Since they were also a generation which had unprecedented technology available to them, their ability to innovate with technology proved an immeasurable edge on the field of combat. This book tells their story through the experience of the battle of Normandy, bringing together three disparate brands of history: (1) military history; (2) the history of science and technology; and (3) social, economic, cultural, and intellectual history. All three historical narratives combine to tell the tale of GI genius and the process by which GI ingenuity became an enduring feature of the American citizen-soldier. GI Ingenuity is in large part an old-fashioned combat history, with mayhem and mass slaughter at center stage. It tells the story of death and destruction on the killing fields of Normandy, as well as the battlegrounds that provide the prologue and postscript to the transformation of war that occurred in France in 1944. This story of GI ingenuity, moreover, puts the battles in the context of the immense social, economic, scientific, and technological changes that accompanied theevolution of combat in the twentieth century. GI Ingenuity illustrates the great transition of the American genius in battle from an industrial-age army to a postmodern military. And it does it by looking at the place where the transition happened--on the battlefield.

This open access book provides a concise introduction to a critical development in memory studies. A global memory formation has emerged since the 1990s, in which memories of traumatic histories in different parts of the world, often articulated in the terms established by Holocaust memory, have become entangled, reconciled, contested, conflicted and negotiated across borders. As historical actors and events across time and space become connected in new ways, new grounds for contest and competition arise; claims to the past that appeared de-territorialized in the global memory formation become re-territorialized - deployed in the service of nationalist projects. This poses challenges to scholarship but also to practice: How can we ensure that shared or comparable memories of past injustice continue to be grounds for solidarity between different memory communities? In chapters focusing on Europe, East Asia and Africa, five scholars respond to these challenges from a range of disciplinary perspectives in the humanities.

Captain Graham Wright is a man ahead of his time. He saw life and work differently from others. However, speaking his mind brought him more trouble than good, as others didn't often agree with his point of view or vision. But during his current 93 years, he's seen many of his predictions and ideas come to fruition. Putting It Wright covers his life to date, from joining the Royal Australian Navy at age 13, his experiences in Palestine, Malta, Turkey and adventures during World War II in the Mediterranean, Madagascar, South-East Asia and most importantly Archangel and the truth behind a secret meeting with Stalin in Moscow by Sir Walter Citrine, UK Trade Union Congress leader, under Churchill's orders in 1941. No other book in history has ever exposed this detail. This Naval career highlight earned him the Arctic Star. His service continued during peacetime until 1962 amid major changes in the Navy and then all the Defence Forces. After 29 years of Naval service he accepted an offer from the then Department of External Affairs, spending two interesting years amongst the communist spy scandals in Bangkok, Thailand, as Head of Research in the South East Asian Treaty Organization Headquarters. Later, after joining the Australian Public Service, his major achievement was working with Sir Arthur Tange in producing the well-known Tange Report. With his Bachelor of Arts Honours degree and his thesis work, the Tange Report amalgamated the administration of the three armed services and Supply Department, creating the Department of Defence as we know it today. Even after being criticized by Australian National University gurus who believed that an insider couldn't be credited with writing about Defence matters, Wright proved to be right again - as history has shown that what we have today with the day-to-day operations of the three Services now controlled by the Headquarters at Bungendore - is just as he'd written it.

This is the story of Chęciny, my hometown in southern Poland, and of the people who lived there between the two world wars of the 20th Century.

The Nazi invasion of Poland in October 1939 started World War II. Millions of Polish Jews died in the ensuing Holocaust, including 4,000 citizens of Chęciny, and 50 members of my family. I was lucky: my mother, brother, three sisters and I had joined my father in America in 1930. I finished high school in Chicago, went to college and graduated from the University of Illinois Medical School. I became a doctor and a psychiatrist, setting up a long and rewarding private practice in Los Angeles that spanned more than 50 years.

Like the wall paintings in Pompeii, which offer a glimpse into the daily life of that city before the volcano, I hope that these stories offer a glimpse into the daily life of my hometown before the Holocaust.

But most of all, this is the story of my family, and a tribute to my beloved Aunt Chana and her daughter, my cousin Rachel, whose courage and self-sacrifice saved Miriam - Chęciny's youngest survivor of the Holocaust - from the Nazi murderers.

This book investigates the complexities of modern urban operations-a particularly difficult and costly method of fighting, and one that is on the rise. Contributors examine the lessons that emerge from a range of historical case studies, from nineteenth-century precedents to the Battle of Shanghai; Stalingrad, German town clearance, Mandalay, and Berlin during World War II; and from the Battle of Algiers to the Battle for Fallujah in 2004. Each case study illuminates the features that differentiate urban operations from fighting in open areas, and the factors that contribute to success and failure. The volume concludes with reflections on the key challenges of urban warfare in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Making the Best of Things is a record of the experiences of its author, Len Williams, over a period of more than thirty years. His narrative opens with a vivid and engaging memoir of childhood and adolescence in Camberwell during the 1910s and early 1920s, and culminates in a personal and anecdotal history of the Second World War, during which he served with the Auxiliary Fire Service and with an RAF Maintenance Unit (60 MU) based in Yorkshire and other parts of England. The central chapters are concerned with the changing fortunes of the Williams family during the 1920s and 1930s, offering an evocative account of the era of the Depression from the perspective of one who toiled, with little hope of advancement, as part of London's army of shopworkers. Williams presents these memoirs as a candid history of his family, and more particularly as his testimony with regard to an extraordinary and disturbing family secret uncovered in the wake of his father's death. The scope of the work quickly broadens, however, to form a rich and detailed panorama of his surroundings in Camberwell, one that pays special attention to the places he knew intimately, including Stobart Mansions, Kimpton Mission, the United Kingdom Tea Company and the Camberwell Green branch of the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society. Making the Best of Things is a meticulous and absorbing recreation of a lost world, offering masterful descriptions of the rituals and routines of ordinary life as Williams knew it, as well as first-hand accounts of many of the more momentous episodes in London's history, including Zeppelin raids, Armistice Night, the General Strike and the Blitz. This new edition, which collects these memoirs into a single volume for the first time, features editorial notes, an index, and a series of appendices relating to Williams's father and other members of his family. Making the Best of Things is also copiously illustrated with photographs and maps.

Hitler's Theology investigates the use of theological motifs in Adolf Hitler's public speeches and writings, and offers an answer to the question of why Hitler and his theo-political ideology were so attractive and successful presenting an alternative to the discontents of modernity. The book gives a systematic reconstruction of Hitler's use of theological concepts like providence, belief or the almighty God. Rainer Bucher argues that Hitler's (ab)use of theological ideas is one of the main reasons why and how Hitler gained so much acquiescence and support for his diabolic enterprise. This fascinating study concludes by contextualizing Hitler's theology in terms of a wider theory of modernity and in particular by analyzing the churches' struggle with modernity. Finally, the author evaluates the use of theology from a practical theological perspective. This book will be of interest to students of Religious Studies, Theology, Holocaust Studies, Jewish Studies, Religion and Politics, and German History.

This book offers a unique perspective on contemporary Polish cinema's engagement with histories of Polish violence against their Jewish neighbours during the Holocaust. Moving beyond conventional studies of historical representation on screen, the book considers how cinema reframes the unwanted knowledge of violence in its aftermaths. The book draws on Derridean hauntology, Didi-Huberman's confrontations with art images, Levinasian ethics and anamorphosis to examine cinematic reconfigurations of histories and memories that are vulnerable to evasion and formlessness. Innovative analyses of Birthplace (Lozinski, 1992), It Looks Pretty From a Distance (Sasnal, 2011), Aftermath (Pasikowski, 2012), and Ida (Pawlikowski, 2013) explore how their rural filmic landscapes are predicated on the radical exclusion of Jewish neighbours, prompting archaeological processes of exhumation. Arguing that the distressing materiality of decomposition disturbs cinematic composition, the book examines how Poland's aftermath cinema attempts to recompose itself through form and narrative as it faces Polish complicity in Jewish death.

Bennett collects oral histories from men of three United States regiments that participated in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment was the most widely scattered of the American parachute infantry regiments to be dropped on D-Day. However, the efforts of 180 men to stop the advance of an SS Panzer Grenadier division largely have been ignored outside of France. The 116th Infantry Regiment received the highest number of casualties on Omaha Beach of any Allied unit on D-Day. Stationed in England through most of the war, it had been the butt of jokes while other regiments did the fighting and dying in North Africa and the Mediterranean; that changed on June 6, 1944. And the 22nd Infantry Regiment, a unit that had fought in almost every campaign waged by the U.S. Army since 1812, came ashore on Utah Beach quite easily before getting embroiled in a series of savage fights to cross the marshland behind the beach and to capture the German heavy batteries to the north. Each participant's story is woven into the larger picture of the assault, allowing Bennett to go beyond the largely personal viewpoints yielded by traditional oral history but avoiding the impersonal nature of studies of grand strategy. In addition to the interviews and memoirs Bennett collected, he also discovered fresh documentary evidence from American, British, and French archives that play an important part in facilitating this new approach, as well as archives in Britain and France. The author unearths new stories and questions from D-Day, such as the massacre of soldiers from the 507th at Graignes, Hemevez, and elsewhere. This new material includes a focus on the regimental level, which is all but ignored by historians, while still covering strategic, tactical, and human issues. His conclusions highlight common misperceptions about the Normandy landings. Questions have already been raised about the wisdom of the Anglo-American amphibious doctrine employed on D-Day. In this study, Bennett continues to challenge the assumption that the operation was an exemplary demonstration of strategic planning.

"Rhodes and the Holocaust" is the story of "La Juderia," the Jewish community that once lived and flourished on Rhodes Island, the largest of the twelve Dodecanese islands in the Mediterranean Sea near the coast of Turkey. While the focus of the accounts of the Holocaust has for the most part been on the Jewish populations of Eastern and Middle Europe, little seems to be known of the events that affected those communities in Greece and the surrounding Aegean Islands during that time.

The population of this group was almost annihilated, reduced from a thriving community of over 80,000, to less than a 1,000 survivors, who were left to tell their stories. Among the victims of Rhodes Island were the grandmother and aunt of the author, who were killed by falling bombs, and his grandfather, who was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. This history tells of the deceit and inhuman treatment the entire Jewish community of Rhodes experienced during their deportation and eventual "liberation" by the Russian Army.

The heart-wrenching story of the Rhodes Jewish community is told through the experiences of a thirteen-year-old boy, taken by the Nazis to Auschwitz along with his father and his eleven-year-old sister.; Most of all, Rhodes and the Holocaust makes known the story of that community's existence and struggle for survival.

The events of World War II thrust young Marine Corps recruit Ralph T. Eubanks into a world he could not have imagined as a boy growing up on a farm in western Arkansas. This firsthand account of his experiences - based on recollections, research and numerous letters to his family and sweetheart back home - chronicles the tense and uncertain years of his service in the Marines. Eubanks describes his admiration for the traditions and glorious history of the Marine Corps that convinced him to join. We follow the adventures of this young recruit through his weeks of boot camp, intense training as an aviation ordnanceman, service in the Pacific combat zone, marriage to Betty Carty, trials of officer candidate school, preparations and execution of the occupation of Japan, and his eventual return to civilian life. Along the way, the farm boy from Arkansas is transformed into a model soldier who lives the maxim "once a Marine, always a Marine" the rest of his life. This is a rare glimpse into the everyday trials of a World War II Marine during one of our country's most trying periods.

Published in 1945 by the 65th Fighter Wing, Saffron Walden, 8th U.S. Air Force. This document was written to make and show why certain recommendations may help future air force commanders conserve fighters; this is not a training manual, however. It details the fact that flak was by far the most dangerous weapon the strategic fighter had to face. How it all came about and what was done to meet the problem (what was encountered, solution by phases, and lessons learned and recommendations) are told in the report. Please note this a high quality, carefully and extensively cleaned up copy of an archive document and while many efforts have been made to clean up these historic texts there may be occasional blemishes, usually reflecting the age of the documents and the typescript used at the time of writing.