"An excellent book . . . D'Este's masterly account comes into its own." --"The Washington Post Book World"
Born into hardscrabble poverty in rural Kansas, the son of stern pacifists, Dwight David Eisenhower graduated from high school more likely to teach history than to make it. Casting new light on this profound evolution, Eisenhower chronicles the unlikely, dramatic rise of the supreme Allied commander.
With full access to private papers and letters, Carlo D'Este has exposed for the first time the untold myths that have surrounded Eisenhower and his family for over fifty years, and identified the complex and contradictory character behind Ike's famous grin and air of calm self-assurance.
Unlike other biographies of the general, "Eisenhower "captures the true Ike, from his youth to the pinnacle of his career and afterward.

Originally published in 1939, this is a pre-war assesment of the political collapse of Europe into fascism. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: Line Up - The Bloody 15th of July - "The Cardinal Without Mercy" - Fascism Sows The Wind - "Millimetternich" - The Brown Flood Rises - War on Two Fronts - Dollfuss Chooses Suicide - Dollfuss Destroys Austria - Aftermath of Destruction - Germany Destroys Dollfuss - Kurt Von Schuschnigg - Conspirators and Two Concentration Camps - Revolutionaries At Play - Exit The Prince - Death Warrant - Secret History - Slipping Downhill - The Betrayal of Schuschnigg - The Agony In Berchtesgaden - The Last Four Weeks - The Provinces Lost - Death Bed Repentance And Last Rally - Interlude At Westminster - Finis Austriae - Terror Unchained - "Back, Or I Shoot!" - Abrupt Exit of The Author - Austria, What Now? - Bastion Czechoslovakia - Holding The Bastion - Konrad Henlein - "Mechant Animal" - Enter Lord Runciman - The Henleinist Rebellion - Bastion Betrayed - "Aux Armes, Citoyens!" - Second Betrayal - Closing Down

Thanks for the Memories destroys the historical myth that young men and women went about the business of war and stayed on the straight and narrow path. Rather, World War II provided new opportunities for sexual experimentation, for hasty marriages, for flourishing prostitution-and for love connections that have stood the test of time. Young men in the military, far away from family and home, did things they might never have done. Young women, many of whom went to work for the first time, experienced a freedom and independence most women had never known. Because of the war, courtships were cut short, couples married more quickly than normal, and husbands and wives were often separated for several years. Despite attempts to get back to normal after the war and the apparent togetherness of the 1950s, World War II had set change in motion, heralding the second wave of the women's liberation movement. The collective consciousness of World War II revolved around the virtues of bravery, sacrifice, and commitment. Members of The Greatest Generation toed political and social lines in hopes of winning the war. They fell into lockstep, asking very few questions, and breaking few social and sexual mores. Or did they? In fact, World War II was-like all wars-a time of sexual experimentation and a general loosening of morals. It was a time of conflicting emotions and conflicting messages, a time of great sacrifice, and a time of discovery, when some groups, especially woman, experienced a relaxing of bonds that had kept them in check. Thanks For The Memories: Love, Sex, and World War II the true story of how the World War II generation responded to the passions of war, and how those passions changed their lives-and the relationships between the sexes-forever. But this book is more than that. As Jane Mersky Leder writes, Thanks for the Memories opens the hearts and memories of a generation that is dying, by one estimate, at the rate of more than 1,000 a day. It exposes the sexual and romantic escapades of The Greatest Generation and underscores how those four war years revolutionized relationships (including those between gays), and how it helped set the stage for the second wave of the women's liberation movement. Many who never thought their stories mattered, Leder writes, now feel the pull of limited time, and the importance of leaving an accurate account for their children and grandchildren of what it was like to be a young man or young woman during World War II. This is their collective story.

Did Hitler mean to pursue global conquest once he had completed his mastery of Europe? In this startling reassessment of Hitler's strategic aims, Duffy argues that he fully intended to bring the war to America once his ambitions in the Eurasian heartland were achieved. Detailed here for the first time are the Third Reich's plans for a projected series of worldwide offensives using the new secret weapons emerging from wartime research. Duffy also recounts other Axis schemes to attack American cities through the use of multi-stage missiles, submarine launched rockets, and suicide missions against ships in the New York harbor. Taken together, these plans reveal just how determined the Axis powers were to attack the United States. Whether German forces could actually reach America has been long debated. What is certain is that Wehrmacht planners explored various options. In 1942 a secret plan was submitted to Hermann Goring for the use of long-range bombers against targets across the globe. The scheme, prepared by a select group within the Luftwaffe, is believed to be the result of direct discussions with Hitler. Long rumored to exist, this document was recently discovered in the military archives in Freiburg. This account provides the first detailed analysis of the plan and places it in the context of Germany's global war objectives.

Chester Nimitz was an admiral's Admiral, considered by many to be the greatest naval leader of the last century. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Nimitz assembled the forces, selected the leaders, and - as commander of all U.S. and Allied air, land, and sea forces in the Pacific Ocean - led the charge one island at a time, one battle at a time, toward victory. A brilliant strategist, he astounded contemporaries by achieving military victories against fantastic odds, outpacing more flamboyant luminaries like General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral "Bull" Halsey. And he was there to accept, on behalf of the United States, the surrender of the Japanese aboard the battleship USS Missouri in August 1945. In this first biography in over three decades, Brayton Harris uses long-overlooked files and recently declassified documents to bring to life one of America's greatest wartime heroes.

Promoted as a means for rectifying the problems of a region in extreme need, the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission (AACC) only exposed and exacerbated the underlying antagonisms between Britain and the United States over the economic and political structure of the post-war world. This study places the AACC, formed in 1942, within the context of the Anglo-American wartime special relationship, and examines the political, economic, and security motives at the heart of this unique and little-known collaboration. It exposes the determination of the United States to use exigencies of war to impose its post-war plans upon Britain, and the tenacity of the British to defend even the smallest and least regarded of its possessions regardless of local and international opposition.

The AACC was a battleground of conflicting British and American visions of a new West Indies, and it would thus serve as a rehearsal for key debates that would emerge at the end of the war. For the United States, the AACC was a vehicle for promoting America's broad postwar ambitions in the West Indies; for Britain, it was simply part of the price that had to be paid for American assistance in the war effort. Debates within the AACC over the future of West Indian sugar, the regulation of tariffs and trade, constitutional reform and the expansion of civil aviation mirrored wider British and American differences.

In the annals of World War II, the role of America's British allies in the Pacific Theater has been largely ignored. Nicholas Sarantakes now revisits this seldom-studied chapter to depict the delicate dance among uneasy partners in their fight against Japan, offering the most detailed assessment ever published of the U.S. alliance with Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Sarantakes examines Britain's motivations for participating in the invasion of Japan, the roles envisioned by its Commonwealth nations, and the United States' decision to accept their participation. He shows how the interests of all allies were served by maintaining the coalition, even in the face of disputes between nations, between civilian and military leaders, and between individual services-and that allied participation, despite its diplomatic importance, limited the efficiency of final operations against Japan.

Sarantakes describes how Churchill favored British-led operations to revive the colonial empire, while his generals argued that Britain would be further marginalized if it didn't fight alongside the United States in the assault on Japan's home islands. Meanwhile, Commonwealth partners, preoccupied with their own security concerns, saw an opportunity to support the mother country in service of their own separatist ambitions. And even though the United States called the shots, it welcomed allies to share the predicted casualties of an invasion.

Sarantakes takes readers into the halls of both civil and military power in all five nations to show how policies and actions were debated, contested, and resolved. He not only describes the participation of major heads of state but also brings in lesser-known Commonwealth figures, plus a cast of military leaders including General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz on the American side and Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham and Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke on the British. He also paints vivid scenes of battle, including the attack of the British Pacific Fleet on Japan and ground fighting on Okinawa.

Deftly blending diplomatic, political, and military history encompassing naval, air, and land forces, Sarantakes's work reveals behind-the-scenes political factors in warfare alliances and explains why the Anglo-America coalition survived World War II when it had collapsed after World War I.

After years of being apart, cousins Carolyn and Patty are eager to catch up with each other at a relative's wedding. They bring the letters they exchanged during World War II--when they were children--as a way to reminisce.

As the women read through the letters, they are transported back to the American home front. When they begin writing letters, Carolyn has just moved from Nebraska to Oregon, and the two girls desperately miss each other. But their communication is soon overshadowed by the events of December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor is bombed.

The tone of the letters changes as the girls grow preoccupied with the war. Patty tells Carolyn about how their Japanese American friends move to Canada to avoid being put into camps, while Carolyn expresses her relief that her father cannot enlist in the navy due to a blind eye.

Whether they write about gas rationing and blackout regulations or saving money to buy war stamps, Carolyn and Patty reveal the war's impact on their lives. But as the two discuss the contents of the letters at their reunion, they realize just how much the war years shaped who they are as adults.

Artfully switching between the past and the present, Letters from the Home Front is a charming novel of America during World War II.

First published in 1929, it is now available as a brand new book. The story is an account of the lives of ordinary soldiers. The central character, Bourne is an enigmatic character and Manning tells his own wartime experiences through him. It is forcibly written, too forcibly for the sensibilities of the time, and a censored version was produced in 1930 under the title 'Her Privates We'.

What was the role played by local police volunteers in the Holocaust? Using eye witness descriptions from the towns and villages of Belorussia and Ukraine, this text reveals local policemen as hands on collaborators of the Nazis. They brutally drove Jewish neighbours from their homes and guarded them closely on the way to their deaths. Some distinguished themselves as ruthless murderers. Outnumbering German police manpower in these areas, the local police were the foot soldiers of the Holocaust in the east.

This startling book reveals the military and political plans of the Axis in the very words of its own generals and admirals. The advent of Adolf Hitler has Germany's supreme leader marked the inauguration of the deliberate plans for world domination by the Third Reich. These plans were not secret; other nations simply refused to take them seriously. They followed the tradition of one hundred years of German military thinking form Clausewitz to Ludendorff. They were implicit in Mein Kampf. During the years from 1933 to 1939 they were worked out in detail by those who today are in charge of the Nazi armies. These writing, in fact, contain the Blueprints for the Total War. Now, for the first time, they have been assembled, translated and made available to all who want to understand the nature of the enemy with whom they are engaged in a life and death struggle. The Axis Grand Strategy describes the plan for modern war from the earliest political and psychological preparation to the ultimate campaign of militar

During World War II the Japanese were stereotyped in the European imagination as fanatical, cruel, almost inhuman - an image reflected in most books and films about prisoner of war in the Far East. While the Japanese cetainly treated those they captured badly, behaving far worse to Chinese and native captives than to Europeans, the conventional view of the Japanese is unhistorical and simplistic. It fails to recognize that hte Japanese were acting at a time of supreme national crisis trial, at a particular period of their history, and that their attitudes were influenced by a combination of their perception of their own racial identity mixed with a powerful historical tradition. This collection of essays, by both western and Japanese scholars, aims to see the question from a historical viewpoint, and from both a western and Japanese perspective, looking at it in the light of both longer-term influences, notably the Japanese attempt to establish themselves as an honorary white race. The essays also examine particular instances. Conditions in the almost self-run camp at Changi contrasted remarkably with those on the Burma Railway, where disease and a failure to provide supplies caused terrible suffering. The book also addresses the other side of the question, looking at the treatment of Japanese prisoners in Allied captivity.

In the ruined Europe of World War II, American soldiers on the front lines had no eye for breathtaking vistas or romantic settings. The brutality of battle profoundly darkened their perceptions of the Old World. As the only means of international travel for the masses, the military exposed millions of Americans to a Europe in swift, catastrophic decline.

Drawing on soldiers' diaries, letters, poems, and songs, Peter Schrijvers offers a compelling account of the experiences of U.S. combat ground forces: their struggles with the European terrain and seasons, their confrontations with soldiers, and their often startling encounters with civilians. Schrijvers relays how the GIs became so desensitized and dehumanized that the sight of dead animals often evoked more compassion than the sight of enemy dead.

The Crash of Ruin concludes with a dramatic and moving account of the final Allied offensive into German-held territory and the soldiers' bearing witness to the ultimate symbol of Europe's descent into ruin--the death camps of the Holocaust.

The harrowing experiences of the GIs convinced them that Europe's collapse was not only the result of the war, but also the Old World's deep-seated political cynicism, economic stagnation, and cultural decadence. The soldiers came to believe that the plague of war formed an inseparable part of the Old World's decline and fall.

Paris - Underground BY ETTA SHIBER IN COLLABORATION WITH ANNE AND PAUL DUPRE NEW YO K 1943 For KITTY AUTHORS NOTE The basic facts in the boo are a matter of record. Most of the names of the persons whose activities are described in this boo have been changed, for obvi us reasons, i few details, not already matters of record t nown to the Gestapo f have been recast, a few omitted, and the roles of various persons interchanged, in order to ma e it impossible for any use to be made of this boo by the German mthorities against anyone described in it. Contents CHAPTER PAGE I Escape from Europe i II Flight from Paris 13 III The English Pilot 22 IV Running the Gauntlet 31 V They Are Here 37 VI Plans for Escape 51 VII William Escapes 57 VIII A Trip to Doullens 67 IX Ten Thousand Englishmen 80 X The Gestapo Pounces 86 XI Where Is Lieutenant Burke 93 XII Nach Paris 103 XIII The Wound no XIV Friends or Enemies 17 XV A Visit to Father Christian 129 XVI The Death Decree 139 fcvn An Old Friend 14 XVIII Check to the Gestapo 160 Made in Heaven 174 f wo Scares CONTENTS CHAPTER. XXIII First Day in Prison XXIV The Stool Pigeon XXV Release XXVI Where Is Kitty XXVII Travels with a Shadow XXVIII Prison Again XXIX Kitty XXX The Trial XXXI Captain Weber Speaks XXXII The Sentence XXXIII Cut Rate for Freedom XXXIV Micheline XXXV A New Cell-Mate XXXVI Louise Clears Up a Mystery XXXVII A New Prison XXXVIII Prison at Troyes XXXIX Pearl Harbor. Axis Report XL A New Arrival XLI Spring XLII Parole XLIII Father Christian XLIV Last Days in Paris PAGE 212 225 234 244 255 271 28l 290 299 308 314 323 327 335 340 349 355 361 368 374 38i 387 PARIS - UNDERGROUND CHAPTER ONE Escape from Europ - TTSAID no good-bye to Europe Iwas below decks when the ship JL began to move Her engines were so smooth and noiseless that they must have been running for some time before I became con scious of their muffled pulsing I hurried up on deck, expecting to find the ship coursing down the broad Tagus River, with the many colored buildings of Lisbon piled in confusion on its shore But from the deck, there was already no sight of land Behind us, I knew, was the coast of Portugal, but it was lost in the evening haze The sea was a dirty gray The engines of the great ship hummed soothingly, monotonously, as she plowed smoothly through the waves, America-bound at last The sky was overcast As the night darkened, not a star showed to relieve the pitch blackness of the sea Our ship alone moved in a blaze of brilliance through the surrounding gloom All other vessels, I knew, would show no lights as they slipped silently over the black waves But as I leaned over the side I could read the great black letters on her white hull, glowing in the light of powerful reflectors, which explained why we alone dared to pass warships, submarines and planes with every light ablaze Diplomat Drottmngholm Diplomat For this was the return trip of the Drottnmgholm, whose safety was guaranteed by both sides, because she had taken Axis officials and correspondents to Lisbon, and was now heading back to the United States with her exchange cargo of American diplomats, con sular officials and newspapermen I was neither a diplomat, nor a consular official, nor a newspaper man I was a unique passenger on this official ship I was an ex changed prisoner, released from a German cell because somewhere m the United States a prison door had swung open for some onewhose return Germany desired I was a pawn in this bargain, made through a neutral nation between the governments of Hitlers Reich 2 PARIS UNDERGROUND and my own United States I had had nothing to do with its con...

Drawing together a wide variety of primary source documents from across the United States, Europe, and Asia, this book illuminates the events and experiences of World War II-the most devastating war in human history. World War II was the most destructive and disruptive war ever, a global conflict that in one way or another affected the lives of people across the planet. Voices of World War II: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life coalesces a wide variety of primary source documents drawn from across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Supplemented by interpretive material that enables readers to analyze them, assess their impact and significance, and place them in context to comparable situations today, the documents provide rare insights into World War II. Expert commentaries and additional information on these texts enable a greater understanding of the background to these documents, providing valuable training in learning to interpret, assess, and evaluate historical sources. Intended primarily for upper-level high school and undergraduate-level history students, general readers will also appreciate the variegated array of primary material from World War II, which depicts numerous aspects of the conflict, often in extremely personal terms. A chronology lists all major events of World War II A bibliography provides an up-do-date selection of basic books, Internet sources, and movies and television series on World War II A glossary defines key World War II terms and phrases Extensive commentary, contextual information, and guiding questions accompany each document

The incredible wartime saga of the only American submariners to survive the sinking of their ship and evade enemy capture in WWII On the night of August 13, 1944, the U.S. submarine Flier struck a mine in the Sulu Sea in the southern Philippines as it steamed along the surface. All but fifteen of the more than eighty-strong crew went down with the vessel. Of those left floating in the dark, eight survived by swimming for seventeen hours before washing ashore on an uninhabited island. The story of the Flier and its eight survivors is wholly unique in the annals of U.S. military history. Eight Survived tells the gripping story of the doomed submarine and its crew from its first patrol, during which it sank several enemy ships, to the explosion in the Sulu Sea. Drawing on interviews with the survivors and on a visit to the jungle where they washed ashore-where a cast of fascinating characters helped the U.S. sailors evade the Japanese-Douglas Campbell fully captures the combination of extraordinary courage and luck that marked one of the most heroic episodes of World War II.

"Don't be too ready to listen to stories told by attractive women. They may be acting under orders." This was only one of the many warnings given to the 30,000 British troops preparing to land in the enemy territory of Nazi Germany nine-and-a-half months after D-Day. The newest addition to the Bodleian Library's bestselling series of wartime pamphlets, "Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944" opens an intriguing window into the politics and military stratagems that brought about the end of World War II.
The pamphlet is both a succinct survey of German politics, culture, and history and a work of British propaganda. Not only does the pamphlet cover general cultural topics such as food and drink, currency, and social customs, but it also explains the effect of years of the war on Germans and their attitudes toward the British. The book admonishes, "The Germans are not good at controlling their feelings. They have a streak of hysteria. You will find that Germans may often fly into a passion if some little thing goes wrong." The mix of humor and crude stereotypes--"If you have to give orders to German civilians, give them in a firm, military manner. The German civilian is used to it and expects it"--in the text make this pamphlet a stark reminder of the wartime fears and hopes of the British.
By turns a manual on psychological warfare, a travel guide, and a historical survey, "Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944" offers incomparable insights into how the British, and by extension the Allied forces, viewed their fiercest enemy on the eve of its defeat.

Paldiel highlights the role of non-Jews in extending aid and assistance to Jews inside Nazi-dominated Europe. From the testimonies and files housed at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust martyrs and heroes memorial in Jerusalem, Paldiel presents dozens of stories of the circumstances and odds facing Jews and those who would help them. Includes an eight-page photo insert.