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.

When Julia Child arrived in Paris in 1948, 'a six-foot-two-inch, thirty-six-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian', she barely spoke a word of French and didn't know the first thing about cooking. As she fell in love with French culture - buying food at local markets, sampling the local bistros, and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu - her life began to change forever. We follow her extraordinary transformation from kitchen ingenue to internationally renowned (and internationally loved) expert in French cuisine. Bursting with Child's adventurous and humorous spirit, My Life in France captures post-war Paris with wonderful vividness and charm.

Jay A. Stout breaks new ground in World War II history with this gripping account of one of the war's most highly decorated American fighter groups. Stout combines the storytelling gifts and careful research for a seasoned historian with the combat experience of a former fighter pilot to tell the remarkable story of the 352nd Fighter Group. This isn't just the story of a single fighter group; it's the story of how the United States won the air war over Europe.

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...

In early 1942, following a string of successes, the Japanese seized nearly 10,000 American soldiers, among them Pvt. Oscar Smith, on Manila Bay and marched them to a near-certain death through Bataan. A few days later they put Smith to work burying the stacked bodies of his own men. Robert Salmon had already served his time in the military during World War I, fighting for his native England. He was teaching biochemistry to Chinese students in Shanghai when the Japanese arrested him in 1943 and condemned him, with thousands of confused Western missionaries, to spend the remainder of World War II in an abandoned tobacco factory. German soldiers, marching toward what would be known as the Battle of the Bulge, captured Ed Uzemack, a Chicago journalist turned soldier, at an abandoned Luxembourg inn. By cattle car they sent him to a crowded, wind-swept POW camp, once the final internment spot for Jewish concentration camp victims. In 1945 Hermann Pfengle, just fifteen years old, had been released from German mil

Shaping the minds of the future generation was pivotal to the Nazi regime in order to ensure the continuing success of the Third Reich. Through the curriculum, the elite schools and youth groups, the Third Reich waged a war for the minds of the young. Hitler understood the importance of education in creating self-identity, inculcating national pride, promoting 'racial purity' and building loyalty. Education in Nazi Germany examines how Nazism took shape in the classroom via school textbook policy, physical education and lessons on Nationalist Socialist heroes and anti-Semitism. Offering a compelling new analysis of Nazi educational policy, this book brings to the forefront an often-overlooked aspect of the Third Reich.

What form does the dialogue about the family during the Nazi period take in the families of those persecuted by the Nazi regime and of Nazi perpertrators and accomplices? What impact does the past of the first generation, and their own way of dealing with it, have on the lives of their descendants? What are the structural differences between the dialogue about the Holocaust in families of perpetrators and those of the victims? This text examines these questions on the basis of selected case studies. It presents five families of survivors from Germany and Israel whose experiences of persecution and family histories after the liberation differ greatly. Two case studies of non-Jewish German families whose grandparents' generation are suspected of having perpretrated Nazi crimes illustrate the mechanisms operating in these families - those of passing the guilt on to the victims and creating the myth of being victims themselves - and give a sense of the psychological consequences these mechanisms have for the generations of their children and grandchildren.

The two decades between the first and second world wars saw the emergence of nuclear physics as the dominant field of experimental and theoretical physics, owing to the work of an international cast of gifted physicists. Prominent among them were Ernest Rutherford, George Gamow, the husband and wife team of Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, Gregory Breit and Eugene Wigner, Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch, the brash Ernest Lawrence, the prodigious Enrico Fermi, and the incomparable Niels Bohr. Their experimental and theoretical work arose from a quest to understand nuclear phenomena; it was not motivated by a desire to find a practical application for nuclear energy. In this sense, these physicists lived in an 'Age of Innocence'. They did not, however, live in isolation. Their research reflected their idiosyncratic personalities; it was shaped by the physical and intellectual environments of the countries and institutions in which they worked. It was also buffeted by the political upheavals after the Great War: the punitive postwar treaties, the runaway inflation in Germany and Austria, the Great Depression, and the intellectual migration from Germany and later from Austria and Italy. Their pioneering experimental and theoretical achievements in the interwar period therefore are set within their personal, institutional, and political contexts. Both domains and their mutual influences are conveyed by quotations from autobiographies, biographies, recollections, interviews, correspondence, and other writings of physicists and historians.

Few historical events have resonated as much in modern British culture as the Second World War. It has left a rich legacy in a range of media that continue to attract a wide audience: film, TV and radio, photography and the visual arts, journalism and propaganda, architecture, museums, music and literature. The enduring presence of the war in the public world is echoed in its ongoing centrality in many personal and family memories, with stories of the Second World War being recounted through the generations. This collection brings together recent historical work on the cultural memory of the war, examining its presence in family stories, in popular and material culture and in acts of commemoration in Britain between 1945 and the present.

How big is Germany's Air Force? Of what is it capable? Is Hitler preparing for battle? Will Germany wage and air-war? These questions, and many more, are answered in this book. Concisely, employing a lucid style which will be refreshing to American readers, Herr Lehmann-Russbueldt states the case of Hitler's rapidly growing air corps. First-hand information is divulged, unassailable facts are presented, and everyone-students of international affairs or not-will lay down this book with a greater knowledge and a truer realization of the martial situation prevelant in Germany under Der Fuehrer.

The use of American POW's as slave labor by Japanese companies is the great unresolved issue of the Second World War in the Pacific. Unjust Enrichment provides a forum for American servicemen to tell their own stories, while Linda Holmes gives the reader the historic context to recognize the seriousness of the crimes. Bio: Linda Goetz Holmes has been interviewing and writing about World War II prisoners in the Pacific for over 30 years. She is the first historian appointed to the U.S. Government Interagency Working Group, formed in 1999 under the aegis of the National Archives to locate and declassify material about World War II war crimes.

Private Dan Jones was captured by Nazi sergeants in a smoke-filled forest in Holland. He and a small group of American prisoners, mostly paratroopers from the 101st and 82nd Airborne, were taken to the squalid barn loft that was to be their home for the rest of the war. In the Work Commando 311/I, Nazis forced them to work as slave laborers, repairing and maintaining German railroads that had been damaged by Allied bombs. The ill, weary prisoners, once proud members of elite U.S. fighting units, suffered unaccustomed disgrace. Bickering over the meager food supply added to their anxious depression and hopelessness. Tired of the men's morose outlook and individualistic ways, Herbert Marlowe, their unofficial leader, held a meeting one evening in the barn loft. Marlow explained that their infighting and irritability were not only keeping their spirits low by also amusing the Germans. He encouraged the prisoners to retaliate against their captors in careful, nonthreatening ways. Jones suggested that they work s

Delving into a traditionally underexplored period, this book focuses on the treatment of Greek Jews under the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas in the years leading up to the Second World War. Almost 86% of Greek Jews died in the Holocaust, leading many to think this was because of Metaxas and his fascist ideology. However, the situation in Greece was much more complicated; in fact, Metaxas in his policies often attempted to quash anti-Semitism. The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 1936-1941 explores how the Jews fit (and did not fit) into Metaxas's vision for Greece. Drawing on unpublished archival sources and Holocaust survivor testimonies, this book presents a ground-breaking contribution to Greek history, the history of Greek anti-Semitism, and sheds light on attitudes towards Jews during the interwar period.

World War II is one of the first conflicts to be extensively recorded in detail by both combatants and journalists, and many iconic photos of the fighting and battlefields have been passed down to us today. But how do these battlefields look now, following the extensive rebuilding of the postwar era? Featuring 75 battlefield sites divided by wartime theatre, World War II Battlefields allows the reader to explore well-known battle locations today and compare them to images captured during the height of the conflict. Examine the huge concrete bunker at Fort Eben Emael, Belgium, captured by German glider troops in May 1940 and still intact today; see the beaches at Tarawa atoll, a scene of fierce fighting between the US Marines and the Japanese defenders in 1943; or the streets of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, the centre of a bloody battle between the II SS Panzer Korps and the Red Army; explore the Norman village of Villers-Bocage, where a few German Tiger tanks halted the advance of the British 7th Armoured Division a week after the D-Day landings; see the twin-medieval towers of the bridge at Remagen on the Rhine river, made famous in photos and movies; see the dozens of Japanese ships sunk in Truk Lagoon following comprehensive American air attacks, and today a popular dive site; and examine Monte Cassino monastery in Italy, destroyed by Allied aerial bombing and since completely rebuilt as a place of pilgrimage.

Swastika over the Acropolis is a new, multi-national account which provides a new and compelling interpretation of the Greek campaign of 1941, and its place in the history of World War II. It overturns many previously accepted English-language assumptions about the fighting in Greece in April 1941 - including, for example, the impact usually ascribed to the Luftwaffe, German armour and the conduct of the Greek Army Further, Swastika over the Acropolis demonstrates that this last complete strategic victory by Nazi Germany in World War II is set against a British-Dominion campaign mounted as a withdrawal, not an attempt to 'save' Greece from invasion and occupation. At the same time, on the German side, the campaign revealed serious and systemic weaknesses in the planning and the conduct of large-scale operations that would play a significant role in the regime's later defeats.

Despite the recent rise in studies that approach fascism as a transnational phenomenon, the links between fascism and internationalist intellectual currents have only received scant attention. This book explores the political thought of Bertrand de Jouvenel and Alfred Fabre-Luce, two French intellectuals, journalists and political writers who, from 1930 to the mid-1950s, moved between liberalism, fascism and Europeanism. Daniel Knegt argues that their longing for a united Europe was the driving force behind this ideological transformation-and that we can see in their thought the earliest stages of what would become neoliberalism.

In October 1946, Colonel Presley Rixey arrived by destroyer at Chichi Jima to repatriate 22,000 Japanese who had been bypassed during the war in the Pacific. While waiting for a Marine battalion to arrive, the colonel met daily with a Japanese commission assigned to assist him. When asked what had happened to American prisoners on the island, the Japanese hatched a story to hide the atrocities that they had committed. In truth, the downed flyers had been captured, executed, and eaten by certain senior Japanese officers. This is the story of the investigation, the cover-up, and the last hours of those Americans who disappeared into war's wilderness and whose remains were distributed to the cooking galleys of Chichi Jima. Rixey's suspicion of a cover-up was later substantiated by a group of Americans returning from Japan who had lived on Chichi Jima for generations. It would take five months of gathering testimony to uncover all the details. Thirty war criminals were eventually tried at Guam in 1947, five of whom met their fate on the gallows.

In Nine Wartime Lives, James Hinton uses diaries kept by nine 'ordinary' people in wartime Britain to re-evaluate the social history of the Second World War, and to reflect on the twentieth-century making of the modern self.
These diaries were written by some of the unusually self-reflective and public-spirited people who agreed to write intimate journals about their daily activity for the social research organization, Mass Observation. One of the nine diarists discussed is Nella Last, whose published diaries have been a source of delight and fascination for many thousands of readers. Alongside her there are chapters on eight other Mass Observers, each in their own way as vivid, interesting, and surprising as Nella herself.
A central insight underpins the book: in seeking to make the best of our own lives, each of us makes selective use of the resources of our shared culture in a unique way; and, in so doing, we contribute, however modestly, to molecular processes of historical change. Placing individuals at the center of his analysis, James Hinton probes the impact of war on attitudes to citizenship, the changing relationships between men and women, and the search for meanings in life that could transcend the wartime context of limitless violence.
Consistently sensitive, thoughtful and often moving, this beautifully written book resists nostalgic contrasts between the presumed dutiful citizenship of wartime Britain and contemporary anti-social individualism, pointing instead to longer run processes of change rooted as much in struggles for personal autonomy in the private sphere as in the politics of active citizenship in public life.

An omnibus edition of two collections of deeply eccentric autobiographical essays by Lord Fisher, the father of the Dreadnought and of the battle cruiser.

From the preface to the first volume, Memories:

Readers of this book will quickly observe that Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher has small faith in the printed word; and those who have enjoyed the privilege of having " his fist shaken in their faces" will readily admit that the printed word, though faithfully taken down from his dictation, must lack a large measure of the power-the " aroma," as he calls it-which his personality lends to his spoken word.

Had Lord Fisher been allowed his own way, there would have been no Book. Not for the first time in his career, the need of serving his country and his country's Navy has over-ridden his personal feeling. These "Memories," therefore, must be regarded as a compromise ("the beastliest word in the English language"-see "The Times" of September gth, 1919) between the No-Book of Lord Fisher's inclination and the orderly, complete Autobiography which the public wishes to possess.

The book consists in the main of the author's ipsissima verba, dictated during the month of September, 1919. One or two chapters have been put together from fugitive writings which Lord Fisher had collected and printed (in noble and eloquently various type) as a gift to his friends after his death. The discreeter passages of the letters which he wrote to Lord Esher between 1903 and 1912 illustrate some portions of the life's work which-caring little for the past and much for the future, much for the idea and little for the fact-Lord Fisher has successfully declined to describe in his own words.