Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Books > History > World history > From 1900 > Second World War
This book investigates cinematic representations of the murder of European Jews and civilian opposition to Nazi occupation from the war up until the twenty-first century. The study exposes a chronology of the conflict's memorialization whose geo-political alignments are demarcated by vectors of time and space-or 'chronotopes', using Mikhail Bakhtin's term. Camino shows such chronotopes to be first defined by the main allies; the USA, USSR and UK; and then subsequently expanding from the geographical and political centres of the occupation; France, the USSR and Poland. Films from Western and Eastern Europe and the USA are treated as primary and secondary sources of the conflict. These sources contribute to a sentient or emotional history that privileges affect and construct what Michel Foucault labels biopolitics. These cinematic narratives, which are often based on memoirs of resistance fighters like Joseph Kessel or Holocaust survivors such as Primo Levi and Wanda Jakubowska, evoke the past in what Marianne Hirsch has described as 'post-memory'.
A Newsman Remembered is not just the story of the life of Ralph Burdette Jordan (RBJ - or "Jock") - who was a remarkable newspaperman/motion picture publicist/war correspondent. It is also a glimpse into an era of American social and political history that is now, unfortunately, largely forgotten if not discarded. The compelling personalities with whom he engaged- Aimee Semple McPherson, William Randolph Hearst, Louis B. Mayer, General Douglas MacArthur - are but fading memories which this book briefly restores. The first half of the 20th century began as an era of optimism that encompassed a belief that working hard - along with seizing the "main chance" - would produce social, professional and financial success. Ralph Jordan certainly exuded that optimism in everything that he encountered in his short life. Along with his contemporaries, moving into the great (largely ill-defined) middle class was his overarching goal. Within this goal, family life was an important ingredient for him - marriage in his day was still a partnership with clearly defined marital roles and expectations. Ralph and Mary's marriage reflected that domestic configuration. Religious faith - if not always observed to the letter - also formed an important part of their family life. It could not be otherwise for them and those other largely third-generation descendants of Mormon pioneers (and their non-Mormon contemporaries) with whom they associated. These so-called Mormon second- and third-generation diasporans were willing - even eager - to leave behind them the remoteness of what was then described as "Zion," to seek more promising futures elsewhere, retaining as best they could their unique heritage. Thus, Ralph Jordan's story is indeed a "life and times" story worth telling
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Most military historians have difficulty comprehending the miracle that took place in late 1941 and early 1942 in the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1941, the German Army routed the Red Army as it had routed the Polish, British, French and other armies in 1939, 1940, and early 1941. None had been able to withstand German might more than a few weeks. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, his legions quickly overcame the Soviet divisions they met, and it appeared to most that Hitler would succeed as he had before. A major portion of the prewar Red Army had been completely annihilated, millions of prisoners taken, and the most populous and developed provinces of the Soviet Union occupied by the Germans and their allies. In September, the Germans surrounded and captured a huge bag of divisions east of Kiev, only to encounter a flood of new Red Army divisions when they redirected their intentions on Moscow. In short order the Wehrmacht broke through this line, and approached within sight of the outskirts of the capital. There, they were surprised by a massive offensive mounted by even more new divisions. Other countries had surrendered after losing one army, let alone two. The Soviets came back with a third--which sent the Germans reeling to the rear. How was this possible? Dunn's detailed examination shows that, far from carelessly throwing thousands of disorganized, untrained men into battle, the Soviets wisely used the resources at hand to resist and drive back the invaders once the initial shock had been absorbed. He reveals how the Soviets systematically trained men as replacements for casualties in existing units, often renaming the unit (a move that confused Germanintelligence then and continues to confound historians today). Unit integrity was as significant in the Red Army as in other armies. Men were not robotic clones, and each had strengths and weaknesses. Knowing this led to unit integrity and success on the battlefield. Tracing the formation and commitment to battle of Soviet units, regardless of the changes of designation, is crucial to understanding the success and failure of Soviet operations--and Stalin's "keys to victory."
In the last half century, ways of thinking about the Holocaust have changed somewhat dramatically. In this volume, noted scholars reflect on how their own thinking about the Holocaust has changed over the years. In their personal stories they confront the questions that the Holocaust has raised for them and explore how these questions have been evolving. Contributors include John T. Pawlikowski, Richard L. Rubenstein, Michael Berenbaum, and Eva Fleischner.
This book is a 'hidden' history of Bletchley Park during the Second World War, which explores the agency from a social and gendered perspective. It examines themes such as: the experience of wartime staff members; the town in which the agency was situated; and the cultural influences on the wartime evolution of the agency.
This volume demonstrates how German expansion in the Second World War II led to shortages, of food and other necessities including medicine, for the occupied populations, causing many to die from severe hunger or starvation. While the various chapters look at a range of topics, the main focus is on the experiences of ordinary people under occupation; their everyday life, and how this quickly became dominated by the search for supplies and different strategies to fight scarcity. The book discusses various such strategies for surviving increasingly catastrophic circumstances, ranging from how people dealt with rationing systems, to the use of substitute products and recycling, barter, black-marketeering and smuggling, and even survival prostitution. In addressing examples from Norway to Greece and from France to Russia, this volume offers the first pan-European perspective on the history of shortage, malnutrition and hunger resulting from the war, occupation, and aggressive German exploitation policies.
United States Marine Corps veteran David Hall presents a new and exciting way to experience the Second World War in "Blood and Guts: Rules, Tactics, and Scenarios for Wargaming World War Two." Hall developed his tactical game system through decades of personal wargaming, and he now shares his unique system with readers everywhere. The rules are easy to learn, and the games are fast-paced. The scenarios cover almost all of the major theaters of conflict, including France 1940, the Mediterranean, the South Pacific, and the Eastern Front. A table of organization and equipment is included to assist readers in recreating wargame infantry and armor formations. Hall doesn't simply provide a set of rules; he infuses each chapter with wargame theory, tactics, and tank development. He provides the logic behind each rule and talks about how the rule design plays out the battlefield. He also shares stories and anecdotes about his early "toy soldier" days and about how he developed into a wargamer-stories sure to spark readers' memories of their own first set of soldiers.
What was life like for ordinary Germans under Hitler? Hitler's Home Front paints a picture of life in Wurttemberg, a region in south-west Germany, during the rise to power and rule of the Nazis. It concentrates in particular on life in the countryside. Many Wurttembergers, while not actively opposing Hitler, carried on their normal lives before 1939, with their traditional loyalties, to region, village, church and family, balancing the claims of Nazism. The Nazis did not kill its own citizens (other than the Jews) in the way that Stalinist Russia did, and there were limits to the numbers and power of the Gestapo and to the reach of the Nazi state. Yet the region could not escape the catastrophic effect of the war, as conscription, labour shortages, migrant labour, bombing, hunger and defeat overwhelmed the lives of everyone.
Germany's Eastern Front in World War II saw many campaigns and battles that have been "forgotten" by a Soviet Union that tried to hide its military failures. The Red Army's invasion of Romania in April and May 1944 was one such campaign, which produced nearly 200,000 casualties and tarnished the reputations of its commanders. The redoubtable David Glantz, the world's leading authority on the Soviet military in World War II, now restores this tale to its proper place in the annals of World War II. Working from newly available Russian and long-neglected German archives--plus Red Army unit histories and commanders' memoirs--Glantz reconstructs an imposing mosaic that reveals the immense scope and ambitious intent of the first Iasi-Kishinev offensive. His re-creation shows that Stalin was not as preoccupied with a direct route to Berlin as he was with a "broad front" strategy designed to gain territory and find vulnerable points in Germany's extended lines of defense. If successful, the invasion would have also eliminated Romania as Germany's ally, cut off the vital Ploiesti oilfields, and provided a base from which to consolidate Soviet power throughout the Balkans. Glantz traces the 2nd Ukrainian Front's offensive along the Tirgu-Frumos, Iasi, and Dnestr River axes and the 3rd Ukrainian Front's simultaneous advance to the Dnestr River and dramatic struggle to seize bridgeheads across the river and capture Kishinev. He discloses General Ivan Konev's strategic plan as the 2nd Ukrainian Front prepared its Iasi offensive and fought a climactic battle with the German Eighth Army and its Romanian allies in the Tirgu-Frumos region in early May, then the regrouping of General Rodion Malinovsky's 3rd Ukrainian Front for its decisive offensive toward Kishinev, which aborted in the face of a skillful counterstroke by a threadbare German Sixth Army. Glantz describes how the Wehrmacht, with a nucleus of survived combat veterans, was able to beat back Soviet forces hampered by spring floods, while already fragile Soviet logistical support was further undermined by the Wehrmacht's scorched-earth strategy. Although Konev's and Malinovsky's offensives ultimately failed, the Red Army managed to inflict heavy losses on Axis forces, exacerbating the effects of Germany's defeats in the Ukraine and making it more difficult for the Wehrmacht to contain the Soviet juggernaut's ultimate advance toward Berlin. By re-creating this forgotten offensive, Glantz commemorates a rich and important chapter in the history of a war that brought down the German Army and reshaped the map of Europe.
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.
On 19 February 1942 the Japanese air force bombed Darwin. Whilst this fact is well known, very few people know exactly what happened. Timothy Hall was the first writer to be given acess to all the official reports of the time and as a result he has been able to reveal exactly what happened on that dreadful day - a day which Sir Paul Hasluck (17th Governor-General of Australia) later described as 'a day of national shame'. The sequence of events in Darwin that day certainly did not reflect the military honour that the War Cabinet wanted people to believe. On the contrary, for what really happened was a combination of chaos, panic and, in many cases, cowardice on an unprecented scale.
This book analyses the film industries and cinema cultures of Nazi-occupied countries (1939-1945) from the point of view of individuals: local captains of industry, cinema managers, those working for film studios and officials authorized to navigate film policy. The book considers these people from a historical perspective, taking into account their career before the occupation and, where relevant, pays attention to their post-war lives. The perspectives of these historical agents" contributes to an understanding of how top-down orders and haphazard signals from the occupying administration were moulded, adjusted and distorted in the process of their translation and implementation. This edited collection offers a more dynamic and less deterministic approach to research on the international expansion of Third-Reich cinema in World War Two; an approach that strives to balance the role of individual agency with the structural determinants. The case studies presented in this book cover the territories of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the Soviet Union.
World War II was the first conflict in which air power was a deciding and indispensable factor. "May Day! May Day! Close Encounters (An Instructor Pilot Remembers)" reveals the personal stories of the aircrews who flew and maintained the planes and who upheld a continuous supply of trained personnel for the war effort. Full of rich, historical detail, author and former World War II pilot Jack Scott shares his experiences and those of others, giving an insightful view into the American home front and the war overseas. "While assigned to Walker Air Base, we were subjected to all of the restrictions of rationing. Shoes, food, clothes and just about everything was rationed. One thing, however never ceased to amaze us. We were allowed only a minimum amount of gasoline for our personal autos, yet we were encouraged to practice touch and go landings as often as we personally desired and were often reminded that at the end of every mission we should make a few extra landings and take offs. The paradox of this was that on one 'go around" we would burn a minimum of 80 gallons of aviation fuel. Rationing did not apply here."
This book is a unique reference source for the uniform collector, modeller and student of military dress and equipment. For the first time the reader can trace the development of the colour and design of the Waffen-SS uniforms with confidence: all the uniforms worn in the 150 colour photographs presented here are rare, original items, from private collections. All major types of service uniform are illustrated, together with a full range of the unique camouflage clothing which was the hallmark of these much-feared divisions.
This book is both a practical guide and an introduction to low-intensity conflict. In addition, it serves as a history of this type of conflict in the United States. A part of normal government operations in the U.S. from 1940 to the present, low-intensity conflict's antecedants can be traced back to the beginning of the republic. Sturgill discusses topics such as: insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrorism and counterterrorism, and military intervention.
This book is a study of the legal reckoning with the crimes of the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police and its political dimensions in the Soviet Union, West and East Germany, and the United States in the context of the Cold War. Decades of work by prosecutors have established the facts of Latvian collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust. No group made a deeper mark in the annals of atrocity than the men of the so-called 'Arajs Kommando' and their leader, Viktors Arajs, who killed tens of thousands of Jews on Latvian soil and participated in every aspect of the 'Holocaust by Bullets.' This study also has significance for coming to terms with Latvia's encounter with Nazism - a process that was stunted and distorted by Latvia's domination by the USSR until 1991. Examining the country's most notorious killers, their fates on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and contemporary Latvians' responses in different political contexts, this volume is a record of the earliest phases of this process, which must now continue and to which this book contributes. |
You may like...
Little Bird Of Auschwitz - How My Mother…
Alina Peretti, Jacques Peretti
Paperback
|