An inside look at the massive efforts needed to keep the Navy's PT Boats in fighting trim. From the stories of Repair Training Units, Bases, FEMU barges, and tenders, the reader will get a real understanding of the men who made up these specialized units. Almost two hundred rarely seen photographs selected by Frank J. Andruss Sr, curator of the acclaimed Mosquito Fleet Exhibit. Photographs and ship histories of every PT tender that operated in World War II. Numerous photographs of forward bases in the Solomons, New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, the Mediterranean, and England. Detailed accounts of personnel, facilities, and curriculum at the Repair Training Units. An indispensable and unique source for anyone interested in the history of U.S. patrol torpedo boats in World War II.

This book is the first collection of multi-disciplinary research on the experience of Italian-Jewish musicians and composers in Fascist Italy. Drawing together seven diverse essays from both established and emerging scholars across a range of fields, this book examines multiple aspects of this neglected period of music history, including the marginalization and expulsion of Jewish musicians and composers from Italian theatres and conservatories after the 1938-39 Race Laws, and their subsequent exile and persecution. Using a variety of critical perspectives and innovative methodological approaches, these essays reconstruct and analyze the impact that the Italian Race Laws and Fascist Italy's musical relations with Nazi Germany had on the lives and works of Italian Jewish composers from 1933 to 1945. These original contributions on relatively unresearched aspects of historical musicology offer new insight into the relationship between the Fascist regime and music.

On the evening of March 31, 1945, hours before the invasion of Okinawa, Max Stripe, Billy Thornhill, and five other crewmen manned the forward twin 40 mm mount of LST 791. Riley was stationed up in the Conn, tracking enemy planes from bogey reports that came in over the radio. An increase in air attacks could be expected at sunset and dawn because-for a brief time-aircraft could see the ships clearly, but it was difficult for the ships to see the planes. Suddenly, a group of transports astern of the 791 came under attack-tracers could be seen across the expanse of water and air. The job of the LST crew was to deliver the troops, tanks, and supplies to hostile beaches and, if necessary, defend those assets with their lives. All were ordinary men; they knew they had a job to do, and they did it. Succeeding so that they could return home to their families was their goal. In "Pacific LST 791, " Stephen C. Stripe, author and son of LST crewman Max Stripe, brings us the incredible true story of the vital actions of LST 791 and her crew in the Pacific Theater of WWII. Our admiration and thanks belong to this hardworking, gallant breed, for their heroic courage and sacrifice brought us hope, victory, and ultimately peace.

Scholars, survivors, and other interested parties have offered, over the years, their own interpretations of the meaning of the Holocaust and the lessons we can learn from it. However, the quest to find a rational explanation for this seemingly irrational course of events has led to both controversy and continued efforts at assigning meaning to this most horrible of events. Examining oral histories provided by survivors, written accounts and explanations, scholarly analysis, and commonly held assumptions, Bolkosky challenges the usual collection of platitudes about the lessons or the meanings we can derive from the Holocaust. Indeed, he argues against the kind of reductionism that such a quest for meaning has led to, and he analyzes the nature of the perpetrators in order to support his position on the inconclusivity of the study of the Holocaust.

Dealing with the perpetrators of the Holocaust as manifestations of twentieth century civilized trends foreseen by the likes of Kafka, Ortega y Gassett, Arthur Koestler and Max Weber, Bolkosky suggests a new nature of evil and criminality along the lines developed by Hannah Arendt, Raul Hilberg, and Richard Rosenstein. Woven into the fabric of the text are insights from literary and historical writers, sociologists, and philosophers. This interdisciplinary attempt to shed new light on efforts to determine the meanings and lessons of the Holocaust provides readers with a challenging approach to considering the oral histories of survivors and the popular and professional assumptions surrounding this devastating moment in history.

The study discusses the history of the Jewish refugees within the Shanghai setting and its relationship to the two established Jewish communities, the Sephardi and Russian Jews. Attention is also focused on the cultural life of the refugees who used both German and Yiddish, and on their attempts to cope under Japanese occupation after the outbreak of the Pacific War. Differences of identity existed between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, religious and secular, aside from linguistic and cultural differences. The study aims to understand the exile condition of the refugees and their amazing efforts to create a semblance of cultural life in a strange new world.

The 1940s were a pivotal decade in the history of the American labor movement. Large migrations significantly changed the composition of the industrial work force while, simultaneously, the organized labor movement sought to consolidate its base. These essays examine topics including aspects of the institutional development of the labor movement at the national level, while west coast case studies explore the conflicts generated at the workplace and in communities by the increased presence of women and minority workers. American labor historians and labor studies specialists will find this collection fills a major void in the research on American labor.

Edward Ellsberg's The Far Shore describes in detail the massive preparations for D-Day, the launch of the greatest armada in history, focusing on Hitler's Atlantic Wall defenses along the Normandy beaches and the ingenious creation of the Mulberry artificial floating harbor which would prove vital in securing an Allied beach-head in France.

When General Douglas MacArthur led Allied troops into the jungles of New Guinea in World War II, he was already looking ahead. By successfully leapfrogging Japanese forces on that island, he placed his armies in a position to fulfill his personal promise to liberate the Philippines.

The New Guinea campaign has gone down in history as one of MacArthur's shining successes. Now Stephen Taaffe has written the definitive history of that assault, showing why it succeeded and what it contributed to the overall strategy against Japan. His book tells not only how victory was gained through a combination of technology, tactics, and Army-Navy cooperation, but also how the New Guinea campaign exemplified the strategic differences that plagued the Pacific War, since many high-ranking officers considered it a diversionary tactic rather than a key offensive.

"MacArthur's Jungle War" examines the campaign's strategic background and individual operations, describing the enormous challenges posed by jungle and amphibious warfare. Perhaps more important, it offers a balanced assessment of MacArthur's leadership and limitations, revealing his reliance on familiar battle plans and showing the vital role that subordinates played in his victory. Taaffe tells how MacArthur played the difficulties of the New Guinea campaign by maintaining his undivided attention on reaching the Philippines. He also discloses how MacArthur frequently deceived both his superiors and the public in order to promote his own agenda, and examines errors the general would later repeat on a larger scale up through the Korean War.

"MacArthur's Jungle War" offers historians a more analytical treatment of the New Guinea campaign than is found in previous works, and is written with a dramatic flair that will appeal to military buffs. By revealing the interaction among American military planning, interservice politics, MacArthur's generalship, and the American way of war, Taaffe's account provides a clearer understanding of America's Pacific war strategy and shows that the New Guinea offensive was not a mere backwater affair, but a critical part of the war against Japan.

Stephen Bungay' s magisterial history is acclaimed as the account of the Battle of Britain. Unrivalled for its synthesis of all previous historical accounts, for the quality of its strategic analysis and its truly compulsive narrative, this is a book ultimately distinguished by its conclusions - that it was the British in the Battle who displayed all the virtues of efficiency, organisation and even ruthlessness we habitually attribute to the Germans, and they who fell short in their amateurism, ill-preparedness, poor engineering and even in their old-fashioned notions of gallantry. An engrossing read for the military scholar and the general reader alike, this is a classic of military history that looks beyond the mythology, to explore all the tragedy and comedy; the brutality and compassion of war.

This first scholarly account of the Royal Navy in the Pacific War is a companion volume to Arthur Marder's Old Friends, New Enemies: Strategic Illusions, 1936-1941 (0-19-822604-7, OP). Picking up the story at the nadir of British naval fortunes - `everywhere weak and naked', in Churchill's phrase - it examines the Royal Navy's role in events from 1942 to the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Drawing on both British and Japanese sources and personal accounts by participants, the authors vividly retell the story of the collapse of Allied defences in the Dutch East Indies, culminating in the Battle of the Java Sea. They recount the attempts of the `fighting admiral', Sir James Somerville, to train his motley fleet of cast-offs into an efficient fighting force in spite of the reluctance of Churchill, who resisted the formation of a full-scale British Pacific Fleet until the 1945 assault on the Ryukyu Islands immediately south of Japan. Meticulously researched and fully referenced, this unique and absorbing account provides a controversial analysis of the key personalities who shaped events in these momentous years, and makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Pacific War. This book also appears in the Oxford General Books catalogue for Autumn 1990.

More than fifty years after the Holocaust, European and other countries are confronting newly-emerging memories and guilt-filled ghosts from the past. The campaign for the restitution of Jewish property stolen during the Holocaust touched a raw nerve within European society and, together with the end of the Cold War and generational change, created a need to re-evaluate conventional historical truths. A group of experts joined together to review in this book how the issue was dealt with in different countries and how national myths must be re-examined.

This handbook is the most comprehensive and up-to-date single volume on the history and memory of the Holocaust in Britain. It traces the complex relationship between Britain and the destruction of Europe's Jews, from societal and political responses to persecution in the 1930s, through formal reactions to war and genocide, to works of representation and remembrance in post-war Britain. Through this process the handbook not only updates existing historiography of Britain and the Holocaust; it also adds new dimensions to our understanding by exploring the constant interface and interplay of history and memory. The chapters bring together internationally renowned academics and talented younger scholars. Collectively, they examine a raft of themes and issues concerning the actions of contemporaries to the Holocaust, and the responses of those who came 'after'. At a time when the Holocaust-related activity in Britain proceeds apace, the contributors to this handbook highlight the importance of rooting what we know and understand about Britain and the Holocaust in historical actuality. This, the volume suggests, is the only way to respond meaningfully to the challenges posed by the Holocaust and ensure that the memory of it has purpose.

This is an original perspective on the experience of refugees and relief workers. The period of the 'long' Second World War (1936-1948) was marked by mass movements of diverse populations: 60 million people either fled or were forced from their homes. This book considers the Spanish Republicans fleeing Franco's Spain in 1939, the French civilians trying to escape the Nazi invasion in 1940, and the millions of people displaced or expelled by the forces of Hitler's Third Reich. Throughout this period state and voluntary organisations were created to take care of the homeless and the displaced. National organisations dominated until the end of the war; afterwards, international organisations - the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency and the International Refugee Organisation - were formed to deal with what was clearly an international problem. Using case studies of displaced people and of relief workers, this book is unique in placing such crises at the centre rather than the margins of wartime experience, making the work nothing less than an alternative history of the Second World War.

Following their occupation by the Third Reich, Warsaw and Minsk became home to tens of thousands of Germans. In this exhaustive study, Stephan Lehnstaedt provides a nuanced, eye-opening portrait of the lives of these men and women, who constituted a surprisingly diverse population-including everyone from SS officers to civil servants, as well as ethnically German city residents-united in its self-conception as a "master race." Even as they acclimated to the daily routines and tedium of life in the East, many Germans engaged in acts of shocking brutality against Poles, Belarusians, and Jews, while social conditions became increasingly conducive to systematic mass murder.

This book offers a new perspective on the British experience of the Second World War in Europe, one in which foreignness and foreign languages are central to the dynamics of war-making. It offers a series of snapshots of the role which foreign languages played in Britain's war - in intelligence gathering (both signals and human intelligence), in psychological warfare, in preparations for liberating and occupying the continent, in denazification, in providing relief for refugees and displaced persons, and in postwar relationships with the USSR. By mapping the linguistic landscape of Britain's war in Europe, key aspects of international communication - translation, language performance, authenticity, language policies - are seen to be vital to military preparations and operations.

"1001 B-29s Avenge Pearl Harbor Memoirs of a Flight Engineer" features the true tales f an aviation officer of the United States Army Air Corps during the final year of World War II. These stories center around an airman's life on the Pacific island of Tinian, the base from which the B-29 Flying Fortress was unleashed against the empire of Japan.

Engagingly written in the first-person, "1001 B-29s Avenge Pearl Harbor" draws the reader into the human drama of the war in the Pacific theater: the tedium and terror, doubt and wonder, guilt and pride, and finally the joy that peace alone can bring. Numerous photographs complement the narrative and provide an immersive experience.

Suspenseful, enlightening, poignant and often humorous, "1001 B-29s Avenge Pearl Harbor" reveals the inner thoughts and emotions of a young man loyal to his country and his comrades-in- arms, confident in his abilities and his magnificent airplane, yet longing to fulfill his promise to return to his pregnant wife on the home front. Strap yourself in and prepare for an experience you'll never forget!

This work relates the policy of appeasement to the personal beliefs and decisions of those responsible for foreign policy. Using Robert Hadow, First Secretary in the Foreign Office, as an example of an appeaser, this approach aims to demonstrate how intelligent and capable men in Britain fell victim to a policy which, to many still, in retrospect, appears blind and irrational. An examination of Hadow's fear of war, his reaction to communism, his sympathy for the German minority in Czechoslovakia, and his actions inside and outside the Foreign Office in pursuit of appeasement is made in this book through detailed research of Hadow's public and private papers. By following the course of Hadow's career and the working of his mind in the 1930s, this study explains the thinking behind a policy associated with Britain on the eve of World War II.