This book, coinciding with the sixtieth anniversary of the Liberation of France, takes a unique approach to the events of 1944, by seeing them as shared experiences which brought ordinary Anglo-Americans and French people into contact with each other in a variety of different communities. The book looks at the Liberation through 5 case-studies: Normandy, Cherbourg, Provence, the Pyrbliogenbliogees-Orientales and Reims, and uses the words of participants at the time to describe the developing relationship between Liberators and Liberated.

Eva Tichauer was born in Berlin at the end of the First World War into a socialist Jewish family. After a happy childhood in a well-off intellectual milieu, the destiny of her family was turned upside-down by the rise of Hitler in 1933. They emigrated to Paris in July of that year, and life started to become difficult. Eva was in her second year of medical studies in 1939 when war was declared, with fatal consequences for her and her family: they sere forced to the Spanish frontier, then returned to Paris to a flat which had been searched by the Gestapo. Eva was then compelled to break off her studies due to a quota system being imposed on Jewish students.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Dirlewanger Brigade was an anti-partisan unit of the Nazi army, reporting directly to Heinrich Himmler. The first members of the brigade were mostly poachers who were released from prisons and concentration camps and who were believed to have the skills necessary for hunting down and capturing partisan fighters in their camps in the forests of the Eastern Front. Their numbers were soon increased by others who were eager for a way out of imprisonment--including men who had been convicted of burglary, assault, murder, and rape.
Under the leadership of Oskar Dirlewanger, a convicted rapist and alcoholic, they could do as they pleased: there were no repercussions for even their worst behavior. This was the group used for its special "talents" to help put down the Jewish uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto, killing an estimated 35,000 men, women, and children in a single day. Even by Nazi standards, the brigade was considered unduly violent and an investigation of its activities was opened. The Nazi hierarchy was eager to distance itself from the behavior of the brigade and eventually exiled many of the members to Belarus. Based on the archives from Germany, Poland, and Russia, "The SS Dirlewanger Brigade" offers an unprecedented look at one of the darkest chapters of World War II.

This book investigates a Jewish orientation to film culture in interwar Britain. It explores how pleasure, politics and communal solidarity intermingled in the cinemas of Jewish neighbourhoods, and how film was seen as a vessel through which Jewish communal concerns might be carried to a wider public. Addressing an array of related topics, this volume examines the lived expressive cultures of cinemas in Jewish areas and the ethnically specific films consumed within these sites; the reception of film stars as representations of a Jewish social body; and how an antisemitic canard that understood the cinema as a Jewish monopoly complicated its use as a base for anti-fascist activity. In shedding light on an unexplored aspect of British film reception and exhibition, Toffell provides a unique insight into the making of the modern city by migrant communities. The title will be of use to anyone interested in Britain's interwar leisure landscape, the Jewish presence in modernity, and a cinema studies sensitised to the everyday experience of audiences.

'That nickname . . .' '"Little bird." It wasn't mine. I found out later he gave it to every little girl that came in to be injected. "Little Bird" didn't mean anything. It was a trick. There were thousands of "little birds", just like me, all thinking they were the only one.' As a reporter, Jacques Peretti has spent his life investigating important stories. But there was one story, heard in scattered fragments throughout his childhood, that he never thought to investigate. The story of how his mother survived Auschwitz. In the few last months of the Second World War, thirteen-year-old Alina Peretti, along with her mother and sister, was one of thirteen thousand non-Jewish Poles sent to Auschwitz. Her experiences there cast a shadow over the rest of her life. Now ninety, Alina has been diagnosed with dementia. Together, mother and son begin a race against time to record her memories and preserve her family's story. Along the way, Jacques learns long-hidden secrets about his mother's family. He gains an understanding of his mother through retracing her past, learning more about the woman who would never let him call her 'Mum'.

As neo-fascist rumblings are being felt again throughout Europe, it is proper to re-examine the development of the Third Reich and the philosophies of its leaders. The Nazi Elite presents twenty-two biographical sketches of some of the most notorious fascist leaders of the twentieth century: Joseph Goebbels, propagandist extraordinaire; Heinrich Himmler, the director of the infamous SS; Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi foreign minister; Rudolf Hess, considered by many to be deputy Fuehrer; Hermann Goerring, Hitler's right- hand man; Martin Bormann; Alfred Rosenberg; Otto Ohlendorf; Ernst Julius Rohm; and many others of the inner circle, including, of course, Adolf Hitler himself.

In a series of highly readable essays, The Nazi Eliteexamines the personalities, histories, and philosophies of these men, dispels common stereotypes, and offers new perspectives. Composed by leading scholars in the U.S. and Europe, many of whom have written definitive full-length biographies on their subjects, these essays shed light on historical controversies, such as the role of modernization during the Third Reich and the basis of Hitler's power as dictator.

The Nazi Elite is illuminating reading for every observer of extremist politics and for anyone interested in the history of our century.

During World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower became convinced that the era of separate land, sea, and air operations was over and that future military operations would involve all three elements acting in concert. He foresaw that, once peace had been restored, the waste and duplication of effort which characterized America's military operations during the war would not be tolerated by an economy-minded Congress. A fiscal conservative, Eisenhower saw national security as dependent upon maintaining a healthy economy and a strong military. His goal, therefore, was the achievement of an efficient, properly balanced military establishment within the context of a healthy economy through the unification of the services into a single Cabinet level department.

As Army Chief of Staff, adviser to Secretaries of National Defense James Forrestal and Louis Johnson, and then as president, Eisenhower was a leader in the effort to achieve unification. The final result of these efforts, the Military Reorganization Act of 1958, did not encompass all of the changes that Eisenhower originally sought. However, he had been instrumental in transforming the unorganized military establishment of pre-war America into a highly centralized organization led by a powerful secretary of defense. This structure would remain unchanged for twenty-eight years.

December 7, 1941, is one of those days engraved in the twentieth century memory. It is a landmark day, along with Armistice Day in 1918, the stock market crash in 1929, and the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. This book is about ordinary people on that extraordinary day. To a large extent, this book is by the people who remember that day because they have been permitted to tell their own stories in their own words. The book chooses representative stories from the entire country and concentrates on the stories of two destroyers, the USS Ward and the USS Henley, which were involved in the attack.

This book, like all good history, reminds us of the changes that have come since World War II. There has been an overall change in attitudes, especially with the dramatic changes in Europe and the economic dominance of Japan. Much of what we see now relates directly to World War II and the way America and its allies conducted themselves when the war ended. It was the last war which had virtually no gray areas--Germany, Japan, and Italy were the bad guys, and America and its allies were the good guys. It truly was that simple for us before and during World War II. Nothing has been that simple since the fateful day that brought America into the most catastrophic conflict in history.

'The body of Christ, broken for you.' These are the words almost always shared whenever the communion bread is given. But what do these words mean for women whose bodies have been broken by injustice and violence? This book interweaves feminist theological ideas, Asian spiritual traditions, and the witnesses of comfort women - sex-slaves during World War II - to offer a new approach to a theology of body. It examines the multi-layered meaning of the broken body of Christ from Christological, sacramental, and ecclesiological perspectives, and explores the centrality of body in theological discourse.

British Literature of the Blitz interrogates the patriotic, utopian ideal of the People's War by analyzing conflicted representations of class and gender in literature and film. Its subtitle - Fighting the People's War - describes how British citizens both united to fight Nazi Germany and questioned the nationalist ideology binding them together.

This book is an important contribution to the study of West European fascism in the inter-war years. Focusing on the organizational and ideological relations of the German Nazis and French and Dutch fascists, Dietrich Orlow analyzes the evolving attitudes and conflicts among the Nazis toward the West European extreme Right, along with the conflicting views which French and Dutch fascists had about the Third Reich in the years from 1933 onward.

Emilio, viaja con su madre y hermano desde Italia para encontrarse con su padre en Eritrea, una de las colonias africanas de Italia desde el siglo XIX. All, la joven familia comienza una vida extraordinaria, sin saber que pronto Mussolini le declarar la guerra a Francia e Inglaterra. El padre deja a su familia a cargo de Al, abnegado sirviente musulm n que los cuida hasta su repatriaci n. Cuando por fin llegan a Italia la madre y los hijos, Mussolini es encarcelado y se genera la infame guerra entre alemanes e ingleses.Por otro lado, Giovanni, un telegrafista de la marina italiana, escribe sus memorias, primero en el puerto de Massaua y luego a bordo de la nave de guerra Ramb II, la cual ser enviada a una misi n secreta en el Pac fico asi tico. sta es una historia (verdadera) vista desde "el lado de los que perdieron." Ni os, mujeres y hombres que, como t teres, ser n manipulados por los l deres de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Pero los personajes de esta novela deciden su destino: utilizar todo su ingenio y fortaleza para mantenerse unidos y sobrevivir.

The Second World War was a period which witnessed struggles for the definition of appropriate feminine identities and behavior. However, of the are myths and silences surrounding women's contribution to the war, the heroic myths of the War are male. Women's own accounts show how they consciously negotiated their lives through that fractured gendered time and space.War conditions threatened existing gendered social relations and so, throughout the war, 'woman' was the target of regulation and surveillance. Women's presence in the public spheres of industry, the services and other masculine spaces led to their sexuality becoming a contentious issue. Women's morals were increasingly related to Brtish male morale.How far the disruptions of war time challenge perceptions of feminine behavior remains controversial. Gender relations, feminine identity and the discourses constructing sexuality could have been threatened as the gendered nature of the public and private spheres and time and space were thorown into relief during the war.

A New York Times bestseller, Norman Ohler's Blitzed is a "fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich" (Washington Post). The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to German soldiers. In fact, troops were encouraged, and in some cases ordered, to take rations of a form of crystal meth--the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to account for the breakneck invasion that sealed the fall of France in 1940, as well as other German military victories. Hitler himself became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs--ultimately including Eukodal, a cousin of heroin--administered by his personal doctor. Thoroughly researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows. "Delightfully nuts."--The New Yorker

This edited volume provides the first fully comprehensive evaluation of Libya since the Qadhafi coup in 1969. Throughout the different chapters the authors explore the rise of the military in Libya, the impact of its self-styled revolution on Libyan society and economy.

Jean Moulin is a universally recognized French hero, celebrated as the delegate of General de Gaulle to Nazi-occupied France in 1942-43 and founder of the National Resistance Council in May 1943. He is known for defiance of the German invaders in June 1940 and for his death in the hands of Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie in July 1943. This book is the first fully-documented account in English of his republican background, his resistance activities, and his death and reputation.

The Pacific story captures the complexity and the furor of islands riddled with Japanese well dug in a landscape of hellish remembrance for our soldiers. The Pacific campaign...jungle fight put terror in the heart...young soldiers never forgot. Story recounts in the major campaigns and battles that relates the outcome of one another on Leyte, Luzon in the Philippines. How advanced-base hospitals on the Pacific islands formed a critical link in the chain of evacuation from battle sites in World War II. The European story tells of warriors that in face of constant danger fought with a fighting spirit that overcame the best Hitler's soldiers could throw against them. Some of World War II's untold campaigns were fought and won by the Seventh Army's fight from Sicily to Austria led first by flamboyant Gen. Patton to the steady Gen. Patch. On both war-fronts, soldiers fought where the advantages had been manifold, but the different branches of the arm services worked together smoothly and maintained a command that worked to the finish as true patriots on the behalf of mov pa ae--Love of One's Country.

On 6 June 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches at Normandy. The invasion followed several years of argument and planning by Allied leaders, who remained committed to a return to the European continent after the Germans had forced the Allies to evacuate at Dunkirk in May 1940. Before the spring of 1944, however, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and other British leaders remained unconvinced that the invasion was feasible. At the Teheran Conference in November 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill promised Josef Stalin that Allied troops would launch Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, in the spring. Because of their continuing concerns about Overlord, the British convinced the Americans to implement a cover plan to help ensure the invasion's success. The London Controlling Section (LCS) devised an elaborate two-part plan called Operation Fortitude that SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force) helped to fine tune and that both British and American forces implemented. Historians analyzing the Normandy invasion frequently devote some discussion to Operation Fortitude. Although they admit that Fortitude North did not accomplish all that the Allied deception planners had hoped, many historians heap praise on Fortitude South, using phrases such as, "unquestionably the greatest deception in military history." Many of these historians assume that the deception plan played a crucial role in the June 1944 assault. A reexamination of the sources suggests, however, that other factors contributed as much, if not more, to the Allied victory in Normandy and that Allied forces could have succeeded without the elaborate deception created by the LCS. Moreover, thepersistent tendency to exaggerate the operational effect of Fortitude on the German military performance at Normandy continues to draw attention away from other, technical-military reasons for the German failures there.

A vivid recount of the little known exploits of 17 courageous Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers in Italy during World War II In this inspiring new study of the SOE and Italian Resistance, 17 extraordinary stories of individual SOE officers illustrate the many and varied tasks of SOE missions throughout the different regions of Italy from 1943-1945. Through their gallantry, ingenuity, and determination, a small handful of SOE missions were able to arm and inspire thousands of Italians to fight the occupying German army after 1943 and in the process give invaluable support to the advancing Allied armies as they pushed north towards Austria.

"You are one of the unremembered heroes of the war," wrote Lord Beaverbrook to Archibald Sinclair in 1961, no man acted with more balance, with more judgement or greater restraint than yourself. Sinclair, a wealthy landowner from the north of Scotland, was Liberal Party leader from 1935 to 1945 and Air Minister throughout Winston Churchill's ministry during the Second World War. He played a crucial role in both the Battle of Britain and in the strategic bombing of Germany. During his career, he locked horns with Churchill (a lifelong friend and companion), Beaverbrook, Hugh Dowding and Bomber Harris. Many wished to destroy him. His political survival during the height of World War II is testimony to his remarkable skill and resilience.

A consummately talented politician, Sinclair played an important part in the major controversies of mid-century: appeasement, unemployment policy, the Abdication, rearmament and war. His integrity and sense of honor set him apart in an age of opportunism and betrayal. A devout believer in liberalism, Sinclair carried his party through its dark age, modernizing the demoralized and disintegrating 19th-century relic. This biography contains much previously unpublished correspondence between Churchill and Sinclair (including especially striking letters dating from the First World War) and provides revealing glimpses into the lives of many other important figures of that day. An absorbing portrait of a private and a passionate man, "Liberal Crusader" is must reading from anyone interested in the history of World War II, in the legacy of Winston Churchill, and in British history and politics in general.