"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 This biography contains much previously unpublished correspondence between Churchill and Sinclair (including especially striking letters dating from the First World War) and provides revealing glimpses into the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.

Major Howard Oleck (1911-1995) was an American combat historian, fiction writer, and law professor. "Heroic Battles of World War II" is a compilations of overall analysis and first-hand accounts from Allied and Axis soldiers, sailors, aviators, and spies.

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.

In British Women Writers of World War II , Phyllis Lassner offers a challenging analysis of politicized literature in which such British women writers as Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Stevie Smith and Storm Jameson debated the `justness' of World War II. Lassner questions prevailing approaches to women's war writing by exploring the complex range of pacifist and activist literary forms of women who redefined such pieties as patriotism and duty and heroism and victimization.

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.

"NEW YORK TIMES" BESTSELLER In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy In "An Army at Dawn"--winner of the Pulitzer Prize--Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa. Now, in "The Day of Battle," he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north toward Rome.
The Italian campaign's outcome was never certain; in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisers engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. But once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered, despite the agonizingly high price. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, and Monte Cassino were particularly difficult and lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to drive the Germans up the Italian peninsula. Led by Lieutenant General Mark Clark, one of the war's most complex and controversial commanders, American officers and soldiers became increasingly determined and proficient. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.
Drawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, this is narrative history of the first rank. With "The Day of Battle," Atkinson has once again given us the definitive account of one of history's most compelling military campaigns.

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 the outbreak of WWII Frank was appointed governor general of Poland. Heinrich Himmler was responsible for the extermination camps and Frank claimed he did not become aware of the mass killings until late in the war. Frank was captured in May 1945 and was accused of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. He said at his trial: "I myself have never installed an extermination camp for Jews, or promoted the existence of such camps; but if Adolf Hitler personally has laid that dreadful responsibility on his people, then it is mine too, for we have fought against Jewry for years; and we have indulged in the most horrible utterances." Hans Frank was found guilty and executed on October 1, 1946. This scholarly study from Martyn Housden examines Frank's career and complex character to shed light upon the Lebensraum project in the East and the carrying out of the Final Solution.

A story of espionage that could have changed the course of history and saved thousands of American and British lives - and millions of Asian lives. 'On the night of 3 December 1941, I could not fall asleep,' Kilsoo Haan remembered. 'I went to the Chop Suey House, the Chinese Lantern, and ordered a bowl of Chinese soup. Next to my table, a Japanese was trying to sell a Chinese a second-hand automobile. After the Japanese left, the Chinese said to me, "You like to buy cheap automobile?" After a pause he said, "This Japanese is selling four automobiles owned by the Japanese Embassy workers because they are going to Japan pretty soon... Oh so cheap."' Four days later the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Before the Second World War, Korean-American Kilsoo Haan repeatedly warned the United States about the Japanese attack and accurately supplied every conceivable detail as relayed to him by Korean agents: midget submarines as well as aircraft at Pearl Harbor, then giant submarine aircraft carriers on the high seas that almost bombed San Diego with plague germs until Tojo cancelled the air strike, and a joint Chinese-Japanese attack - Operation Ichi-Go - against the American and Chinese Nationalist forces, which drove through Chiang Kai-shek's much larger army. When US political bungling helped to create a Communist North Korea, Haan continued to supply information about Soviet nuclear tests in Siberia, the development of Soviet guided missiles, and the North Korean invasion of the Republic of Korea, which led to thousands of American and British casualties. He was ignored. The story of American influence in Korea and dealings with Japan provides a little-known new perspective on the Pacific War and remains a factor today in international politics. Author John Koster explains the tragic and bloody entangled histories of Japan, China and Korea that form the backdrop to this extraordinary story.

With the end of World War I, a new Republic of Poland emerged on the maps of Europe, made up of some of the territory from the first Polish Republic, including Wolyn and Wilno, and significant parts of Belarus, Upper Silesia, Eastern Galicia, and East Prussia. The resulting conglomeration of ethnic groups left many substantial minorities wanting independence.

The approach of World War II provided the minorities' leaders a new opportunity in their nationalist movements, and many sided with one or the other of Poland's two enemies -- the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany -- in hopes of achieving their goals at the expense of Poland and its people. Based on primary and secondary sources in numerous languages (including Polish, German, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Russian and English), this work examines the roles of the ethnic minorities in the collapse of the Republic and in the atrocities that occurred under the occupying troops. The Polish government's response to mounting ethnic tensions in the prewar era and its conduct of the war effort are also examined.

"In Guerrilla in Striped PantS," Walter W. Orebaugh, a former U.S. diplomat, gives an account of his adventures behind the lines in Italy during World War II--a courageous odyssey which won him his country's acclaim as a hero and the Medal of Freedom, its highest civilian decoration, for exceptionally meritorious and courageous service . . . behind the German lines and for courage, resourcefulness and coolness under fire. The drama of Orebaugh's capture by the Italian army, his internment in the mountains, and his subsequent escape is punctuated by his heroic smuggling of two companions out of danger, his encounter with a glamorous Hungarian spy, and his treacherous journey through enemy territory to freedom.

Orebaugh's account is a personal adventure story containing all the elements of danger, intrigue, and courage which will grip the reader's imagination. The fact that it accurately recounts an important moment in history intensifies the drama, and affirms how ingenuity and daring feats can be performed by ordinary people in times of great peril.

In the last two decades our empirical knowledge of the Holocaust has been vastly expanded. Yet this empirical blossoming has not been accompanied by much theoretical reflection on the historiography. This volume argues that reflection on the historical process of (re)constructing the past is as important for understanding the Holocaust-and, by extension, any past event-as is archival research. It aims to go beyond the dominant paradigm of political history and describe the emergence of methods now being used to reconstruct the past in the context of Holocaust historiography.

Italy's declaration of war on Britain in June 1940 had devastating consequences for Italian immigrant families living in Scotland signalling their traumatic construction as the 'enemy other'. Through an analysis of personal testimonies and previously unpublished archival material, this book takes a case study of a long-established immigrant group and explores how notions of belonging and citizenship are undermined at a time of war. Overall, this book considers how wartime events affected the construction or Italian identity in Britain. It makes a groundbreaking and original contribution to the social and cultural history of Britain during World War Two as well as the wider literature on war, memory and ethnicity. It will appeal to scholars and students of British and Scottish cultural and social history and the history of World War II. -- .

The division of Europe between East and West, born during World War II, not only denied independence to more than 100 million East Europeans, but upset the balance of global power, putting Stalin in a position to threaten Western Europe and planting the seeds of the Cold War and the arms race. This book probes the questions and facts surrounding the division of Europe and offers new insight into how it might have been prevented. Looking beyond the conventional assumption that Stalin simply took over Eastern Europe in the postwar years, Remi Nadeau demonstrates how the Soviet leader, having gained power in Eastern Europe through Red Army occupation, was unrestrained by any prior Allied agreements. The Sovietization of Eastern Europe, which is commonly believed to have occurred in the immediate postwar years, actually came about during the war as the Allies failed to limit Stalin. Nadeau shows how the British, who recognized the Soviet threat, repeatedly tried to block it and how Roosevelt, with a different foreign policy approach, did not support them. But, as the author states in his preface, this is not a story of American wrongdoing, but of American innocence.

Well researched and thorough in its arguments, this book demonstrates how Roosevelt's failure to throw U.S. strength into the political balance was not confined to the Yalta Conference in 1945, but was a consistent U.S. policy in East-West encounters throughout the war. Nadeau shows that Roosevelt did not understand Stalin's intentions and repeatedly failed to support Churchill's attempts to block Stalin with diplomatic bargaining and military preemption. Written in a highly readable style and full of little-known historical detail, this book will appeal to any student of World War II, Eastern Europe, or European history.

World War II B-24 crew beats the odds over Pacific waters.

"Brothers at Daybreak" tells the intimate story of 11 boys who got together in 1944 to fight World War II from the air above the vast Pacific Ocean. The young members of Pilot Frank Jeter's flight crew took their role in defeating the Japanese one mission and one day at a time. They stuck together to face the constant threat of falling out of the sky in war- weary B-24 bombers that lost engines and ran out of fuel at the most inopportune times.

The Jeter Crew's time together wasn't all tragic and sad, however. They thoroughly enjoyed their time away from war and quickly learned the art of shutting out fear and grief with a bottle of beer or a shot of whiskey. "Brothers at Daybreak" chronicles the Jeter Crew's postwar lives and the enduring bond of brotherhood they never allowed to loosen.

At 17, Curtis "Kojo" Morrow enlisted in the United States Army and joined the 24th Infantry Regiment Combat Team, originally known as the Buffalo Soldiers. Seven months later he found himself fighting a bloody war in a place he had never heard of: Korea. During nine months of fierce combat, Morrow developed not only a soldier's mentality but a political consciousness as well. Hearing older men discussing racial discrimination in both civilian and military life, he began to question the role of his all-black unit in the Korean action. Supposedly they were protecting freedom, justice, and the American way of life, but what was that way of life for blacks in the United States? Where was the freedom? Why were the Buffalo Soldiers laying their lives on the line for a country in which African-American citizens were sometimes denied even the right to vote? Morrow's story of his service in the United States Army is a revealing portrait of life in the army's last all-black unit, a factual summary of that unit's actions in a bloody "police action", and a personal memoir of a boy becoming a man in a time of war.