Title search results
Showing 3261 - 3280 of 7266 items
Battle Stations: How the USS Yorktown Helped Turn the Tide at Coral Sea and Midway (American War Heroes)
By Stephen L. Moore. 2021
The true story of the valiant men who gave their all to save the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown—and changed the course…
of the Pacific War. On June 4, 1942—six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor—Yorktown&’s crew began the carrier&’s final battle against Japan&’s infamous aircrafts. Hotshot fighter pilot Lieutenant Scott McCuskey attacked from the air in his Wildcat, becoming the Navy&’s second-ever &“ace in a day.&” Carpenter Boyd McKenzie worked tirelessly to repair Yorktown before a fresh air strike. Critically injured gun crew member George Weise fought for his life as the ship threatened to capsize. Meanwhile, Pharmacist&’s Mate Second Class Warren Heller raced to save the lives of bloodied gunners and sailors by evacuating them before time ran out. The stories of these heroes and many other brave servicemen bring the gripping narrative of Yorktown&’s final thirty days to life, as she fights in the near back-to-back Battles of Coral Sea and Midway. Through unpublished memoirs and interviews with Yorktown&’s last surviving veterans, acclaimed author Stephen L. Moore offers up a new and compelling amount of a pivotal month in World War II, while honoring the courage of those who served.Years of Glory: Nelly Benatar and the Pursuit of Justice in Wartime North Africa (Worlding the Middle East)
By Susan Gilson Miller. 2021
The compelling true story of Nelly Benatar—a hero of the anti-Fascist North African resistance and humanitarian who changed the course…
of history for the "last million" escaping the Second World War. When France fell to Hitler's armies in June 1940, a flood of refugees fleeing Nazi terror quickly overwhelmed Europe's borders and spilled across the Mediterranean to North Africa, touching off a humanitarian crisis of dizzying proportions. Nelly Benatar, a highly regarded Casablancan Jewish lawyer, quickly claimed a role of rescuer and almost single-handedly organized a sweeping program of wartime refugee relief. But for all her remarkable achievements, Benatar's story has never been told. With this book, Susan Gilson Miller introduces readers to a woman who fought injustice as an anti-Fascist resistant, advocate for refugee rights, liberator of Vichy-run forced labor camps, and legal counselor to hundreds of Holocaust survivors. Miller crafts a gripping biography that spins a tale like a Hollywood thriller, yet finds its truth in archives gathered across Europe, North Africa, Israel, and the United States and from Benatar's personal collection of eighteen thousand documents now housed in the US Holocaust Museum. Years of Glory offers a rich narrative and a deeper understanding of the complex currents that shaped Jewish, North African, and world history over the course of the Second World War. The traumas of genocide, the struggle for anti-colonial liberation, and the eventual Jewish exodus from Arab lands all take on new meaning when reflected through the interstices of Benatar's life. A courageous woman with a deep moral conscience and an iron will, Nelly Benatar helped to lay the groundwork for crucial postwar efforts to build a better world over Europe's ashes.Army Girls is the intimate story of the final few women who served in World War II and are still…
alive to tell their tale. They were female soldiers in a war Britain wanted to fight without conscripting women. It was a vain hope, by December 1941 for the first time in British history women were called up and a generation of girls came of age in khaki, serving king and country. Barbara trained to drive army-style in giant trucks and Grace swapped her servant's pinafore for battledress and a steel hat, Martha turned down officer status for action on a gun-site and Olivia won the Croix de Guerre in France.Commemorating the 80th anniversary of conscription for women, Army Girls captures remarkable stories from the last surviving veterans who served in Britain's female army and brings to life a pivotal moment in British history. Precious memories and letters are entwined in a rich narrative that travels back in time and sheds new light on being young, female and at war.Uniquely this moving Second World War memoir is embedded in the present day. Written in the midst of a global pandemic, the parallels and paradoxes between two very different national crises are explored in a book that honours the women who fought on in extreme youth and now once more in great old age.The Rebirth of Italian Communism, 1943–44: Dissidents in German-Occupied Rome
By David Broder. 2021
During the final years of the Second World War, a decisive change took place in the Italian left, as the…
Italian Communist Party (PCI) rose from clandestinity and recast itself as a mass, patriotic force committed to building a new democracy. This book explains how this new party came into being. Using Rome as its focus, it explains that the rebirth of the PCI required that it subdue other, dissident strands of communist thinking. During the nine-month German occupation of Rome in 1943-44, dissident communists would create the capital’s largest single resistance formation, the Communist Movement of Italy (MCd’I), which galvanised a social revolt in the capital's borgate slums. Exploring this wartime battle to define the rebirth of Italian communism, the author examines the ways in which a militant minority of communists rooted their activity in the everyday lives of the population under occupation. In particular, this study focuses on the role of draft resistance and the revolt against labour conscription in driving recruitment to partisan bands, and how communist militants sought to mould these recruits through an active effort of political education. Studying the political writing of these dissidents, their autodidact Marxism and the social conditions in which it emerged, this book also sheds light on an often-ignored underground culture in the years that preceded the armed resistance that began in September 1943. Revealing an almost unknown history of dissident communism in Italy, outside of more recognisable traditions like Trotskyism or Bordigism, this book provides an innovative perspective on Italian history. It will be of interest to those researching the broad topics of political and social history, but more specifically, resistance in the Second World War and the post-war European left.The Afterlife of the Shoah in Central and Eastern European Cultures is a collection of essays by literary scholars from…
Germany, the US, and Central Eastern Europe offering insight into the specific ways of representing the Shoah and its aftereffects as well as its entanglement with other catastrophic events in the region. Introducing the conceptual frame of postcatastrophe, the collected essays explore the discursive and artistic space the Shoah occupies in the countries between Moscow and Berlin. Postcatastrophe is informed by the knowledge of other concepts of "post" and shares their insight into forms of transmission and latency; in contrast to them, explores the after-effects of extreme events on a collective, aesthetic, and political rather than a personal level. The articles use the concept of postcatastrophe as a key to understanding the entangled and conflicted cultures of remembrance in postsocialist literatures and the arts dealing with events, phenomena, and developments that refuse to remain in the past and still continue to shape perceptions of today’s societies in Eastern Europe. As a contribution to memory studies as well as to literary criticism with a special focus on Shoah remembrance after socialism, this book is of great interest to students and scholars of European history, and those interested in historical memory more broadly.The Routledge History of the Second World War (Routledge Histories)
By Paul R. Bartrop. 2022
The Routledge History of the Second World War sums up the latest trends in the scholarship of that conflict, covering…
a range of major themes and issues. The book delivers a thematic analysis of the many ways in which study of the Second World War can take place, considering international, transnational, and global approaches, and serves as a major jumping off point for further research into the specific fields covered by each of the expert authors. It demonstrates the global and total nature of the Second World War, giving due coverage to the conflict in all major theatres and through the lens of the key combatants and neutrals, examines issues of race, gender, ideology, and society during the war, and functions as a textbook to educate students as to the trends that have taken place in how the conflict has been (and can be) interpreted in the modern world. Divided into twelve parts that cover central themes of the conflict, including theatres of war, leadership, societies, occupation, secrecy and legacies, it enables those with no memory of war to approach it with a view to comprehending what it was all about and places the history of this conflict into a context that is international, transnational, and institutional. This is a comprehensive and accessible reference volume for anyone interested in the most up to date scholarship on this major conflict.Island Infernos: The US Army's Pacific War Odyssey, 1944
By John C. McManus. 2021
From the author of Fire and Fortitude, the continuation of the US Army's epic crusade in the Pacific War, from…
the battle of Saipan to the occupation of JapanJohn C. McManus's award-winning Fire and Fortitude enthralled readers with an unforgettable and authoritative account of the US Army's evolution during the Pacific War, from the devastation of Pearl Harbor to the bloody battle for Makin Island in 1943. Now, in this second and final volume, he follows the Army as they land on Saipan, Guam, and Okinawa, climaxing with the American return to the Philippines, one of the largest, most complex operations in American history and one that would eventually account for one-third of all American casualties in the Pacific-Asia theater.Brilliantly researched and written, the narrative moves seamlessly from the highest generals to the lowest foot soldiers and in between, capturing the true essence of this horrible conflict. It is a masterful history by one of our finest historians of World War II.National Treasures: Saving The Nation's Art in World War II
By Caroline Shenton. 2021
'Geeks triumph over the forces of darkness: nothing could have given me greater pleasure. Combining an exciting story with scrupulous…
research, Caroline Shenton has done her unlikely heroes proud' - Lucy WorsleyAs Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London's museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation's highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely misfits packed up the nation's greatest treasures and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout the country on a series of top-secret wartime adventures. National Treasures highlights a moment from our history when an unlikely coalition of mild-mannered civil servants, social oddballs and metropolitan aesthetes became the front line in the heritage war against Hitler. Caroline Shenton shares the interwoven lives of ordinary people who kept calm and carried on in the most extraordinary of circumstances in their efforts to save the Nation's historic identity.Romania's Holy War rights the widespread myth that Romania was a reluctant member of the Axis during World War II.…
In correcting this fallacy, Grant T. Harward shows that, of an estimated 300,000 Jews who perished in Romania and Romanian-occupied Ukraine, more than 64,000 were, in fact, killed by Romanian soldiers. Moreover, the Romanian Army conducted a brutal campaign in German-occupied Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, and civilians. Investigating why Romanian soldiers fought and committed such atrocities, Harward argues that strong ideology—a cocktail of nationalism, religion, antisemitism, and anticommunism—undergirded their motivation. Romania's Holy War draws on official military records, wartime periodicals, soldiers' diaries and memoirs, subsequent war crimes investigations, and recent interviews with veterans to tell the full story. Harward integrates the Holocaust into the narrative of military operations to show that most soldiers fully supported the wartime dictator, General Ion Antonescu, and his regime's holy war against "Judeo-Bolshevism." The army perpetrated mass reprisals, targeting Jews in liberated Romanian territory; supported the deportation and concentration of Jews in camps or ghettos in Romanian-occupied Soviet territory; and played a key supporting role in SS efforts to exterminate Jews in German-occupied Soviet territory. Harward proves that Romania became Nazi Germany's most important ally in the war against the USSR because its soldiers were highly motivated, thus overturning much of what we thought we knew about this theater of war. Romania's Holy War provides the first complete history of why Romanian soldiers fought on the Eastern Front.The Virtuous Wehrmacht explores the myth of the German armed forces' innocence during World War II by reconstructing the moral…
world of German soldiers on the Eastern Front. How did they avoid feelings of guilt about the many atrocities their side committed? David A. Harrisville compellingly demonstrates that this myth of innocence was created during the course of the war itself—and did not arise as a postwar whitewashing of events. In 1941 three million Wehrmacht troops overran the border between German- and Soviet-occupied Poland, racing toward the USSR in the largest military operation in modern history. Over the next four years, they embarked on a campaign of wanton brutality, murdering countless civilians, systemically starving millions of Soviet prisoners of war, and actively participating in the genocide of Eastern European Jews. After the war, however, German servicemen insisted that they had fought honorably and that their institution had never involved itself in Nazi crimes. Drawing on more than two thousand letters from German soldiers, contextualized by operational and home front documents, Harrisville shows that this myth was the culmination of long-running efforts by the army to preserve an illusion of respectability in the midst of a criminal operation. The primary authors of this fabrication were ordinary soldiers cultivating a decent self-image and developing moral arguments to explain their behavior by drawing on a constellation of values that long preceded Nazism. The Virtuous Wehrmacht explains how the army encouraged troops to view themselves as honorable representatives of a civilized nation, not only racially but morally superior to others.In the Shadows of Paris: The Nazi Concentration Camp That Dimmed The city Of Light
By Anne Sinclair. 2021
A personal journey into a family’s history gradually becomes a historical investigation into the lesser known tragedy of the Nazi’s…
mass arrests of prominent French Jews and their imprisonment at the “camp of slow death” just fifty miles from Paris. “This story has haunted me since I was a child,” begins Anne Sinclair in a personal journey to find answers about her own life and about her grandfather’s, Léonce Schwartz. What her tribute reveals is part memoir, part historical documentation of a lesser known chapter of the Holocaust: the Nazi’s mass arrest, in French the word for this is rafle and there is no equivalent in English that captures the horror, on December 12, 1941 of influential Jews—the doctors, professors, artists and others at the upper levels of French society—who were then imprisoned just fifty miles from Paris in the Compiegne-Royallieu concentration camp. Those who did not perish there, were taken by the infamous one-way trains to Auschwitz; except for the few to escape that fate. Léonce Schwartz was among them.The Last Jew of Treblinka
By Chil Rajchman. 2011
Operation Damocles: Israel's Secret War Against Hitler's Scientists, 1951-1967
By Roger Howard. 2013
The forgotten cloak-and-dagger history of the former Nazi scientists who were recruited by Egypt to develop long-range missiles capable of…
striking Israel.From 1951 to 1967, Egypt pursued a secret program to build military rockets that could have conceivably posed a threat to neighboring Israel. Because such an ambitious project required Western expertise, the Egyptian leader president Nasser hired West German scientists, many of them veterans of the Nazi rocket program at Peenemünde and elsewhere.These covert plans soon came to the attention of Israel&’s legendary secret service, Mossad, and caused deep alarm in Tel Aviv. Could the missiles be fitted with warheads filled with radiological, chemical, or even nuclear materials? Israel responded by using threats, intimidation, and brutal assassination squads to deter the German scientists from working on Nasser&’s behalf. Exactly half a century later, this book tells the gripping story of the mysterious arms dealers, Mossad assassins, scientific genii, and leading figures who all played their part in Operation DamoclesDestiny in the Desert: The Road to El Alamein: The Battle that Turned the Tide of World War II
By Jonathan Dimbelby. 2012
The definitive history of the battle of El Alamein?"The end of the beginning," as Churchill said?the bloody conflict that would…
change the course of World War II.It was the Allied victory at the Battle of El Alamein in November 1942 that inspired one of Churchill's most famous aphorisms: &“This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.&” In this thrilling historical account, Jonathan Dimbleby describes the political and strategic realities that lay behind the battle, charting the nail-biting months that led to the victory at El Alamein in November 1942. Drawing on official records and the personal insights of those involved, Dimbleby creates a vivid portrait of a struggle which for Churchill marked the turn of the tide?and which for the soldiers on the ground involved fighting and dying in a foreign land. 16 pages of B&W photographsDestination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe
By Ruth Balint. 2021
In this unique "history from below," Destination Elsewhere chronicles encounters between displaced persons in Europe and the Allied agencies who…
were tasked with caring for them after the Second World War. The struggle to define who was a displaced person and who was not was a subject of intense debate and deliberation among humanitarians, international law experts, immigration planners, and governments. What has not adequately been recognized is that displaced persons also actively participated in this emerging refugee conversation. Displaced persons endured war, displacement, and resettlement, but these experiences were not defined by passivity and speechlessness. Instead, they spoke back, creating a dialogue that in turn helped shape the modern idea of the refugee. As Ruth Balint shows, what made a good or convincing story at the time tells us much about the circulation of ideas about the war, the Holocaust, and the Jews. Those stories depict the emerging moral and legal distinction between economic migrants and political refugees. They tell us about the experiences of women and children in the face of new psychological and political interventions into the family. Stories from displaced persons also tell us something about the enduring myth of the new world for people who longed to leave the old. Balint focuses on those persons whose storytelling skills became a major strategy for survival and escape out of the displaced persons' camps and out of the Europe. Their stories are brought to life in Destination Elsewhere, alongside a new history of immigration, statelessness, and the institution of the postwar family.Air Raid -- Pearl Harbor!: The Story of December 7, 1941
By Theodore Taylor. 1991
The Japanese-American Internment: An Interactive History Adventure (Understanding Differences Series)
By Lola M. Schaefer, Rachael Hanel. 2008
Describes the events surrounding the internment of Japanese Americans in relocation centers during World War II. The reader's choices reveal…
the historical details from the perspective of Japanese internees and Caucasians.Shoah and Torah (Routledge Studies in Second World War History)
By David Patterson. 2022
Shoah and Torah systematically takes up the task of reading the Shoah through the lens of the Torah and the…
Torah through the lens of the Shoah.The investigation rests upon (1) the metaphysical standing that the Nazis ascribed to the Torah, (2) the obliteration of the Torah in the extermination of the Jews, (3) the significance of the Torah for an understanding of the Shoah, and (4) the significance of the Shoah for an understanding of the Torah.The basis for the inquiry lies not in the content of a certain belief but in the categories of a certain mode of thought. Distinct from all other studies, this book is grounded in the categories of Jewish thought and Judaism—the categories of creation, revelation, and redemption—that the Nazis sought to obliterate in the Shoah.Thus, the investigation is itself a response to the Nazi project of the extermination of the Jews and the millennial testimony of the Jews to the Torah.Classic Stories of World War II: Tales of History's Most Heroic and Harrowing Experiences
By Classic Stories Of World War II. 1984
Classic Stories of World War II is a collection of fiction and non-fiction excerpts from the works of world-class authors…
who lived through the conflict. Authentic and impassioned stories reveal the heroism, survival, defeat and triumph of one of the most shocking wars this world has ever seen. Contents include: IRWIN SHAW A Perfect Morning (from The Young Lions) J. G. BALLARD Lunghua Camp (from Empire of the Sun) JAMES JONES The Big Day (from From Here to Eternity) JAMES A. MICHENER The Landing at Kuralei (from Tales of the South Pacific) RICHARD HILLARY Shall Live for a Ghost? (from The Last Enemy) KURT VONNEGUT Billy Pilgrim (from Slaughterhouse Five) EVELYN WAUGH Battalion in Defence (from Officers and Gentlemen) NORMAN MAILER Anopopei (from The Naked and the Dead) GUYGIBSON, VC Some were Unlucky(from Enemy Coast Ahead) JOSEPH HELLER Major Major Major Major(from Catch 22) RAYMOND PAULL The Invasion of Papua (from Retreat from Kokoda) RONALD SETH Stalingrad- the Story of the Battle (from Stalingrad-Point of Return) NANCY WAKE The White Mouse and the Maquis d'Auvergne (from The White Mouse) JOHN STEINBECK The Invaders (from The Moon is Down) NICHOLAS MONSARRAT The Compass Rose (from The Cruel Sea) JOHN HERSEY Hiroshima - The Fire (from Hiroshima)The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity, and Genocide explores the many and sometimes complicated ways in which religion, faith,…
doctrine, and practice intersect in societies where mass atrocity and genocide occur. This volume is intended as an entry point to questions about mass atrocity and genocide that are asked by and of people of faith and is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, historical events, and heated debates in this subject area. The 39 contributions to the handbook, by a team of international contributors, span five continents and cover four millennia. Each explores the intersection of religion, faith, and mainly state-sponsored mass atrocity and genocide, and draws from a variety of disciplines. This volume is divided into six core sections: Genocide in Antiquity and Holy Wars The Genocide of Indigenous Peoples Religion and the State The Role of Religion during Genocide Post Genocide Considerations Memory Culture Within these sections central issues, historical events, debates, and problems are examined, including the Crusades; Jihad and ISIS, colonialism, the Holocaust, desecration of ritual objects, politics of religion, Shinto nationalism, attacks on Rohingya Muslims; the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, responses to genocide; gender-based atrocities, ritualcide in Cambodia, burial sites and mass graves, transitional justice, forgiveness, documenting genocide, survivor memory narratives, post-conflict healing and memorialization. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Genocide is essential reading for students and researchers with an interest in religion and genocide, religion and violence, and religion and politics. It will be of great interest to students of theology, philosophy, genocide studies, narrative studies, history, and international relations and those in related fields, such as cultural studies, area studies, sociology, and anthropology.