World War II: the Global, Human, and Ethical Dimension - Böcker

On his first day in basic training in 1942, Lawrence Cane wrote his wife Grace from Fort Dix, New Jersey. "I'm in the army now?really!" he wrote, complaining, "I don't have enough time to write a decent letter." Three years later, Capt. Lawrence Cane went home from World War II. He'd landed at Utah Beach on D-Day, helped liberate France and Belgium, and survived the Battle of the Bulge. He won a Silver Star for bravery. And he still managed to write 300 letters home to Grace. This book is a different kind of war story--both an powerful chronicle of life in battle and a unique portrait of courage fueled by a life-long passion for political justice. Cane's fight for freedom began well before D-Day. In 1937, joined the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and got wounded fighting for democracy in Spain. In 1942, at age 30, he enlisted in the new war against fascism, and as an officer with the 238th Combat Engineer Battalion, went ashore in Normandy to clear mines, destroy fortifications, and open roads from Normandy to the Siegfried Line. Of the 400 Spanish Civil War veterans in World War II, Cane was the only one to go ashore on D-Day. After the war, Lawrence Cane fought for civil rights and peace until his death in 1976. Discovered in 1995 by Cane's son David, his letters are not only classic accounts of war and unforgettable expressions of love for family. They are the fiercely patriotic words of a left-wing, working-class New York Jew (and one-time Communist Party member) who knew exactly why we fought---to create a better world by destroying all forms of fascism, one battle at a time. With a fascinating introduction by David Cane, detailed notes, and much additional material, these letters add a new dimension to the meaning of American patriotism and an invaluable chapter to the history of "the greatest generation."

Frank and Albert Dietrich were identical twins whose lives took very different directions during World War II. Drafted into the Army Air Corps and trained as a radio operator, Frank was shipped to the Philippines in 1945, where as a sergeant in the Fifth Air Force he prepared for the invasion of Japan. Albert, a pacifist, struggled mightily to become a conscientious objector and spent two years building dams, saving farmland, and helping the poor at Civilian Service Camps in South Dakota, Iowa, and Florida.Raised in a close, religious, Pittsburgh family, Frank and Albert were inseparable as boys, sharing a strong social conscience. Divided by war, they kept in touch by writing hundreds of letters to each other. The correspondence concerns everything from the daily drudgery of service—loneliness, lousy food—to heartfelt debates about war, peace, and patriotism.This absorbing selection of letters offers fresh perspectives on the American experience during World War II. The first published correspondence between GI and CO brothers, the letters are an uncommonly articulate chronicle of military service and life on the home front, including GI marriage and parenthood. Back and forth, Frank and Albert also argued about the uses of armed force and pacifist nonviolence in the face of fascism and Nazism.Frank Dietrich's letters from Manila are vivid descriptions of a liberated city under an uneasy occupation. Albert provides an insider's view of the pacifist experience, especially the protracted efforts pacifists often had to wage to obtain CO status. Together, the letters bring to life different ways Americans chose to serve their country during one of its most dangerous and demanding times.

Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Don Whitehead delivered battlefield dispatches that were classics of frontline reporting. One of the legendary reporters of World War II, Whitehead covered almost every important Allied invasion and campaign in Europe-from landings in Sicily, Salerno, and Anzio on the Italian front to Normandy, where he went ashore with the First Army Division. Writing for the Associated Press, he covered the brutal beachhead fighting and followed the Allied sweep to victory across France, Belgium, and Germany. Daring, valiant, and fearless, "Beachhead Don" was one of sixteen correspondents awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry S Truman.Collected here for the first time, his dispatches are classics of war journalism. This book, long overdue, will help a new generation discover Whitehead's vivid, powerful, and unforgettable stories of men at war. John Romeiser provides a richly detailed introduction and background to the man, his work, and his world.

How did Japan and the United States end up at waron December 7, 1941? What American decisions mighthave provoked the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor?In this classic study of the run up to World War II, Utleyexamines the ways domestic politics shaped America'sresponse to Japanese moves in the Pacific.

One of the few non-Japanese Americans trained to read, write, and speak Japanese, Princeton undergraduate Grant Goodman had a privileged position during World War II. As an Army lieutenant, Goodman served in the Philippines at the close of the war and in Tokyo as an intelligence officer on General Douglas MacArthur's staff. Goodman translated thousands of letters, interviews, and other documents by Japanese citizens of all kinds, and came to know, as few Americans could, the "hearts and minds" of a defeated people as they moved slowly to democracy. This book is a not only a fascinating personal chronicle of Grant Goodman's unique experience in Japan. Moving deftly between his role as an Army officer gathering essential information and as a young scholar fascinated by Japanese culture, he provides a vividly drawn portrait of daily life in occupied Tokyo.Here he looks back at signal events: Japan's responses to occupation, the writing of the new constitution and the de-deification of the Emperor, the International Military Tribunal and the issue of Japanese war crimes, reactions by ordinary Japanese to American occupiers, and much more.September 2, 2005, marks the 60th anniversary of the Japanese surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri. First published in Japanese in 1986, America's Japan is not only superb history. It is also a timely reminder of the realities of war and the responsibilities of victors and vanquished alike.

Kurt Frank Korf's story is one of the most unusual to come out of World War II. Although German-Americans were America's largest ethnic group, and German-Americans—including thousands of native-born Germans—fought bravely in all theaters, there are few full first-person accounts by German- Americans of their experiences during the 1930s and 1940s.Drawing on his correspondence and on oral histories and interviews with Korf, Patricia Kollander paints a fascinating portrait of a privileged young man forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1937 because the infamous Nuremburg Laws had relegated him to the status of "second-degree mixed breed" (Korf had one Jewish grandparent).Settling in New York City, Korf became an FBI informant, watching pro-Nazi leaders like Fritz Kuhn and the German-American Bund as they moved among the city's large German immigrant community. Soon after, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving in Germany as an intelligence officer during the Battle of the Bulge, and as a prisoner of war camp administrator. After the war, Korf stayed on as a U.S. government attorney in Berlin and Munich, working to hunt down war criminals, and lent his expertise in the effort to determine the authenticity of Joseph Goebbels's diaries. Kurt Frank Korf died in 2000.Kollander not only draws a detailed portrait of this unique figure; she also provides a rich context for exploring responses to Nazism in Germany, the German-American position before and during the war, the community's later response to Nazism and its crimes, and the broader issues of ethnicity, religion, political ideology, and patriotism in 20th-century America. Patricia Kollander is Associate Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University. She is the author of Frederick III: Germany's Liberal Emperor. "I Must Be a Part of This War" is part of her ongoing research into the experiences of some fifteen thousand native-born Germans who served in the U.S. Army in World War II. John O'Sullivan was Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University.

In this concise, clearly written book, Thomas and Michael Christofferson provide a balanced introduction to every aspect of the French experience during World War II.Synthesizing a wide range of scholarship, the authors integrate political, diplomatic, military, social, cultural, and economic history in this portrait of a nation and a people at war. Here is a chronicle of the battles and campaigns that stained French soil with blood. Here, also, is the full historical context of the war—its origins, realities, and aftermath—in French society. The authors pay particular attention to the key failures of institutional France—especially the officer corps, political elites, and the Catholic Church. They also assess the controversial history of the Vichy regime and the German occupation, in carefully crafted accounts of resistance and collaboration, Vichy's National Revolution, and the fate of France's Jews.Accessible to both students and general readers, France during World War II develops a full understanding of the actors, events, issues, and controversies of a turbulent era.

In this concise, clearly written book, Thomas and Michael Christofferson provide a balanced introduction to every aspect of the French experience during World War II.Synthesizing a wide range of scholarship, the authors integrate political, diplomatic, military, social, cultural, and economic history in this portrait of a nation and a people at war. Here is a chronicle of the battles and campaigns that stained French soil with blood. Here, also, is the full historical context of the war—its origins, realities, and aftermath—in French society. The authors pay particular attention to the key failures of institutional France—especially the officer corps, political elites, and the Catholic Church. They also assess the controversial history of the Vichy regime and the German occupation, in carefully crafted accounts of resistance and collaboration, Vichy's National Revolution, and the fate of France's Jews.Accessible to both students and general readers, France during World War II develops a full understanding of the actors, events, issues, and controversies of a turbulent era.

This fascinating book tells the remarkable story of an ordinary American woman's heroism in the French Resistance. Virginia Roush fell in love with Philippe d'Albert-Lake during a visit to France in 1936; they married soon after. In 1943, they both joined the Resistance, where Virginia put her life in jeopardy as she sheltered downed airmen and later survived a Nazi prison camp. After the war, she stayed in France with Philippe, and was awarded the Légion d'Honneur and the Medal of Honor. She died in 1997.Judy Barrett Litoff brings together two rare documents—Virginia's diary of wartime France until her capture in 1944 and her prison memoir written immediately after the war. Masterfully edited, they convey the compassion and toughness of a nearly forgotten heroine as they provide an invaluable record of the workings of the Resistance by one of the very few American women who participated in it."An indelible portrait of extraordinary strength of character . . . [D'Albert-Lake] is sombre, reflective, and attentive to every detail."—The New Yorker "A sharply etched and moving story of love, companionship, commitment, and sacrifice. . . . This beautifully edited diary and memoir throw an original light on the French Resistance."—Robert Gildea, author of Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation, 1940-1945 "At once a stunning self-portrait and dramatic narrative of a valorous young American woman . . . an exciting and gripping story, one of the best of the many wartime tales." —Walter Cronkite"An enthralling tale which brims with brave airmen and plucky heroines."—David Kirby, St. Petersburg Times

This fascinating book tells the remarkable story of an ordinary American woman's heroism in the French Resistance. Virginia Roush fell in love with Philippe d'Albert-Lake during a visit to France in 1936; they married soon after. In 1943, they both joined the Resistance, where Virginia put her life in jeopardy as she sheltered downed airmen and later survived a Nazi prison camp. After the war, she stayed in France with Philippe, and was awarded the Légion d'Honneur and the Medal of Honor. She died in 1997.Judy Barrett Litoff brings together two rare documents—Virginia's diary of wartime France until her capture in 1944 and her prison memoir written immediately after the war. Masterfully edited, they convey the compassion and toughness of a nearly forgotten heroine as they provide an invaluable record of the workings of the Resistance by one of the very few American women who participated in it."An indelible portrait of extraordinary strength of character . . . [D'Albert-Lake] is sombre, reflective, and attentive to every detail."—The New Yorker "A sharply etched and moving story of love, companionship, commitment, and sacrifice. . . . This beautifully edited diary and memoir throw an original light on the French Resistance."—Robert Gildea, author of Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation, 1940-1945 "At once a stunning self-portrait and dramatic narrative of a valorous young American woman . . . an exciting and gripping story, one of the best of the many wartime tales." —Walter Cronkite"An enthralling tale which brims with brave airmen and plucky heroines."—David Kirby, St. Petersburg Times

Valdis Lumans provides an authoritative, balanced, and comprehensive account of one of the most complex, and conflicted, arenas of the Second World War. Struggling against both Germany and the Soviet Union, Latvia emerged as an independent nation state after the First World War. In 1940, the Soviets occupied neutral Latvia, deporting or executing more than 30,000 Latvians before the Nazis invaded in 1941 and installed a puppet regime. The Red Army expelled the Germans in 1944 and reincorporated Latvia as a Soviet Republic. By the end of the war, an estimated 180,000 Latvians fled to the West. The Soviets would deport at least another 100,000.Drawing on a wide range of sources—many brought together here for the first time—Lumans synthesizes political, military, social, economic, diplomatic, and cultural history. He moves carefully through traditional sources, many of them partisan, to scholarship emerging since the end of the Cold War, to confront such issues as political loyalties, military collaboration, resistance, capitulation, the Soviet occupation, anti-Semitism, and the Latvian role in the Holocaust.

"No one bore witness better than Don Whitehead . . . this volume, deftly combining his diary and a previously unpublished memoir, brings Whitehead and his reporting back to life, and 21st-century readers are the richer for it."—from the Foreword, by Rick AtkinsonWinner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Don Whitehead is one of the legendary reporters of World War II. For the Associated Press he covered almost every important Allied invasion and campaign in Europe—from North Africa to landings in Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, and Normandy, and to the drive into Germany. His dispatches, published in the recent Beachhead Don, are treasures of wartime journalism.From the fall of September 1942, as a freshly minted A.P. journalist in New York, to the spring of 1943 as Allied tanks closed in on the Germans in Tunisia, Whitehead kept a diary of his experiences as a rookie combat reporter. The diary stops in 1943, and it has remained unpublished until now. Back home later, Whitehead started, but never finished, a memoir of his extraordinary life in combat.John Romeiser has woven both the North African diary and Whitehead's memoir of the subsequent landings in Sicily into a vivid, unvarnished, and completely riveting story of eight months during some of the most brutal combat of the war. Here, Whitehead captures the fierce fighting in the African desert and Sicilian mountains, as well as rare insights into the daily grind of reporting from a war zone, where tedium alternated with terror. In the tradition of cartoonist Bill Mauldin's memoir Up Front, Don Whitehead's powerful self-portrait is destined to become an American classic.

James Maurice Gavin left for war in April 1943 as a colonel commanding the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division—America's first airborne division and the first to fight in World War II. In 1944, "Slim Jim" Gavin, as he was known to his troops, at the age of thirty-seven became the 82nd's commanding general—the youngest Army officer to become a major general since the Civil War. At war's end, this soldier's soldier had become one of our greatest generals—and the 82nd's most decorated officer.Now James Gavin's letters home to his nine-year-old daughter Barbara provide a revealing portrait of the American experience in World War II through the eyes of one of its most dynamic officers. Written from ship decks, foxholes, and field tents—often just before or after a dangerous jump—they capture the day-to-day realities of combat and Gavin's personal reactions to the war he helped to win. And provide an invaluable self-portrait of a great general, and a great American, in war and peace.The book's more than 200 letters begin at Fort Bragg in 1943 and continue to December 1945, as Gavin came home to lead the 82nd at the head of the Victory parade in New York. This correspondence constitutes the majority of Gavin's private wartime letters, but except for rare appearances in regimental newsletters, it has never before been published. In her Introduction, Epilogue, and Notes, Barbara Gavin Fauntleroy gives a privileged glimpse of the private man. Edited by Gayle Wurst, the book features historical overviews by Starlyn Jorgensen, a preface by noted Gavin biographer Gerard M. Devlin, and a foreword by Rufus Broadaway, Gavin's aide-de-camp.

Over the course of five years, the Reserve Officers Association of the United States—the nation's oldest such professional military organization—invited its members to write about their experiences in World War II. The response was an impressive outpouring of memories, now compiled here in an extraordinary record of courage, sacrifice, and commitment.Stories from 240 veterans—representing all theaters, ranks, and services—track the years of World War II month by month.From the young ensign's letter to his fiancée, describing his escape from the USS Cassin minutes before it explodes at Pearl Harbor, to the battle-seasoned colonel's account of his flyover at the peace-treaty signing aboard the USS Missouri, the stories give a human face to the moments of war, written by men and women who intimately lived those history-making days, on bombing missions and invasion duty, on front lines and the home front.Readers will meet a survivor of the USS Reuben James, sunk by a German U-boat before December 7, 1941, and eight D-Day invaders of Normandy, including Lieutenant Colonel J. Strom Thurmond, paratrooper. They will also meet a bodyguard to General Douglas MacArthur and the nurses who healed the fallen in huts on Bataan, the hospital ship Shamrock in the Mediterranean, and field hospitals in France.Here, too, are personal accounts by Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) and the battlehardened engineers of the Seabees in the Pacific. Other veterans tell of surviving the sinking of the troopship Leopoldville, when 750 Americans died in the English Channel on Christmas Eve, 1944; the horrific discovery of the Nazi extermination camps; and the tragic bombings near war's end of unmarked Japanese ships transporting U.S. POWs from the Philippines.Featuring photographs, a chronology, and historical introductions, this book—thanks to these stories by ordinary soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and nurses—is destined to become an enduring testimony to the American experience in World War II.

"I see this book as the story my father never got to tell," John Toffey writes. And what a remarkable story it is that Lt. Col. Jack Toffey never got to tell.In this moving account of a young man's journey to know a father who went to war in 1942 and never came back, John Toffey weaves memory, history, and his father's vivid letters home into a fascinating tale of a family, a war, and the threads that connect them.John Toffey was nine when his father's National Guard outfit was mobilized. For two years Toffey, his mother, and his sister moved from post to post before his dad shipped out—to North Africa, fighting the Vichy French in Morocco, then the Germans in Tunisia, where he was wounded. In July 1943 he went back to war, leading an infantry battalion in the invasions of Sicily and southern Italy. In January 1944 he landed his battalion at Anzio and was wounded again. After a long, bitter stalemate, Toffey's regiment led Mark Clark's push on Rome. On June 3, 1944, Jack Toffey was killed in the hill town of Palestrina, one day before the Allies marched intoRome. In a brutal campaign, Jack Toffey had commanded a combat battalion longer than any other officer in the Mediterranean theater.Only in 1996, when his father's letters were discovered, did John Toffey begin to piece together what happened to his father. And he tells this contested story of Allied success and failure with drama, steely reserve, and balance, adding an invaluable perspective to the portrait of Jack Toffey created by Rick Atkinson in his bestselling Day of Battle. This book is also a lovingly crafted portrait of home front Ohio, and how a young boy, his sister, and his mother waited out their war, scanning newspapers and magazines for news of Dad and devouring letters full of easy humor and expressions of love for and pride in his family and dreams of a good life after the war.

In his 36 years of military service, Lt. General James V. Edmundson had extensive experience in combat operations and command at every level in the Air Force. He had over 10,000 hours of pilot time in 137 types of airplanes. In addition to the 107 combat missions in World War II, he led 32 combat missions in Korea and 42 in Vietnam. Two years after General Edmundson's death in 2001, his daughter, Celia discovered a trunk of his letters and was particularly fascinated with the correspondence between her father and mother, Lee. This very personal story is told through chronological vignettes, letters, newspaper and magazine articles of the period. The vignettes were written in 2000 - the letters begin in 1939 in the beautiful Territory of Hawaii. The two are interwoven and provide incredible descriptions and detail of the conditions both before and after the U.S. entry into the War; of the early fighting in the South Pacific; of the highly secret development and implementation of the Superfortress, which ultimately brought an end to Japan's war against the United States; and of the China-Burma-India Theater, as the war accelerates and the last mission is flown. Correspondents from the United Press and Newsweek who accompanied Edmundson on combat missions enrich the story. Letter to Lee is a first person account of two of the heroes of World War II and of the love that they shared across the years and miles. They lived their lives with integrity and courage, one example of this great generation and this incredible period in time.

In this compelling book, G. Kurt Piehler and Sidney Pash bring together a collection of essays offering a fresh examination of American participation in the Second World War, including a long overdue reconsideration of such seminal topics as the forces leading the United States to enter World War II, the role of the American military in the Allied victory, and war-time planning for the postwar world, but also tackle new inquiries into life on the home front and America's commemoration of one of the most controversial and climatic events of the war-the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. These outstanding historians cover crucial moments such as:Franklin D. Roosevelt's pivotal, if at times indecisive, role in leading the United StatesThe miscalculation of Japanese intentions by American diplomats and the failure of deterrence in preventing war in the PacificThe experiences and contributions of conscientious objectors to American society in this time of total warThe decision of the United States to fight with an ineffective battle tank at the expense of American livesThe Coast Guard's contribution to the D-Day LandingHow elite foreign policy organizations prior to V-J Day sought to influence American occupation policies regarding Japan With these essays and much more, The United States in the Second World War is sure to prove a classic to World War II buffs.

In this moving memoir a young man comes of age in an age of violence, brutality, and war. Recounting his experiences during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, this account brings to life the shocking day-to-day conditions in a Japanese labor camp and provides an intimate look at the collapse of Dutch colonial rule.As a boy growing up on the island of Java, John Stutterheim spent hours exploring his exotic surroundings, taking walks with his younger brother and dachshund along winding jungle roads. His father, a government accountant, would grumble at the pro-German newspaper and from time to time entertain the family with his singing. It was a fairly typical life for a colonial family in the Dutch East Indies, and a peaceful and happy childhood for young John. But at the age of 14 it would all be irrevocably shattered by the Japanese invasion.With the surrender of Java in 1942, John's father was taken prisoner. For over three years the family would not know if he was alive or dead. Soon thereafter, John, his younger brother, and his mother were imprisoned. A year later he and his brother were moved to a forced labor camp for boys, where they toiled under the fierce sun while disease and starvation slowly took their toll, all the while suspecting they would soon be killed.Throughout all of these travails, John kept a secret diary hidden in his handmade mattress, and his memories now offer a unique perspective on an often overlooked episode of World War II. What emerges is a compelling story of a young man caught up in the machinations of a global war—struggling to survive in the face of horrible brutality, struggling to care for his disease-wracked brother, and struggling to put his family back together. It is a story that must not be forgotten.

In this moving memoir a young man comes of age in an age of violence, brutality, and war. Recounting his experiences during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, this account brings to life the shocking day-to-day conditions in a Japanese labor camp and provides an intimate look at the collapse of Dutch colonial rule.As a boy growing up on the island of Java, John Stutterheim spent hours exploring his exotic surroundings, taking walks with his younger brother and dachshund along winding jungle roads. His father, a government accountant, would grumble at the pro-German newspaper and from time to time entertain the family with his singing. It was a fairly typical life for a colonial family in the Dutch East Indies, and a peaceful and happy childhood for young John. But at the age of 14 it would all be irrevocably shattered by the Japanese invasion.With the surrender of Java in 1942, John's father was taken prisoner. For over three years the family would not know if he was alive or dead. Soon thereafter, John, his younger brother, and his mother were imprisoned. A year later he and his brother were moved to a forced labor camp for boys, where they toiled under the fierce sun while disease and starvation slowly took their toll, all the while suspecting they would soon be killed.Throughout all of these travails, John kept a secret diary hidden in his handmade mattress, and his memories now offer a unique perspective on an often overlooked episode of World War II. What emerges is a compelling story of a young man caught up in the machinations of a global war—struggling to survive in the face of horrible brutality, struggling to care for his disease-wracked brother, and struggling to put his family back together. It is a story that must not be forgotten.

Thoburn H. "Toby" Wiant was a fighter from an early age, and words were his weapons of choice. During World War II, he fought to scoop stories from rival reporters on the front lines as an Associated Press war correspondent. In chronicling the war from the China-Burma-India and European theaters of operation, he skillfully reported the battles of an all-too-real war while often in personal peril. In letters to his parents he revealed his personal reactions to the war. In this remarkable book, his daughter brings together Wiant's printed articles and his private letters. With her aid, we view the war through his eyes as we watch a scrappy boy grow into manhood and an eager cub reporter develop into a seasoned war correspondent.

The story of Hungary's participation in World War II is part of a much larger narrative—one that has never before been fully recounted for a non-Hungarian readership. As told by Deborah Cornelius, it is a fascinating tale of rise and fall, of hopes dashed and dreams in tatters. Using previously untapped sources and interviews she conducted for this book, Cornelius provides a clear account of Hungary's attempt to regain the glory of the Hungarian Kingdom by joining forces with Nazi Germany—a decision that today seems doomed to fail from the start. For scholars and history buff s alike, Hungary in World War II is a riveting read.Cornelius begins her study with the Treaty of Trianon, which in 1920 spelled out the terms of defeat for the former kingdom. The new country of Hungary lost more than 70 percent of the kingdom's territory, saw its population reduced by nearly the same percentage, and was stripped of five of its ten most populous cities. As Cornelius makes vividly clear, nearly all of the actions of Hungarian leaders during the succeedingdecades can be traced back to this incalculable defeat.In the early years of World War II, Hungary enjoyed boom times—and the dream of restoring the Hungarian Kingdom began to rise again. Caught in the middle as the war engulfed Europe, Hungary was drawn into an alliance with Nazi Germany. When the Germans appeared to give Hungary much of its pre–World War I territory, Hungarians began to delude themselves into believing they had won their long-sought objective. Instead, the final year of the world war brought widespread destruction and a genocidal war against Hungarian Jews. Caught between two warring behemoths, the country became a battleground for German and Soviet forces. In the wake of the war, Hungary suffered further devastation under Soviet occupation and forty-five years of communist rule.The author first became interested in Hungary in 1957 and has visited the country numerous times, beginning in the 1970s. Over the years she has talked with many Hungarians, both scholars and everyday people. Hungary in World War II draws skillfully on these personal tales to narrate events before, during, and after World War II. It provides a comprehensive and highly readable history of Hungarian participation in the war, along with an explanation of Hungarian motivation: the attempt of a defeated nation to relive its former triumphs.

The story of Hungary's participation in World War II is part of a much larger narrative—one that has never before been fully recounted for a non-Hungarian readership. As told by Deborah Cornelius, it is a fascinating tale of rise and fall, of hopes dashed and dreams in tatters. Using previously untapped sources and interviews she conducted for this book, Cornelius provides a clear account of Hungary's attempt to regain the glory of the Hungarian Kingdom by joining forces with Nazi Germany—a decision that today seems doomed to fail from the start. For scholars and history buff s alike, Hungary in World War II is a riveting read.Cornelius begins her study with the Treaty of Trianon, which in 1920 spelled out the terms of defeat for the former kingdom. The new country of Hungary lost more than 70 percent of the kingdom's territory, saw its population reduced by nearly the same percentage, and was stripped of five of its ten most populous cities. As Cornelius makes vividly clear, nearly all of the actions of Hungarian leaders during the succeedingdecades can be traced back to this incalculable defeat.In the early years of World War II, Hungary enjoyed boom times—and the dream of restoring the Hungarian Kingdom began to rise again. Caught in the middle as the war engulfed Europe, Hungary was drawn into an alliance with Nazi Germany. When the Germans appeared to give Hungary much of its pre–World War I territory, Hungarians began to delude themselves into believing they had won their long-sought objective. Instead, the final year of the world war brought widespread destruction and a genocidal war against Hungarian Jews. Caught between two warring behemoths, the country became a battleground for German and Soviet forces. In the wake of the war, Hungary suffered further devastation under Soviet occupation and forty-five years of communist rule.The author first became interested in Hungary in 1957 and has visited the country numerous times, beginning in the 1970s. Over the years she has talked with many Hungarians, both scholars and everyday people. Hungary in World War II draws skillfully on these personal tales to narrate events before, during, and after World War II. It provides a comprehensive and highly readable history of Hungarian participation in the war, along with an explanation of Hungarian motivation: the attempt of a defeated nation to relive its former triumphs.

Süssen Is Now Free of Jews offers a close look at the legacy of a few Jewish families from Süssen—a village in the District of Göppingen, which is located in the state of Baden Württemberg in southern Germany. The author, Gilya Gerda Schmidt, looks at this rural region through the lens of two Jewish families—the Langs and the Ottenheimers—who settled there in the early twentieth century. As a child, she shared with the Langs the same living space for just a few months. She remembers her mother's telling her of the Jews who lived in Süssen until the Holocaust. More than thirty years later, in a used bookstore in Knoxville, Tennessee, the author accidentally found documentation verifying the Jewish presence in a book about the surviving Jews of Württemberg. In it, she found confirmation that there had been Jews living in Süssen until the Holocaust. For the first time, she had the proof she needed to look into the reality behind this lingering mystery. Here began her detective-like journey to find out what happened to the Jews of Süssen.A decade of research into local and regional archives ensued, and this very penetrating study is the result. In it, the author attempts to shed light on not just the original question of what happened to the two families during the Holocaust but also on a host of other questions: What was it like to be Jewish in rural southern Germany a century ago? What were the Jewish traditions of this region? What were the relations between Jews and Christians before the Holocaust? And where did those family members who were able to escape or who survived the concentration camps go when they left Süssen or Göppingen? Few witnesses came forward, yet the documents in the archives spoke volumes. This micro-history records the not-so-romantic journey of two Jewish families who lived in the Fils Valley. The study also addresses issues of being an American prisoner of war; of resuming life after the Holocaust; of the bureaucratic nightmare of requisitions, restitution, and reparations; and of life in America.This unique book will be of interest to a general readership and is an important book for scholars in German and Holocaust studies.

Angelo Tasca, a pivotal figure in 20th-century Italian political history, and indeed European history, is frequently overshadowed by his Fascist opponent Mussolini or his Socialist and Communist colleagues (Gramsci and Togliatti). Yet, as Emanuel Rota reveals in this captivating biography, Tasca—also known as Serra, A. Rossi, André Leroux, and XX—was in fact a key political player in the first half of the 20th century and an ill-fated representative of the age of political extremes he helped to create. In A Pact with Vichy, readers meet the Italian intellect and politician with fresh eyes as the author demystifies Tasca's seemingly bizarre trajectory from revolutionary Socialist to Communist to supporter of the Vichy regime. Rota demonstrates how Tasca, an indefatigable cultural operator and Socialist militant, tried all his life to maintain his commitment to scientific analysis in the face of the rise of Fascism and Stalinism, but his struggle ended in a personal and political defeat that seemed to contradict all his life when he lent his support to the Vichy government.Through Tasca's complex life, A Pact with Vichy vividly reconstructs and elucidates the even more complex networks and debates that animated the Italian and French Left in the first half of the 20th century. After his expulsion from the Italian Communist Party as a result of his refusal to conform to Stalinism, Tasca reinvented his life in Paris, where he participated in the intense political debates of the 1930s. Rota explores how Tasca's political choices were motivated by the desperate attempt to find an alternative between Nazism and Stalinism, even when this alternative had the ambiguous borders of Vichy's collaborationist regime. A Pact with Vichy uncovers how Tasca's betrayal of his own ideal was tragically the result of his commitment to political realism in the brief age of triumphant Fascism.This riveting, perceptive biography offers readers a privileged window into one of the 20th century's most intriguing yet elusive characters. It is a must-read for history buffs, students, and scholars alike.

In this compelling book, G. Kurt Piehler and Sidney Pash bring together a collection of essays offering a fresh examination of American participation in the Second World War, including a long overdue reconsideration of such seminal topics as the forces leading the United States to enter World War II, the role of the American military in the Allied victory, and war-time planning for the postwar world, but also tackle new inquiries into life on the home front and America's commemoration of one of the most controversial and climatic events of the war-the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. These outstanding historians cover crucial moments such as:Franklin D. Roosevelt's pivotal, if at times indecisive, role in leading the United StatesThe miscalculation of Japanese intentions by American diplomats and the failure of deterrence in preventing war in the PacificThe experiences and contributions of conscientious objectors to American society in this time of total warThe decision of the United States to fight with an ineffective battle tank at the expense of American livesThe Coast Guard's contribution to the D-Day LandingHow elite foreign policy organizations prior to V-J Day sought to influence American occupation policies regarding Japan With these essays and much more, The United States in the Second World War is sure to prove a classic to World War II buffs.

Axis forces (Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria) occupied Greece from 1941 to 1944. The unimaginable hardships caused by foreign occupation were compounded by the flight of the government days before enemy forces reached Athens. This national crisis forced the Church of Greece, an institution accustomed to playing a central political and social role during times of crisis, to fill the political vacuum. Led by Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens, the clergy sought to maintain the cultural, spiritual, and territorial integrity of the nation during this harrowing period. Circumstances forced the clergy to create a working relationship with the major political actors, including the Axis authorities, their Greek allies, and the growing armed resistance movements, especially the communist-led National Liberation Front. In so doing the church straddled a fine line between collaboration and resistance—individual clerics, for instance, negotiated with Axis authorities to gain small concessions, while simultaneously resisting policies deemed detrimental to the nation.Drawing on official archives—of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the British Foreign Office, the U.S. State Department, and the Greek Holy Synod—alongside an impressive breadth of published literature, this book provides a refreshingly nuanced account of the Greek clergy's complex response to the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. The author's comprehensive portrait of the reaction of Damaskinos and his colleagues, including tensions and divisions within the clergy, provides a uniquely balanced exploration of the critical role they played during the occupation. It helps readers understand how and why traditional institutions such as the Church played a central social and political role in moments of social upheaval and distress. Indeed, as this book convincingly shows, the Church was the only institution capable of holding Greek society together during World War II.While The Church of Greece under Axis Occupation elucidates the significant differences between the Greek case and those of other territories in Axis-occupied Europe, it also offers fresh insight into the similarities. Greek clerics dealt with many of the same challenges clerics faced in other parts of Hitler's empire, including exceptionally brutal reprisal policies, deprivation and hunger, and the complete collapse of the social and political order caused by years of enemy occupation. By examining these challenges, this illuminating new book is an important contribution not only to Greek historiography but also to the broader literatures on the Holocaust, collaboration and resistance during World War II, and church–state relations during times of crisis.

Angelo Tasca, a pivotal figure in 20th-century Italian political history, and indeed European history, is frequently overshadowed by his Fascist opponent Mussolini or his Socialist and Communist colleagues (Gramsci and Togliatti). Yet, as Emanuel Rota reveals in this captivating biography, Tasca—also known as Serra, A. Rossi, André Leroux, and XX—was in fact a key political player in the first half of the 20th century and an ill-fated representative of the age of political extremes he helped to create. In A Pact with Vichy, readers meet the Italian intellect and politician with fresh eyes as the author demystifies Tasca's seemingly bizarre trajectory from revolutionary Socialist to Communist to supporter of the Vichy regime. Rota demonstrates how Tasca, an indefatigable cultural operator and Socialist militant, tried all his life to maintain his commitment to scientific analysis in the face of the rise of Fascism and Stalinism, but his struggle ended in a personal and political defeat that seemed to contradict all his life when he lent his support to the Vichy government.Through Tasca's complex life, A Pact with Vichy vividly reconstructs and elucidates the even more complex networks and debates that animated the Italian and French Left in the first half of the 20th century. After his expulsion from the Italian Communist Party as a result of his refusal to conform to Stalinism, Tasca reinvented his life in Paris, where he participated in the intense political debates of the 1930s. Rota explores how Tasca's political choices were motivated by the desperate attempt to find an alternative between Nazism and Stalinism, even when this alternative had the ambiguous borders of Vichy's collaborationist regime. A Pact with Vichy uncovers how Tasca's betrayal of his own ideal was tragically the result of his commitment to political realism in the brief age of triumphant Fascism.This riveting, perceptive biography offers readers a privileged window into one of the 20th century's most intriguing yet elusive characters. It is a must-read for history buffs, students, and scholars alike.

When literary biographer and memoirist Louise DeSalvo embarked upon a journey to learn why her father came home from World War II a changed man, she didn't realize her quest would take ten years, and that it would yield more revelations about the man—and herself—and the effect of his military service upon their family than she'd ever imagined. During his last years, as he told her about his life, DeSalvo began to understand that her obsession with war novels and military history wasn't merely academic but rooted in her desire to understand this complex father whom she both adored and reviled because of his mistreatment of her. Although she at first believes she wants to uncover his story, the story of a man who was no hero but who was nonetheless adversely affected by the his military service, she learns that what she really wants is to recover the man that he was before he went away.As DeSalvo and her father uncover his past piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit, she learns about the dreams of a working-class man who entered the military in the late 1930s during peacetime to better himself, a man who wanted to become a pilot. She learns about what it was like for him to participate in war games in the Pacific prior to the war, and its devastating toll. She learns about what it was like for her parents to fall in love, set up house, marry, and have children during this cataclysmic time. And as the pieces of her father's life fall into place as works to piece together the puzzle of everything she's learned about this time, she finds herself finally able to understand him.Chasing Ghosts is an original contribution to the understanding of working-class World War II veterans who did not conventionally distinguish themselves through "heroic" actions and whose lives were not until recently considered worthy of historical or cultural attention. It personalizes the history of those sailors who served in the Navy aboard aircraft carriers and on islands in the Pacific prior to, and during World War II and contributes to the current vital conversation about the often-unrecognized effects of war and its traumas upon those men and their families. It reveals the lifelong devastating consequences of military service on those men and women who fell in love, married, and set up house. And it reveals the complexity of what it is like to be the daughter of a father who has gone to war.

Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is a rare gift detailing the experience of Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson, who was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending a country that considered them to be second-class citizens. In this vividly detailed, deeply personal story, Jefferson writes as a genuine American hero about what it meant to be an African American pilot in enemy hands, fighting to protect the promise of freedom. The book features the sketches, drawings, and other illustrations Jefferson created during his nine months as a POW, and Lewis Carlson's authoritative background to the man, his unit, and the fight Alexander Jefferson fought so well.This revised edition covers the story of Jefferson's continuing outreach and education work, as he brings the story of the Tuskegee Airmen to communities and schools across the country, and the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Airmen in 2007.Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is perhaps the only account of the African American experience in a German prison camp.