Kategoria BISAC: History >> Wars & Conflicts - World War II - General

A brief, yet complete history of the Allied campaign for the liberation of Europe from the Normandy invasion to the surrender of Germany, this study describes not only what happened, but "why" it happened. While an enormous amount has been written about this campaign, most of it focuses upon a single army or an individual battle. This book stresses a true inter-Allied and all arms approach with a balance of both strategy and tactics; accounts of effort by land, sea, air forces; as well as the strong influence of logistics. Levine deals extensively with the German side, particularly morale...

Written by a survivor of the Warsaw Uprising, this book examines the background of the ill-fated 63-day uprising that pitted poorly armed Polish civilians and volunteers against Hitler's well-armed and veteran forces. Borowiec also examines Stalin's decision to stand by while Warsaw and its defenders were destroyed.

Borowiec provides a day-by-day account of the combat and the efforts to resupply the partisans by Allied aircraft. In this, the first English-language history of the Uprising, Borowiec relies on his own experiences, those of other participants, and other materials not...

The Battle of the Bulge was the last hurrah for the German Army on the Western Front. With the help of various unpublished sources, Samuel Mitcham sets out to tell the story of that battle and of the Ardennes Offensive from the German point of view. The greatest military disaster the United States suffered in the European Theater of Operations in World War II occurred in the Ardennes Offensive, when most of the U.S. 106th Infantry Division was destroyed in the Schnee Eifel (Snow Mountains). Mitcham covers the Battle of the Schnee Eifel from the German point of view in greater depth than...

The relationship of the United States and Great Britain has been the subject of numerous studies with a particular emphasis on the idea of a special relationship based on traditional common ties of language, history, and political affinity. Although certainly special, Anglo-American cooperation arose from mutual necessity. Soybel examines the special relationship through a new lens--that of the most intimate of wartime collaborations, the naval intelligence relationship. Rather than looking at the uses of intelligence and espionage, Soybel explores how the cooperation was established and...

Why would a journalist who was an ardent socialist and an anti-Nazi during the waning years of the Weimar Republic decide to go to work for the Gestapo abroad? Hans Wesemann, a veteran of World War I and a successful journalist, fled his native Germany in 1933 after writing a number of anti-Nazi articles. Once in Britain, he found life difficult and dull, and thus, for a number of reasons, agreed to furnish the German Embassy in London with information about other refugees. Inevitably, Wesemann became ensnared in his own treachery and suffered the consequences.

During the volatile and...

The so-called Phony War from September 1939 to May 1940 occupies a peculiar yet distinct place in popular memory. All the sensations of war, except the fighting, were present; yet, instead of massed air attacks and great land battles, very little happened. The British government was said to be complacent, and the people downright bored. Then, France fell to German attack, and the small British army was evacuated (minus its equipment) from Dunkirk. Reaction to this major strategic catastrophe was naturally to blame the men deemed guilty for bringing the nation to the verge of humiliating...

A year before the much-heralded second front was opened at Normandy in 1944, the Allies waged a campaign in Sicily and Italy--an assault that was marked by argument and dissent from beginning to end, highlighting the fundamental differences in strategic thinking between the Americans and the British. Winston Churchill favored scrapping what would become the Normandy invasion entirely, focusing instead on the soft underbelly of Nazi Europe, but American planners summarily rejected any plan that relied solely on a southern option. This is the story of this backwater campaign, a series of...

Promoted as a means for rectifying the problems of a region in extreme need, the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission (AACC) only exposed and exacerbated the underlying antagonisms between Britain and the United States over the economic and political structure of the post-war world. This study places the AACC, formed in 1942, within the context of the Anglo-American wartime special relationship, and examines the political, economic, and security motives at the heart of this unique and little-known collaboration. It exposes the determination of the United States to use exigencies of war to...

Connell uncovers a little known World War II top secret program. The United States demanded that Latin American governments deport--or allow the United States to take--anyone of Japanese ancestry and place them in camps in Texas and New Mexico. The plan was to trade them for American civilians held by the Japanese.

Although Peru was the most enthusiastic participant in this program, expelling nearly 5,000 Peruvian citizens of Japanese ancestry, other Latin American countries participated as well. Connell traces the reasons for prejudice and discrimination, the specific programs, and the...

Relying on extensive oral interviews with WWII veterans in Botswana, Schmitt argues that British military policy during the Second World War directly impacted Bechuanaland's entry into the war, the nature of the soldier's service, and the lives of the individual soldiers. Because Bechuanaland was considered a small, rather unimportant backwater of colonial possessions, policy decisions were often influenced by the political situation in South Africa and by its attitudes towards arming Africans. Unwilling to cause friction with South Africa, Great Britain mirrored that policy with the...

By the 1930s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini reached the conclusion that Italy faced a clear choice: expand its power at the expense of the British and French Empires or face stagnation and decline. He believed that the regimes in the democratic West would not be able to contain their inherent hostility toward fascist dynamism, while their demographic and political weaknesses provided the opportunity for the younger, demographically virile fascist Italy to carve a new empire in the Mediterranean status quo.

Through his intervention in the Spanish Civil War and his attempts to...

In October 1946, Colonel Presley Rixey arrived by destroyer at Chichi Jima to repatriate 22,000 Japanese who had been bypassed during the war in the Pacific. While waiting for a Marine battalion to arrive, the colonel met daily with a Japanese commission assigned to assist him. When asked what had happened to American prisoners on the island, the Japanese hatched a story to hide the atrocities that they had committed. In truth, the downed flyers had been captured, executed, and eaten by certain senior Japanese officers. This is the story of the investigation, the cover-up, and the last...

The French naval bases at St. Nazaire and Lorient, occupied by the Germans in June 1940, quickly became the homes of massive U-boat fortresses--nearly indestructible submarine pens, built by mostly slave labor. The Royal Air Force began an all-out bombardment of the two ports. Despite their extensive efforts--and those of the Americans who joined them in 1942--the fortresses would survive, surrounded by the decimated French towns and countryside. This is the story of what was, perhaps, the longest ongoing battle in Europe during the Second World War, seen through the eyes of someone who...

The Maginot Line was the last great gun-bearing line of subterranean forts built before World War II. Although it acquired an unjustified reputation as a white elephant, the Maginot Line fulfilled the role for which it was built, allowing the French High Command the opportunity to mass its forces and counter the German invasion. Unfortunately, the French leadership failed to make the most of its assets, with the resulting disastrous outcome.

During the 1920s, the French High Command formulated a number of offensive plans to strike at Germany, but by the end of the decade, it...

Often overshadowed by other Pacific War engagements such as Midway or Guadalcanal, the Battle of Leyte Gulf was characterized by some of the most gallant hours in seagoing history: the U.S. Navy's defeat of the combined Japanese fleet during the invasion of the Philippines in October 1944. Involving more ships than even the gargantuan First World War Battle of Jutland and two hundred thousand men, it was the biggest naval battle in world history. It marked the last time that huge capital ships fought within sight and sound of each other. Using the personal accounts of the men who were...

World War II saw the first generation of young men that had grown up comfortable with modern industrial technology go into combat. As kids, the GIs had built jalopies in their garage and poured over glossy, full-color issues of Popular Mechanics; they had read Buck Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century comic books, listened to his adventures on the radio, and watched him pilot rocket ships in the Saturday morning serials at the Bijou. Tinkerers, problem-solvers, risk-takers, and day-dreamers, they were curious and outspoken--a generation well prepared to improvise, innovate, and...

In November of 1940, the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer attacked British Convoy HX-84. The merchant cruiser HMS Jervis Bay, a converted passenger liner that was the convoy's only escort--armed only with antique 6-inch guns--charged the Nazi raider. While the Jervis Bay did not stand a chance of surviving the battle, her crew's fatalistic bravery inspired awe in all who witnessed the fight. Watson recounts how the Scheer's 11-inch guns turned the ship into a burning hulk in twenty-two minutes, but most of the convoy escaped.

In November of 1940, the German pocket battleship...

"Thanks for the Memories" destroys the historical myth that young men and women went about the business of war and stayed on the straight and narrow path. Rather, World War II provided new opportunities for sexual experimentation, for hasty marriages, for flourishing prostitution--and for love connections that have stood the test of time. Young men in the military, far away from family and home, did things they might never have done. Young women, many of whom went to work for the first time, experienced a freedom and independence most women had never known. Because of the war, courtships...

From the American entry into World War II until September 1943, U.S. submarines experienced an abnormally high number of torpedo failures. These failures resulted from three defects present in the primary torpedo of the day, the Mark XIV. These defects were a tendency to run deeper than the set depth, the frequent premature detonation of the Mark 6 magnetic influence exploder, and the failure of the contact exploder when hitting a target at the textbook ninety-degree angle. Ironically, despite using a completely independent design, the Germans experienced the same three defects. The...

Most military historians have difficulty comprehending the miracle that took place in late 1941 and early 1942 in the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1941, the German Army routed the Red Army as it had routed the Polish, British, French and other armies in 1939, 1940, and early 1941. None had been able to withstand German might more than a few weeks. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, his legions quickly overcame the Soviet divisions they met, and it appeared to most that Hitler would succeed as he had before. A major portion of the prewar Red Army had been completely...