Best of
World-War-Ii

1983

Piece of Cake


Derek Robinson - 1983
    By the author of "Goshawk Squadron" and "War Story".

Until We Meet Again: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Holocaust


Michael Korenblit - 1983
    A small town in Poland. Two Jewish families flee to hiding places, hoping to evade deportation by the Nazis. At the last moment, 17-year old Manya makes the heart wrenching decision to leave her family and join her sweetheart, Meyer, also 17, with his family. For three long years, Manya and Meyer endure the loss of their parents and siblings, separation from each other, and the horror of concentration camps, including Aushwitz-but are helped at key points by courageous Polish Catholics and are constantly sustained by their faith and their love for each other. Co-authored by the couple's son Michael, this absorbing and suspenseful narrative reads like a novel, yet tells a true story of love and horror, sacrifice and courage, with a conclusion that is truly miraculous.

Tumult in the Clouds


James Goodson - 1983
    This is his story, from the first day of the war to the last, of how he became one of history’s leading fighter aces. Starting out flying Spitfires for 416 (Canadian) Squadron and then for an RAF Eagle Squadron, Goodson transferred over to the Thunderbolts and Mustangs of the Fourth Fighter Group when the U.S. joined the war. Mixing it up with the Luftwaffe’s very best pilots accompanying bombing runs into the heart of Germany, Goodson scored thirty kills. But the “King of the Strafers” finally got shot down trying to attack a Me 163 rocket plane. Captured by the Gestapo and only hours away from execution, he managed to buy himself more time by showing the commandant how to blow smoke rings!—and was moved to Berlin, just as Allied bombers besieged the city… With breathtaking descriptions of aerial dogfights and vivid portraits of the men who fought, Tumult in the Clouds is a dramatic, gripping story of courage and sacrifice—and a stunningly personal account of war.

Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America


Ruth Gruber - 1983
    'I have decided,' President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced, 'that approximately 1,000 refugees should be immediately brought from Italy to this country.' One thousand refugees....For years, refugees knocking on the doors of American consulates abroad had been told, 'You cannot enter America. The quotas are filled.' And, while the quotas remained untouchable ... millions died."With this mixture of desperation and hope, Ruth Gruber begins Haven, the inspiring story of one thousand Jewish and Christian refugees brought to sanctuary in America in 1944. As special assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, Gruber was selected to carry out this top-secret mission despite the objections of military brass who doubted the thirty-three-year-old woman's qualifications. When Gruber met the gaunt survivors, they told her about hiding in sewers and forests, of risking their lives to save others. As she wrote down their stories, tears often wiped out the words in her notebook. Gruber became the refugees' guardian angel during the dangerous crossing of the U-boat-haunted Atlantic, and during their eighteen-month internment at a former army camp in Oswego, New York. Lobbying Congress at the end of the war, she also helped the refugees become American citizens. This edition concludes with a new chapter featuring Gruber's look back on her many decades as a crusading journalist, and a special Appendix from the 1946 Congressional Record listing the names of all the camp's residents.Basis for the CBS Mini-series Starring Natasha Richardson.

Moonless Night: The Second World War Escape Epic


B.A. 'Jimmy' James - 1983
    The author made more than 12 escape attempts including his participation in The Great Escape, where 50 of the 76 escapees were executed in cold blood on Hitler's orders.On re-capture, James was sent to the infamous Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp where, undeterred, he tunneled out. That was not the end of his remarkable story.Moonless Night has strong claim to be the finest escape story of the Second World War.

The Barrier and the Javelin


H.P. Willmott - 1983
    P. Willmott's three-volume history of the war in the Pacific, this work tells how Japan arrived at a situation in which war with the United States was the only means of ensuring long-term security and resolving her immediate problems of access to raw materials and of an unwinnable war in China.

Justice at Nuremberg


Robert E. Conot - 1983
    Conot reconstructs in a single absorbing narrative not only the events at Nuremburg but the offenses with which the accused were charged. He brilliantly characterizes each of the twenty-one defendants, vividly presenting each case and inspecting carefully the process of indictment, prosecution, defense and sentencing.

Spitfire - A Test Pilot's Story


Jeffrey Quill - 1983
    He used his first-hand experience of combat conditions fighting with 65 Squadron at the height of the Battle of Britain to help turn this elegant flying machine into a deadly fighter airplane.

Night Sky


Clare Francis - 1983
    They are a young Englishwoman, a vicious Paris pimp turned Nazi collaborator and a German scientist.

Trading with the Enemy: An Exposé of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949


Charles Higham - 1983
    Now at last Charles Higham, drawing his account from thousands of documents just released under the Freedom of Information Act, has given us a full-scale picture of the American businessmen who dealt with the Nazis right through World War II. Among those who traded on both sides of the war were certain executives of Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Chase Bank, the Texas Company, ITT, Ford, and Sterling Products. And helping them with their dealings were such government officials as a secretary of commerce, an assistant secretary of state, and ambassadors to France and Great Britain...."

Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II (Labor in Crisis)


Nelson Lichtenstein - 1983
    Focusing on the internal dynamics of the labor movement (especially the C.I.O.) and its relationship to the Roosevelt administration, this book gives the history of labor and business politics from 1939 to 1946.

The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945: 'August Storm'


David M. Glantz - 1983
    Volume 2 covers the detailed course of operational and tactical fighting in virtually every combat sector.

Wildcat: The F4F in WWII


Barrett Tillman - 1983
    Navy, Marine Corps and in the British Fleet Air Arm.

A General's Life: An Autobiography


Omar N. Bradley - 1983
    Draws on Bradley's diaries and papers to recount his experiences as American commander at Normandy, as ground-war strategist in Europe, and as first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Epic : The Story of the Waffen-SS


Leon Degrelle - 1983
    Why? The celebrated Belgian SS General, Leon Degrelle, answers these, and other questions about the Waffen SS, in this remarkable book.

Caviar and Commissars: The Experiences of A U.S. Naval Officer in Stalin's Russia


Kemp Tolley - 1983
    His absorbing tale describes the adventures of a thirty-day journey on a trans-Siberian train, the success of a long-sought-after inspection of a Soviet warship viewed through the haze of innumerable Vodka toasts, and the unease of state banquets with Stalin and Churchill. It also provides dramatic evidence of the contrasts of Soviet life with descriptions of elegant nights at the ballet accompanied by a beautiful agente provocatrice and memories of starving stevedores wolfing down scraps of raw meat thrown out by American ships. Filled with clever one-liners and complemented by numerous period photographs culled from the author's own collection, this reminiscence has enjoyed great appeal, since first published on 1983, with readers who like adventure and have an interest in the behind-the-scenes activities of the U.S. Navy and Soviet Union in the early 1940s.

Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1933-1945


Williamson Murray - 1983
    "Authoritative and thorough . . . an interesting and thought provoking book of real value to historians and military thinkers."--RUSI Journal.

A Special Valor: The U.S. Marines and the Pacific War


Richard Wheeler - 1983
    Marines gave birth to a legend in the halls of Montezuma in the nineteenth century, they added glorious luster to it with their heroism and victories against the Japanese in World War II. For this vivid, foxhole view of the Marines' war, Richard Wheeler draws extensively on frontline eyewitness accounts of Marines and combat journalists and backs up their stories with official U.S. action reports and captured Japanese materials. First published in 1983, the book has earned praise as a popular, one-volume history of all the battles fought by the Marine Corps in the Pacific campaign. The book describes in fascinating and exciting detail the heroic defense of Wake Island against an overwhelming enemy assault force. It traces the long bloody battle for Guadalcanal that brought the Marines their first victory and gave America and its allies control of the strategically important Soloman Islands. It follows the painful, island-by-island counterattack toward the Japanese homeland when the Marines created new legends at such places as Bougainville, Saipan, Tarawa, Guam, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Here are the remarkable exploits of the Marines holding off Japanese assault waves at Heartbreak Ridge, storming across coral reefs, and struggling up the slopes of Mount Suribachi to raise the Stars and Stripes. Some sixty-five photographs enhance the book, which is now available in paperback for the first time.

Air Battle for Dunkirk: 26 May - 3 June 1940


Norman L.R. Franks - 1983
    The air forces were there, as Norman Franks proves, detailing the outstanding achievements of the Allied pilots who had earlier had easy victories over the Polish, Dutch and Belgian air forces. The RAF’s achievement reminds us just how close Britain came to disaster in June 1940.

The Secret Camera: A Marine's Story: Four Years as a POW


Terence S. Kirk - 1983
    And they sat unpublished for more than fifty years, apparently ignored by a U.S. government that seemed indifferent to the atrocities the images documented."--Fort Worth WeeklyOn the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the twenty-three marines stationed in North China were at the peak of physical condition. They were young, brave men who were willing to die to defend their country. But on that day, they were forced to surrender to the Japanese and spent the rest of the war-all 1,355 days-as POWs. They didn't know the statistic that stated a marine was 17.5 times more likely to die in a Japanese prison camp than in battle-or that 38 percent of all Americans captured by the Japanese died in labor camps. But they were soon to find out on their own. The Secret Camera is the true story of how one North China marine struggled for survival. From his capture on Pearl Harbor Day, through the bombing of Nagasaki, Corporal Terence S. Kirk spent years as slave labor for the Japanese war machine. Watching himself and his fellow marines wither from strapping young men to mere skeletons, ravaged by starvation, abuse, and disease, he decided to make a difference-by recording the atrocities they all endured. With the help of a Japanese interpreter and a handful of other brave marines, Kirk managed to build a pinhole camera from scraps of cardboard, take a handful of photos, and then hide them away until the end of the war. These are the only photos ever taken inside a Japanese POW camp. A record of courage, faith, and ingenuity, his is a story of heroism, unimaginable adversity, and the will to survive.His photos sat unpublished for more than fifty years, ignored by a U.S. government that seemed indifferent to the atrocities the images documented. But Kirk would not let them languish, and this book is his legacy.