Best of
World-War-Ii

1996

The Fragile Hour


Rosalind Laker - 1996
    Assuming a new identity, she lived among the Nazis whilst carrying out highly dangerous acts of sabotage, risking her life and the lives of her loved ones.Despite the constant danger she faced, Anna found love – or love found Anna.But as the war drags her away from those she loves, can this passion outlast Germany’s occupation of Norway?Or will it be just one more casualty of the conflict?

The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism


Stanley Cloud - 1996
    Murrow and his legendary band of CBS radio journalists - Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, William Shirer, Eric Sevareid, and others - as they "paint pictures in the air" from the World War II front. Brimming with personalities and anecdotal detail, it also serves up a sharp-eyed account of where the craft went wrong after the war, when vanity and commercialism increasingly intruded."This is history at its best," said Ted Anthony of AP News.

The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West


Karl-Heinz Frieser - 1996
    The account, written by the German historian Karl-Heinz Frieser and edited by American historian John T. Greenwood, provides the definitive explanation for Germany's startling success and the equally surprising military collapse of France and Britain on the European continent in 1940. In a little over a month, Germany defeated the Allies in battle, a task that had not been achieved in four years of brutal fighting during World War I.First published in 1995 as the official German history of the 1940 campaign, this book goes beyond standard explanations to show that the German victory was not inevitable and that French defeat was not preordained. Contrary to most accounts of the campaign, Frieser's illustrates that the military systems of both Germany and France were solid and that their campaign plans were sound. The key to victory or defeat, Frieser argues, was the execution of operational plans--both preplanned and ad hoc--amid the eternal Clausewitzian combat factors of friction and the fog of war. He shows why, on the eve of the campaign, the British and French leaders had good cause to be confident and why many German generals were understandably concerned that disaster was looming for them.This study explodes many of the myths concerning German blitzkrieg warfare and the planning for the 1940 campaign. Frieser's groundbreaking interpretation of the topic has been the subject of discussion since the German edition first appeared. This English translation is published in cooperation with the Association of the United States Army.

The Rape of Nanking


James Yin - 1996
    The Rape of Nanking, or Nanking Massacre, in which at least 369,366 people were slaughtered and 80,000 women were raped by Japanese invasion troops, has become little more than a historical footnote in the West. The horror began on the morning of December 13, 1937, when the Japanese Imperial Army captured Nanking (Nanjing), which was then China's capital. Soldiers went through the streets indiscriminately killing Chinese men, women, and children without apparent provocation or excuse until in places the streets and alleys were littered with the bodies of their victims. Thousands of women were raped by Japanese soldiers; death was frequently the penalty for the slightest resistance by a victim or members of her family. Even large numbers of young girls and old women were raped throughout the city, and many cases of abnormal and sadistic behavior in connection with these rapes were reported. Many women were killed after the act and their bodies mutilated. For the next six weeks, while horrific rape continued, wholesale murder of male civilians was conducted with the apparent sanction of the Japanese high command. Hundreds of thousands of civilians and disarmed ex-soldiers were arrayed in formation, their hands bound behind their backs, and marched outside the city wall where, in groups, they were beheaded, or buried alive, or bayoneted, or raked with machine-gun fire, or doused with gasoline and burned. This book, using more than 400 historical photographs, many of which were taken by Japanese soldiers themselves, is published to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Rape of Nanking, to remind the world of the forgotten holocaust of WWII, and to honor history and answer any attempt to deny or change it.

Still Waters


Judith Saxton - 1996
     As she grows up, Tess slowly starts to put together the pieces herself. But the outbreak of war brings tragedy and upheaval, changing Tess's priorities. Mal Chandler has travelled the length and breadth of Australia with his feckless father and weary mother. Now, the war brings Mal to England as a pilot for the RAF - and into Tess's world.

The Guns of Victory: A Soldier's Eye View, Belgium, Holland, and Germany, 1944-45


George Blackburn - 1996
    The war was won, they thought, and to win it they had been pushed to what seemed like the limits of endurance. But ahead lay not only an enemy with no thoughts of surrender, but also appalling battle conditions reminiscent of the legendary miseries of Passchendaele. This much-anticipated sequel to The Guns of Normany picks up where its critically acclaimed predecessor leaves off, and it continues in the same absorbing, startlingly vivid style. After the battle for Normandy, Blackburn’s 4th Field Regiment, with the rest of 1st Canadian Army, is called upon to pursue the enemy through the flooded Low Country, clearing the Scheldt estuary – a task equal to that of D-Day – and opening the port of Antwerp to allow for the huge influx of supplies necessary to press on against the German forces, now fighting with mounting desperation and ferocity. After enduring the worst winter in local memory, and spending yet another Christmas far from home, in the spring of 1945 the Canadians are thrust into the crucial Battle of the Rhineland, which will eventually allow Allied forces to plunge into the heart of the Reich.When victory comes, it is with no sense of triumph over a vanquished foe, but with the profoundest relief that this most terrible conflict in history is finally over.Told with Blackburn’s now trademark sense of drama and eye for detail, this story of the desperate struggle for Europe becomes as large as life. It should fully establish Blackburn as the author of an acknowledged classic on the Second World War.From the Hardcover edition.

Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific


Eric M. Bergerud - 1996
    In this revelatory portrayal of the lives of the regular infantrymen who struggled to contain the Japanese advance, Eric Bergerud has given us a compelling and chilling record of the incredible hardships endured by these soldiers, and the heroic efforts that resulted in the reversal of the course of the war. Bergerud spent hundreds of hours interviewing the last surviving veterans of this remarkable campaign, and he has placed their personal experiences at the center of his analysis of military strategy."Aspires to do for the ground war in the South Pacific what Keegan achieved in Six Armies in Normandy."--Los Angeles Times

Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939-1942


Clay Blair Jr. - 1996
    For a period of nearly six years, the German U-boat force attempted to blockade and isolate the British Isles in hopes of forcing the British out of the war, thereby thwarting both the Allied strategic air assault on German cities and Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Occupied France. Fortunately for the Allies, the U-boat force failed to achieve either of these objectives, but in the attempt they sank 2,800 Allied merchant ships, while the Allies sank nearly 800 U-boats. On both sides, tens of thousands of sailors perished.     For decades, an authoritative and definitive history of the Battle of the Atlantic could not be attempted, since London and Washington agreed to withhold all official code-breaking and U-boat records in order to safeguard the secrets of code breaking in the postwar years. The accounts that did appear were incomplete and full of false conclusions and errors of fact, often leaving the entirely wrong impression that the German U-boats came within a whisker of defeating the Allies, a myth that is finally laid to rest in this account.     Clay Blair, acclaimed author of the bestselling naval classic Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan, has drawn from the official records as well as the work of German, British, American, and Canadian naval scholars. Never before has Hitler's U-boat war been chronicled with such authority, fidelity, objectivity, and detail. The result is this magnificent and monumental work, crammed with vivid and dramatic scenes of naval actions and dispassionate but startling new revelations, interpretations, and conclusions about all aspects of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Mrs. Ike: Memories and Reflections on the Life of Mamie Eisenhower


Susan Eisenhower - 1996
    Written by her granddaughter, a portrait of a beloved First Lady and an incisive account of a complex marriage examines the life of Mamie Eisenhower, a saucy young lady who found her match in handsome Ike Eisenhower, and their adventures, misunderstandings, and glowing triumphs.

PT 105


Dick Keresey - 1996
    As captain of PT 105, the author was in the same battle as John F. Kennedy when Kennedy's PT 109 was rammed and sunk. The famous incident, Keresey says, has often been described inaccurately and the PT boat depicted as unreliable and ineffective. This book helps set the record straight by presenting an authentic picture of PT boats that draws on the author's experience at Guadalcanal, New Georgia, Bougainville, and Choiseul Island. Action-filled, his account describes evading night bombers, rescuing coast watchers and downed airmen, setting down Marine scouts behind Japanese lines, engaging in vicious gun battles with Japanese barges and small freighters, and contending with heat, disease, and loneliness. First published in 1996, the book has been hailed for telling an exciting yet fully accurate story.

Mark It with a Stone


Joseph Horn - 1996
    Twelve-year-old Joseph Horn was set to start school--but he never made it. Instead, he began an odyssey through one of the most barbarous atrocities in the history of mankind: the Holocaust. Horn survived Auschwitz. He survived Bergen-Belsen. Now, he says, "it is time for me to leave a record of the crimes I have seen".

Before Night Falls


MaryAnn Minatra - 1996
    

Killing Ground on Okinawa: The Battle for Sugar Loaf Hill


James H. Hallas - 1996
    Marines attacking the hill. In this emotionally compelling account of the fierce fight, James H. Hallas chronicles the extraordinary courage and tactical skills of the 6th Marine Division's junior officers and enlisted men as they captured a network of sophisticated Japanese defenses on Sugar Loaf while under heavy artillery fire from surrounding hills. To give human dimensions to the story, the author draws on his many interviews with participants and skillfully weaves together their individual stories of the sustained close-quarter fighting that claimed more than 2,000 Marine casualties. Pushed to their physical and moral limits during eleven attempts to capture the fifty-foot-high 300-yard-long hill, the Marines' proved their uncommon valor to be a common virtue, and this detailed record of their courage and commitment assures them a permanent place in history.

Where Ghosts Walked: Munich's Road to the Third Reich


David Clay Large - 1996
    In exploring the question of why Nazism flourished in the 'Athens of the Isar', David Clay Large has written a compelling account of the cultural roots of the Nazi movement, allowing us to see that the conventional explanations for the movement's rise are not enough. Large's account begins in Munich's 'golden age', four decades before World War I, when the city's artists and writers produced some of the outstanding work of the modernist spirit. He sees a dark side to the city, a protofascist cultural heritage that would tie Adolf Hitler's movement to its soul. Large prowls his volatile world of seamy basement meeting places, finding that attacks on modernity and liberalism flourished, along with virulent anti-Semitism and German nationalism. From the violent experience of the Munich Soviet, through Hitler's failed Beer-Hall Putsch of 1923 and on to his appointment as German chancellor in 1933, Large unfurls a narrative full of insight and implication.

Hirschfeld: The Secret Diary Of A U Boat


Wolfgang Hirschfeld - 1996
    Wolfgang Hirschfeld, whose diaries Geoffrey Brooks has translated is a born story teller. The principal chapters describe his experiences during six war patrols in U-109, in which he served as the senior telegraphist. His is a tale which covers the whole kaleidescope of emotions shared by men at war - a story of immense courage and fortitude, of remarkable comradeship born of the dangers, frustrations and privations shared and of transitory moments of triumph. Throughout runs a vein of humour, without which resistance to stress would have been virtually impossible. We get to know one of Germany's great U-boat aces, 'Ajax' Bleichrodt, holder of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and, in a special biographical appendix, learn how he finally cracked under the strain. The role of Admiral Karl Donitz, the dynamic commander of the U-boat service, so fascinatingly described by Hirschfeld, is of special interest - not least because even this dedicated Nazi had clearly realized by September, 1942, that the war was fast being lost. In 1944 Hirschfeld was promoted Warrant Officer and found himself on a large, schnorkel-equipped boat (U-234) heading for Japan with a load of high technology equipment and, in addition, a quantity of uranium ore. The possible significance of that uranium has been deeply researched by Geoffrey Brooks and is discussed in a second appendix.

U.S. Infantry Weapons of World War II


Bruce N. Canfield - 1996
    INFANTRY WEAPONS OF WORLD WAR II is the definitive guide detailing the weapons used by U.S. soldiers during World War II. This comprehensive book includes information about design, purchase, distribution and combatperformance as it describes the hardware that won the famous battles. It is heavily illustrated and includes many combat photos.

The Wrong Stuff: The Adventures and Misadventures of an 8th Air Force Aviator


Truman Smith - 1996
    He was only twenty years old. Although barely adults, Smith and his peers worried about cramming a lifetime’s worth of experience into every free night, each knowing he probably would not survive the next bombing mission. Written with blunt honesty, wry humor, and insight, The Wrong Stuff is Smith’s gripping memoir of that time. In a new preface, the author comments with equal honesty and humor on the impact this book has had on his life.

No Time for Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II


Diane Burke Fessler - 1996
    Fessler has meticulously compiled and transcribed more than 200 interviews with American military nurses of the Army, Army Air Force, and Navy who were present in all theaters of WWII. Their stories bring to life horrific tales of illness and hardship, blinding blizzards, and near starvation—all faced with courage, tenacity, and even good humor. This unique oral-history collection makes available to readers an important counterpoint to the seemingly endless discussions of strategy, planning, and troop movement that often characterize discussions of the Second World War.

The War Never Ended: Memories of Holocaust Survivors


Simon Hammelburg - 1996
    When living in Los Angeles, the author received phone calls from 1200 people in reaction to a campaign raised to help American Jews and other individuals file claims for property they had lost during the Nazi regime in what would later be Eastern Germany. Many of these phone calls were unrelated to the issue of filing the claims. On many occasions someone simply needed to talk to a complete stranger who lent a listening ear and understood. The conversations were usually long monologues about experiences in concentration camps like Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, even Sobibor. The victims talked about their escapes from the hands of the Nazi's, and about their harsh return after the liberation.When the process of filing claims was finished, the author found himself in the possession of a wealth of information, not only about the experiences of Holocaust survivors but also about the post-war generation. The personal, moving and candid witness statements and memories were all transcribed and verified, and provided shocking insights into the psychological aftermath of the first and second generation Holocaust victims.It was felt important to make these stories and memories accessible to a larger audience, especially to young people. The author Simon Hammelburg is a holocaust educator, lecturing in Europe, the United States and Israel. We should never forget what happened during World War II, and how this impacted generations to come. For countless people the war never ended.In this book, the memories of Holocaust survivors and their children have been intelligently woven into characters that play a role in the main storyline; the main character, himself a child from Jewish parents who both survived the Second World War, is trying to come to terms with the loss of a beloved one, Daisy, by traveling back to the place where they first met and were happy together. The book ends with the Kaddish for Daisy, attended by a circle of dear childhood friends, all of them from emotionally damaged and traumatized families. In their youth, they used to escape their homes on Sundays to meet at their Clubhouse from Ichud Habonim, a worldwide Zionist organization. The clubhouse served as a safehaven where they could be children and have fun.Although the tone of the book is generally serious, the author managed to give the book a gentle touch with his dry humor. In The War never Ended - Memories of Holocaust Survivors, Simon Hammelburg shows the trauma’s of his parents’ and of his own generation without ever becoming sentimental. They have been given a voice in an intelligent and natural way. The book is of rare literary quality with some great dialogues; once you start reading, you cannot put it down until you have read the very last page.The War Never Ended – Memories of Holocaust Survivors has been dedicated to Dr Flo Kinsler (1929-2013), a Los Angeles social worker and psychologist specialized in Holocaust trauma’s.

Volcano and Miracle: A Selection of Fiction and Nonfiction from The Journal Written at Night


Gustaw Herling-Grudziński - 1996
    The Journal is an account of events and reflections that offer the occasion for this great writer to continue rethinking and reimagining the human condition. These remarkable selections from Gustaw Herling's Journal, written from 1970 to the present, include such astonishing fictional tales, based on historical sources, as "Rubble," "The Duke of Milan," "The Miracle," and "A Venetian Portrait," a love story that takes place at the end of World War II. But the heart of the Journal is brilliant critical pieces on Soviet Communism and literary gems on such writers as Ignazio Silone, Stendhal, Melville, Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Camus.

He Rode Up Front For Patton


Albin F. Irzyk - 1996
    The author's vivid descriptions and somber insights paint a striking portrait of life on the European front.

Op. JB


Christopher Creighton - 1996
    The key to getting it back lay with Nazi treasurer, Martin Bormann. This book tells the story of Ian Fleming's raid to snatch Bormann out of Berlin. Creighton led a commando raid into the city.

The Last Great Frenchman: A Life Of General De Gaulle


Charles Williams - 1996
    A product of Northern French provincial society of the 19th century - austere, catholic and nationalist - de Gaulle was, according to Williams, the last great Frenchman. Whatever the arguments concerning de Gaulle's legacy, in his single-minded devotion to his country, and in his skill and strength in pushing it, there would have been no France if there had been no de Gaulle.

Who Shall Live: The Wilhelm Bachner Story


Samuel P. Oliner - 1996
    The authors interviewed Bachner in 1983, and did extensive historical research.

See Naples and Die: A World War II Memoir of a United States Army Ski Trooper in the Mountains of Italy


Robert B. Ellis - 1996
    Army Ski Troops of the 10th Mountain Division. This division has been called the most elite and publicized American military unit in World War II. While a member of the unit Ellis maintained a detailed battle diary and conducted extensive wartime correspondence. Upon their arrival in Italy, the U.S. Army Ski Troops played a major role in the defeat of the Germans in Italy. They also faced some of the bloodiest combat of the war; the 10th Mountain Division suffered the heaviest casualties relative to time-in-combat of any U.S. division in the Italian campaign. While the author details the exceptional service of the unit, he also explores the brutal reality of infantry service and reveals how the battles were falsely represented by the media.

Fields of Bright Clover


Elizabeth Jeffrey - 1996
    Her father, Stanhope, is cold and remote, and her mother Nellie seems to care for nothing but housework. Then, one day, Stanhope collapses in the street and dies—and the façade he had built up carefully for so many years is revealed as a sham. Sad and confused, Rachel leaves home and flees to the one place she has known parental kindness: the home of the rector's daughter Angela, her school friend. As her feelings for Angela's elder brother David deepen into romance, Rachel believes she has everything she ever desired. But after the outbreak of World War II, David joins the RAF and returns horribly injured, refusing to see her. Fate, however, gives Rachel another chance at love. And just as the pieces of her once-shattered life are falling into place, a new disaster threatens everything she holds dear.

Spitfire: Flying Legend - 60th Anniversary 1936-96


John M. Dibbs - 1996
    From the throaty growl of its Rolls-Royce Merlin or Griffon, to its beautifully tapered elliptical wings, the Spitfire is a true aeronautical thoroughbred. Regarded by many as the saviour of the Sceptred Isle 'in its darkest hour', the Spitfire is without a doubt the most famous combat aircraft the world has ever seen. The year 2000 celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire’s ‘finest hour’. This lavishly illustrated volume makes a stunning pictorial tribute to the airworthy survivors of today.

Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps


Hermann Langbein - 1996
    - Kirkus Reviews Finally in paperback, in this major and comprehensive work, hailed by Le Monde as a monumental study, Hermann Langbein shatters the myth that all prisoners of concentration camps, during World War II, passively let themselves be slaughtered. A prisoner himself and one of the leaders of resistance at Auschwitz, Langbein painstakingly documents the detailed account of the history of the camps and the story of the resistance. Spanning the initial years to the chaotic weeks before liberation, Against All Hope is the first systematic presentation of organized resistance. Deeply moving, it is an unforgettable testament to the resilience and determination of the human spirit.

The Book and the Sword: A Life of Learning in the Throes of the Holocaust


David Weiss Halivni - 1996
    Before he was five he began his studies; by the time he was ten he had outgrown the town's teachers and started to learn at home with his scholarly, impoverished grandfather. Even before his ordination at the age of fifteen, in 1943, he was famous for his erudition. But when the Nazis crushed the Jewish community of the Carpathians in 1944, he closed his Talmud. Halivni taught in the concentration camps and risked his life to save a scrap of paper from a sacred book. But adherence to the fundamentalist worldview that insists on reconciling every apparent contradiction in the text -- troubling to him even as a child -- had become impossible for him now. When he arrived in New York after the war, he began struggling toward the window of secular learning. From that synthesis emerged his original approach to critical study of the Talmudic text not only in its modern printed form but as it was in its original form, the Oral Torah from the mouths of countless sages.

A Hundred Miles As The Crow Flies: A Great Escape of WWII


Ralph Churches - 1996
    After planning for years and succeeding in escaping with five companions, Ralph Churches decided he had better go back and get the rest of his mates; which he did, all ninety of them, then got them airlifted from behind German lines to Italy without loss

Hitler's Enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolutio


George C. Browder - 1996
    These personnel helped to form the character and missions of their organizations, which were not simply created from above by Hitler, Himmler, or Heydrich. Hitler's Enforcers is based on research at 34 archives in Germany and the United States, including the personnel files of over 1,000 former members, and is the first such study to benefit from the German documents captured by the Soviets and Poles and kept secret until recently.

Stalin's Aviation Gulag: A Memoir of Andrei Tupolev and the Purge Era


L.L. Kerber - 1996
    Tupolev (1888-1972), one of Russia's most talented aviation designers, whose fortunes plummeted with those of his profession. In the latter half of the decade, the entire aeronautical establishment fell victim to the massive wave of arrests and killings known as the Great Purge. Arrested in 1937, Tupolev was sent not to the notorious labor camps, but to a sharaga, or special prison, established in Moscow specifically for aviation designers and engineers. Stalin's Aviation Gulag is a sympathetic memoir of Tupolev's life and work by engineer L.L. Kerber, whose collaboration with Tupolev spanned most of their careers. At the heart of Kerber's chronicle is a description of the sharaga's daily life, which verged on the surreal. Well-fed and well-clothed but supervised by Party and police functionaries with little knowledge of aviation, Tupolev and his team of 150 specialists worked under the threat of harsh reprisal for the least setback. Dependent on Stalin's whims, permitted only infrequent, heavily guarded inspections of the aircraft they created, they nevertheless managed to circumvent both political dangers and technical constraints to develop the two major Soviet aircraft of World War II: the fast, twin-engined Pe-2 and the Tu-2, a medium bomber. Kerber also documents the postprison achievements of his mentor, who, after his release in 1941, went on to design the Soviet replica of the B-29 Superfortress as well as many of the giant passenger jets of the cold war era.

Normandy to the Bulge: An American Infantry GI in Europe During World War II


Richard D. Courtney - 1996
    Richard D. Courtney tells what it was like to be a combat infantryman in the greatest and most destructive war in history. Courtney relates a true first-person account of his trave

While God Slept: A Novel of World War II


Ted Jones - 1996
    Embassy in Berlin in 1938. Wolfe's superiors in Washington have another, more sinister purpose in mind for the young soldier: determine the intent of Hitler's military leadership and to set up an espionage operation inside the Third Reich. Wolfe inadvertently obtains a mind-boggling package containing film of top-secret Nazi documents confirming a conspiracy to trade a portion of Europe - and its Jews - for "peace in our time." Intended for the Jewish resistance, the documents originated in the heart of the Reich, in the Abwehr, the German intelligence operation. Appalled by the plans for mass murder, a young Abwehr officer, Maj. August Niedenz, contacts Wolfe, and although the two have vastly different objectives, they form a strange alliance to further each other's very different goals. Wolfe befriends beautiful Maria Hylga O'Brien, one of the world's most sought-after atomic scientists, and becomes mired in a swamp of deadly intrigue and obstructionism within the Allied camp that threatens to undermine Overlord, the cross-channel invasion of Europe, as well as the race to build the atomic bomb. It is already May, only three weeks before D-Day, and secrets of all kinds are unravelling. From Berlin to Washington to London, Wolfe races to cut through the web of duplicity that stretches from Hitler and his generals to the British high command, all the way to the inner sanctums of the Vatican, ending on the sands of Utah Beach, June 6, 1944, and the shattering climax of While God Slept.

Conquerors' Road


Osmar White - 1996
    Based largely on Osmar White's own war diary and the articles he wrote as a war correspondent, this deeply personal account stands out among the vast literature on World War II. Selected among the best 100 articles in Australian journalism of the twentieth century, White's eloquent record of the climactic events in the final days of the Third Reich remains as fresh and timely as ever.