Résultats de recherche de titre
Articles 161 à 180 sur 738
The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow
Par Krystyna Chiger, Daniel Paisner. 2008
True story from the major motion picture "In Darkness," official 2012 Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.In 1943,…
with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of Polish Jews daringly sought refuge in the city's sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing and ultimately triumphant tales of survival to emerge from the Holocaust. The Girl in the Green Sweater is Chiger's harrowing first-person account of the fourteen months she spent with her family in the fetid, underground sewers of Lvov.The Girl in the Green Sweater is also the story of Leopold Socha, the group's unlikely savior. A Polish Catholic and former thief, Socha risked his life to help Chiger's underground family survive, bringing them food, medicine, and supplies. A moving memoir of a desperate escape and life under unimaginable circumstances, The Girl in the Green Sweater is ultimately a tale of intimate survival, friendship, and redemption.Renia's Diary: A Holocaust Journal
Par Renia Spiegel, Elizabeth Bellak. 2019
A New York Times bestseller A USA Today bestsellerThe long-hidden diary of a young Polish woman's life during the Holocaust,…
translated for the first time into EnglishRenia Spiegel was born in 1924 to an upper-middle class Jewish family living in southeastern Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. At the start of 1939 Renia began a diary. “I just want a friend. I want somebody to talk to about my everyday worries and joys. Somebody who would feel what I feel, who would believe me, who would never reveal my secrets. A human being can never be such a friend and that’s why I have decided to look for a confidant in the form of a diary.” And so begins an extraordinary document of an adolescent girl’s hopes and dreams. By the fall of 1939, Renia and her younger sister Elizabeth (née Ariana) were staying with their grandparents in Przemysl, a city in the south, just as the German and Soviet armies invaded Poland. Cut off from their mother, who was in Warsaw, Renia and her family were plunged into war.Like Anne Frank, Renia’s diary became a record of her daily life as the Nazis spread throughout Europe. Renia writes of her mundane school life, her daily drama with best friends, falling in love with her boyfriend Zygmund, as well as the agony of missing her mother, separated by bombs and invading armies. Renia had aspirations to be a writer, and the diary is filled with her poignant and thoughtful poetry. When she was forced into the city’s ghetto with the other Jews, Zygmund is able to smuggle her out to hide with his parents, taking Renia out of the ghetto, but not, ultimately to safety. The diary ends in July 1942, completed by Zygmund, after Renia is murdered by the Gestapo.Renia's Diary has been translated from the original Polish, and includes a preface, afterword, and notes by her surviving sister, Elizabeth Bellak. An extraordinary historical document, Renia Spiegel survives through the beauty of her words and the efforts of those who loved her and preserved her legacy.Fields of Battle: Pearl Harbor, the Rose Bowl, and the Boys Who Went to War
Par Brian Curtis. 2016
A riveting and emotional tale of the boys who played in the 1942 Rose Bowl and then served on the…
WWII battlefields—a story of football, wartime, and boys becoming men.In the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the 1942 Rose Bowl was moved from Pasadena to Durham, North Carolina, out of fear of Japanese attacks on the West Coast. It remains the only Rose Bowl game to ever be played outside of Pasadena. Duke University, led by legendary coach Wallace Wade Sr., faced off against underdog Oregon State College, with both teams preparing for a grueling fight on the football field while their thoughts wandered to the battlefields they would soon be on. As the players and coaches prepared for the game, America was preparing for war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to discuss the Allied strategy in Europe; a discussion that would change the lives of the boys and men on the field in Durham.Finally, on New Year’s Day 1942, under dark gray skies and occasional rain, the two teams clashed on the gridiron in front of a crowd of 56,000, playing one of the most unforgettable games in history. Shortly afterward, many of the players and coaches entered the military and would quickly become brothers on the battlefield. Scattered around the globe, the lives of Rose Bowl participants would intersect in surprising ways, as they served in Iwo Jima and Normandy, Guadalcanal and the Battle of the Bulge. Four players from that Rose Bowl game would lose their lives, while many more were severely wounded. In one powerful encounter on the battlefield, OSC’s Frank Parker saved the life of Duke’s Charles Haynes as he lay dying on a hill in Italy. And one OSC player, Jack Yoshihara, a Japanese-American, never had the chance to play in the game or serve his country, as he was sent to an internment camp in Idaho. In this riveting an emotional tale, Brian Curtis sheds light on a little-known slice of American history and captures in gripping detail an intimate account of the teamwork, grit, and determination that took place on both the football fields and the battlefields of World War II. It was a game created by infamy and a war fought by ordinary boys who did the extraordinary.In For Crew and Country, John Wukovits tells of the most dramatic naval battle of the Pacific War and the…
incredible sacrifice of the USS Samuel B. Roberts.On October 25, 1944, the Samuel B. Roberts, along with the other twelve vessels comprising its unit, stood between Japan's largest battleship force ever sent to sea and MacArthur's transports inside Leyte Gulf. Faced with the surprise appearance of more than twenty Japanese battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, including the Yamato, at 70,000 tons the most potent battlewagon in the world, the 1,200-ton Samuel B. Roberts turned immediately into action with six other ships. Captain Copeland marked the occasion with one of the most poignant addresses ever given to men on the edge of battle: "Men," he said over the intercom, "we are about to go into a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected."The ship churned straight at the enemy in a near-suicidal attempt to deflect the more potent foe, allow the small aircraft carriers to escape, and buy time for MacArthur's forces. Of 563 destroyers constructed during WWII, the Samuel B. Roberts was the only one sunk, going down with guns blazing in a duel reminiscent of the Spartans at Thermopylae or Davy Crockett's Alamo defenders. The men who survived faced a horrifying three-day nightmare in the sea, where they battled a lack of food and water, scorching sun and numbing nighttime cold, and nature's most feared adversary—sharks.The battle would go down as history's greatest sea clash, the Battle of Samar—the dramatic climax of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.The Tango War: The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds and Riches of Latin America During World War II
Par Mary Jo McConahay. 2018
One of WW2 Reads "Top 20 Must-Read WWII Books of 2018" • A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of September…
•One of The Progressive's "Favorite Books of 2018"The gripping and little known story of the fight for the allegiance of Latin America during World War IIThe Tango War by Mary Jo McConahay fills an important gap in WWII history. Beginning in the thirties, both sides were well aware of the need to control not just the hearts and minds but also the resources of Latin America. The fight was often dirty: residents were captured to exchange for U.S. prisoners of war and rival spy networks shadowed each other across the continent. At all times it was a Tango War, in which each side closely shadowed the other’s steps. Though the Allies triumphed, at the war’s inception it looked like the Axis would win. A flow of raw materials in the Southern Hemisphere, at a high cost in lives, was key to ensuring Allied victory, as were military bases supporting the North African campaign, the Battle of the Atlantic and the invasion of Sicily, and fending off attacks on the Panama Canal. Allies secured loyalty through espionage and diplomacy—including help from Hollywood and Mickey Mouse—while Jews and innocents among ethnic groups —Japanese, Germans—paid an unconscionable price. Mexican pilots flew in the Philippines and twenty-five thousand Brazilians breached the Gothic Line in Italy. The Tango War also describes the machinations behind the greatest mass flight of criminals of the century, fascists with blood on their hands who escaped to the Americas. A true, shocking account that reads like a thriller, The Tango War shows in a new way how WWII was truly a global war.The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews
Par Father Patrick Desbois. 2008
The poignant story of how a Catholic priest uncovered the truth behind the murder of one and a half million…
Ukrainian JewsFather Patrick Desbois documents the daunting task of identifying and examining all the sites where Jews were exterminated by Nazi mobile units in the Ukraine in WWII. Using innovative methodology, interviews, and ballistic evidence, he has determined the location of many mass gravesites with the goal of providing proper burials for the victims of the forgotten Ukrainian Holocaust. Compiling new archival material and many eye-witness accounts, Desbois has put together the first definitive account of one of World War II's bloodiest chapters. Published with the support of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum."[T]his modest Roman Catholic priest from Paris, without using much more than his calm voice and Roman collar, has shattered the silence surrounding a largely untold chapter of the Holocaust." --The Chicago TribuneEisenhower: A Biography (Great Generals Series)
Par John Wukovits. 2006
American general and 34th president of the United States, Eisenhower was the principal architect of the successful Allied invasion of…
Europe during World War II and of the subsequent defeat of Nazi Germany.World War II expert John Wukovits explores Dwight D. Eisenhower's contributions to American warfare. American general and 34th president of the United States, Eisenhower led the assault on the French coast at Normandy and held together the Allied units through the European campaign that followed. The book reveals Eisenhower's advocacy in the pre-war years of the tank, his friendships with George Patton and Fox Conner, his service in the Philippines with Douglas MacArthur, and his culminating role as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe. Wukovits skillfully demonstrates how Eisenhower's evolution as a commander, his military doctrine, and his diplomatic skills are of extreme importance in understanding modern warfare.The Last Secret of the Secret Annex: The Untold Story of Anne Frank, Her Silent Protector, and a Family Betrayal
Par Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl, Jeroen De Bruyn. 1982
A riveting historical investigation and family memoir that intertwines the iconic narrative of Anne Frank with the untold story of…
Bep Voskuijl, her protector and closest confidante in the Annex, bringing us closer to understanding one of the great secrets of World War II.Anne Frank&’s life has been studied by many scholars, but the story of Bep Voskuijl has remained untold, until now. As the youngest of the five Dutch people who hid the Frank family, Bep was Anne&’s closest confidante during the 761 excruciating days she spent hidden in the Secret Annex. Bep, who was just twenty-three when the Franks went into hiding, risked her life to protect them, plunging into Amsterdam&’s black market to source food and medicine for people who officially didn&’t exist under the noses of German soldiers and Dutch spies. In those cramped quarters, Bep and Anne&’s friendship bloomed through deep conversations, shared meals, and a youthful understanding. Told by her own son, The Last Secret of the Secret Annex intertwines the story of Bep and her sister Nelly with Anne&’s iconic narrative. Nelly&’s name may have been scrubbed from Anne&’s published diary, but Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl and Jeroen De Bruyn expose details about her collaboration with the Nazis, a deeply held family secret. After the war, Bep tried to bury her memories just as the Secret Annex was becoming world famous as a symbol of resistance to the Nazi horrors. She never got over losing Anne nor could Bep put to rest the horrifying suspicion that those in the Annex had been betrayed by her own flesh and blood. This is a story about those caught in between the Jewish victims and Nazi persecutors, and the moral ambiguities and hard choices faced by ordinary families like the Voskuijls, in which collaborators and resisters often lived under the same roof. Beautifully written and unsettlingly suspenseful, The Last Secret of the Secret Annex will show us the Secret Annex as we&’ve never seen it before. And it provides a powerful understanding of how historical trauma is inherited from one generation to the next and how sometimes keeping a secret hurts far more than revealing a shameful truth.Churchill's Great Escapes: Seven Incredible Escapes Made by WWII Heroes
Par Damien Lewis. 2021
From Damien Lewis, bestselling author and award-winning historian and war reporter, comes the thrillingly told stories of seven dramatic and…
epic WWII escapes executed by members of one of the world&’s legendary military fighting forces: the British Special Air Service. No food. No water. Out of ammo. Hunted and on the run. The dreaded certainty of discovery looming between recapture and safe haven. What would you do? Give up? For the seven heroes of Churchill&’s Great Escapes the answer was simple: keep moving against all odds. These are the extraordinary stories of the bravery and endurance of the men of SAS, legendary pioneers of escape and evasion who, through the darkest of days and nights of World War II, endeavored and succeeded in slipping through the clutches of the enemy. Based on in-the-moment personal diaries and notebooks, mission reports, debriefings and letters, Damien Lewis recounts the most terrifying and adrenaline-fueled days and nights in the lives of men for whom survival was the only option. We follow every desperate step, facing unknowable threats and death around every corner, and share in the breathtaking endurance that brought them freedom against the most formidable of threats: the seemingly invincible Nazi war machine.Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power
Par Timothy W. Ryback. 2024
From the internationally acclaimed author of Hitler&’s Private Library, a dramatic recounting of the six critical months before Adolf Hitler…
seized power, when the Nazi leader teetered between triumph and ruinIn the summer of 1932, the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse. One in three Germans was unemployed. Violence was rampant. Hitler&’s National Socialists surged at the polls. Paul von Hindenburg, an aging war hero and avowed monarchist, was a reluctant president bound by oath to uphold the constitution. The November elections offered Hitler the prospect of a Reichstag majority and the path to political power. But instead, the Nazis lost two million votes. As membership hemorrhaged and financial backers withdrew, the Nazi Party threatened to fracture. Hitler talked of suicide. The New York Times declared he was finished. Yet somehow, in a few brief weeks, he was chancellor of Germany. In facinating detail and with previously un-accessed archival materials, Timothy W. Ryback tells the remarkable story of Hitler&’s dismantling of democracy through democratic process. He provides fresh perspective and insights into Hitler&’s personal and professional lives in these months, in all their complexity and uncertainty—backroom deals, unlikely alliances, stunning betrayals, an ill-timed tax audit, and a fateful weekend that changed our world forever. Above all, Ryback details why a wearied Hindenburg, who disdained the &“Bohemian corporal,&” ultimately decided to appoint Hitler chancellor in January 1933. Within weeks, Germany was no longer a democracy.Command: How the Allies Learned to Win the Second World War
Par Al Murray. 2022
Al Murray's passion for military history and the Second World War in particular has always run parallel with his comedy…
and was brought to the fore with several acclaimed and award-winning television shows and the recent huge success of his podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk which he hosts with fellow bestselling military author James Holland. In his first serious narrative book, Command showcases Al Murray's passion for this pivotal period in the twentieth century, as he writes an engaging, entertaining and sharp analysis of the key allied military leaders in the conflict. Command highlights the performance and careers of some of the leading protagonists who commanded armies, as well as the lesser-known officers who led divisions, regiments and even battalions for the British, Commonwealth and United States of American armies. By showcasing each combat commander across every major theatre of operations the allies fought in, Murray tells the story of how the Western Allies rebounded from early shocking defeats (Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor) to then victories (El Alamein and D-Day) in its efforts to defeat the Axis forces of Nazi Germany and Japan, and what that tells us about the characters and the challenges that faced them. Command is the book for all fans of Second World War History who appreciate a true enthusiast of the genre with something new and compelling to say.Into the Jungle!: A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II (Cultures of Childhood)
Par Jimmy Kugler. 2023
Near the end of World War II and after, a small-town Nebraska youth, Jimmy Kugler, drew more than a hundred…
double-sided sheets of comic strip stories. Over half of these six-panel tales retold the Pacific War as fought by “Frogs” and “Toads,” humanoid creatures brutally committed to a kill-or-be-killed struggle. The history of American youth depends primarily on adult reminiscences of their own childhoods, adult testimony to the lives of youth around them, or surmises based on at best a few creative artifacts. The survival then of such a large collection of adolescent comic strips from America’s small-town Midwest is remarkable. Michael Kugler reproduces the never-before-published comics of his father’s adolescent imagination as a microhistory of American youth in that formative era. Also included in Into the Jungle! A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II are the likely comic book models for these stories and inspiration from news coverage in newspapers, radio, movies, and newsreels. Kugler emphasizes how US propaganda intended to inspire patriotic support for the war gave this young artist a license for his imagined violence. In a context of progressive American educational reform, these violent comic stories, often in settings modeled on the artist’s small Nebraska town, suggests a form of adolescent rebellion against moral conventions consistent with comic art’s reputation for “outsider” or countercultural expressions. Kugler also argues that these comics provide evidence for the transition in American taste from war stories to the horror comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Kugler’s thorough analysis of his father’s adolescent art explains how a small-town boy from the plains distilled the popular culture of his day for an imagined war he could fight on his audacious, even shocking terms.Flights from Fassberg: How a German Town Built for War Became a Beacon of Peace (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)
Par Colonel Wolfgang W. Samuel. 2021
Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, Colonel, US Air Force (Ret.), interweaves his story and that of his family with the larger…
history of World War II and the postwar world through a moving recollection and exploration of Fassberg, a small town in Germany few have heard of and fewer remember. Created in 1933 by the Hitler regime to train German aircrews, Fassberg hosted Samuel’s father in 1944–45 as an officer in the German air force. As fate and Germany's collapse chased young Wolfgang, Fassberg later became his home as a postwar refugee, frightened, traumatized, hungry, and cold.Built for war, Fassberg made its next mark as a harbinger of the new Cold War, serving as one of the operating bases for Allied aircraft during the Berlin Airlift in 1948. With the end of the Berlin Crisis, the airbase and town faced a dire future. When the Royal Air Force declared the airbase surplus to its needs, it also signed the place's death warrant, yet increasing Cold War tensions salvaged both base and town. Fassberg transformed again, this time into a forward operating base for NATO aircraft, including a fighter flown by Samuel's son.Both personal revelation and world history, replete with tales from pilots, mechanics, and all those whose lives intersected there, Flights from Fassberg provides context to the Berlin Airlift and its strategic impact, the development of NATO, and the establishment of the West German nation. The little town built for war survived to serve as a refuge for a lasting peace.Artful Breakdowns: The Comics of Art Spiegelman (Tom Inge Series on Comics Artists)
Par Georgiana Banita and Lee Konstantinou. 2023
Contributions by Georgiana Banita, Colin Beineke, Harriet Earle, Ariela Freedman, Liza Futerman, Shawn Gilmore, Sarah Hamblin, Cara Koehler, Lee Konstantinou,…
Patrick Lawrence, Philip Smith, and Kent Worcester A carefully curated, wide-ranging edited volume tracing Art Spiegelman’s exceptional trajectory from underground rebellion to mainstream success, Artful Breakdowns: The Comics of Art Spiegelman reveals his key role in the rise of comics as an art form and of the cartoonist as artist. The collection grapples with Spiegelman’s astonishing versatility, from his irreverent underground strips, influential avant-garde magazine RAW, the expressionist style of the comics classic Maus, the illustrations to the Jazz Age poem “The Wild Party,” and his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks to his iconic cover art for the New Yorker, his children’s books, and various cross-media collaborations. The twelve chapters cut across Spiegelman’s career to document continuities and ruptures that the intense focus on Maus has obscured, yielding an array of original readings. Spiegelman’s predilection for collage, improvisation, and the potent protest of silence shows his allegiance to modernist art. His cultural critique and anticapitalist, antimilitary positions shed light on his vocal public persona, while his deft intertextual strategies of mixing media archives, from comics to photography and film, amplify the poignance of his works. Developing new approaches to Spiegelman’s comics—such as the publication history of Maus, the history of immigration and xenophobia, and the cartoonist’s elevation of children’s comics—the collection leaves no doubt that despite the accolades his accessible comics have garnered, we have yet to grasp the full range of Spiegelman’s achievements in the realm of comics and beyond.Motherland, Fatherland, Whateverland: Searching for Home
Par Erik Smalhout. 2022
Erik Smalhout was born a child of privilege in the Netherlands East Indies. Smalhout’s father sent his unruly son to…
a boarding school in Australia, just months before the Japanese seized the Netherlands East Indies in early 1942. While young Smalhout adapted to life in rural Australia, his sister and father back home were placed in Japanese prison camps, an experience that proved fateful for his father and changed his sister’s life forever. Serendipity followed him through induction in the WWII Dutch military, his postwar service on merchant ships circling the globe, and eventually to the most southern place on earth: the Mississippi Delta. Smalhout spent the rest of his life adapting to challenging circumstances time after time: first as a progressive Dutchman in the American South, then as an IRS agent in the nation’s second-largest financial center, and finally as a man who, due to a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, often could not identify himself. Motherland, Fatherland, Whateverland: Searching for Home is Smalhout’s memoir, edited by his granddaughter, Erika Berry, and supported with pictures and documents that he saved throughout his lifetime. Smalhout’s story reminds readers that place is secondary to experience and that no matter where we are or what fortunate or unfortunate circumstances placed us there, an eternal curiosity for humanity will help us find a place in the world.Dear Bob: Bob Hope's Wartime Correspondence with the G.I.s of World War II
Par Martha Bolton, Linda Hope. 2021
Winner of the 2021 Golden Scroll Awards for Memoir of the Year and Christian Market Book of the Year awarded…
by the Advanced Writers and Speakers AssociationFIRST PLACE WINNER IN THE MEMOIR CATEGORY OF THE 2022 SELAH AWARDSFor five decades, comedian, actor, singer, dancer, and entertainer Bob Hope (1903–2003) traveled the world performing before American and Allied troops and putting on morale-boosting USO shows. Dear Bob . . . : Bob Hope’s Wartime Correspondence with the G.I.s of World War II tells the story of Hope’s remarkable service to the fighting men and women of World War II, collecting personal letters, postcards, packages, and more sent back and forth among Hope and the troops and their loved ones back home. Soldiers, nurses, wives, and parents shared their innermost thoughts, swapped jokes, and commiserated with the “G.I.s’ best friend” about war, sacrifice, lonely days, and worrisome, silent nights. The Entertainer of the Century performed for millions of soldiers in person, in films, and over the radio. He visited them in the hospitals and became not just a pal but their link to home. This unforgettable collection of letters and images, many of which remained in Hope’s personal files throughout his life and now reside at the Library of Congress, capture a personal side of both writer and recipient in a very special and often-emotional way. This volume heralds the voices of those servicemen and women whom Hope entertained and who, it is clear, delighted and inspired him.A Thousand Places Left Behind: One Soldier’s Account of Jungle Warfare in WWII Burma
Par Peter K. Lutken Jr.. 2023
Born and raised in Mississippi, Peter K. Lutken, Jr. (1920–2014) joined the army in 1941 and was assigned to the…
Coast Artillery. Originally sent to India to guard airfields, he was reassigned to the British V Force, then the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services and precursor to the CIA) after he volunteered for reconnaissance missions behind Japanese lines. Skills he had learned as a boy in the backwoods and swamps around the Pearl River stood him in good stead, and by the end of the war, he attained the rank of major, commanding an entire battalion of ethnic Kachins and other local people of northern Burma (now called Myanmar). Lutken's stories carry the reader along as he sails on a troop ship to India, then treks into the mountainous jungles of northern Burma to gather intelligence and engage in guerrilla warfare with the Japanese. In his straightforward way, he describes how he learned the language of the Kachins and much about their customs and legends, and how he fought alongside them for the course of the war. Adventures of rafting uncharted rivers, surprise attacks, sabotage, natural hazards and disease, feasts and ceremonies, the plight of refugees, and tragic events of war are all told from the perspective of a young soldier, who finds himself half a world away from home. Based on hundreds of pages of transcripts from tapes recorded late in his life, A Thousand Places Left Behind recounts the untold story not just of one soldier’s experiences, but of the little-known history of American and British forces in Burma during World War II. Supported by original maps based on Lutken’s personal travels as well as photographs from his scrapbook, the book traces Lutken’s journey overseas, his expeditions into the jungle, and his return to Jackson, Mississippi in 1945. Beyond the war, Lutken’s connection with the Kachins culminated in “Project Old Soldier,” a crop exchange program which he and other veterans of OSS Detachment 101 initiated in the 1990s and which lasted until after his death in 2014. The book tells a remarkable story of bravery, friendship, history, and the unbreakable bonds forged in times of war.Unsung Valor: A GI's Story of World War II
Par A. Cleveland Harrison. 2003
Winner of the 2001 Forrest C. Pogue Prize from the Eisenhower Center for American StudiesWhen drafted into the army in…
1943, A. Cleveland Harrison was a reluctant eighteen-year-old Arkansas student sure that he would not make a good soldier. But inside thirty months he manfully bore arms and more. This book is his memoir about becoming a soldier, a common infantryman among the ranks of those who truly won the war. After the Allied victory in 1945, books by and about the major statesmen, generals, and heroes of World War II appeared regularly. Yet millions of American soldiers who helped achieve and secure victory slipped silently into civilian life, trying to forget the war and what they had done. Most remain unsung, for virtually none thought of themselves as exceptional. During the war ordinary soldiers had only done what they believed their country expected. Harrison's firsthand account is the full history of what happened to him in three units from 1943 to 1946, disclosing the sensibilities, the conflicting emotions, and the humor that coalesced within the naive draftee. He details the induction and basic training procedures, his student experiences in Army pre-engineering school, his infantry training and overseas combat, battle wounds and the complete medical pipeline of hospitalization and recovery, the waits in replacement depots, life in the Army of Occupation, and his discharge. Wrenched from college and denied the Army Specialized Training Program's promise of individual choice in assignment, students were thrust into the infantry. Harrison's memoir describes training in the Ninety-fourth Infantry Division in the U.S., their first combat holding action at Lorient, France, and the division's race to join Patton's Third Army, where Harrison's company was decimated, and he was wounded while attacking the Siegfried Line. Reassigned to the U.S. Group Control Council, he had a unique opportunity to observe both the highest echelons in military government and the ordinary soldiers as Allied troops occupied Berlin. This veteran's memoir reveals all aspects of military life and sings of those valorous but ordinary soldiers who achieved the victory.Since the earliest days of the nation, US citizenship has been linked to military service. Even though blacks fought and…
died in all American wars, their own freedom was usually restricted or denied. In many ways, World War II exposed this contradiction.As demand for manpower grew during the war, government officials and military leaders realized that the war could not be won without black support. To generate African American enthusiasm, the federal government turned to mass media. Several government films were produced and distributed, movies that have remained largely unexamined by scholars. Kathleen M. German delves into the dilemma of race and the federal government's attempts to appeal to black patriotism and pride even while postponing demands for equality and integration until victory was achieved.German's study intersects three disciplines: the history of the African American experience in World War II, the theory of documentary film, and the study of rhetoric. One of the main films of the war era, The Negro Soldier, fractured the long tradition of degrading minstrel caricatures by presenting a more dignified public image of African Americans. Along with other government films, the narrative within The Negro Soldier transformed the black volunteer into an able soldier. It included African Americans in the national mythology by retelling American history to recognize black participation. As German reveals, through this new narrative with more dignified images, The Negro Soldier and other films performed rhetorical work by advancing the agenda of black citizenship.Pacific Skies: American Flyers in World War II
Par Jerome Klinkowitz. 2004
From 1941 to 1945 the skies over the Pacific Ocean afforded the broadest arena for battle and the fiercest action…
of air combat during World War II. It was in the air above the Pacific that America's involvement in the war began. It was in these skies that air power launched from carriers became a new form of engagement and where the war ultimately ended with kamikaze attacks and with atomic bombs dropped over Japan. Throughout the conflict American flyers felt a compelling call to supplement the official news and military reports. In vivid accounts written soon after combat and in reflective memoirs recorded in the years after peace came, both pilots and crew members detailed their stories of the action that occurred in the embattled skies. Their first-person testimonies describe a style of warfare invented at the moment of need and at a time when the outcome was anything but certain. Gathering more than a hundred personal narratives from Americans and from Japanese, Pacific Skies recounts a history of air combat in the Pacific theater. Included are the words of such famous aces and bomber pilots as Joe Foss, Pappy Boyington, Dick Bong, and Curtis Lemay, as well as the words of many rank-and-file airmen. Together their stories express fierce individualism and resourcefulness and convey the vast panorama of war that included the skies over Pearl Harbor, Wake, and Guadalcanal and missions from Saipan and Tinian. As Pacific Skies recounts the perilous lives of pilots in their own words, Jerome Klinkowitz weaves the individual stories into a gripping historical narrative that exposes the shades of truth and fiction that can become blurred over time. A book about experiencing and remembering, Pacific Skies also is a story of unique perspectives on the war.