Daughters, fathers and war - three words seldom used together. In "The Hidden Legacy of World War II: A Daughter's Journey of Discovery," Carol Schultz Vento weaves life with her paratrooper father into the larger narrative of World War II and the homecoming of the Greatest Generation. The book describes the seldom told story of how the war trauma of World War II impacted one family. This personal story is combined with the author's thorough research and investigation of the reality for those World War II veterans who could not forget the horrors of war. This nonfiction work fills in the missing pieces of the commonly accepted societal view of World War II veterans as stoic and unwavering, a true but incomplete portrait of that generation of warrior.
There is a hidden legacy of war that is rarely talked about: the children of native civilians and enemy soldiers. What is their fate?This book unearths the history of the thousands of forgotten children of World War II, including its prelude and aftermath during the Spanish Civil War and the Allied occupation of Germany. It looks at liaisons between German soldiers and civilian women in the occupied territories, and the Nazi Lebensborn program of racial hygiene. It also considers the children of African-American soldiers and German women. The authors examine what happened when the foreign solders went home and discuss the policies adopted towards these children by the Nazi authorities as well as postwar national governments. Personal testimonies from the children themselves reveal the continued pain and shame of being children of the enemy.Case studies are taken from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Denmark and Spain.
Suppose you were offered a million dollars to spend ten years on a deserted, but beautiful, tropical island paradise? Plenty of fresh water and natural growing food and great fishing. Would you? Here are a few more details, before you decide. This is a secret, off-book, experiment. It involves forty healthy subjects – twenty men, twenty women, between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-two. Once the forty subjects are on the island, they will have no way of getting off and no way of communicating with the outside world. The subjects arrive with only the clothes on their backs. Not even shoes. There’s more … The people running the experiment, own the island and its sovereignty. This means that the island is an independent nation, answering to no other country or authority. There are no rules or laws, except those made by the owners. They don’t make any. The island government is, thus, “Anything goes.” There you have it: Deserted island. No rules, no laws. No government. Anything goes. Forty people. Clothes on your back. Ten years. No way off. Completely isolated. Completely on your own. Whatever happens … you deal with it. One million dollars. Are you in? Then let’s see how it goes … Best of luck.
History is both the past and our accounts of the past. In Rethinking World War Two, Jeremy Black explores the contesting accounts and interpretations of the war, critically examining the leading controversies surrounding the conflict, its aftermath and its ongoing significance in the modern world. The first half of the book considers controversies surrounding the course of the war, with chapters looking at the importance of military history, the causes of the war, politics and grand strategy and domestic politics. The second half goes on to consider the memory of the war and its echoes in political and military spheres, with chapters devoted to the memory of the war in Europe and in Asia. A detailed further reading section provides guidance on how to take study of various topics further. Rethinking World War Two is unique in offering a survey of both the events of the conflict and the various debates surrounding its memory. It will be an invaluable resource for any student of World War Two, particularly those seeking a better understanding of its continuing legacy in the postwar world.
“A riveting tale told through personal accounts and sketches along the way—ultimately, a story of success against great odds. I enjoyed it enormously.” —Tom Brokaw The first book to tell the full story of how a traveling road show of artists wielding imagination, paint, and bravado saved thousands of American lives—now updated with new material. In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs—artists, designers, architects, and sound engineers, including such future luminaries as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey—landed in France to conduct a secret mission. From Normandy to the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the Ghost Army, conjured up phony convoys, phantom divisions, and make-believe headquarters to fool the enemy about the strength and location of American units. Every move they made was top secret, and their story was hushed up for decades after the war's end. Hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs, along with maps, official memos, and letters, accompany Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles’s meticulous research and interviews with many of the soldiers, weaving a compelling narrative of how an unlikely team carried out amazing battlefield deceptions that saved thousands of American lives and helped open the way for the final drive to Germany. The stunning art created between missions also offers a glimpse of life behind the lines during World War II. This updated edition includes: A new afterword by co-author Rick Beyer Never-before-seen additional images The successful campaign to have the unit awarded a Congressional Gold Medal History and WWII enthusiasts will find The Ghost Army of World War II an essential addition to their library.
Addresses the perplexing and often overlooked questions about World War II, revealing the ways in which the war and its legacy still touch lives today.
While the government wants you to think that aliens are buzzing military bases, this book presents the overwhelming evidence that most "nuts and bolts" UFOs are made on earth and piloted by earthlings. This important book reveals the secret technologies German scientists captured at the end of World War II were working on, and takes us right up to today's state-of-the-art flying machines
The classic photo book about the battlegrounds of the Pacific Theater then and now—updated with new information about the preservation and accessibility of these historic sites. Pacific Legacy offers an unprecedented record of the relics of World War II that have survived on the islands of the Pacific: American landing craft rusting on the reefs where they were stopped by enemy fire; shell-pocked Japanese fortifications; fallen aircraft overgrown by jungle; packed-coral landing strips still as good as new. These evocative color images are paired with archival photographs that show the same tropical battlegrounds as they appeared in wartime. The text covers the entire war in the Pacific, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to Japan’s surrender in Tokyo Bay. The principal battles are recounted hour-by-hour, drawing heavily on firsthand accounts. This vivid narrative helps the reader visualize what it was really like to be at war in the Pacific, doggedly island-hopping to victory.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrews comes an enthralling new trilogy set in the Hidden Legacy world, where magic means power, and family bloodlines are the new currency of society… In a world where magic is the key to power and wealth, Catalina Baylor is a Prime, the highest rank of magic user, and the Head of her House. Catalina has always been afraid to use her unique powers, but when her friend’s mother and sister are murdered, Catalina risks her reputation and safety to unravel the mystery. But behind the scenes powerful forces are at work, and one of them is Alessandro Sagredo, the Italian Prime who was once Catalina’s teenage crush. Dangerous and unpredictable, Alessandro’s true motives are unclear, but he’s drawn to Catalina like a moth to a flame. To help her friend, Catalina must test the limits of her extraordinary powers, but doing so may cost her both her House–and her heart.
The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years... The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the twentieth century's most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our minds that the period of anarchy and civil war that followed has been forgotten. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted - such as the police, the media, transport, local and national government - were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places – particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France – they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities. Savage Continent is the story of post WWII Europe, in all its ugly detail, from the end of the war right up until the establishment of an uneasy stability across Europe towards the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is a frightening and thrilling chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come.
