Survivors: Battlefield Relics of WWII

Survivors: Battlefield Relics of WWII PDF Author: Simon Forty
Publisher: Chartwell Books
ISBN: 9780785835783
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Survivors: Battlefield Relics of World War II tells the stories of some of the massive military weapons left scattered across the European countryside after the Second World War, accompanied by maps and a gazetteer of their locations. Large, difficult to move, and now without a use, they've settled in as monuments and tributes to the battles that passed. By the end of World War II, the battlefields were littered with debris, the most obvious being knocked out tanks and other armored vehicles. Tanks were usually sold as scrap metal, but some were acquired by museums and others were used as battlefield memorials. These survivors of the battles of World War II reflect in many ways the numbers built on both sides: there are many M4 Shermans,T-34s, Tigers, Panthers, Cromwells, Churchills, Somuas and Char-Bs. Each survivor, either on a memorial plinth or in a museum, has a story to tell—from the T-34 pulled out of an Estonian bog to the Tiger I at Vimoutiers to the badly damaged Panther at Houffalize. Some of these battlefield relics, like the multitude of M4s in France, show the path of the Allied armies as they took back Europe from the Axis powers. Each one of these armored titans is a testament to heroism. They commemorate American heroism during the Battle of the Bulge or French 2e DB’s Bourg La Reine outside Phalsbourg and Champagne, part of the force that destroyed the German 112th Panzer Brigade at Dompaire. There are equally as many T-34s in the east: from Berlin’s Tiergarten to Gdansk or Studzianki Pancerne in Poland; there are examples in Finland and Bosnia, and many in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—from Moscow to Sevastopol, Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) to Leningrad. Other Russian tanks to be seen include KV-1s, KV-85s, IS-2s, BT-7s, Su-76s, and any others. Survivors: Battlefield Relics of World War II looks in detail at a number of these vehicles, telling their stories, why they have survived, and why they were placed where they sit today. The book also identifies the locations of many other World War II armored vehicles. While most of these locations are in continental Europe—east and west—one or two are in Britain and the United States. Appendices provide maps and a gazetteershowing the locations of the tanks, along with suggested itineraries, so that the reader can organize trips to visit the vehicles of the Normandy landings, the race across France and the Low Countries, the Battle of the Bulge, the sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad, the Battle of Kharkov, Battle of Berlin, and other major campaigns.

Battle of Gettysburg - The Relics, Artifacts & Souvenirs

Battle of Gettysburg - The Relics, Artifacts & Souvenirs PDF Author: Robert Jones
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0557177707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
The Battle of Gettysburg ended, but what was left behind, was unimaginable, 51,000 casualties (23,000 Union and 28,000 Confederate). Private residences took in and cared for these suffering soldiers. Without these caring townspeople, the death rate would have increased tremendously. The soldiers realized that they were part of history in the making. As in any momentous event, the participants sought some kind of remembrance from the battle, something they could gaze at in their twilight years and reminisce about being part of such an historical event. Be it a button, a bullet, canteen, photograph, letter, or even a handful of the sacred soil.....just something. Collecting of these relics continued with the veterans, right up until today. The author has spent the last 20 years acquiring and documenting these artifacts and has now included many of them in this book which was released in 2008 (revised 2009). Also included are the rare souvenirs, which now have become collectible in themselves.

Relics of War

Relics of War PDF Author: Jennifer Raab
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691179972
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
How a single haunting image tells a story about violence, mourning, and memory In 1865, Clara Barton traveled to the site of the notorious Confederate prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, where she endeavored to name the missing and the dead. The future founder of the American Red Cross also collected their relics—whittled spoons, woven reed plates, a piece from the prison’s “dead line,” a tattered Bible—and brought them back to her Missing Soldiers Office in Washington, DC, presenting them to politicians, journalists, and veterans’ families before having them photographed together in an altar-like arrangement. Relics of War reveals how this powerful image, produced by Mathew Brady, opens a window into the volatile relationship between suffering, martyrdom, and justice in the wake of the Civil War. Jennifer Raab shows how this photograph was a crucial part of Barton’s efforts to address the staggering losses of a war in which nearly half of the dead were unnamed and from which bodies were rarely returned home for burial. The Andersonville relics gave form to these absent bodies, offered a sacred site for grief and devotion, mounted an appeal on behalf of the women and children left behind, and testified to the crimes of war. The story of the photograph illuminates how military sacrifice was racialized as political reconciliation began, and how the stories of Black soldiers and communities were silenced. Richly illustrated, Relics of War vividly demonstrates how one photograph can capture a precarious moment in history, serving as witness, advocate, evidence, and memory.

Texas Civil War Artifacts

Texas Civil War Artifacts PDF Author: Richard Mather Ahlstrom
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 598

Book Description
One of the most popular literary subjects worldwide is the American Civil War. In addition to an enormous number of history buffs, there are tens of thousands of collectors of Civil War artifacts. In the last fifty years, several books have been written concerning the equipment associated with soldiers of specific Confederate states, but no book until now has ever chronicled the military equipment used by Texas soldiers. Texas Civil War Artifacts is the first comprehensive guide to the physical culture of Texas Civil War soldiers. Texas military equipment differs in a number of ways from the equipment produced for the eastern Confederate states. Most of the Texas-produced equipment was blacksmithed, or local-artisan made, and in many cases featured the Lone Star as a symbol of Texas. Contemporary Civil War literature frequently mentions that most soldiers of Texas displayed the Lone Star somewhere on their uniform or equipment. In this groundbreaking volume, Richard Mather Ahlstrom has photographed and described more than five hundred Texas-related artifacts. He shows the diverse use of the Lone Star on hat pins, waist-belt plates, buckles, horse equipment, side knives, buttons, and canteens. In addition, the weapons that Texans used in the Civil War are featured in chapters on the Tucker Sherrard and Colt pistols; shotguns, rifles, and muskets; and swords. Rounding out the volume are chapters on leather accouterments, uniforms and headgear, and a gallery of Texas soldiers in photographs. This book will prove to be a valuable reference guide for Civil War collectors, historians, museum curators, re-enactors, and federal and state agencies.

Sacred Relics

Sacred Relics PDF Author: Teresa Barnett
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022605974X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Book Description
A piece of Plymouth Rock. A lock of George Washington’s hair. Wood from the cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born. Various bits and pieces of the past—often called “association items”—may appear to be eccentric odds and ends, but they are valued because of their connections to prominent people and events in American history. Kept in museum collections large and small across the United States, such objects are the touchstones of our popular engagement with history. In Sacred Relics, Teresa Barnett explores the history of private collections of items like these, illuminating how Americans view the past. She traces the relic-collecting tradition back to eighteenth-century England, then on to articles belonging to the founding fathers and through the mass collecting of artifacts that followed the Civil War. Ultimately, Barnett shows how we can trace our own historical collecting from the nineteenth century’s assemblages of the material possessions of great men and women.

Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War

Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War PDF Author: Alexander Gardner
Publisher: Ravenio Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
In presenting the Photographic Sketch Book of the War to the attention of the public, it is designed that it shall speak for itself. The omission, therefore, of any remarks by way of preface might well be justified; and yet, perhaps, a few introductory words may not be amiss. As mementoes of the fearful struggle through which the country has just passed, it is confidently hoped that the following pages will possess an enduring interest. Localities that would scarcely have been known, and probably never remembered, save in their immediate vicinity, have become celebrated, and will ever be held sacred as memorable fields, where thousands of brave men yielded up their lives a willing sacrifice for the cause they had espoused. Verbal representations of such places, or scenes, may or may not have the merit of accuracy; but photographic presentments of them will be accepted by posterity with an undoubting faith. During the four years of the war, almost every point of importance has been photographed, and the collection from which these views have been selected amounts to nearly three thousand.

J. Howard Wert's Gettysburg

J. Howard Wert's Gettysburg PDF Author: Bruce E. Mowday
Publisher: Schiffer Military History
ISBN: 9780764353918
Category : Gettysburg (Pa.)
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
J. Howard Wert was a recent college graduate when the armies of the North and South converged near his family's homestead just three miles outside Gettysburg in the summer of 1863. A militia member and anti-slavery supporter, Wert acted as a guide for Union General George Meade, helping position federal troops in the fields and hills around town. Perhaps more importantly, he collected and labeled artifacts from the battle, including a still-hot Confederate shell that almost hit him near Little Round Top. After the war, Wert resumed gathering relics of the three-day battle, many given to him by veterans of both sides, including weapons, clothing, letters, furniture, and even items related to Lincoln's Address. Now this amazing private collection can be appreciated through more than 120 color pictures and informative text about both the items and Wert's life.

Hitler's Holy Relics

Hitler's Holy Relics PDF Author: Sidney Kirkpatrick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1849832080
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Book Description
From Paris to Stalingrad, the Nazis systematically plundered all manner of art and antiquities. But the first and most valuable treasure they looted were the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. This is the true-life Indiana Jones story of a college professor turned Army sleuth who foils a Nazi plot to preserve these cherished symbols of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich. Author Sidney Kirkpatrick draws on recently discovered and previously unpublished documents, including interrogation and intelligence reports, diaries and correspondence, as well as on interviews with all remaining living participants involved with the case, to re-create this thrilling true-life story.
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