What Soldiers Do

Author: Mary Louise Roberts
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226923096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly—but if you’re the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. That’s not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we’ve been given, but it’s the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the US military command systematically spread—and then exploited—the myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaos—ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal disease—horrified the war-weary and demoralized French population. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American military leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the liberated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty. While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do reminds us that history is always more useful—and more interesting—when it is most honest, and when it goes beyond the burnished beauty of nostalgia to grapple with the real lives and real mistakes of the people who lived it.

Sheer Misery

Author: Mary Louise Roberts
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022675314X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Book Description
The senses -- The dirty body -- The foot -- The wound -- The corpse.

Secret Soldiers

Author: Philip Gerard
Publisher: Dutton Books
ISBN: 9780525946649
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
"Secret Solders" reveals how an extraordinary group of American artists, designers, and engineering wizards became America's unsung heroes of the Second World War. Photo inserts.

The Ghost Army of World War II

Author: Rick Beyer
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1797225308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
“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.

The Second World War

Author: Antony Beevor
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 0316084077
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 829

Book Description
A masterful and comprehensive chronicle of World War II, by internationally bestselling historian Antony Beevor. Over the past two decades, Antony Beevor has established himself as one of the world's premier historians of WWII. His multi-award winning books have included Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin 1945. Now, in his newest and most ambitious book, he turns his focus to one of the bloodiest and most tragic events of the twentieth century, the Second World War. In this searing narrative that takes us from Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939 to V-J day on August 14, 1945 and the war's aftermath, Beevor describes the conflict and its global reach -- one that included every major power. The result is a dramatic and breathtaking single-volume history that provides a remarkably intimate account of the war that, more than any other, still commands attention and an audience. Thrillingly written and brilliantly researched, Beevor's grand and provocative account is destined to become the definitive work on this complex, tragic, and endlessly fascinating period in world history, and confirms once more that he is a military historian of the first rank.

Nigeria and World War II

Author: Chima J. Korieh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
A sophisticated history of colonial interactions in Nigeria during World War II drawing on hitherto unexplored archival resources.

When Books Went to War

Author: Molly Guptill Manning
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544535170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

Book Description
This New York Times bestselling account of books parachuted to soldiers during WWII is a “cultural history that does much to explain modern America” (USA Today). When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned 100 million books. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops, gathering 20 million hardcover donations. Two years later, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million specially printed paperbacks designed for troops to carry in their pockets and rucksacks in every theater of war. These small, lightweight Armed Services Editions were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy, in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific, in field hospitals, and on long bombing flights. This pioneering project not only listed soldiers’ spirits, but also helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity and made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. “A thoroughly engaging, enlightening, and often uplifting account . . . I was enthralled and moved.” — Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Whether or not you’re a book lover, you’ll be moved.” — Entertainment Weekly

German Soldiers of World War Two

Author: Jean De La Garde
Publisher: Histoire Et Collections
ISBN: 9782352503477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 136

Book Description
Every soldier is shown on a full page, front and back with numerous detail shots of head gear, equipment etc. The chronological order of the original edition is retained, while the widest selection of types of Third Reich armed forces members is featured, from the most famous uniforms to the more obscure. In addition to land forces, this book also offers a wide selection of airmen and sailor uniforms.

World War Two Soldiers

Author: Laurent Mirouze
Publisher: Histoire et Collections
ISBN: 9782352503408
Category : Military uniforms
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Presented here in this eighth Militaria guide are detailed color illustrations of the uniforms and equipment of combat infantrymen of WWII, displayed on live models. Only authentic pieces from several private and public collections have been chosen for this work, and are presented on the man as they were carried on the battlefield. Each of these 31 soldiers, Polish, Belgian, French, German, British, Italian, Russian and North American, is photographed from the front and back to reveal every detail and accompanied by detailed captions.

A Tale of Two Soldiers

Author: Max Gendelman
Publisher: Hillcrest Publishing Group
ISBN: 162652288X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
A Tale of Two Soldiers is a memoir about the unlikely friendship an American Jewish G.I. and trained sniper for the US Army, formed with a German Luftwaffe pilot during WWII. On Dec. 18, 1944, twenty-one-year-old Max Gendelman was captured in the Battle of the Bulge, one of only a handful in his company to survive. Starving and dazed, his dog tags blown off, he was marched through German villages and eventually arrived at a farm the Reich had commandeered from a German family. The family's grandson, Karl Kirschner, a lieutenant in the Luftwaffe conscripted against his will, was hiding out in one of the barns. To Max's astonishment one day Karl spoke to him through the fence; they discovered a shared passion for chess, and began to secretly meet to play the game. As they got to know each other, they recognized what they needed to do; they formed a pact, a plan to escape together. This was the start of a friendship that would endure for more than six decades.