Eisenhower and the German POWs


Book Description

Essays refute charges that Eisenhower deliberately starved to death German POWs during World War II




Challenge to Mars


Book Description

The fourteen essays in Part I look at the interwar years, which gave rise to an array of pacifist organizations, both religious and humanist, throughout Europe and North America. Twelve essays in Part II deal with the brutal challenge to pacifist ideals posed by the Second World War and include a look at the fate of those courageous Germans who refused to fight for Hitler.




The Nazis Next Door


Book Description

A Newsweek Best Book of the Year: “Captivating . . . rooted in first-rate research” (The New York Times Book Review). In this New York Times bestseller, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story of the thousands of Nazis—from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich—who came to the United States after World War II and quietly settled into new lives. Many gained entry on their own as self-styled war “refugees.” But some had help from the US government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler’s minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. Now, relying on a trove of newly disclosed documents and scores of interviews, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau reveals this little-known and “disturbing” chapter of postwar history (Salon).




Citizen Soldiers


Book Description

From Stephen E. Ambrose, bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the inspiring story of the ordinary men of the U.S. army in northwest Europe from the day after D-Day until the end of the bitterest days of World War II. In this riveting account, historian Stephen E. Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Citizen Soldiers opens at 0001 hours, June 7, 1944, on the Normandy beaches, and ends at 0245 hours, May 7, 1945, with the allied victory. It is biography of the US Army in the European Theater of Operations, and Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war. From the high command down to the ordinary soldier, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.




Fighting the People's War


Book Description

Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.




Cold War Respite


Book Description

At the midpoint of the “high” cold war, when most people in North America and Europe thought catastrophic nuclear onslaught was almost inevitable, an unprecedented and unrepeated event took place in Geneva in July 1955. The heads of state from the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France came together in an attempt at diplomatic dialogue, primarily over the questions of German unification, European security, and nuclear disarmament. Although the summit ended with no tangible results, its ramifications were extensive, and it provided the world with a brief repose from escalating East-West tension. In Cold War Respite twelve scholars writing from several national perspectives investigate in riveting detail how that event—examined only in passing until now—came about, why its “spirit” was so short-lived, and what its subsequent impact was on the development of the cold war. Making use of newly -declassified archives in the United States, France, Britain, and Russia, the authors provide some of the latest research and insights into early cold-war history as they track the crucial period from Stalin’s death in 1953 until the summit. They consider John Foster Dulles’s policy at Geneva and the meeting of the four foreign ministers that followed the summit. As the essayists attest, the psychological effects of the summit were of immense significance to the history of international relations and reveal the complexity and dynamism of foreign affairs during the decades following World War II. While some argue that the series of international crises beginning in 1958 and culminating in 1962 might have been averted if the Geneva conference had been pursued more eagerly, others argue that it is a credit to the summit that those events are studied today as examples of crisis management and not of nuclear war.




Rangers


Book Description

This Leavenworth Paper is a critical reconstruction of World War II Ranger operations conducted at or near Djebel el Ank, Tunisia; Porto Empedocle, Sicily; Cisterna, Italy; Zerf, Germany; and Cabanatuan in the Philippines. It is not intended to be a comprehensive account of World War II Ranger operations, for such a study would have to include numerous minor actions that are too poorly documented to be studied to advantage. It is, however, representative for it examines several types of operations conducted against the troops of three enemy nations in a variety of physical and tactical environments. As such, it draws a wide range of lessons useful to combat leaders who may have to conduct such operations or be on guard against them in the future. Many factors determined the outcomes of the operations featured in this Leavenworth Paper, and of these there are four that are important enough to merit special emphasis. These are surprise, the quality of opposing forces, the success of friendly forces with which the Rangers were cooperating, and popular support.




How Ike Led


Book Description

How Dwight D. Eisenhower led America through a transformational time—by a DC policy strategist, security expert and his granddaughter. Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare to the Missile Gap controversies, Ike was able to give our country eight years of peace and prosperity by relying on a core set of principles. These were informed by his heritage and upbringing, as well as his strong character and his personal discipline, but he also avoided making himself the center of things. He was a man of judgment, and steadying force. He sought national unity, by pursuing a course he called the "Middle Way" that tried to make winners on both sides of any issue. Ike was a strategic, not an operational leader, who relied on a rigorous pursuit of the facts for decision-making. His talent for envisioning a whole, especially in the context of the long game, and his ability to see causes and various consequences, explains his success as Allied Commander and as President. After making a decision, he made himself accountable for it, recognizing that personal responsibility is the bedrock of sound principles. Susan Eisenhower's How Ike Led shows us not just what a great American did, but why—and what we can learn from him today.




Operation Rollback


Book Description

Discusses America's secret plan known as Rollback that was designed to subvert and sabotage the Soviet grip on its satellite countries after the collapse of Nazi power in 1945.




The Secret Betrayal


Book Description