Books

RESISTANCE: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945
18JanWW2By WW2No Comments
Books, European War Book Reviews

RESISTANCE: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945

Halik Kochanski’s “Resistance” traces the underground opposition to the Nazis across the continent of Europe. RESISTANCE: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945, by Halik Kochanski For continental Europeans World War II was a vastly different experience than it was for the people of the British Commonwealth or the United States. In the English-speaking world the war was largely a long narrative of military operations happening somewhere else — sometimes going very badly, but always going, and ending in a comfortably self-affirming victory. They were spared the hardships, horrors, moral dilemmas and later recriminations of foreign occupation. Not so with the peoples of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, France, Yugoslavia, much of the Soviet Union and many, many others. For them,...
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Paddy Mayne: New book tells story of Irish WW2 hero who helped found the SAS
17JanWW2By WW2No Comments
Books, War in Africa and Middle East Book Reviews

Paddy Mayne: New book tells story of Irish WW2 hero who helped found the SAS

Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, the Irishman who helped found the famed SAS, was a World War Two hero, a capped rugby star and Queen’s University boxing champion, who was also a troubled young man who would die at the age of 40 after a heavy drinking session. Mayne’s incredible life story is back in the public eye thanks to the BBC TV series SAS Rogue Heroes, which features the Newtownards man’s exploits in the North African desert during the war. While entertainingly told, the series has come in for some criticism from members of Mayne’s family who objected to his depiction as the stereotypical “drunk Irishman”, adding that there was much more to him than that. We spoke to Damian Lewis, author of the book ‘SAS Brothers in Arms’, who is arguably in a bette...
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Why did the US ignore diplomats who boldly raised an alarm about Hitler before WWII?
16JanWW2By WW2No Comments
Memoir and Biography Book Reviews, Books

Why did the US ignore diplomats who boldly raised an alarm about Hitler before WWII?

    In new book ‘Watching Darkness Fall,’ former US ambassador David McKean illustrates how antisemitism, apathy and internal politics set America back in the war against Germany. In 1938, William Dodd, the United States ambassador to Nazi Germany, publicly declared that Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews not just in Germany, but the entire European continent. Months later, the Kristallnacht pogroms indicated he was right. Despite Dodd’s perception, the US diplomatic corps overlooked a number of totalitarian threats at the time, according to “Watching Darkness Fall: FDR, His Ambassadors, and the Rise of Adolf Hitler,” a new book by David McKean. The author is himself a former US ambassador to Luxembourg under the Obama administration. The inspiration for the bo...
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William Dodd: The U.S. Ambassador In Hitler’s Berlin
15JanWW2By WW2No Comments
Memoir and Biography Book Reviews

William Dodd: The U.S. Ambassador In Hitler’s Berlin

In March 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt approached politician James M. Cox to offer him what should have been a cushy gig: the ambassadorship to Germany. But Cox turned down the job. Germany was unstable and violent — and German Chancellor Adolf Hitler's paramilitary army had started to attack and jail thousands of its own citizens. The job remained open for months as candidates were summarily rejected. In early June 1933, Roosevelt's commerce secretary suggested an alternative: William Dodd, a professor at the University of Chicago who spoke German and received his graduate degree in Germany. Roosevelt offered Dodd the job, who accepted and went to Berlin with his wife, son and daughter. Roosevelt emphasized that Dodd needed to be a model of American values in Nazi Germany. But th...
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A Bridge Too Far
10JanWW2By WW2No Comments
Books, European War Book Reviews

A Bridge Too Far

Author: Cornelius Ryan ISBN: 0450837319 A Bridge Too Far (1974) is Cornelius Ryan’s opus. Author of The Longest Day and The Last Battle, Ryan brings his considerable talent as a journalist, storyteller, and historian to bear in this text. A dense read, A Bridge Too Far is some 670 page long including a generous selection of pictures, maps, index, acknowledgements, and “Soldiers and Civilians – What They Do Today” sections, and bibliography. Don’t let the length of the book scare you off, however. This is a must read for airborne history readers, with sections outlining the activities of the American 101st, 82nd, and British 1st Airborne Divisions, with emphasis on the British experience, and of course, XXX Corps, whose job it was to navigate Hell’s Highway all the way to Arnhem in sho...
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A Better Comrade You Will Never Find
10JanWW2By WW2No Comments
Books, European War Book Reviews

A Better Comrade You Will Never Find

Author:Helmut Schiebel Language:English Text Format:Hardcover Dimensions:6" x 9" Pages:272 pages Photos:5 b+w images, 12 colour images, 45 photos, 4 colour 3D drawings. Publisher:Fedorowicz Publishing ISBN:9780921991977 A Better Comrade You Will Never Find presents Eastern Front experiences of Helmut Schiebel from 1941 to the end of WW II. The author took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 as a member of the 43 Motorcycle Infantry Battalion of the 13 Panzer Division. In September he left for an Officer Candidate course in Germany, returning as a Leutnant and platoon leader to the division s reconnaissance battalion at the end of April 1942. He was wounded at the end of June and retuned to Russia in September 1943. On the way to the 18 Panzer Division, he fou...
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11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944
10JanWW2By WW2No Comments
Books, European War Book Reviews

11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944

Stanley Weintraub, (224pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-8710-4 The Battle of the Bulge doesn't quite fit the epic mold it's often cast in—bloody, yes, but lacking in strategic consequence, with no one but Hitler doubting the Allied victory. That the carnage spoiled Christmas time is the slender irony anchoring this aimless retelling by military historian Weintraub (Silent Night: The Story of the 1914 Christmas Truce ). Noting American complacency about the German buildup, and strategic and personal squabbles among the Allied commanders, he trumps up Patton's prayer for good killing weather into a dramatic turning point. Mainly, though, the book is a kaleidoscope of anecdotes, combat scenes alternating incoherently with foxhole doldrums and frontline picaresque. There's pluck and defiance—" 'They've ...
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In ‘Operation Underworld,’ local author Matthew Black chronicles an unholy alliance in World War II
10JanWW2By WW2No Comments
Books, European War Book Reviews

In ‘Operation Underworld,’ local author Matthew Black chronicles an unholy alliance in World War II

Author’s dogged research uncovers never-before-seen details of a secret collaboration between the U.S. government and the Mafia. Ocean Beach author Matthew Black has uncovered new information regarding a Mafia and U.S. Navy partnership during World War II. In his new book, “Operation Underworld: How the Mafia and US Government Teamed Up to Win World War II,” Black details how this secret deal came to pass. Following a ship fire in New York in 1942, the U.S. military feared there were Nazi saboteurs in the shipyards. The government secretly collaborated with Italian gangsters to gather information on dock workers and, later, plan the Allied invasion of Sicily. In return, the gangsters wanted the notorious mobster Charles “Lucky” Luciano behind bars. Black tells how he discovered th...
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