From April 6 1941 To November 27 1942

A three-volume edition of the wartime diary of a Yugoslav partisan who fought with Tito

After fleeing from occupied Beograd to the liberated territory in the Sumadija, Vladimir Dedijer began his life as a Yugoslavian Partisan. Commissioned at the request of then Commander Tito, Vladimir Dedijer began writing his diaries in April of 1941 to record the daily lives, battles, and casualties of the Yugoslavian Partisan Army. The War Diaries of Vladimir Dedijer represents a wealth of primary information about the lives and struggles of the Partisan brigades. There can be no complete understanding of Tito's Yugoslavia without knowing the Diaries' account of the extent of the Second World War's impact on Yugoslavia's people. Tito, who was a frequent reader of the Diaries as the Partisan Army fought across Yugoslavia, called this work "Our Great Obituary." To maintain a diary under the hardships of war was difficult. Among the hazards were river crossings, rain, self-censorship should the Germans find the diaries, and in many instances a shortage of ink. In fact, ink was in such demand that German supplies were targeted by Partisans during raids. Despite these difficulties, Dedijer continually recorded day-to-day life throughout the war. These three volumes contain his writings up to the liberation of Prague in November of 1944. The Diaries were originally published in Yugoslavia more than forty years ago, and have since gone through four editions. The original publication in 1945 caused great debate because of Dedijer's fierce commitment to speaking his views and his uncompromising dedication to recording what he lived. Many felt that Dedijer should not make public the names of Partisan heroes who supported Stalin during the bitter Stalin-Tito split, but in keeping with his values, Dedijer refused, with Tito supporting his decision.

Children during the Holocaust, from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes, and fates, of its youngest victims. The ten chapters follow the arc of the persecutory policies of the Nazis and their sympathizers and the impact these measures had on Jewish children and adolescents—from the years leading to the war, to the roundups, deportations, and emigrations, to hidden life and death in the ghettos and concentration camps, and to liberation and coping in the wake of war. This volume examines the reactions of children to discrimination, the loss of livelihood in Jewish homes, and the public humiliation at the hands of fellow citizens and explores the ways in which children's experiences paralleled and diverged from their adult counterparts. Additional chapters reflect upon the role of non-Jewish children as victims, perpetrators, and bystanders during World War II. Offering a collection of personal letters, diaries, court testimonies, government documents, military reports, speeches, newspapers, photographs, and artwork, Children during the Holocaust highlights the diversity of children's experiences during the nightmare years of the Holocaust.

In a new interpretation of the history of the Balkans during the Second World War, Alfred J. Rieber explores the tangled political rivalries, cultural clashes, and armed conflicts among the great powers and the indigenous people competing for influence and domination. The study takes an original approach to the region based on the geography, social conditions, and imperial rivalries that spans several centuries, culminating in three wars during the first half of the twentieth century. Against this background, Rieber focuses on leadership - personified by Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and Tito - as the key to explaining events. For each one the Balkans represented a strategic prize vital for the fulfilment of their ambitious war aims. For the local forces the destabilization of the war offered the opportunity to reorder societies, expel ethnic minorities, and expand national borders. Storms over the Balkans during the Second World War illustrates how the leaders of the external powers were forced to improvise their tactics and compromise their ideologies under the pressure of war and the competing claims of their allies and clients. Neither the Axis nor the Allied camps were uniform blocs, and deep divisions ran through the ranks of the resistance and those collaborating with the occupying powers. These tensions contributed to the failure of all the participants in the struggle to achieve their aims. The complexities of the wartime experiences help to explain the persistence of memories and unfulfilled aspirations that continue to haunt the region. The study is based on extensive research in new sources in seven languages.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War was central to Nazi plans for territorial expansion and genocidal demographic revolution. To create 'living space', Nazi Germany pursued two policies. The first was the systematic murder of millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma, and other groups that the Nazis found undesirable on racial, religious, ethnic, ideological, hereditary, or behavioral grounds. It also pursued a parallel, albeit smaller, program to mobilize supposedly Germanic residents of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union - so-called Volksdeutsche or ethnic Germans - as the vanguard of German expansion. This study recovers the intersection of these two projects in Transnistria, a portion of southern Ukraine that, because of its numerous Volksdeutsche communities, became an epicenter of both Nazi Volksdeutsche policy and the Holocaust in conquered Soviet territory, ultimately asking why local residents, whom German authorities identified as Volksdeutsche, participated in the Holocaust with apparent enthusiasm.