World War Ii In Minutes

Clear, concise yet comprehensive, World War II in Minutes is the quickest way to understand the greatest conflict in human history. From its causes to its aftermath, this book details in 200 mini-essays every key event of the war, including the rise of Hitler, the Dunkirk evacuation, The Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor, Midway and Iwo Jima, the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, D-Day and the fall of Berlin, and much much more. Covers all aspects of World War II: origins and politics; major battles; great leaders; weapons and technology; civilian life and atrocities; turning points and surrenders; and the reverberations of the war through history. Illustrated with 200 contemporary photographs, images and maps. Includes entries on: The Path to War; The Versailles Treaty; The Spanish Civil War; Mussolini and the rise of Fascism; Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, FDR and Joseph Stalin; The Sino-Japanese War; The Blitz; U-boat warfare and Enigma; The Desert War; Operation Barbarossa; The Battle of Moscow; Resistance and collaboration; The Final Solution; Colditz; Coral Sea and Guadalcanal; The Dambusters; The bombing of Dresden; Alamein; Kursk; Montgomery, Zhukov, Rommel and Eisenhower; Operation Overlord; The liberation of Paris; The battle of the Bulge; The Yalta Conference, The Berlin bunker; The battle for Okinawa; Kamikazes; The atomic bomb; Casualties of war; War crimes trials and The Cold War.

In this important and moving true story of reconciliation after war, beautifully illustrated in watercolor, a Japanese pilot bombs the continental U.S. during World War II and comes back 20 years later to apologize. Full color.

The cloud cover had finally begun to clear after 8 days and nights. It was time for action. Both the Allies and the German forces had prepared for what was coming. It was likely to be the turning point of the air battle over Europe. Like most other airmen on both sides of the war, we knew how important our mission was this day. It could very well be the beginning of the end for the Nazi air forces, or it could set back our surge into Germany many months. Such was the mindset of most every member of the air group as we set our sights on the beginning of the most ambitious air assault ever. We were all nervous and afraid yet anxious to take off and do what we had trained for so long. Our ship was brand new and had been tested over and over for any possibility of malfunction. We were ready and so was our ship. Then, the unthinkable happened... The events which followed, set the stage for one of the most mysterious happenings of that day. It was to haunt everyone in the crew for the rest of their lives and change the course of history for all on board.

"The author's search for the annihilated Polish community captured in his grandfather's 1938 home movie. Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author's grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community--an entire culture--that was annihilated in the Holocaust. Three Minutes in Poland traces Glenn Kurtz's remarkable four-year journey to identify the people in his grandfather's haunting images. His search takes him across the United States; to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel; to archives, film preservation laboratories, and an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. Ultimately, Kurtz locates seven living survivors from this lost town, including an eighty-six-year-old man who appears in the film as a thirteen-year-old boy. Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the sole remaining record of a vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival--a monument to a lost world"--

The astounding memoir of a World War II veteran who spent three and a half years in the slave labor camps made famous by The Bridge on the River Kwai.

The award-winning history of 12 million German-speaking civilians in Europe who were driven from their homes after WWII: “a major achievement” (New Republic). Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized the forced relocation of ethnic Germans from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable: between 12 and 14 million civilians, most of them women and children. And the losses were horrifying: at least five hundred thousand people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, locked in trains, or after arriving in Germany malnourished, and homeless. In this authoritative and objective account, historian R.M. Douglas examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the forced migrations were conceived, planned, and executed, and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The first comprehensive history of this immense manmade catastrophe, Orderly and Humane is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing." It may also be the most significant untold story of the World War II.

The untold stories of bravery, triumph, and redemption in the depths of the darkest world war. Behind the great powers, global military conflict, and infamous battles are more than 100 incredible stories that bring to life the Second World War. During the six years of war were countless little-known moments of profound triumph and tragedy, bravery and cowardice, and good and evil. These amazing and unbelievable stories of brotherhood, redemption, escape, and civilian courage shed new light on the war that gripped the entire world. Experience the action through the eyes of people like: Lieutenant Jacob Beser, who was aboard both the Enola Gay and Bock's Car and felt the force of the shockwave that nearly destroyed the planes after dropping the H-bombs that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Professor William Miller, who collapsed during a death march of POWs in Germany and was saved by the same man who had rescued him from what would have been a fatal car wreck in Pennsylvania five years earlier. The brave civilians who answered the British Admiralty's call to help rescue an army from Dunkirk during the height of a dangerous battle and sailed small fishing boats into relentless German fire, ultimately saving 335,000 men from This is the perfect book for any history buff looking for the untold stories of military and civilian daring during World War 2.

Real-life Rosie the Riveters worked the lines in New Jersey's factories, such as those of General Motors' Eastern Aircraft Division, while women on the vulnerable coast enforced blackout orders. Others sold war bonds, planted victory gardens and conserved materials for the war effort. Thousands more served as nurses and in branches of the armed forces like the Women's Army Corps and the U.S. Navy's Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. African American women fought a double war--one against the nation's enemies and another against discrimination. Historian Patricia Chappine explores the pivotal roles that New Jersey women played in World War II.

James Leininger was just two years old when he began having disturbing nightmares that would not stop. He screamed out in the night: 'Plane on fire! Little man can't get out!' While nightmares are common among children, what happened next shocked those around him... James began to reveal details of planes and war tragedies that no two-year-old boy could know. His desperate parents were at a loss to help him until he said three things: 'Corsair', 'Natoma' and 'Jack Larsen'. From these tantalising clues, James's parents travelled thousands of miles and spent many long years piecing together these facts to try and find an answer that could end his torment. Finally, despite his mother's fears and his father's staunch Christian beliefs, they found only one possibility to the endless coincidences that surrounded every detail in James's life – that their son was reliving the past life of a World War II fighter pilot. Their touching story is one that will challenge sceptics and confirm the beliefs of those who already believe in life after death.