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Author: Charles Koburger
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
Steel Ships, Iron Crosses, and Refugees documents the German navy's role in the Baltic, including the final epic amphibious lift in the Baltic and the world's two largest maritime disasters. The small German Navy and Merchant Marines evacuated over 2,000,000 refugees, wounded, and troops by sea, without adequate air support and while under Russian fire. During the evacuation, the torpedoing of Wilhelm Gustaloff and GOYA alone resulted in the loss of 12,000 lives. The magnitude of the loss is overwhelming when compared to Titanic (1,500 dead) and Lusitania (1,200 dead). Yet at the end, one out of every 20 West Germans was free because of this effort. Focusing our attention on a little known chapter of modern naval history, this study demonstrates the critical role of sea power and the interrelationship of navy and merchant marine. It also repeats an oft-forgotten lesson on the special characteristics of inshore waters and warfare. Few people know of the Baltic Naval Campaign (1939-1945), which culminated in the tremendous rescue operation that evacuated over 2,000,000 people ahead of the advancing Red Army. The Germans suffered the two largest maritime disasters on record. The already battered German navy was almost totally destroyed during this last campaign. Suggesting that a knowledge of this great humanitarian effort might balance our historical perspective, this volume also reinforces many basic truths concerning the importance and use of sea power.
Author: Charles Koburger
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
Steel Ships, Iron Crosses, and Refugees documents the German navy's role in the Baltic, including the final epic amphibious lift in the Baltic and the world's two largest maritime disasters. The small German Navy and Merchant Marines evacuated over 2,000,000 refugees, wounded, and troops by sea, without adequate air support and while under Russian fire. During the evacuation, the torpedoing of Wilhelm Gustaloff and GOYA alone resulted in the loss of 12,000 lives. The magnitude of the loss is overwhelming when compared to Titanic (1,500 dead) and Lusitania (1,200 dead). Yet at the end, one out of every 20 West Germans was free because of this effort. Focusing our attention on a little known chapter of modern naval history, this study demonstrates the critical role of sea power and the interrelationship of navy and merchant marine. It also repeats an oft-forgotten lesson on the special characteristics of inshore waters and warfare. Few people know of the Baltic Naval Campaign (1939-1945), which culminated in the tremendous rescue operation that evacuated over 2,000,000 people ahead of the advancing Red Army. The Germans suffered the two largest maritime disasters on record. The already battered German navy was almost totally destroyed during this last campaign. Suggesting that a knowledge of this great humanitarian effort might balance our historical perspective, this volume also reinforces many basic truths concerning the importance and use of sea power.
Author: David Williams
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752477137
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
While the near 1,500 victims of Titanic accounted for a huge loss of life, each of the ships here had a greater number of casualties, in some cases more than five times as many. In total, these 27 merchant ship sinkings resulted in a staggering loss of life at sea – more than 96,000 in total, 3,840 per ship. While the circumstances were different to Titanic, the outcome in each case was no less tragic. Yet, despite the fact that Titanic ranks behind so many other losses, so powerful has her name become that it was the inevitable choice to describe some of these other events, ‘Germany’s Titanic’ and ‘The Titanic of Japan’ being two examples. Ships include the Lancastria, Britain’s worst maritime disaster with 3,000 lost; the Ryusei Maru, a Japanese ‘Hellship’ loaded with 6,000 Allied POWs, torpedoed by a US submarine; and the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German liner packed with 7,800 civilians, sunk by a Russian submarine. There were no survivors and this tragedy was the worst maritime disaster of all time.
Author: Donald Stoker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135774226
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
Donald Stoker's book examines British and French involvement from 1919 to 1939 in the creation and development of the naval forces of Poland, Finland and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Author: Bryan Mark Rigg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536
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Book Description
On the murderous road to "racial purity" Hitler encountered unexpected detours, largely due to his own crazed views and inconsistent policies regarding Jewish identity. After centuries of Jewish assimilation and intermarriage in German society, he discovered that eliminating Jews from the rest of the population was more difficult than he'd anticipated. As Bryan Rigg shows in this provocative new study, nowhere was that heinous process more fraught with contradiction and confusion than in the German military. Contrary to conventional views, Rigg reveals that a startlingly large number of German military men were classified by the Nazis as Jews or "partial-Jews" (Mischlinge), in the wake of racial laws first enacted in the mid-1930s. Rigg demonstrates that the actual number was much higher than previously thought-perhaps as many as 150,000 men, including decorated veterans and high-ranking officers, even generals and admirals. As Rigg fully documents for the first time, a great many of these men did not even consider themselves Jewish and had embraced the military as a way of life and as devoted patriots eager to serve a revived German nation. In turn, they had been embraced by the Wehrmacht, which prior to Hitler had given little thought to the "race" of these men but which was now forced to look deeply into the ancestry of its soldiers. The process of investigation and removal, however, was marred by a highly inconsistent application of Nazi law. Numerous "exemptions" were made in order to allow a soldier to stay within the ranks or to spare a soldier's parent, spouse, or other relative from incarceration or far worse. (Hitler's own signature can be found on many of these "exemption" orders.) But as the war dragged on, Nazi politics came to trump military logic, even in the face of the Wehrmacht's growing manpower needs, closing legal loopholes and making it virtually impossible for these soldiers to escape the fate of millions of other victims of the Third Reich. Based on a deep and wide-ranging research in archival and secondary sources, as well as extensive interviews with more than four hundred Mischlinge and their relatives, Rigg's study breaks truly new ground in a crowded field and shows from yet another angle the extremely flawed, dishonest, demeaning, and tragic essence of Hitler's rule.
Author: Evan Mawdsley
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030024875X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 541
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Book Description
This “impeccable, myth-busting study” of WWII maritime operations sheds new light on the conflict with sharp analysis and an international perspective (The Sunday Times, UK). Command of the oceans was crucial to winning World War II. By the start of 1942 Nazi Germany had conquered mainland Europe, and Imperial Japan had overrun Southeast Asia and much of the Pacific. How could Britain and distant America prevail in what had become a "war of continents"? In this definitive account, Evan Mawdsley traces events at sea from the first U-boat operations in 1939 to the surrender of Japan. He argues that the Allied counterattack involved not just decisive sea battles, but a long struggle to control shipping arteries and move armies across the sea. Covering all the major actions in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as those in the narrow seas, this book interweaves for the first time the endeavors of the maritime forces of the British Empire, the United States, Germany, and Japan, as well as those of France, Italy, and Russia.
![World War II at Sea [2 volumes] PDF](https://books.google.com/books/content/images/frontcover/vETPEAAAQBAJ?fife=w80-h100)
Author: Spencer C. Tucker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 159884458X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 970
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Book Description
The war at sea was a key aspect of World War II, one that is too-often under-studied. This comprehensive encyclopedia shares current understandings of the struggle to control the seas during that conflict—and it opens our eyes to the reasons sea power continues to be of critical importance today. Scholarly treatment of World War II is constantly changing as new materials inform new interpretations. At the same time, current military operations lead to reevaluation of the tactics and technologies of the past. Marshalling the latest information and insights into this epic conflict, World War II at Sea: An Encyclopedia will enable students and other interested readers to explore specific naval engagements, while also charting the transformation of naval history through innovations in ordnance. In treating the naval aspects of World War II, this two-volume ready reference enhances the understanding of a part of the war that is often overshadowed by the fighting on land and in the air. The encyclopedia focuses on the events, individuals, organizations, and ideas that shaped the world's navies during World War II, as well as the resultant battles that changed naval history. It also covers the numerous innovations that occurred during the conflict and shows how strategies evolved and were executed.
Author: Chris Madsen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135223653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
After the bitter lessons of German self-disarmament in 1919, Britain was far more alert and focused when it came to overseeing the disarmament of Germany's naval forces after World War II. This book shows how well-prepared the British were second time around.
![World War II [5 volumes] PDF](https://books.google.com/books/content/images/frontcover/wZX3EAAAQBAJ?fife=w80-h100)
Author: Spencer C. Tucker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 4723
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Book Description
With more than 1,700 cross-referenced entries covering every aspect of World War II, the events and developments of the era, and myriad related subjects as well as a documents volume, this is the most comprehensive reference work available on the war. This encyclopedia represents a single source of authoritative information on World War II that provides accessible coverage of the causes, course, and consequences of the war. Its introductory overview essays and cross-referenced A–Z entries explain how various sources of friction culminated in a second worldwide conflict, document the events of the war and why individual battles were won and lost, and identify numerous ways the war has permanently changed the world. The coverage addresses the individuals, campaigns, battles, key weapons systems, strategic decisions, and technological developments of the conflict, as well as the diplomatic, economic, and cultural aspects of World War II. The five-volume set provides comprehensive information that gives readers insight into the reasons for the war's direction and outcome. Readers will understand the motivations behind Japan's decision to attack the United States, appreciate how the concentration of German military resources on the Eastern Front affected the war's outcome, understand the major strategic decisions of the war and the factors behind them, grasp how the Second Sino-Japanese War contributed to the start of World War II, and see the direct impact of new military technology on the outcomes of the battles during the conflict. The lengthy documents volume represents a valuable repository of additional information for student research.
Author: Vincent Hunt
Publisher: Helion and Company
ISBN: 1912866935
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
With original research and interviews with survivors, a journalist reveals the brutal yet forgotten battles in Latvia during the final months of WWII. While the eyes of the world were on Hitler’s bunker, more than half a million men fought six cataclysmic battles in the fields and forests of Western Latvia known as the Courland Pocket. Just an hour from the capital Riga, German forces bolstered by Latvian Legionnaires were trapped with their backs to the Baltic. Forced into uniform by Nazi and Soviet occupiers, Latvian fought Latvian – sometimes brother against brother. Hundreds of thousands of men died for little territorial gain in unimaginable slaughter. When the Germans capitulated, thousands of Latvians continued a war against Soviet rule from the forests for years afterwards. An award-winning documentary journalist, Vincent Hunt travels through the modern landscape gathering eye-witness accounts, piecing together the stories of those who survived. He meets veterans who fought in the Latvian Legion, former partisans and a refugee who fled the Soviet advance to later become President, Vaira Vike-Freiberga. A survivor of the little-known concentration camp at Popervale details his escape from a death march and subsequent survival in the forests with a Soviet partisan group - and a German deserter. With detailed maps and expert contributions alongside rare newspaper archives, photographs from private collections and extracts from diaries translated from Latvian, German and Russian, Hunt assembles a ghastly picture of death and desperation in a nation both gripped by war and at war with itself.
Author: Alastair Noble
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1836241976
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 527
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Book Description
An examination of the final period of Nazi rule in Germany's eastern provinces at the end of the Second World War. It outlines the wartime role of this region and assesses the impact of Nazi 'popular mobilisation' initiatives during the closing months of the conflict.
