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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: 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: 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: 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.
Author: Ulrich Merten
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351519549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
The news agency Reuters reported in 2009 that a mass grave containing 1,800 bodies was found in Malbork, Poland. Polish authorities suspected that they were German civilians that were killed by advancing Soviet forces. A Polish archeologist supervising the exhumation, said, "We are dealing with a mass grave of civilians, probably of German origin. The presence of children . . . suggests they were civilians."During World War II, the German Nazi regime committed great crimes against innocent civilian victims: Jews, Poles, Russians, Serbs, and other people of Central and Eastern Europe. At war's end, however, innocent German civilians in turn became victims of crimes against humanity. Forgotten Voices lets these victims of ethnic cleansing tell their story in their own words, so that they and what they endured are not forgotten. This volume is an important supplement to the voices of victims of totalitarianism and has been written in order to keep the historical record clear.The root cause of this tragedy was ultimately the Nazi German regime. As a leading German historian, Hans-Ulrich Wehler has noted, "Germany should avoid creating a cult of victimization, and thus forgetting Auschwitz and the mass killing of Russians." Ulrich Merten argues that applying collective punishment to an entire people is a crime against humanity. He concludes that this should also be recognized as a European catastrophe, not only a German one, because of its magnitude and the broad violation of human rights that occurred on European soil.Supplementary maps and pictures are available online at http://www.forgottenvoices.net
![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: Stephen Robinson
Publisher: Exisle Publishing
ISBN: 1775593029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
Author: David T. Zabecki
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457
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Book Description
This invaluable resource offers students a comprehensive overview of the German war machine that overran much of Europe during World War II, with close to 300 entries on a variety of topics and a number of key primary source documents. This book provides everything the reader needs to know about the German war machine that developed into the potent armed force under Adolf Hitler. This expansive encyclopedia covers the period of the German Third Reich, from January 1933 to the end of World War II in Europe, in May 1945. Dozens of entries on key battles and military campaigns, military and political leaders, military and intelligence organizations, and social and political topics that shaped German military conduct during World War II are followed by an illuminating epilogue that outlines why Germany lost World War II. A documents section includes more than a dozen fascinating primary sources on such significant events as the Tripartite Pact among Germany, Italy, and Japan; the Battle of Stalingrad; the Normandy Invasion; the Ardennes Offensive; and Germany's surrender. In addition, six appendices provide detailed information on a variety of topics such as German aces, military commanders, and military medals and decorations. The book ends with a chronology and a bibliography of print resources.
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.
