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Author: Stephen Harding
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306822091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
The incredible story of the unlikeliest battle of World War II, when a small group of American soldiers joined forces with German soldiers to fight off fanatical SS troops May, 1945. Hitler is dead, the Third Reich is little more than smoking rubble, and no GI wants to be the last man killed in action against the Nazis. The Last Battle tells the nearly unbelievable story of the unlikeliest battle of the war, when a small group of American tankers, led by Captain Lee, joined forces with German soldiers to fight off fanatical SS troops seeking to capture Castle Itter and execute the stronghold's VIP prisoners. It is a tale of unlikely allies, startling bravery, jittery suspense, and desperate combat between implacable enemies.
Author: Stephen Harding
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306822091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
The incredible story of the unlikeliest battle of World War II, when a small group of American soldiers joined forces with German soldiers to fight off fanatical SS troops May, 1945. Hitler is dead, the Third Reich is little more than smoking rubble, and no GI wants to be the last man killed in action against the Nazis. The Last Battle tells the nearly unbelievable story of the unlikeliest battle of the war, when a small group of American tankers, led by Captain Lee, joined forces with German soldiers to fight off fanatical SS troops seeking to capture Castle Itter and execute the stronghold's VIP prisoners. It is a tale of unlikely allies, startling bravery, jittery suspense, and desperate combat between implacable enemies.
Author: Stephen Wynn
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399007106
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
The Battle of Itter Castle was undoubtedly one of the strangest events of the Second World War, being one of only two occasions during the war in which Americans and Germans fought side by side. The castle was seized by the Nazis on 7 February 1943, on the direct orders of Heinrich Himmler, and in just ten weeks was changed into a five-star prison for a number of high-ranking French dignitaries, both civilian and military. In the final days of the war, in May 1945, with the castle's German guards having deserted their posts and an attack by SS units imminent, those inside the castle realised they needed help. Having sent out two men to try to make contact with American forces, it was then a case of sit and wait, not knowing if they had been successful in their task or had been captured and killed by the SS. Help eventually arrived in the shape of United States Army Captain John C. "Jack" Lee, his tank and a handful of men, along with German Wehrmacht officer Major Josef "Sepp" Gangl, and some of his men. Although happy that their 'prayers' had been answered and help had arrived, the French dignitaries could not hide their disappointment at such a small force of rescuers. The subsequent battle started early on the morning of Saturday, 5 May, and continued until mid-afternoon when a larger American force arrived and defeated the remaining SS forces. The victory came at a price for Major Gangl, who was the only one of the defenders to lose his life in the fighting.
Author: Charles River
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 78
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Book Description
After the successful amphibious invasion on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies began racing east toward Germany and liberating France along the way. The Allies had landed along a 50 mile stretch of French coast, and despite suffering 8,000 casualties on D-Day, over 100,000 still began the march across the western portion of the continent. By the end of August 1944, the German Army in France was shattered, with 200,000 killed or wounded and a further 200,000 captured. However, Adolf Hitler reacted to the news of invasion with glee, figuring it would give the Germans a chance to destroy the Allied armies that had water to their backs. As he put it, "The news couldn't be better. We have them where we can destroy them." In April 1945, the Allies were within sight of the German capital of Berlin, but Hitler refused to acknowledge the collapsed state of the German military effort even at this desperate stage, and he confined himself to his Berlin bunker where he met for prolonged periods only with those that professed eternal loyalty, even to the point of death. In his last weeks, Hitler continued to blame the incompetence of military officers for Germany's apparent failings, and he even blamed the German people themselves for a lack of spirit and strength. As their leader dwelled in a state of self-pity, without remorse or mercy but near suicide, the people of Berlin were simply left to await their fate as Russians advanced from the east and the other Allies advanced from the west. The battle for Berlin would technically begin on April 16, 1945, and though it ended in a matter of weeks, it produced some of the war's most climactic events and had profound implications on the immediate future. By the time the fighting mostly came to an end on May 2, Hitler had already committed suicide and the chain of German surrenders in the field outside of Berlin took off like dominoes. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed Germany's unconditional surrender on May 7, and news of the final surrender of the Germans was celebrated as Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) on May 8, 1945. One of the most crucial aspects of the final fighting was that while some Germans gave up and others committed suicide, there were others holding out or trying to escape, and that produced one of the war's most unusual scenes. World War II brought about the creation and breaking of a number of alliances, which meant German and Soviet soldiers coordinated together before bitterly fighting each other after Germany's invasion of Russia in 1941. Similarly, Italian soldiers began the war fighting the Allies until, in July 1943, Mussolini was deposed and Italian soldiers found themselves fighting with the Allies against the Germans. But neither of those situations truly compares to a skirmish fought in early May 1945, which featured Americans and Germans fighting together for the first and only time. And as if that wasn't unbelievable enough, they were fighting the Waffen-SS. At stake was an Austrian castle that had served as a prison for some of the most senior French prisoners of war, including two former Prime Ministers. The SS had been responsible for guarding the castle, but after the guards abandoned it with the war coming to an end, American and German soldiers who had already surrendered defended the prisoners at the site. Nonetheless, in early May, a Waffen-SS unit was detailed to retake the castle, almost certainly with the intention of executing the prisoners before all fighting ceased. Thus, the Battle of Castle Itter, an almost completely forgotten sideshow, would find Americans and Germans defending French prisoners against the SS.
Author: Sivamohan Valluvan
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 152612615X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
Nationalism has reasserted itself today as the political force of our times, remaking European politics wherever one looks. Britain is no exception, and in the midst of Brexit, it has even become a vanguard of nationalism’s confident return to the mainstream. Intellectual attempts to account for nationalism’s resurgence have however floundered. Desperately trying to read nationalism through one overarching cause – as capitalist crisis, as cultural backlash, or as social media led anti-Establishment politics – these accounts have proven woefully inadequate. This book argues that the only way to understand nationalism is through nationalism itself. To understand it as the key force of modernity that calls upon all existing ideological traditions in asserting its appeal: whether it is liberal, conservative, neoliberal or left-wing. This ideological clamour that characterises today’s British nationalism requires both recognition and theorisation. A meaningful understanding of new nationalism must reckon with the ideological range animating it and the deeply hostile aversion to different racial minorities that pervades its respective ideologies. Drawing on a variety of cultural and political themes – ranging from Corbyn’s dithering, the cult of Churchillism, the neoliberal fixation with a ‘point-system’ immigration policy, the muscular secularism of Richard Dawkins and friends, fears that the white working class have ‘become black’, and even simply the strange appeal of Harry Potter and Game of Thrones – this book provides a dazzling but always detailed study of how nationalism is the politics of today only because it is a politics of everything.
Author: Edouard Daladier
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
"The French Prime Minister who signed the Munich Agreement in 1938 and who one year later led his country into war against Hitler's Germany, Edouard Daladier was arrested by the Vichy regime and imprisoned in France and Germany until the war's end. As a pastime and a catharsis, Daladier wrote." "He wrote about what had happened to him and to his country, about day-to-day conditions in captivity, and about what he could glean of the anti-Nazi war effort through newspaper accounts, from the visits of his friends and family, and from his well-hidden radio receiver. He wrote of the accusations made against him by his former proteges and comrades-in-arms; and of his trial, during which the charges oddly metamorphosed from having declared war on Germany to not having sufficiently prepared France for battle (the charges were of little importance, as the verdict had been previously decided)." "Ever the statesman, Daladier wrote most of all about his hopes and fears for France and Europe - which hung so heavily, at first, upon the battlefield successes of the British, American, and Allied forces; and later, upon the Allies' refusal to recognize in Soviet power the danger of the very totalitarianism that they had been fighting to eliminate. At the war's end, witnessing the devastation of Germany, Daladier wrote with a poignant sympathy that is unexpectedly moving." "Daladier's notes remained forgotten and unpublished until twenty years after his death, when they were discovered and compiled by his son Jean. They are presented here in English for the first time. By turns sorrowful, enraged, humorous, and philosophical, this lively narrative gives fresh insights into the tangled politics of the era."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Author: C. Lloyd
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230503926
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
This book is about how people behaved during the German occupation of France during World War Two, and more specifically about how individuals from different social and political backgrounds recorded and reflected on their experiences during and after these tragic events. The book focuses on the concepts of treason and sacrifice, and takes the form of an introductory overview, followed by contextualised case studies in the areas of politics, daily life, civil administration, paramilitary action, literature and film.
Author: United States. War Department
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Infantry
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
Author: Wayne Vansant
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682474399
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 586
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Book Description
On Sunday, June 22, 1941, the morning after Katusha's graduation, the Germans invade the Soviet Union. As enemy forces occupy Kiev, Ukraine, Katusha and her family learn the Nazis are not there to liberate them from harsh communist rule, but to conquer. They discover there is a special danger for the Jews, and in saving her friend Zhenya Gersteinfeld, Katusha finds her whole family in danger. During the next four years, Katusha experiences the war on the Eastern Front with all its ferocity and hardship: first as a partisan, then as a Red Army tank driver and commander. From Barbarossa to Babi Yar, from Stalingrad to Kursk, from the Dnipro to Berlin, follow the footprints and tanks tracks of Katusha's journey through a time of death, hopelessness, victory, glory, and even love. Seen through the eyes of a Ukrainian teenage girl, Katusha is both a coming-of-age story and a carefully researched account of one of the most turbulent and important periods of the twentieth century, where women served in the hundreds of thousands, and Russians died by the millions.
Author: Dennis E. Showalter
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 1616085460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Leading historians suggest what might have been if key events during World War II had the war gone differently.
Author: Charles Sydnor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691008530
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
Surveys the emergence of the Nazi SS and its Death's Head Division, noting the impact of this elite and powerful army upon military history.
