World War II history

As historians are becoming more aware of the diversity of the Australian prisoner of war experience during the Second World War, increasing numbers of Indigenous Australians' stories are being identified. Through the combined hard work of researchers, families, and communities, a more complete picture of Aboriginal prisoner-of-war experiences is emerging.

"Still, something essentially sympathetic about Lucas persists, and his fate is heavy with pathos. Once he had been selected for a command he never should have held, he had no choice but to carry out his orders as he understood them, even though he regarded them at the core as completely misguided and he was fully prepared to die doing his duty. The only other option would have been to ask to be relieved, thus ending a distinguished career under a real cloud, rather than the historical fog that has settled over his name. John Lucas, who had faced Pancho Villa's men, alone, barefoot, and in the dark, was not prepared to do that."

Alamein covers the events leading up to the battle in North Africa that turned the tides of war against the Axis Powers during World War II: the Battle of Al Alamein. The first part of the book is the history of the battle. Sections include: the leaders, their weapons, the battles of Tobruk, Gazala, and finally Al Alamein. There is a section on the contribution of spies to the victory of the allies. The second half of the book is devoted to a tour of the battle sites, the memorials, and the Al Alamein Museum.
56 pages. 20 vintage black and white illustrations. 8 color illustrations. 10 maps. 6x9. All rights reserved. copyright © Cassandra Vivian 1992. ISBN: 977-5100-0\8-9.

This study examines the role of political factors in attitudes toward World War II in contemporary Ukraine. The question under examination is which factors determine public views of the principal warring sides and their leaders in Ukraine. This paper uses a representative national survey specifically designed for this research project and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in 2012. It analyzes the roles of regionalism, political party preferences, ethnicity, language, age, and sex in attitudes toward the Red Army, Soviet partisans, the German Army (Wehrmacht), and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during the war, as well as toward the wartime leaders of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the UPA. The analysis of the survey data shows that regional values, political party preferences, ethnicity, language, and age have significant effects on views of the Soviet Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the war and attitudes toward the wartime activities of Joseph Stalin and Roman Shukhevych. Public perceptions of the German Army and Adolf Hitler in Ukraine do not vary much across regions, political parties, and ethnic, language, age, and sex groups.

Dados da Segunda Guerra Mundial A Segunda Guerra Mundial teve amplitude maior do que na Primeira Guerra Mundial, estendendo-se através do Atlântico e do Pacífico pela Europa e a Ásia, e do Ártico ao Norte da África. Mais de cinquenta milhões de pessoas morreram em 2.174 dias de luta entre 1939 e 1945-muitas outras pereceram anteriormente, durante a invasão da China pelo Japão, que começou em 1931. Mortandade em massa de civis foi admitida em ambos os lados-metade dos 36 milhões de pessoas que morreram na Europa não eram combatentes, e as baixas de civis chineses chegaram a muitos milhões. Embora fossem travados ásperos e sangrentos combates corpo a corpo, morte e destruição, muitas vezes se infligiram por quem não via, do ar e das posições de artilharia, os mortos. Hiroshima e Nagasaki foram extensões lógicas da blitz de Londres. Tanto o custo em vidas humanas, o conflito causou enorme destruição material. A América do Norte escapou à devastação, mas grandes parcelas da Alemanha e do Japão foram arrasadas, enquanto um quarto dos bens da União Soviética foi destruído.

This article is devoted to Birth Anniversary of Kurt Knispel, the highest scoring tank ace of World War II with a total of 168 confirmed tank kills. He was born in Salisfeld (Salisov) near the town of Zuckmantel (Zlaté Hory) in Sudetenland (now Jesenicko District, Land of Silesia, Czech Republic).

An analysis of the plan of the German General Staff in the context of the military-political situation in Europe in the years before the outbreak of the Second World War and the aggression of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union, shows that anti-Russian attacks today are based on a misreading of activities of military and political leadership of the USSR in the interwar period and the pre-war years.

"There is an apocryphal story that German General Staff Chief von Moltke once said that it takes the loss of a full division to train a major general. As brutal and cynical as this sounds, if there is any truth at all in it and without in any way diminishing respect for and gratitude to those who fell, then Kasserine Pass might be considered a "bargain." At a cost of just 6,000 casualties, one clearly incompetent general unworthy of further "training" was relieved, and the Supreme Allied Commander learned one of the most important lessons in war - the absolute requirement for ruthlessness in command. From that point on, Ike dealt severely with those who failed in leadership on or off the battlefield."

Berdasarkan hasil penelitian maka dapat disimpulkan sebagai berikut: Pertama, tentara Jepang mulai memasuki Pontianak pada 2 Februari 1942 dan disambut dengan baik. Jepang melakukan mobilisasi terhadap rakyat untuk kepentingan perang mereka, seperti pengerahan pemuda, pengenalan budaya Jepang dan kewajiban kerja bakti. Akan tetapi semakin lama rakyat merasa antipati karena sikap kejam tentara Jepang, serta kondisi hidup yang semakin sulit pada waktu itu. Kedua, Peristiwa Mandor terjadi karena kecurigaan dan kekhawatiran Jepang akan adanya aksi perlawanan rakyat. Kabar ini hanyalah isu dan seakan dibuat-dibuat. Jepang melakukan pembersihan sebagai upaya pencegahan mulai dari Oktober 1943 hingga 28 Juni 1944. Jumlah korban secara resmi menurut pemerintah Kalimantan Barat ialah 21.037 jiwa. Ketiga, dampak Peristiwa Mandor antara lain hilangnya generasi cerdik pandai, terpelajar, hingga tokoh politik yang dapat menjadi modal untuk membangun Kalimantan Barat. Selain itu dua belas pemimpin swapraja/kesultanan juga gugur dan menyebabkan keguncangan pemerintahannya. Kekejaman Jepang terhadap rakyat juga memantik perlawanan etno-gerilya Suku Dayak di seluruh penjuru Kalimantan Barat.

This book is the first of a kind in that it covers South Africa's war in East and North Africa in a single volume. However, it is by no means a complete history. Some events, especially those which involve the South Africans, are dealt with in detail, while other facets of the desert war receive less attention. The Union Defence Force in the Second World War made tremendous sacrifices, all but forgotten in South Africa and Britain. Britain owes a debt to the South Africans who voluntarily came to her aid during her darkest hours. Modern day South Africans, who enjoy the fruits of a democratic country, should not forget that black and white South Africans soldiers took up arms and fought side by side against fascist tyranny in the hope that a better and freer South Africa would emerge as a result of their sacrifices.

La política diplomática y migratoria mexicana a finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX se caracterizó por fomentar el respeto y colaboración entre naciones, velar por las garantías y derechos de las personas, así como respetar la vida e intereses de los extranjeros que llegaban al territorio nacional.
Sin embargo, en la primera mitad del siglo XX la política migratoria del gobierno mexicano se transformó de acuerdo con el cambiante contexto internacional, en el que fue de mayor prioridad resguardar los intereses económicos y políticos nacionales que mantener una imagen internacional de amistad y protección de los exiliados internacionales.
Este artículo se desarrolla en torno a dos hechos históricos que determinantes de las políticas migratorias, diplomática y de integración social en México: la crisis económica internacional de 1929 y el estallido de la Segunda Guerra Mundial en 1939.

Varying figures appear in different sources documenting Royal Australian Air Force losses in Bomber Command. But why has there been such a discrepancy in the numbers and what is the more accurate figure? New research explains how the true figure is much higher than that listed in the Australian Official History of the Second World War.

Roman Shukhevych conducted his first political assassination in 1926 at age 19. In 1934, he was jailed for his role in killing Poland’s Interior Minister. By 1940, he was attending a Nazi military intelligence (Abwehr) academy in German-occupied Poland.

In 2015, the Government of  Canada gave $279,138 to the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in Edmonton. Just outside this centre is a large bronze statue to Shukhevych.  It has often been used over the decades as the symbolic backdrop for uniformed Ukrainian ethnonationalist youth and veterans of fascist military formations to pose in reverence to their WWII-era heroes.

Shukhevych was an organizer of Bandera’s faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B). In 1941, he helped create their founding policy. It called for the ethnic cleansing of "non-Ukrainians" and the liquidation of "Polish, Muscovite and Jewish activists" in a future Ukrainian state.1

Shukhevych was the top-ranking Ukrainian in the Nachtigall Battalion (aka the Konovalets’ Legion). Trained, armed, funded and led by the Nazis, and attached to a Germany special-forces regiment, its Ukrainian soldiers wore German uniforms and joined their Operation-Barbarossa invasion of the USSR (June 22, 1941). Eight days later, on his 34th birthday, Shukhevych’s Nachtigall marched into Lviv with the Nazis. The OUN(B) then declared Ukraine a state under President Yaroslav Stetsko, with Shukhevych as Deputy Defense Minister.

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the world’s two superpower countries the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies, the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc, after the finish of World War II. In the second half of the 20th century, they are engaged in a face-off without direct confrontation for almost 45 years. Major European powerful country is weakened after more than 60 million deaths in 6 years of fighting.

The author states that the "Europe First" strategy of the United States in World War II was more a political statement that a military strategy.  He asserts that the U.S. effort required to defeat Japan has been underestimated by many historians.

Praca źródłowa, zawierająca ponad 2300 biogramów, ustalonych na podstawie akt Sądu Grodzkiego w Białymstoku. Bohaterami publikacji są białostoczanie, którzy zaginęli lub - co najczęstsze - zginęli w wyniku działań II wojny światowej.

This book consists of over 2300 (arranged alphabetically) biographies inhabitants of Białystok who have been missing or have died as a result of warfare of World War II. The presented publication is based on the archival sources, mainly on court files in Białystok.

Public Diplomacy is much about communication, advocacy, and appeals.  D-Day, June 6, 1944, and President Roosevelt's radio prayer to the American people allow us to take a professional look at public communication on “The Longest Day.”  The President was heard by as many as 100 million Americans.  He sought a full engagement of the nation’s deepest values and religious emotions.

The ideal of the unity of the Resistance is one of the most impervious myths of recent Italian history. Both historians and former partisans have propounded this ideal of unity, but the weight of historical evidence does not justify such a view. While operational unity certainly existed among the Resistance forces, this should not disguise the evident fractures and divisions within the Resistance movement as a whole. Through an examination of the Piedmontese Resistance, it becomes evident that ideological differences, pragmatic political issues and even the competing esprit de corps of the individual partisan brigades created suspicion, tension and hostility among Resistance forces at the local, regional and even national level.

This paper explores the internecine conflict that characterised and undermined US propaganda toward neutral Spain in the Second World War. These tensions primarily confronted those who saw US propaganda as an ideological weapon of mass persuasion in a crusade against Fascism with those who defended that US informational and cultural operations should be subservient to traditional diplomacy, and so be limited to explaining US foreign policy and advancing bilateral friendship. In addition, the article argues that the unambiguous subordination of propaganda to diplomacy that characterised US public diplomacy during the cold war was one of the lessons learnt out of the civil war that US propagandists fought over Spain between 1941 and early 1945.

В статье анализируется роль Бразилии во Второй мировой войне. Она была единственной страной латиноамериканского континента, пославшей свои войска в Европу для сражений с гитлеровцами. Рассмотрены характер боевых действий Бразильского экспедиционного корпуса на итальянском театре военных действий, а также деятельность авиационно-истребительного отряда бразильских ВВС.
Ключевые слова: Бразилия, Италия, Бразильский экспедиционный корпус, Монте-Кастелло, Жетулио Варгас, Эурико Гаспар Дутра, Освалдо Аранья, Жоао Батиста Маскареньяс де Мораес.

By the latter half of 1942, the High Command of the German U-Boats (BdU) realised that the “sinking results’’ of the North Atlantic had decreased immensely. The successes of the Allied anti-submarine operations in the North Atlantic precluded the successful employment of the German submarines in said waters. It was realised that the “sinking potential” of the Cape Town - Freetown convoy route, in terms of tonnage, had increased exponentially by the latter half of 1942. This sudden increase was a direct result of the successful German submarine operations in the North Atlantic during 1939-1942. The first German submarine offensive in South African waters during 1942, Operation Eisbär, was aimed at striking a devastating blow to shipping off the South African coast. By the end of December 1942 an estimated 310 864 tons of shipping had been sunk through Operation Eisbär alone. The success of Operation Eisbär led to a further two German submarine offensives being launched by the BdU in South African waters during the remainder of the Second World War, with a number of opportunistic attacks also made by submarines travelling to the Far East. This paper deals with the German Submarine Offensives off the South African Coast between1942 and 1945. It focusses on three key aspects of the maritime war off the South African coast: the maritime threat perception, the Axis maritime strategy in these waters, and the resulting
U-boat offensives.

The German invasion of the Netherlands on the 10th of May 1940 was not only a tragedy for the Dutch people; it was also a tragedy for Dutch literature. In a few weeks time, the intellectual leaders of an entire generation would disappear. In the chaos of the battle of Rotterdam, Doeke Zijlstra, editor in chief of the publishing house Nijgh & Van Ditmar, was killed by a stray bullet. Publisher Robert Leopold, who feared German revenge for his publication of Hermann Rauschning’s critical work Hitler Speaks, shot himself. The promising Jewish writer Jacob Hiegentlich took poison and died. The young poet Tom de Bruin was accidentally shot by a nervous Dutch sentry. Hendrik Marsman, the most celebrated Dutch poet of his time, was among the few who found a place on a ship that would bring him to England. Within sight of the coast, however, they were hit by a German torpedo and he drowned. By then, two of the most prominent essayists, Edgar Du Perron and Menno ter Braak, had already died; Du Perron collapsed with a heart attack during the bombardment of an airport near his home in Bergen and ter Braak committed suicide upon the news of the Dutch surrender to the Germans. None of them ever knew about the death of the others.
What might seem as the last chapter of a Greek tragedy was only the beginning. During the occupation, at least 700 men and women of the underground press would lose their lives. The punishment for participation in the clandestine press was equivalent to that for acts of sabotage. Propaganda had been an essential element in the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and, as such, a strict control over the press in the occupied Netherlands was considered of paramount importance. Literature was given a totally new purpose in the occupied Netherlands; it became propaganda in support of the Nazification of Dutch society and the tightening of links between the “Germanic” Dutch and their German “brothers.”
Hence, Dutch authors were suddenly confronted with a tough challenge. For decades, most of them had preferred the loftiness of the ivory tower over the squabbling of daily politics. In 1937, the celebrated novelist Simon Vestdijk still wrote: “The creative artist faces war like a toddler: utterly helpless.”  Only a couple of years later, his publishing house was bombed and he himself was taken hostage. The same author, who didn’t want to have anything to do with war, had ended up in its clutches.
In fact, after the German invasion, participation in political debates was no longer an option. It had become a necessity. Even keeping quiet was now considered a political statement. In this context, a simple poem could have a huge impact.

Betrayal in High Places, a book written in 1996 by the late James MacKay, has created debate among World War II historians and former prisoners of war (POWs) because it claims to reveal suppressed Allied reports of Japanese war atrocities, such as the massacre of 387 American, Australian, British, and Dutch POWs in a gold mine at Aikawa on Sado Island, Japan, in 1945. Our investigation finds that the Sado massacre report is an intentional forgery, and that MacKay’s book is a spurious historical source. We explain why he sought to deceive the public and contrast his fiction with the historical truth about Sado Island.

Archaeologist Joel Klenck conducted an archaeological identification project for prehistoric and historic properties covering approximately 70 acres on Breakers Point, for the American Samoa Historic Preservation Office, in compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (“NHPA”), as amended. The project resulted in the identification and recordation of two sites: World War II defensive fortification complex (AS-23-64) and a precontact site (AS-23-65) that comprised 77 features and more sub-features (loci) and artifacts. There are 62 World War II features belonging to AS-23-64 and 23 precontact features ascribed to AS-23-65. A nomination for the U.S. National Register of Historic Places will be submitted for sites AS-23-64 and AS-23-65.