Download or read book Italian POWs and a Texas Church written by Donald Mace Williams and published by Texas Tech University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interned in a camp in the Texas panhandle, more than 3,000 Italian POWs spent the last years of World War II an ocean away from their family and friends. A handful of men in camp were artists, and it was this small group of prisoners who struck a deal with the priest of a nearby Catholic church. In exchange for a home-cooked meal each noon, the artists agreed to decorate the plain church with murals and carvings. This compassionate story of courage and kindliness is as enduring as the artwork that still graces the walls of a modest Catholic church in a tiny Texas town.
Download or read book Interlude in Umbarger written by Donald Mace Williams and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interned in a camp in the Texas panhandle, more than 3,000 Italian POWs spent the last years of World War II an ocean away from their family and friends. A handful of men in camp were artists, and it was this small group of prisoners who struck a deal with the priest of a nearby Catholic church. In exchange for a home-cooked meal each noon, the artists agreed to decorate the plain church with murals and carvings. This compassionate story of courage and kindliness is as enduring as the artwork that still graces the walls of a modest Catholic church in a tiny Texas town.
Download or read book Italian Prisoners of War in Pennsylvania written by Flavio G. Conti and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-19 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II 51,000 Italian prisoners of war were detained in the United States. When Italy signed an armistice with the Allies in September 1943, most of these soldiers agreed to swear allegiance to the United States and to collaborate in the fight against Germany. At the Letterkenny Army Depot, located near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, more than 1,200 Italian soldiers were detained as co-operators. They arrived in May 1944 to form the 321st Italian Quartermaster Battalion and remained until October 1945. As detainees, the soldiers helped to order, stock, repair, and ship military goods, munitions and equipment to the Pacific and European Theaters of war. Through such labor, they lent their collective energy to the massive home front endeavor to defeat the Axis Powers. The prisoners also helped to construct the depot itself, building roads, sidewalks, and fences, along with individual buildings such as an assembly hall, amphitheater, swimming pool, and a chapel and bell tower. The latter of these two constructions still exist, and together with the assembly hall, bear eloquent testimony to the Italian POW experience. For their work the Italian co-operators received a very modest, regular salary, and they experienced more freedom than regular POWs. In their spare time, they often had liberty to leave the post in groups that American soldiers chaperoned. Additionally, they frequently received or visited large entourages of Italian Americans from the Mid-Atlantic region who were eager to comfort their erstwhile countrymen. The story of these Italian soldiers detained at Letterkenny has never before been told. Now, however, oral histories from surviving POWs, memoirs generously donated by family members of ex-prisoners, and the rich information newly available from archival material in Italy, aided by material found in the U.S., have made it possible to reconstruct this experience in full. All of this historical documentation has also allowed the authors to tell fascinating individual stories from the moment when many POWs were captured to their return to Italy and beyond. More than seventy years since the end of World War II, family members of ex-POWs in both the United States and Italy still enjoy the positive legacy of this encounter.
Download or read book Texas and Texans in World War II written by Christopher B. Bean and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-24 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Texans in World War II offers an informative look at the challenges and changes faced by Texans on the home front during the Second World War. This collection of essays by leading scholars of Texas history covers topics from the African American and Tejano experience to organized labor, from the expanding opportunities for women to the importance of oil and agriculture. Texans in World War II makes local the frequently studied social history of wartime, bringing it home to Texas. An eye-opening read for Texans eager to learn more about this defining era in their state’s history, this book will also prove deeply informative for scholars, students, and general readers seeking detailed, definitive information about World War II and its implications for daily life, economic growth, and social and political change in the Lone Star State.
Download or read book The British Empire and its Italian Prisoners of War 1940 1947 written by B. Moore and published by Springer. This book was released on 2002-03-13 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Second World War, British and Imperial forces captured more than half a million Italian soldiers, sailors and airmen. Although a symbol of military success, these prisoners created a multitude of problems for the authorities throughout the war. This book looks at how the British addressed these problems and turned liabilities into assets by using the Italians as a labour force, a source of military intelligence and as a political warfare tool before their final repatriation in 1946-47.
Download or read book Finding Your Italian Ancestors written by Suzanne Russo Adams and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For millions of Americans, home means Italy, where their roots started years ago. In Finding Your Italian Ancestors, you'll discover the tools you need to trace your ancestors back to the homeland. Learn how and where to find records in the United States and Italy, get practical advice on deciphering those hard-to-read documents, and explore valuable online resources. The guide also includes maps, multiple glossaries, and an extensive bibliography.
Download or read book Forgotten Battles written by Charles T. O'Reilly and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italy's War of Liberation takes issue with the apparently prevalent attitude among Allied commanders during World War II that the Italian military was ineffective. O'Reilly recounts the little-known story of the significant contribution made by the Italian military during the Italian Campaign, including the contribution of relatively unacknowledged Italian Partisan formations that fought in Italy, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece. Despite the fact that Italians fought on the front lines with the British and American soldiers, and despite the service of the Italian Navy and Air Force, the Allies refused repeated Italian pleas for more involvement in combat. This book not only attempts to correct the record of military history by illustrating the ways in which the Italians were underutilized by the Allies, but it also serves to paint a fair portrait of the Italian military's substantial efforts to defeat Hitler and eradicate Fascism.
Download or read book Italian Americans Bridges to Italy Bonds to America written by and published by Teneo Press. This book was released on with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume attesting to the Italian American influence on the United States, nine professors of Italian American studies and a curator of an ethnic museum provide original essays on the Italian American experience, using the theme bridges to Italy and bonds to America. Drawing from a wide variety of primary sources, such as census tracts, local directories, diaries, voting records, newspaper accounts, personal interviews and scholarly and polemical books and articles, the authors show how Italian Americans adapted, through work, prejudice, strife, and advancement, to the social and political life in America while still retaining an element of Italianita. A bibliography of the colonial period reveals how Italians and Italian Americans impacted the creation, exploration, and settlement of America. While many studies are concentrated in the eastern United States, Italian Americans settled early in the west, including Arizona. Their history in Arizona parallels the labor strife, religion, music, and entrepreneurship that engaged their countrymen in the East. Italian Americans responded in a massive way to help their families that were devastated by the earthquake that leveled Messina, Sicily and Reggio, Calabria. A study of a sculptor who settled in Pittsburgh, shows how he produced works depicting, American and Italian themes often on a grand scale suitable for outdoor placement, and mingled with native-born community leaders and clubs and fraternal organizations. Tracing the life of a controversial Brooklyn politician, Francis B. Spinola, the authors show how he was elected to local and state political office and fought in the U. S. Civil War. Italian Americans were key components in the early years of jazz history in the 1920s and 1930s. This study adds some balance to the development of jazz by tracing the bonds that Italian Americans formed with Black musicians and their pioneering use of the guitar and violin. An obvious example of the theme of this book is a study of Italian prisoners of World War II, who were transported to the United States and settled in a camp in Texas. The author shows how they helped farmers by their work and how artists among them helped decorate a local church with paintings and murals. A comparison of the Italian and Mexican immigration to the United States shows the similarity and differences of these two groups over time. An examination of the proposition that Mexicans are like Italians is examined in detail. A bibliographical study of the “southern question” in Italian history shows the explosive forces that erupted during and after Italian unification. Italians and Italian Americans are still debating whether this incorporation of the Italian south into the kingdom of Italy was detrimental to the people who lived there and contributed to the massive emigration that followed. This study is an outgrowth of a desire by scholars to honor the passing of Professor Salvatore Mondello, coauthor of the national bestseller The Italian Americans. One of a few historians of Italian American immigration who appeared on the scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s he approached the subject with enthusiasm, passion, and a relentless search for relevant material marked by digging into primary sources, rooting out individuals who had lived through the immigrant experience and pouring over the contemporary accounts found in newspapers and magazines. Sal was one of the first to see the important link between railroads and Italian American settlements. He saw that the rail lines accelerated the Italians’ movement beyond the large cities in the coastal areas. They used the railroads as the means to establish new lives in many urban and rural communities across the country. In many ways the articles presented in this book reflect the Mondello approach. The authors continue as pioneers by dealing with important topics that have been overlooked, ignored, and/or newly arisen. They add a dimension to Italian immigration which focuses on the interaction of American and immigrant cultures and shows them as much American as Italian, if not more so. Having the advantage of living and teaching in smaller towns, the authors write with conviction and verve. Whether treating subjects old or new, the authors’ writing is clean, fresh, often imaginative and well documented producing a fine example of good scholarship, solid research, clear expository writing, and expert analysis. They move Italian American history beyond the corpus of work which usually includes radicalism, labor strife, crime, religion and the current blossoming of literature and poetry framing Italian American themes. This book will serve to inspire the group of scholars appearing on the scene today to carry on in opening new paths in the Italian American experience. This book will be of interest to scholars and lay people alike. Scholars will find particularly useful the information in the bibliographical articles and the book’s usefulness as a reader in an immigration history or sociology course. The younger scholar is sure to be challenged and possibly richly rewarded. The book’s human interest will appeal to a diverse audience, young and old. Exposed to nine subjects, the general reader is sure to be drawn to one or more of them.
Download or read book Historic Churches in Texas written by ,William and published by Covenant Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2018-06-20 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of historic churches in Texas is the story of the Anglo-American and European immigrants in Texas. It is the story of the struggle of three cultures trying to coexist in an empty and often hostile land: the Native Americans, the Mexicans, and the immigrants. It is the story of circuit-riding preachers tirelessly, clandestinely crisscrossing Texas, bringing the Protestant word of God to the people in a land where, prior to Texas's independence, only Catholicism was legal. It is the story of a people who successfully fought and won their independence to build a nation. It is the story of Texas. Over the past ten years, my wife and I have visited and photographed almost one thousand historic churches in Texas. We have seen stunningly beautiful stained-glass windows, listened to the rich tones of Texas's largest organ, and prayed in the smallest active Catholic Church in the world. We visited the oldest Polish church in the United States in Panna Maria, lingered with spirits in an abandoned church in Nacogdoches, and were dazzled by the bright colors and designs found in the Catholic Cathedral in Beaumont. In Berlin, we held a silver communion cup donated to the church in 1889, and in San Antonio we touched the sarcophagus where the remains of Alamo heroes William Travis, David Crockett, and James Bowie are said to be kept. The photographs and text, which was jointly written by William and Mary Pamela Schaefer, are attempts to capture the important history and the quiet beauty of the 186 historic Texas churches presented in this book.
Download or read book Prisoners of War written by Arnold Krammer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-11-30 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's current War on Terror is causing a readjustment of centuries of POW policies. Prisoners of war are once again in the news as America and Western Europe grapple with a new, faceless enemy and the rules of war and the torture of POWs are open to reconsideration. Until very recently, there has been astonishingly little written on the subject of prisoners of war. Yet, to understand the present, it is critical to look back over history. To that end, Arnold Krammer examines the fate of war prisoners from Biblical and Medieval times through the halting evolution of international law to the current reshuffling of the rules. The issue of prisoners of war is of more immediate concern now than ever before and an examination of the history of their treatment and current status may well influence foreign policy. The fate of war prisoners through history has been cruel and haphazard. The lives of captives hung by a thread. Execution, enslavement, torture, or being held for ransom were equally likely. International agreements developed haltingly through the 19th and 20th centuries to culminate in the Geneva Accords of 1929. America's current War on Terror is causing a readjustment of centuries of POW policies. Prisoners of war are once again in the news as America and Western Europe grapple with a new, faceless enemy and the rules of war and the torture of POWs are open to reconsideration. Until very recently, there has been astonishingly little written on the subject of prisoners of war. Yet, to understand the present, it is critical to look back over history. To that end, Arnold Krammer examines the fate of war prisoners from Biblical and Medieval times through the halting evolution of international law to the current reshuffling of the rules. Since biblical times, war captives have been considered property and counted as booty to be enslaved or killed. Americans were interested in generals and weapons and battles, but not the fate of prisoners of war. The Second World War, when 90,000 Americans fell into enemy hands, began to change that. Concern for our POWs in Germany and Japan, and close contact with enemy camps in America began to change our attitudes. However, it was the Vietnam War, media-driven and polarizing, that caused the American public to truly reevaluate the plight of its sons and brothers, heroic and clearly loyal, as they fell into the hands of an inscrutable and apparently unyielding distant enemy. More recently, during the first Gulf War of 1991 and the current War on Terrorism, the issue of prisoners of war has moved to center stage, involving the clash of ideologies, politics, and expediency. Since 9/11, the rights and safety of prisoners of war caught up in the War on Terror have been debated in Congress and adjudicated on by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales whose conclusions were protested by numerous organizations. The issue of prisoners of war is of more immediate concern now than ever before, and an examination of the history of their treatment and current status may well influence foreign policy.
Download or read book America s Captives written by Paul J. Springer and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2010-03-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notwithstanding the long shadows cast by Abu Ghraib and Guantnamo, the United States has been generally humane in the treatment of prisoners of war, reflecting a desire to both respect international law and provide the kind of treatment we would want for our own troops if captured. In this first comprehensive study of the subject in more than half a century, Paul Springer presents an in-depth look at American POW policy and practice from the Revolutionary War to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Springer contends that our nation's creation and application of POW policy has been repeatedly improvised and haphazard, due in part to our military's understandable focus on defeating its enemies on the field of battle, rather than on making arrangements for their detention. That focus, however, has set the conditions for the military's chronic failure to record and learn from both successful and unsuccessful POW practices in previous wars. He also observes that American POW policy since World War II has largely sought to outsource POW operations to allied forces in order to retain American personnel for frontline service-outsourcing that has led to recent scandals. Focusing on each major war in turn, Springer examines the lessons learned and forgotten by American military and political leaders regarding our nation's experience in dealing with foreign POWs. He highlights the indignities of the Civil War, the efforts of the United States and its World War I allies to devise an effective POW policy, the unequal treatment of Japanese prisoners compared with that of German and Italian prisoners during World War II, and the impact of the Geneva Convention on the handling of Korean and Vietnamese captives. In bringing his coverage up to the so-called War on Terror, he also marks the nation's clear departure from previous practice-American treatment of POWs, once deemed exemplary by the Red Cross after Operation Desert Storm, has become controversial throughout the world. America's Captives provides a long-needed overarching framework for this important subject and makes a strong case that we should stop ignoring the lessons of the past and make the disposition of prisoners one of the standard components of our military education and training.
Download or read book World War II in Europe Africa and the Americas with General Sources written by Loyd Lee and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1997-08-21 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A broadly interdisciplinary work, this handbook discusses the best and most enduring literature related to the major topics and themes of World War II. Military historiography is treated in essays on the major theaters of military operations and the related themes of logistics and intelligence, while political and diplomatic history is covered in chapters on international relations, resistance movements, and collaboration. The volume analyzes themes of domestic history in essays on economic mobilization, the home fronts, and women in the military and civilian life. The book also covers the Holocaust. This handbook approaches each topic from a global viewpoint rather than focusing on individual national communities. Except for nonprint material, the literature, research, and sources surveyed are primarily those available in English. The volume is aimed at both experts on the war and the general academic community and will also be useful to students and serious laymen interested in the war.
Download or read book The Enemy Within Never Did Without written by Jeffrey L. Littlejohn and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-17 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Camp Huntsville was one of the first and largest POW camps constructed in America during World War II. Located roughly eight miles east of Huntsville, Texas, in Walker County, the camp was built in 1942 and opened for prisoners the following year. The camp served as a model site for POW installations across the country and set a high standard for the treatment of prisoners. Between 1943 and 1945, the camp housed roughly 4,700 German POWs and experienced tense relations between incarcerated Nazi and anti-Nazi factions. Then, during the last months of the war, the American military selected Camp Huntsville as the home of its top-secret re-education program for Japanese POWs. The irony of teaching Japanese prisoners about democracy and voting rights was not lost on African Americans in East Texas who faced disenfranchisement and racial segregation. Nevertheless, the camp did inspire some Japanese prisoners to support democratization of their home country when they returned to Japan after the war. Meanwhile, in this country, the US government sold Camp Huntsville to Sam Houston State Teachers College in 1946, and the site served as the school’s Country Campus through the mid-1950s. “This long-overdue project is one I started working on decades ago but didn’t finish. It is gratifying to see the book come to fruition through the efforts of these two history professors. And what a job they’ve done!”—Paul Ruffin, Director, TRP
Download or read book Faded Glory written by Thomas E. Alexander and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each of the wars fought by Texans spawned the creation of scores of military sites across the state, from the lonely frontier outpost at Adobe Walls to the once-bustling World War II shipyards of Orange. Today, although vestiges of the sites still exist, many are barely discernible, their once-proud martial trappings now faded by time, neglect, the elements and, most of all, public apathy. ?In Faded Glory: A Century of Forgotten Texas Military Sites, Then and Now, Thomas E. Alexander and Dan K. Utley revisit twenty-nine sites—many of them largely forgotten—associated with what was arguably the most tumultuous hundred-year period in a five-century span of Texas history.? Whether in the war with Mexico, the American Civil War, in clashes between Indians and the frontier army, or in two worldwide conflicts fought on foreign shores, Texas and Texans have often answered the call to arms. Beginning in 1845 and continuing through 1945, the Lone Star State and its people were fully involved in seven major conflicts. ?In this thoroughly researched and absorbing guide, Alexander and Utley recount the full story of the sites from their days of fame to the present. Comparing historic sketches, paintings, and period photographs of the original installations with recent photographs, they illustrate how time has dealt with these important places. Providing maps to aid readers in locating each site, the authors close with a resounding call for preservation and interpretation for future generations. ?The descriptions and images restore, at least in the mind’s eye, a touch of vitality and color to these forgotten and disappearing sites. Thanks to Faded Glory: A Century of Forgotten Texas Military Sites, Then and Now, both the traveler and the armchair tourist can recover a sense of these places and events that did so much to shape the military history of Texas.
Download or read book The Great Plains During World War II written by R. Douglas Hurt and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth examination of the effects of World War II on the Great Plains states brings to life the voices and experiences of the residents of the region in recounting the stories of the daily concerns of ordinary people.
Download or read book The Nectar Dancer written by Donald Mace Williams and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-08 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These sixty-one poems, only a few of which are longer than a page, have the clarity and terseness that newspaper reporters strive for. No wonder—Donald Mace Williams spent most of his long adulthood as a newspaper writer and editor. They are his observations, full of joy and sadness, about life, loss, and nature. Williams spent more than seventy years as a devoted student and amateur singer of German Lieder by Schubert and other great composers. That concentration may account in part for the metrical flow, the frequent rhymes, and the beginning-middle-and end structure of most of his poems. Williams, now in his nineties, has always been a traditionalist in his literary and musical tastes. Meter and rhyme may be unfashionable today, but to Williams they remain, like him, alive and well.
Download or read book New Mexico Historical Review written by Lansing Bartlett Bloom and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
