Download or read book My Mission to Spain Watching the Rehearsal for World War II by Claude G Bowers written by Claude G. Bowers and published by . This book was released on 1954 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book My Mission to Spain written by Claude G. Bowers and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based upon his diary entries, personal contacts, conversations and dispatches, My Mission to Spain chronicles American historian and politician Claude G. Bowers’ time in Spain as U.S. Ambassador. This fascinating historical record, which was first published in 1954, details Bowers’ travels throughout the country, as well as the hectic politics that foreshadowed the Spanish Civil War. “For six years, during the most dramatic period in Spanish history since the crusade against the Moors, I was accredited Ambassador to Spain by President Roosevelt. I loved Spain and had admiration and affection for the Spanish people. “In driving thousands of miles through this magic land I came to love its mountains looming on the horizon everywhere, enveloped in their blue or purple haze, the quaint old dusty villages soaked with history, the old cathedrals with their works of art, the romance of the aged cities, the laughing, happy people. “Across the stage will pass distinguished non-political figures of international renown—Benavente, the dramatist; Unamuno, the philosopher; Madariaga, the historian and biographer; Belmonte, the famous matador; Zuloaga, the painter; Margarita Xirgu, the actress; Argentina, the dancer; and Ramón del Valle Inclán and Pérez de Ayala, the novelists. “The political leaders in the forefront behind whom the totalitarian conspiracy was hatching are all here as I knew them—Azaña, Lerroux, Gil Robles, Count Romanones, Martinez Barrio, Juan Negrin, Prieto, and all the others. I have tried to paint their portraits with fidelity to the truth.”—Claude G. Bowers
Download or read book Spain During World War II written by Wayne H. Bowen and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Spain during World War II has largely been viewed as the story of dictator Francisco Franco's foreign diplomacy in the aftermath of civil war. Wayne H. Bowen now goes behind the scenes of fascism to reveal less-studied dimensions of Spanish history. By examining the conflicts within the Franco regime and the daily lives of Spaniards, he has written the first book-length assessment of the regime's formative years and the struggle of its citizens to survive. Bowen argues that the emphasis of previous scholars on Spain's foreign affairs is misplaced-that even the most pro-Axis elements of Franco's regime were more concerned with domestic politics, the potential for civil unrest, and poverty than with events in Europe. Synthesizing a wide range of Spanish-language scholarship and recently declassified government documents, Bowen reveals how Franco's government stumbled in the face of world war, inexperienced leaders, contradictory political ideology, and a divided populace. His book tells the dramatic story of a six-year argument among the general, the politicians, and the clerics on nothing less than what should be the nature of the new Spain, touching on issues as diverse as whether the monarchy should be restored and how women should dress. Examining the effects of World War II years on key facets of Spanish life-Catholicism, the economy, women, leisure, culture, opposition to Franco, and domestic politics-Bowen explores a wide range of topics: the grinding poverty following the civil war, exacerbated by poor economic decisions; restrictions on employment for women versus the relative autonomy enjoyed by female members of the Falange; the efforts of the Church to recover from near decimation; and methods of repression practiced by the regime against leftists, separatists, and Freemasons. He also shows that the lives of most Spaniards remained apolitical and centered on work, family, and leisure marked by the popularity of American movies and the resurgence of loyalty to regional sports teams. Unlike other studies that have focused exclusively on Spain's foreign affairs during the Second World War, Bowen's work stresses the importance of the home front not only in keeping Spain out of the war but also in keeping Franco in power. He shows that in spite of internal problems and external distractions, Franco's government managed to achieve its goals of state survival and internal peace. As the only single-volume survey of this era available in English, Spain during World War II is a masterful synthesis that offers a much-needed alternative view of the Franco regime during crucial times as it provides a testament to the Spanish people's will to survive.
Download or read book The International Brigades written by Giles Tremlett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Magnificent. Narrative history at its vivid and compelling best' Fergal Keane The first major history of the International Brigades: a tale of blood, ideals and tragedy in the fight against fascism. The Spanish Civil War was the first armed battle in the fight against fascism, and a rallying cry for a generation. Over 35,000 volunteers from sixty-one countries around the world came to defend democracy against the troops of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. Ill-equipped and disorderly, yet fuelled by a shared sense of purpose and potential glory, disparate groups of idealistic young men and women banded together to form a volunteer army of a size and kind unseen since the Crusades, known as the International Brigades. These passionate liberal fighters – from across Europe, China, Africa and the Americas – would join the Republican cause, fighting for over two years on the bloody battlegrounds of Madrid, Jarama and Ebro. Were they heroes or fools? Saints or bloodthirsty adventurers? And what exactly did they achieve? This is a story rendered vivid in the writings of Orwell and Hemingway, the paintings of Picasso and the photographs of Taro and Capa. But here, in this magisterial history, award-winning historian Giles Tremlett tells – for the first time – the story of the Spanish Civil War through the experiences of this remarkable group of people. Drawing on the Brigades' extensive archives in Moscow, Comintern documents and first-hand accounts, Tremlett captures all the human drama of an historic mission to halt fascist expansion in Europe. A fascinating history of resistance, The International Brigades shows just how far ordinary people will go to save democracy against overwhelming odds in a tale of European solidarity that resonates just as strongly today.
Download or read book American Statecraft written by J. Robert Moskin and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 1002 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This magisterial work on American diplomacy by a veteran journalist and historian is the first complete history of the U.S. Foreign Service American Statecraft is a fascinating and comprehensive look at the unsung men and women of the U.S. Foreign Service whose dedication and sacrifices have been a crucial part of our history for over two centuries. Fifteen years in the making, veteran journalist and historian Moskin has traveled the globe conducting hundreds of interviews both in and out of the State Department to look behind the scenes at America's "militiamen of diplomacy." As the nation's eyes and ears, our envoys pledge a substantial part of their lives in foreign lands working for the benefit of their nation. Endeavoring to use dialogue and negotiation as their instruments of change, our diplomats tirelessly work to find markets for American business, rescue its citizens in trouble abroad, and act in general as "America's first line of defense" in policy negotiations, keeping America out of war. But it took generations to polish these skills, and Moskin traces America's full diplomatic history, back to its amateur years coming up against seasoned Europeans during the days of Ben Franklin, now considered the father of the U.S. Foreign Service, and up to the recent Benghazi attack. Along the way, its members included many devoted and courageous public servants, and also some political spoilsmen and outright rogues. An important contribution to the political canon, American Statecraft recounts the history of the United States through the lens of foreign diplomacy.
Download or read book Lawfare written by Orde F. Kittrie and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Lawfare, author Orde Kittrie's draws on his experiences as a lawfare practitioner, US State Department attorney, and international law scholar in analyzing the theory and practice of the strategic leveraging of law as an increasingly powerful and effective weapon in the current global security landscape. Lawfare incorporates case studies of recent offensive and defensive lawfare by the United States, Iran, China, and by both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and includes dozens of examples of how lawfare has thus been waged and defended against. Kittrie notes that since private attorneys can play important and decisive roles in their nations' national security plans through their expertise in areas like financial law, maritime insurance law, cyber law, and telecommunications law, the full scope of lawfare's impact and possibilities are just starting to be understood.
Download or read book Becoming a Good Neighbor among Dictators written by Jorrit van den Berk and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-28 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very few works of history, if any, delve into the daily interactions of U.S. Foreign Service members in Latin America during the era of Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy. But as Jorrit van den Berk argues, the encounters between these rank-and-file diplomats and local officials reveal the complexities, procedures, intrigues, and shifting alliances that characterized the precarious balance of U.S. foreign relations with right-wing dictatorial regimes. Using accounts from twenty-two ministers and ambassadors, Becoming a Good Neighbor among Dictators is a careful, sophisticated account of how the U.S. Foreign Service implemented ever-changing State Department directives from the 1930s through the Second World War and early Cold War, and in so doing, transformed the U.S.-Central American relationship. How did Foreign Service officers translate broad policy guidelines into local realities? Could the U.S. fight dictatorships in Europe while simultaneously collaborating with dictators in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras? What role did diplomats play in the standoff between democratic and authoritarian forces? In investigating these questions, Van den Berk draws new conclusions about the political culture of the Foreign Service, its position between Washington policymakers and local actors, and the consequences of foreign intervention.
Download or read book Media Made Dixie written by Jack Temple Kirby and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Media-Made Dixie Jack Kirby shows how the American public’s perceptions of the South have been influenced, even controlled, by the mass communications media. In this newly updated edition, Kirby surveys major movies, radio and television shows, plays, popular histories, and music from the turn of the century through the 1980s. He documents a progression in the national image of the South from the cracker wasteland of Erskine Caldwell’s God’s Little Acre to the antebellum wonderland of Hollywood’s Shirley Temple-“Bojangles” Robinson musicals; from William Styron’s searching account of the Old South in Confessions of Nat Turner to the New South ingenuity of Jimmy Carter and Ted Turner; and from the regressive back-roads of television’s The Dukes of Hazzard to the complex reconciliation found in Alice Walker’s and Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple.
Download or read book The Triumph of the Dark written by Zara Steiner and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 1248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this magisterial narrative, Zara Steiner traces the twisted road to war that began with Hitler's assumption of power in Germany. Covering a wide geographical canvas, from America to the Far East, Steiner provides an indispensable reassessment of the most disputed events of these tumultuous years. Steiner underlines the far-reaching consequences of the Great Depression, which shifted the initiative in international affairs from those who upheld the status quo to those who were intent on destroying it. In Europe, the l930s were Hitler's years. He moved the major chess pieces on the board, forcing the others to respond. From the start, Steiner argues, he intended war, and he repeatedly gambled on Germany's future to acquire the necessary resources to fulfil his continental ambitions. Only war could have stopped him-an unwelcome message for most of Europe. Misperception, miscomprehension, and misjudgment on the part of the other Great Powers leaders opened the way for Hitler's repeated diplomatic successes. It is ideology that distinguished the Hitler era from previous struggles for the mastery of Europe. Ideological presumptions created false images and raised barriers to understanding that even good intelligence could not penetrate. Only when the leaders of Britain and France realized the scale of Hitler's ambition, and the challenge Germany posed to their Great Power status, did they finally declare war.
Download or read book Cruel World written by Lynn H. Nicholas and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-05-25 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To be a child in mid-twentieth-century Europe was to be not a person but an object, available for use in the service of the totalitarian state. Very soon after Adolf Hitler came to power, policies of eugenic selection and euthanasia began to weed ill or disabled children out of the New Order by poison, gas, and starvation. Defect-free “good blood” children were subjected to an “education” based on racism, propaganda, and the glorification of the Führer, and were deliberately deprived of free time that would allow independent thought or action. Once the war began, “Nordic”-looking children were kidnapped from families in the conquered lands and subjected to “Germanization.” Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of “bad blood” children—Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians(were separated from their families and condemned to forced migration, slave labor, sadistic experiments, starvation, and mass execution. At the end of the war, uprooted children of every origin wandered the bombed-out cities and countryside, some having been taken from home at such a young age that they did not know where they had come from or even their own names. Millions surged into and out of DP camps, exploited by political and religious groups, while the Allies and the fledgling United Nations tried mightily to put families back together and to find new homes for the orphans. All the riveting narrative skill and impeccable scholarship that distinguished Lynn Nicholas’s first book, The Rape of Europa (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction), are present in her study of these terrible crimes against humanity. To research this story she has delved into the governmental and military archives of many nations, and has interviewed countless individuals. She shows the relationship of the deadly Nazi policies to the brutal tactics used in the USSR in the 1930s and to their rehearsal in the Spanish Civil War, and vividly describes the abject failure of Hitler’s campaign to plant Germanizing colonies in the conquered nations. She gives us the stories of survivors of ghastly war-spawned famines(in Greece and Russia in the 1940s, Holland in the “Hunger Winter” of 1945, and Berlin in the Airlift year of 1949(and of British, French, and Dutch children who were evacuated to the countryside; boys and girls sent alone from Europe to England on the Kindertransports; the teenaged soldiers of the Reich; the small veterans of the quarries, the factories, and the camps as well as those who survived in lonely hiding. In Cruel World Lynn Nicholas shows us clearly, and with passionate empathy for the innocent victims, the crimes against children that inevitably result when ideology overwhelms humanity. This powerful book, as it recounts the waking nightmare that enmeshed the lives of Europe’s boys and girls, bears witness to our own responsibility to the children of the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Transition of Power written by Brian J. C. McKercher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-02-15 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses one of the least understood issues in modern international history: how, between 1930 and 1945, Britain lost its global pre-eminence to the United States. The crucial years are 1930 to 1940, for which until now no comprehensive examination of Anglo-American relations exists. Transition of Power analyses these relations in the pivotal decade, with an epilogue dealing with the Second World War after 1941. Britain and the United States, and their intertwined fates, were fundamental to the course of international history in these years. Professor McKercher's book dissects the various strands of the two powers' relationship in the fifteen years after 1930 from a British perspective - economic, diplomatic, naval and strategic.
Download or read book The Versailles Treaty and its Legacy written by Norman A. Graebner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-26 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study, a realist interpretation of the long diplomatic record that produced the coming of World War II in 1939, is a critique of the Paris Peace Conference and reflects the judgment shared by many who left the Conference in 1919 in disgust amid predictions of future war. The critique is a rejection of the idea of collective security, which Woodrow Wilson and many others believed was a panacea, but which was also condemned as early as 1915. This book delivers a powerful lesson in treaty-making and rejects the supposition that treaties, once made, are unchangeable, whatever their faults.
Download or read book Richard Wright written by Michel Fabre and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1990 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Born to Rule written by Julia P. Gelardi and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julia Gelardi's Born to Rule is an historical tour de force that weaves together the powerful and moving stories of the five royal granddaughters of Queen Victoria. These five women were all married to reigning European monarchs during the early part of the 20th century, and it was their reaction to the First World War that shaped the fate of a continent and the future of the modern world. Here are the stories of Alexandra, whose enduring love story, controversial faith in Rasputin, and tragic end have become the stuff of legend; Marie, the flamboyant and eccentric queen who battled her way through a life of intrigues and was also the mother of two Balkan queens and of the scandalous Carol II of Romania; Victoria Eugenie, Spain's very English queen who, like Alexandra, introduced hemophilia into her husband's family-with devastating consequences for her marriage; Maud, King Edward VII's daughter, who was independent Norway's reluctant queen; and Sophie, Kaiser Wilhelm II's much maligned sister, daughter of an Emperor and herself the mother of no less than three kings and a queen, who ended her days in bitter exile. Born to Rule evokes a world of luxury, wealth, and power in a bygone era, while also recounting the ordeals suffered by a unique group of royal women who at times faced poverty, exile, and death. Praised in their lifetimes for their legendary beauty, many of these women were also lauded-and reviled-for their political influence. Using never before published letters, memoirs, diplomatic documents, secondary sources, and interviews with descendents of the subjects, Julia Gelardi's Born to Rule is an astonishing and memorable work of popular history.
Download or read book America and the French Nation 1939 1945 written by Julian G. Hurstfield and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-06-15 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hurstfield analyzes American responses--diplomatic, military, intellectual, and popular--to the plight of the French nation during World War II, as the constitution of the Third Republic was suspended, Petain ruled in Vichy, the Germans administered Occupied France, DeGaulle organized the Free French movement, and an internal French resistance slowly gathered strength. Interweaving diplomatic and intellectual history, the author combines analysis with a sensitive account of American currents of opinion. Originally published in 1986. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Download or read book Richard Wright written by Toru Kiuchi and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this minutely detailed, comprehensive chronology, Toru Kiuchi and Yoshinobu Hakutani document the life in letters of the greatest African American writer of the twentieth century. The author of Black Boy and Native Son, among other works, Wright wrote unflinchingly about the black experience in the United States, where his books still influence discussions of race and social justice. Entries are documented by Wright's journals, articles, and other works published and unpublished, as well as his letters to and from friends, associates, writers and public figures. Part One covers Wright's life through the year 1946, the period in which he published his best-known work. Part Two covers the final fifteen years of his life in exile, a prolific period in which he wrote two novels, four works of nonfiction, and four thousand haiku. Each part begins with a historical and critical introduction.
Download or read book Crossroads Of Decision written by Howard Jablon and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative interpretation of New Deal diplomacy, Howard Jablon challenges the view that the State Department was wiser and more expert at international maneuver than was President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the early years of his presidency. These were years of growing world tension, with the preliminary shots of World War II being fired as Japan took over Manchuria, Italy made Ethiopia an extension of its new Roman Empire, and all the European great powers tried out their new weaponry in Spain. The author argues that the department's advice in this period actually led to unfortunate decisions which later had a considerable impact on events leading to World War II. Former Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote in his memoirs that the United States was at the "oriental crossroads of decision" in 1934. Hull and his colleagues in the State Department did not suggest blocking the Japanese. Instead, they recommended continuing the ineffective nonrecognition policy. Consequently, the roads taken by American diplomacy at this and other junctures were equally unfortunate. To date no one has criticized the influence of the State Department on New Deal diplomacy. Crossroads of Decision represents a timely and important contribution to our understanding of both the State Department and foreign policy in this interwar period of rapid change, when diplomatic courses were set that allowed for no turning back.
