Download or read book Myths and Legends of the First World War written by James Hayward and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the First World War, a rich crop of legends sprouted from the battlefields and grew with such ferocity that many still excite controversy today. This book is the first to examine the roots of those stories and reveal the truth. Some myths remain well-known. Did an entire battalion of the Norfolk Regiment vanish without trace at Gallipoli in 1915? Did thousands of Russian troops actually pass through England with snow on their boots? In 1914, an acute spy mania gripped the British public, who imagined that the country was brimming with German spies. Xenophobia, denunciations and attacks on dachshunds were rampant. Amazingly, there was even talk of enemy aircraft dropping poisoned sweets to kill British children. Myths such as the Angel of Mons and the Comrade in White were more innocent creations. With no radio or television, rumours of disaster were rife, and the apparition of mystical guardian spirits gave hope to the civilian population at home. Other stories, such as the so-called Crucified Canadian, and the existence of a gruesome German corpse rendering factory, were more sinister. Yet in an age of new and startling technologies such as poison gas, submarine warfare and the tank, such tales appeared believable. Using a wide range of contemporary sources, James Hayward traces the story of each myth and examines the likely explanation. Supported by a selection of rare photographs and illustrations, the result is a refreshingly different perspective on the common ‘mud and trenches’ view of the First World War, shedding fascinating new light on many curious and unexplained wartime tales.
Download or read book Myths Legends of the First World War written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Myths and Legends of the Second World War written by James Hayward and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2009-09-23 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second World War gave rise to a rich crop of legends, many of which persist in the public consciousness today. Some are well known, such as the escape of an undead Hitler to South America, Allied aircraft buzzed by 'Foo Fighters' and UFOs, German parachutists dressed as nuns, and a failed German invasion of Suffolk in 1940. Others are more subtle, such as the vaunted Dunkirk spirit, which portrayed the disaster of 1940 as a victory, and the conspiracy theories surrounding Rudolf Hess. Did he fly to Scotland to negotiate a peace treaty with members of the Royal Family? Was the aged prisoner who died in Spandau Prison a double? From tales of betrayal at Dieppe and Arnhem to Hitler's obsession with the occult and Nazi U-boat bases in Ireland, James Hayward offers a refreshing and intriguing perspective on the myths, legends and folk memories of the Second World War.
Download or read book Finding the Lost Battalion Beyond the Rumors Myths and Legends of America s Famous WW1 Epic Hardcover written by Robert Laplander and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-01-13 with total page 726 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its release in 2006, 'Finding the Lost Battalion' by Robert J. Laplander has become the benchmark work against which all things Lost Battalion related have been measured. Now, in this updated 3rd edition released to coincide with the centennial of America's entry into WW1, Mr. Laplander again takes us to the Charlevaux Ravine to delve deeper into the story than ever before! Meticulously chronicling what would become arguably the most famous event of America's part in the war, we find the truths behind the legend. Spanning twenty years of research and hundreds of sources (most never before seen), the reader is led through the Argonne Forest during September and October, 1918 virtually hour by hour. The result is the single most factual accounting of the Lost Battalion story and their leader, Charles W. Whittlesey, to date. Told in an entertaining, fast moving style, the book has become a favorite the world over! With new Forward by Major-General William Terpeluk, US Army (Ret).
Download or read book The Myth of the Great War written by John Mosier and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Students of military history love to argue, and John Mosier gives them much to argue about. From armaments and tactics to strategy and politics, he challenges conventional wisdom and forces a rethinking of the war that inaugurated the modern era.” — H.W. Brands, author of The First American and TR: The Last Romantic “Ther is much in this book I really admire, not least its brilliant recasting of the traditional military narrative.” — Niall Ferguson, author of The Pity of War “A compelling and novel reassessment of World War I military history.”— — Kirkus Reviews “Packed with evidence, much of it ingeniously obtained and argued.” — Washington Post
Download or read book The Good War written by Studs Terkel and published by New Press/ORIM. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 707 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize: “The richest and most powerful single document of the American experience in World War II” (The Boston Globe). “The Good War” is a testament not only to the experience of war but to the extraordinary skill of Studs Terkel as an interviewer and oral historian. From a pipe fitter’s apprentice at Pearl Harbor to a crew member of the flight that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, his subjects are open and unrelenting in their analyses of themselves and their experiences, producing what People magazine has called “a splendid epic history” of WWII. With this volume Terkel expanded his scope to the global and the historical, and the result is a masterpiece of oral history. “Tremendously compelling, somehow dramatic and intimate at the same time, as if one has stumbled on private accounts in letters locked in attic trunks . . . In terms of plain human interest, Mr. Terkel may well have put together the most vivid collection of World War II sketches ever gathered between covers.” —The New York Times Book Review “I promise you will remember your war years, if you were alive then, with extraordinary vividness as you go through Studs Terkel’s book. Or, if you are too young to remember, this is the best place to get a sense of what people were feeling.” —Chicago Tribune “A powerful book, repeatedly moving and profoundly disturbing.” —People
Download or read book Myths and Legends of the Second World War written by James Hayward and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2009-09-23 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second World War gave rise to a rich crop of legends, many of which persist in the public consciousness today. Some are well known, such as the escape of an undead Hitler to South America, Allied aircraft buzzed by 'Foo Fighters' and UFOs, German parachutists dressed as nuns, and a failed German invasion of Suffolk in 1940. Others are more subtle, such as the vaunted Dunkirk spirit, which portrayed the disaster of 1940 as a victory, and the conspiracy theories surrounding Rudolf Hess. Did he fly to Scotland to negotiate a peace treaty with members of the Royal Family? Was the aged prisoner who died in Spandau Prison a double? From tales of betrayal at Dieppe and Arnhem to Hitler's obsession with the occult and Nazi U-boat bases in Ireland, James Hayward offers a refreshing and intriguing perspective on the myths, legends and folk memories of the Second World War.
Download or read book The Great War written by Dan Todman and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First World War, with its mud and the slaughter of the trenches, is often taken as the ultimate example of the futility of war. Generals, safe in their headquarters behind the lines, sent millions of men to their deaths to gain a few hundred yards of ground. Writers, notably Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, provided unforgettable images of the idiocy and tragedy of the war. Yet this vision of the war is at best a partial one, the war only achieving its status as the worst of wars in the last thirty years. At the time, the war aroused emotions of pride and patriotism. Not everyone involved remembered the war only for its miseries. The generals were often highly professional and indeed won the war in 1918. In this original and challenging book, Dan Todman shows views of the war have changed over the last ninety years and how a distorted image of it emerged and became dominant.
Download or read book Myths and Legends of the Eastern Front written by Boris Sokolov and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2020-01-19 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This English translation of the original Russian work is thought provoking, challenging the ‘official’ version of what happened” during World War II (Firetrench). The memory of the Second World War on the Eastern Front—still referred to in modern Russia as the Great Patriotic War—is an essential element of Russian identity and history, as alive today as it was in Stalin’s time. It is represented as a defining episode, a positive historical myth that sustains the Russian national idea and unites the majority of Russian citizens. As a result, as Boris Sokolov shows in this powerful and thought-provoking study, the heroic and tragic side of the war is highlighted while the dark side—the incompetent, negligent and even criminal way the war was run—is overlooked. Although almost eighty years have passed since the defeat of Nazi Germany, he demonstrates that many of the fabrications put forward during the war and immediately afterwards persist into the present day. In a sequence of incisive chapters he uncovers the truth about famous wartime episodes that have been consistently misrepresented. His bold reinterpretation should go some way towards dispelling the enduring myths about the Great Patriotic War. It is necessary reading for anyone who is keen to understand how it continues to be distorted in Russia today.
Download or read book The Ancient Book of Myth and War written by Scott Morse and published by Adhouse Books. This book was released on 2007-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ancient Book of Myth and War presents to you a time capsule, a glimpse into a strange and wondrous world, where myths and legends still roam freely and wars rage in the hearts and minds of the noble and the feeble alike. Experiments in color, shape, line and composition enrich each and every page, accompanied by text that will enlighten the audience with atmospheric facts concerning origins, eras and even media used in the production of the art itself. The Ancient Book of Myth and War is a fine art hardcover collection of images produced by some of the most highly sophisticated animation designers in the industry.
Download or read book National Myth and the First World War in Modern Popular Music written by Peter Grant and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-09 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the role of popular music in constructing the myth of the First World War. Since the late 1950s over 1,500 popular songs from more than forty countries have been recorded that draw inspiration from the War. National Myth and the First World War in Modern Popular Music takes an inter-disciplinary approach that locates popular music within the framework of ‘memory studies’ and analyses how songwriters are influenced by their country’s ‘national myths’. How does popular music help form memory and remembrance of such an event? Why do some songwriters stick rigidly to culturally dominant forms of memory whereas others seek an oppositional or transnational perspective? The huge range of musical examples include the great chansonniers Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens; folk maestros including Al Stewart and Eric Bogle; the socially aware rock of The Kinks and Pink Floyd; metal legends Iron Maiden and Bolt Thrower and female iconoclasts Diamanda Galás and PJ Harvey.
Download or read book The Spirit of 1914 written by Jeffrey Verhey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-04 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first systematic analysis of German public opinion at the outbreak of the Great War. Jeffrey Verhey's powerful study demonstrates that the myth of war enthusiasm was historically inaccurate. He also examines the development of the myth in newspapers, politics and propaganda, and the propagation and appropriation of this myth after the war. His innovative analysis sheds new light on German experience of the Great War and on the role of political myths in modern German political culture.
Download or read book Forgotten Victory written by G. D. Sheffield and published by Headline Review. This book was released on 2002 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First World War is arguably the most misunderstood event in twentieth-century history. In a radical new interpretation, leading military historian Gary Sheffield argues that while the war was tragic, it was not futile; and, although condemned as 'lions led by donkeys', in reality the British citizen army became the most effective fighting force in the world, which in 1918 won the greatest series of battles in British history. A challenging and controversial book, FORGOTTEN VICTORY is based on twenty years of research and draws on the work of major scholars. Without underestimating the scale of the human tragedy or playing down the disasters, it explodes many myths about the First World War, placing it in its true historical context.
Download or read book Mysteries Legends and Myths of the First World War written by Cynthia J. Faryon and published by James Lorimer & Company. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a fresh, close-up look at the First World War as it was experienced by ordinary Canadian soldiers. This is the war as it was experienced by the tens of thousands of young Canadians. Reading their accounts offers a no-holds-barred picture of fighting, life in the trenches, the human cost in lives lost, and the physical and emotional aftermath for survivors.
Download or read book Verdun written by Paul Jankowski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 976 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At seven o'clock in the morning on February 21, 1916, the ground in northern France began to shake. For the next ten hours, twelve hundred German guns showered shells on a salient in French lines. The massive weight of explosives collapsed dugouts, obliterated trenches, severed communication wires, and drove men mad. As the barrage lifted, German troops moved forward, darting from shell crater to shell crater. The battle of Verdun had begun. In Verdun, historian Paul Jankowski provides the definitive account of the iconic battle of World War I. A leading expert on the French past, Jankowski combines the best of traditional military history-its emphasis on leaders, plans, technology, and the contingency of combat-with the newer social and cultural approach, stressing the soldier's experience, the institutional structures of the military, and the impact of war on national memory. Unusually, this book draws on deep research in French and German archives; this mastery of sources in both languages gives Verdun unprecedented authority and scope. In many ways, Jankowski writes, the battle represents a conundrum. It has an almost unique status among the battles of the Great War; and yet, he argues, it was not decisive, sparked no political changes, and was not even the bloodiest episode of the conflict. It is said that Verdun made France, he writes; but the question should be, What did France make of Verdun? Over time, it proved to be the last great victory of French arms, standing on their own. And, for France and Germany, the battle would symbolize the terror of industrialized warfare, "a technocratic Moloch devouring its children," where no advance or retreat was possible, yet national resources poured in ceaselessly, perpetuating slaughter indefinitely.
Download or read book Myth written by Kenneth McLeish and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 2500 detailed entries provide a comprehensive insight into mythology, one of the most influential strands of social and literary history. Drawn from every continent, from the Americas and the Middle East to Europe and Asia, the origins and historical significance of central figures and legends are examined, and recurring motifs traced throughout the ages and around the world.
Download or read book The Myth of the Eastern Front written by Ronald Smelser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some Americans are receptive to a positive interpretation of German military conduct on the Russian front in World War II.
