Download or read book What Soldiers Do written by Mary Louise Roberts and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-05-17 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly—but if you’re the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. That’s not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we’ve been given, but it’s the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the US military command systematically spread—and then exploited—the myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaos—ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal disease—horrified the war-weary and demoralized French population. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American military leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the liberated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty. While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do reminds us that history is always more useful—and more interesting—when it is most honest, and when it goes beyond the burnished beauty of nostalgia to grapple with the real lives and real mistakes of the people who lived it.
Download or read book The GI s War written by Edwin P. Hoyt and published by Cooper Square Press. This book was released on 2000-08-08 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The GI's War contains eyewitness accounts from ordinary young men, farm hands and factory workers, who had war thrust upon them and in the process became veteran soldiers. Their unsparing narratives, presented in their own words, capture the many emotions evoked by war. GIs and their commanding officers speak freely, and movingly, of becoming soldiers, of enduring the ordeals of the various campaigns, and of fightling for their lives and their country. Vividly personal and compelling, this book puts the reader on the front lines.
Download or read book A Religious History of the American GI in World War II written by G. Kurt Piehler and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-12 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Religious History of the American GI in World War II breaks new ground by recounting the armed forces' unprecedented efforts to meet the spiritual needs of the fifteen million men and women who served in World War II. For President Franklin D. Roosevelt and many GIs, religion remained a core American value that fortified their resolve in the fight against Axis tyranny. While combatants turned to fellow comrades for support, even more were sustained by prayer. GIs flocked to services, and when they mourned comrades lost in battle, chaplains offered solace and underscored the righteousness of their cause. This study is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the social history of the American GI during World War II. Drawing on an extensive range of letters, diaries, oral histories, and memoirs, G. Kurt Piehler challenges the conventional wisdom that portrays the American GI as a nonideological warrior. American GIs echoed the views of FDR, who saw a Nazi victory as a threat to religious freedom and recognized the antisemitic character of the regime. Official policies promoted a civil religion that stressed equality between Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Judaism. Many chaplains embraced this tri-faith vision and strived to meet the spiritual needs of all servicepeople regardless of their own denomination. While examples of bigotry, sectarianism, and intolerance remained, the armed forces fostered the free exercise of religion that promoted a respect for the plurality of American religious life among GIs.
Download or read book The GI War Against Japan written by Peter Schrijvers and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2002-05 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Choice Outstanding Academic Title Even in the midst of World War II, Americans could not help thinking of the lands across the Pacific as a continuation of the American Western frontier. But this perception only heightened American soldiers' frustration as the hostile region ferociously resisted their attempts at control. The GI War Against Japan recounts the harrowing experiences of American soldiers in Asia and the Pacific. Based on countless diaries and letters, it sweeps across the battlefields, from the early desperate stand at Guadalcanal to the tragic sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis at war's very end. From the daunting spaces of the China-India theater to the fortress islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Schrijvers brings to life the GIs’ struggle with suffocating wilderness, devastating diseases, and Japanese soldiers who preferred death over life. Amidst the frustration and despair of this war, American soldiers abandoned themselves to an escalating rage that presaged Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The GI’s story is, first and foremost, the story of America's resounding victory over Japan. At the same time, however, the reader will recognize in the extraordinarily high price paid for this victory chilling forebodings of the West’s ultimate defeat in Asia’and America’s in Vietnam.
Download or read book GI Jews written by Deborah Dash MOORE and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through memoirs, oral histories, and letters, Deborah Dash Moore charts the lives of 15 young Jewish men as they faced military service and tried to make sense of its demands.
Download or read book The Gi s War written by Edwin P. Hoyt and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 1991-08-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly ten years in the making, The GI's War tells the story of the European war through the eyes of the field soldiers who actually fought it—the ”dogfaces.” Unfolding chronologically from the summer of 1940 to V-E Day, 1945, this is a gripping account of Americans fighting for their country.To get the ground-level view, historian Edwin P. Hoyt contacted scores of veterans and drew extensively on their interviews, letters, and diaries. From these sources he pieced together an enormous montage of vivid details, each one an event recalled by an individual soldier. The portrait that emerges is impressionistic, yet realistic. The combat infantryman's experience comes to light in all its horror and glory: Excruciating boredom and bewilderment are interrupted by flashes of sheer terror. Hoyt follows both new recruits and seasoned veterans. Their stories tell of basic training and combat; mobilization and recreation; rations and weapons.Hoyt gives us a picture of the war as these men saw and lived through it; confessions and gut reactions; frank opinions of commanding officers; tales of rivalries within the ranks; revelations of errors and incompetence; chilling accounts of atrocities committed by both sides. The result ultimately conveys heroism more effectively than the romantic sagas that glorify war. Astonishing bravery emerges from the ranks of these soldiers slogging through the mud—and their victory over a determined and skillful enemy is all the more admirable in its gritty reality.
Download or read book The Rise of the G I Army 1940 1941 written by Paul Dickson and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A must-read book that explores a vital pre-war effort [with] deep research and gripping writing.” —Washington Times In The rise of the G.I. Army, 1940–1941, Paul Dickson tells the dramatic story of how the American Army was mobilized from scattered outposts two years before Pearl Harbor into the disciplined and mobile fighting force that helped win World War II. In September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and initiated World War II, America had strong isolationist leanings. The US Army stood at fewer than 200,000 men—unprepared to defend the country, much less carry the fight to Europe and the Far East. And yet, less than a year after Pearl Harbor, the American army led the Allied invasion of North Africa, beginning the campaign that would defeat Germany, and the Navy and Marines were fully engaged with Japan in the Pacific. Dickson chronicles this transformation from Franklin Roosevelt’s selection of George C. Marshall to be Army Chief of Staff to the remarkable peace-time draft of 1940 and the massive and unprecedented mock battles in Tennessee, Louisiana, and the Carolinas by which the skill and spirit of the Army were forged and out of which iconic leaders like Eisenhower, Bradley, and Clark emerged. The narrative unfolds against a backdrop of political and cultural isolationist resistance and racial tension at home, and the increasingly perceived threat of attack from both Germany and Japan.
Download or read book Soldiers in Revolt written by David Cortright and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1975-01-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the evidence of increasing discontent within the U.S. armed services during the Vietnam War, discusses what has happened to the military establishment since the war's end, and proposes still further changes to bring the military in line with modern society.
Download or read book The American GI in Europe World War II written by Joseph E. Kaufmann and published by . This book was released on with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Alan s War written by Emmanuel Guibert and published by First Second. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When I was eighteen, Uncle Sam told me he'd like me to put on a uniform and go off to fight a guy by the name of Adolf. So I did." When Alan Cope joined the army and went off to fight in World War II, he had no idea what he was getting into. This graphic memoir is the story of his life during wartime, a story told with poignant intimacy and matchless artistry. Across a generation, a deep friendship blossomed between Alan Cope and author/artist Emmanuel Guibert. From it, Alan's War was born – a graphic novel that is a deeply personal and moving experience, straight from the heart of the Greatest Generation – a unique piece of WWII literature and a ground-breaking graphic memoir.
Download or read book Individual Gear and Personal Items of the GI in Europe written by James B. Klokner and published by Schiffer Military History. This book was released on 2005 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses "on the GI's individual personal possessions, particularly what was carried with him overseas and into combat"--Introduction, p. 8.
Download or read book The GI War Against Japan written by Peter Schrijvers and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2005-03 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Choice Outstanding Academic Title Even in the midst of World War II, Americans could not help thinking of the lands across the Pacific as a continuation of the American Western frontier. But this perception only heightened American soldiers' frustration as the hostile region ferociously resisted their attempts at control. The GI War Against Japan recounts the harrowing experiences of American soldiers in Asia and the Pacific. Based on countless diaries and letters, it sweeps across the battlefields, from the early desperate stand at Guadalcanal to the tragic sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis at war's very end. From the daunting spaces of the China-India theater to the fortress islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Schrijvers brings to life the GIs’ struggle with suffocating wilderness, devastating diseases, and Japanese soldiers who preferred death over life. Amidst the frustration and despair of this war, American soldiers abandoned themselves to an escalating rage that presaged Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The GI’s story is, first and foremost, the story of America's resounding victory over Japan. At the same time, however, the reader will recognize in the extraordinarily high price paid for this victory chilling forebodings of the West’s ultimate defeat in Asia’and America’s in Vietnam.
Download or read book The Story of World War II written by Donald L. Miller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-08 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, prizewinning historian Donald L. Miller has written what critics are calling one of the most powerful accounts of warfare ever published. Here are the horror and heroism of World War II in the words of the men who fought it, the journalists who covered it, and the civilians who were caught in its fury. Miller gives us an up-close, deeply personal view of a war that was more savagely fought—and whose outcome was in greater doubt—than readers might imagine. This is the war that Americans at the home front would have read about had they had access to the previously censored testimony of the soldiers on which Miller builds his gripping narrative. Miller covers the entire war—on land, at sea, and in the air—and provides new coverage of the brutal island fighting in the Pacific, the bomber war over Europe, the liberation of the death camps, and the contributions of African Americans and other minorities. He concludes with a suspenseful, never-before-told story of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, based on interviews with the men who flew the mission that ended the war.
Download or read book Elvis s Army written by Brian McAllister Linn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Army drafted Elvis in 1958, it set about transforming the King of Rock and Roll from a rebellious teen idol into a clean-cut GI trained for nuclear warfare. Brian Linn traces the origins, evolution, and ultimate failure of the army’s attempt to reinvent itself for the Atomic Age, and reveals the experiences of its forgotten soldiers.
Download or read book Rising Sons written by Bill Yenne and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-07-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sample Text
Download or read book Taking Leave Taking Liberties written by Aaron Hiltner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American soldiers overseas during World War II were famously said to be “overpaid, oversexed, and over here.” But the assaults, rapes, and other brutal acts didn’t only happen elsewhere, far away from a home front depicted as safe and unscathed by the “good war.” To the contrary, millions of American and Allied troops regularly poured into ports like New York and Los Angeles while on leave. Euphemistically called “friendly invasions,” these crowds of men then forced civilians to contend with the same kinds of crime and sexual assault unfolding in places like Britain, France, and Australia. With unsettling clarity, Aaron Hiltner reveals what American troops really did on the home front. While GIs are imagined to have spent much of the war in Europe or the Pacific, before the run-up to D-Day in the spring of 1944 as many as 75% of soldiers were stationed in US port cities, including more than three million who moved through New York City. In these cities, largely uncontrolled soldiers sought and found alcohol and sex, and the civilians living there—women in particular—were not safe from the violence fomented by these de facto occupying armies. Troops brought their pocketbooks and demand for “dangerous fun” to both red-light districts and city centers, creating a new geography of vice that challenged local police, politicians, and civilians. Military authorities, focused above all else on the war effort, invoked written and unwritten legal codes to grant troops near immunity to civil policing and prosecution. The dangerous reality of life on the home front was well known at the time—even if it has subsequently been buried beneath nostalgia for the “greatest generation.” Drawing on previously unseen military archival records, Hiltner recovers a mostly forgotten chapter of World War II history, demonstrating that the war’s ill effects were felt all over—including by those supposedly safe back home.
Download or read book The GI War Against Japan written by P. Schrijvers and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-06-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on numerous diaries and letters, this book depicts the story of America's soldier sin Asia and the Pacific during World War II. Combining social and cultural history, the author examines the GIs' encounters with Asia's environmental, sociocultural and racial otherness and the impact that these encounters had on them. The Americans' experience in Asia and the Pacific presaged the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
