Download or read book Confronting Captivity written by Arieh J. Kochavi and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011-01-20 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How was it possible that almost all of the nearly 300,000 British and American troops who fell into German hands during World War II survived captivity in German POW camps and returned home almost as soon as the war ended? In Confronting Captivity, Arieh J. Kochavi offers a behind-the-scenes look at the living conditions in Nazi camps and traces the actions the British and American governments took--and didn't take--to ensure the safety of their captured soldiers. Concern in London and Washington about the safety of these POWs was mitigated by the recognition that the Nazi leadership tended to adhere to the Geneva Convention when it came to British and U.S. prisoners. Following the invasion of Normandy, however, Allied apprehension over the safety of POWs turned into anxiety for their very lives. Yet Britain and the United States took the calculated risk of counting on a swift conclusion to the war as the Soviets approached Germany from the east. Ultimately, Kochavi argues, it was more likely that the lives of British and American POWs were spared because of their race rather than any actions their governments took on their behalf.

Download or read book Useful Enemies written by Richard Rashke and published by Delphinium Books. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John “Iwan” Demjanjuk was at the center of one of history’s most complex war crimes trials. But why did it take almost sixty years for the United States to bring him to justice as a Nazi collaborator? The answer lies in the annals of the Cold War, when fear and paranoia drove American politicians and the U.S. military to recruit “useful” Nazi war criminals to work for the United States in Europe as spies and saboteurs, and to slip them into America through loopholes in U.S. immigration policy. During and after the war, that same immigration policy was used to prevent thousands of Jewish refugees from reaching the shores of America. The long and twisted saga of John Demjanjuk, a postwar immigrant and auto mechanic living a quiet life in Cleveland until 1977, is the final piece in the puzzle of American government deceit. The White House, the Departments of War and State, the FBI and the CIA supported policies that harbored Nazi war criminals and actively worked to hide and shelter them from those who dared to investigate and deport them. The heroes in this story are men and women such as Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman and Justice Department prosecutor Eli Rosenbaum, who worked for decades to hold hearings, find and investigate alleged Nazi war criminals, and successfully prosecute them for visa fraud. But it was not until the conviction of John Demjanjuk in Munich in 2011 as an SS camp guard serving at the Sobibor death camp that this story of deceit can be told for what it is: a shameful chapter in American history. Riveting and deeply researched, Useful Enemies is the account of one man’s criminal past and its devastating consequences, and the story of how America sacrificed its moral authority in the wake of history’s darkest moment.

Download or read book William Sloane Coffin Jr written by Warren Goldstein and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magnet for controversy, the media, and followers, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr. was the premier voice of northern religious liberalism for more than a quarter-century, and a worthy heir to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. From his pulpits at Yale University and, later, New York City’s Riverside Church, Coffin focused national attention on civil rights, the anti-Vietnam War movement, disarmament, and gay rights. This revealing biography—based on unparalleled access to family papers and candid interviews with Coffin, his colleagues, family, friends, lovers, and wives—tells for the first time the remarkable story of Coffin’s life. An army and CIA veteran before assuming the post of Yale University chaplain at the youthful age of 33, Coffin gained notoriety as a leader of a dangerous civil rights Freedom Ride in 1961, as a defendant in the “Boston Five” trial of draft resisters in 1969, and as the preeminent voice of liberal religious dissent into the 1980s. This book encompasses Coffin’s turbulent private life as well as his flamboyant, joyful public career, while dramatically illuminating the larger social movements that consumed his days and defined his times.

Download or read book Lost Souls written by Sheila Fitzpatrick and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-11-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A history of the roughly half a million Soviet "displaced persons" post-WWII that looks at how ordinary people caught up in the deepening Cold War sought resettlement"--

Download or read book The Refugee Experience written by Wsevolod W. Isajiw and published by CIUS Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Unwanted written by Michael Robert Marrus and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There have always been homeless people, but only in the twentieth century have refugees become an important part of international politics, seriously affecting relations between states. Since the 1880s, the number of displaced persons has climbed astronomically, with people scattered over vaster distances and for longer periods of time than ever before. Tracing the emergence of this new variety of collective alienation, The Unwanted covers everything from the late nineteenth century to the present, encompassing the Armenian refugees, the Jews, the Spanish Civil War émigrés, the Cold War refugees in flight from Soviet states, and much more. Marrus shows not only the astounding dimensions of the subject but also depicts the shocking apathy and antipathy of the international community toward the homeless. He also examines the impact of refugee movements on Great Power diplomacy and considers the evolution of agencies designed to assist refugees, noting outstanding successes and failures.

Download or read book The People s War written by Robert W. Thurston and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The People's War lifts the Stalinist veil of secrecy to probe an almost untold side of World War II: the experiences of the Soviet people themselves. Going beyond dry and faceless military accounts of the eastern front of the "Great Patriotic War" and the Soviet state's one-dimensional "heroic People," this volume explores how ordinary citizens responded to the war, Stalinist leadership, and Nazi invasion. Drawing on a wealth of archival and recently published material, contributors detail the calculated destruction of a Jewish town by the Germans and present a chilling picture of life in occupied Minsk. They look at the cultural developments of the war as well as the wartime experience of intellectuals, for whom the period was a time of relative freedom. They discuss women's myriad roles in combat and other spheres of activity. They also reassess the behavior and morale of ordinary Red Army troops and offer new conclusions about early crushing defeats at the hands of the Germans--defeats that were officially explained as cowardice on the part of high officers. A frank investigation of civilian life behind the front lines, The People's War provides a detailed, balanced picture of the Stalinist USSR by describing not only the command structure and repressive power of the state but also how people reacted to them, cooperated with or opposed them, and adapted or ignored central policy in their own ways. By putting the Soviet people back in their war, this volume helps restore the range and complexity of human experience to one of history's most savage periods.

Download or read book Caught between Roosevelt and Stalin written by Dennis J. Dunn and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On November 16, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov signed an agreement establishing diplomatic ties between the United States and the Soviet Union. Two days later Roosevelt named the first of five ambassadors he would place in Moscow between 1933 and 1945. Caught between Roosevelt and Stalin tells the dramatic and important story of these ambassadors and their often contentious relationships with the two most powerful men in the world. More than fifty years after his death, Roosevelt's foreign policy, especially regarding the Soviet Union, remains a subject of intense debate. Dennis Dunn offers an ambitious new appraisal of the apparent confusion and contradiction in Roosevelt's policy one moment publicizing the four freedoms and the Atlantic Charter and the next moment giving tacit approval to Stalin's control of parts of Eastern Europe and northeast Asia. Dunn argues that "Rooseveltism," the president's belief that the Soviet Union and the United States were both developing into modern social democracies, blinded Roosevelt to the true nature of Stalin's brutal dictatorship despite repeated warnings from his ambassadors in Moscow. Focusing on the ambassadors themselves, William C. Bullitt, Joseph E. Davies, Laurence A. Steinhardt, William C. Standley, and W. Averell Harriman, Dunn details their bruising arguments with Roosevelt over the president's repeated concessions to Stalin. Using information uncovered during extensive research in the Soviet archives, Dunn reveals much about Stalin's policy toward the United States and demonstrates that in ignoring his ambassadors' good advice, Roosevelt appeased the Soviet leader unnecessarily. Sure to generate new discussion concerning the origins of the Cold War, this controversial assessment of Roosevelt's failed Soviet policy will be read for years to come.

Download or read book DPs written by Mark Wyman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wyman has written a highly readable account of the movement of diverse ethnic and cultural groups of Europe's displaced persons, 1945–1951. An analysis of the social, economic, and political circumstances within which relocation, resettlement, and repatriation of millions of people occurred, this study is equally a study in diplomacy, in international relations, and in social history. . . . A vivid and compassionate recreation of the events and circumstances within which displaced persons found themselves, of the strategies and means by which people survived or did not, and an account of the major powers in response to an unprecedented human crisis mark this as an important book."—Choice

Download or read book Prisoners of War written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-05 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second World War between the Axis and Allied powers saw over 20 million soldiers taken as prisoners of war. Prisoners of War uses a series of case studies to illuminate the personal and collective histories of those who experienced captivity in Eastern and Western Europe during the war and their repatriation and reintegration afterwards.

Download or read book Post Holocaust Politics written by Arieh J. Kochavi and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-01-14 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1945 and 1948, more than a quarter of a million Jews fled countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and began filling hastily erected displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria. As one of the victorious Allies, Britain had to help find a solution for the vast majority of these refugees who refused repatriation. Drawing on extensive research in British, American, and Israeli archives, Arieh Kochavi presents a comprehensive analysis of British policy toward Jewish displaced persons and reveals the crucial role the United States played in undermining that policy. Kochavi argues that political concerns--not human considerations--determined British policy regarding the refugees. Anxious to secure its interests in the Middle East, Britain feared its relations with Arab nations would suffer if it appeared to be too lax in thwarting Zionist efforts to bring Jewish Holocaust survivors to Palestine. In the United States, however, the American Jewish community was able to influence presidential policy by making its vote hinge on a solution to the displaced persons problem. Setting his analysis against the backdrop of the escalating Cold War, Kochavi reveals how, ironically, the Kremlin as well as the White House came to support the Zionists' goals, albeit for entirely different reasons.

Download or read book Return to the Motherland written by Seth Bernstein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-15 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Return to the Motherland follows those who were displaced to the Third Reich back to the Soviet Union after the victory over Germany. At the end of World War II, millions of people from Soviet lands were living as refugees outside the borders of the USSR. Most had been forced laborers and prisoners of war, deported to the Third Reich to work as racial inferiors in a crushing environment. Seth Bernstein reveals the secret history of repatriation, the details of the journey, and the new identities, prospects, and dangers for migrants that were created by the tumult of war. He uses official and personal sources from declassified holdings in post-Soviet archives, more than one hundred oral history interviews, and transnational archival material. Most notably, he makes extensive use of secret police files declassified only after the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014. The stories described in Return to the Motherland reveal not only how the USSR grappled with the aftermath of war but also the universality of Stalinism's refugee crisis. While arrest was not guaranteed, persecution was ubiquitous. Within Soviet society, returnees met with a cold reception that demanded hard labor as payment for perceived disloyalty, soldiers perpetrated rape against returning Soviet women, and ordinary people avoided contact with repatriates, fearing arrest as traitors and spies. As Bernstein describes, Soviet displacement presented a challenge to social order and the opportunity to rebuild the country as a great power after a devastating war.

Download or read book The Day The Sun Danced written by Leslie Michael and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1917, in Fatima, Portugal, the Virgin Mary appeared to three illiterate, peasant children. She showed them a vision of hell and warned that if Russia was not converted and consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart, that country would spread its errors around the world. The last apparition on October 13, 1917, was accompanied by a strange event: the sun danced in the sky! Before an estimated seventy thousand people gathered in an open field, it zigzagged overhead and appeared to be rushing toward the crowd. There was no screaming, no panic and no stampede. Scientific instruments around the world, failed to record this terrifying event. It became known as the “Miracle of the Sun.” More than a century has passed and the Vatican has yet to proclaim it a miracle. Nevertheless, these apparitions with its anti-Russian message were shamelessly used by the Catholic Church as a rallying war cry against Russia and its purported godlessness. Part religious-political treatise, but mostly, history, The Day The Sun Danced, traces the history that for centuries, saw Christians slaughter fellow Christians across Europe -- the cradle of Christianity, in the firm belief, that God was on their side. From the time of the Crusades to Martin Luther's nailing of his ninety-five theses, to the Holocaust, to World War II, the Cold War and beyond, author Leslie Michael pays special attention to the role Christianity played in the rise of Hitler. Pope Pius XII was not Hitler's Pope. He firmly believed Jews were the architect of their own misfortune. Instead of accepting Christ as their Lord, they murdered him – and Hitler was taking good care of them. Pius XII had his own agenda. Godless Communism was not his sole concern. He agonized over the division between the Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. It was his fervent hope that “Operation Barbarossa” the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union, joined by several Eastern European nations, would form a “Christian Crusade” that would would wipe out those godless communists and faithless Jews from the face of Europe. That country would be conquered, converted to Catholicism and consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, thus fulfilling the promises of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima -- and seeing Pope Pius XII emerge as the Supreme head of all Christendom.

Download or read book A Companion to Franklin D Roosevelt written by William D. Pederson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-03-21 with total page 948 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt presents a collection of historiographical essays by leading scholars that provides a comprehensive review of the scholarship on the president who led the United States through the tumultuous period from the Great Depression to the waning days of World War II. Represents a state-of-the-art assessment of current scholarship on FDR, the only president elected to four terms of office and the central figure in key events of the first half of the 20th century Covers all aspects of FDR's life and times, from his health, relationships, and Supreme Court packing, to New Deal policies, institutional issues, and international relations Features 35 essays by leading FDR scholars

Download or read book The Failure of America s Foreign Wars written by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger and published by The Future of Freedom Foundation. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans are now faced with competing visions of where we want our nation to go. On the one hand, we have the vision of America's Founders: individual liberty, private property, and limited government, in which there is no welfare, Social Security, income taxation, Medicare, Medicaid, regulations, subsidies, and the like. Equally important, no foreign wars. On the other hand, we have the vision of the 20th- and 21st-century public officials: ever-increasing taxation, regulations, and political plunder. And, of course, body bags and caskets as part of their attempt to remake the world into one gigantic welfare state. The stakes are too high for any American to ignore. For with foreign wars, not only do we have taxation and regulation, we also have the specter of funerals and wheelchairs for husbands, fathers, sons, wives, mothers, and daughters. It is time for the American people to recognize that our ancestors were right and that public officials were wrong. It is time to recapture the principles of our Founders. It is time to lead the world out of the welfare-state darkness into which it has plunged during most of our lifetime. The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars strips away the truth-obscuring nostalgia for America’s foreign adventures and shows the perverse and bloody consequences of these conflicts.

Download or read book Ukra written by Halyna Koscharsky and published by Nova Publishers. This book was released on 1995 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ukraine is one of the largest and most strategically important newly independent countries in the world. Ukraine's history and culture extend back over thousands of years and form a tapestry which reveals much about mankind's history. This book discusses issues of concern for the future.

Download or read book When Migrants Fail to Stay written by Ruth Balint and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-07 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aftermath of the Second World War marked a radical new moment in the history of migration. For the millions of refugees stranded in Europe, China and Africa, it offered the possibility of mobility to the 'new world' of the West; for countries like Australia that accepted them, it marked the beginning of a radical reimagining of its identity as an immigrant nation. For the next few decades, Australia was transformed by waves of migrants and refugees. However, two of the five million who came between 1947 and 1985 later left. When Migrants Fail to Stay examines why this happened. This innovative collection of essays explores a distinctive form of departure, and its importance in shaping and defining the reordering of societies after World War II. Esteemed historians Ruth Balint, Joy Damousi, and Sheila Fitzpatrick lead a cast of emerging and established scholars to probe this overlooked phenomenon. In doing so, this book enhances our understanding of the migration and its history.