Tag Archives: WWII

In My Hands Today…

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The Rising Sun: The Decline & Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-45 – John Toland

This Pulitzer Prize–winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author’s words, “a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened—muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox.”

In weaving together the historical facts and human drama leading up to and culminating in the war in the Pacific, Toland crafts a riveting and unbiased narrative history. In his Foreword, Toland says that if we are to draw any conclusion from The Rising Sun, it is “that there are no simple lessons in history, that it is human nature that repeats itself, not history.”

In My Hands Today…

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Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway – Dale A. Jenkins

It’s November 1941. Japan and the US are teetering on a knife-edge as leaders on both sides of the Pacific strive to prevent war between them. But failed diplomacy, foiled negotiations, and possible duplicity in the Roosevelt administration thwarted their attempts.

Drawing on now-declassified original documents, Diplomats & Admirals reveals the inside story of one fateful year, including:

  • How the hidden agendas of powerful civilian and military leaders pushed the two nations toward war
  • The miscommunications, misjudgments, and blunders that doomed efforts at peace
  • China’s role in the US ultimatum that triggered the attack on Pearl Harbor
  • Why the carrier-to-carrier showdown at Coral Sea proved a fatal mistake for Japan
  • How courageous US navy pilots snatched victory from defeat at the Battle of Midway

The defining events of WWII could have ended very differently. Combining perspectives from both military and civilian leaders, Diplomats & Admirals uncovers new insights into the Pacific naval battles that shaped the world—and the men behind them.

In My Hands Today…

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I Seek a Kind Person: My Father, Seven Children and the Adverts that Helped Them Escape the Holocaust – Julian Borger

In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out adverts offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life and death. Eighty-three years later, Guardian journalist Julian Borger comes across the advert that saved his father, Robert, from the Nazis. Robert had kept this a secret, like almost everything else about his traumatic Viennese childhood, until he took his own life.

Drawn to the shadows of his family’s past and starting with nothing but a page of newspaper adverts, Borger traces the remarkable stories of his father, the other advertised children and their families, each thrown into the maelstrom of a world at war. From a Viennese radio shop to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, the deep forests and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, smugglers saving Jewish lives in Holland, an improbable French Resistance cell, and a redemptive story of survival in New York, Borger unearths the astonishing journeys of the children at the hands of fate, their stories of trauma and the kindness of strangers.

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Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS – Lisa Rogak

Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was of course one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.

As members of the OSS, their task was to create a secret brand of propaganda produced with the sole aim to break the morale of Axis soldiers. Working in the European theater, across enemy lines in occupied China, and in Washington, D.C., Betty, Zuzka, Jane, and Marlene forged letters and “official” military orders, wrote and produced entire newspapers, scripted radio broadcasts and songs, and even developed rumors for undercover spies and double agents to spread to the enemy. And outside of a small group of spies, no one knew they existed. Until now.

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Paris Undercover – Matthew Goodman

Etta Shiber and Kitty Bonnefous are the unlikeliest of two seemingly ordinary women, an American widow and an English divorcée, living quietly together in Paris. Yet during the Nazi occupation, these two friends find themselves unexpectedly plunged into the whirlwind of history. With the help of a French country priest and others, they rescue untold numbers of British and French soldiers trapped behind enemy lines—some of whom they daringly smuggle through Nazi checkpoints in the trunk of their car.

Ultimately the Gestapo captures them both. After eighteen months in prison, Etta, a New Yorker of Jewish descent, is returned to the United States in a prisoner exchange. Back home, hoping to bring attention to her friend Kitty’s bravery, Etta publishes a memoir about their work. Paris-Underground becomes a publishing sensation and Etta a celebrity. Meanwhile Kitty spends the rest of the war in solitary confinement in a Nazi prison, entirely unaware of the book that has been written about her – and the deeds that have been claimed in her name.

In researching this story, Matthew Goodman uncovered military records, personal testimonies, and Etta Shiber’s own never-before-seen wartime letters. Together they reveal, for the first time, the shocking truth behind Etta’s bestselling memoir and the unexpected, far-reaching consequences of its publication. More than just a story of two women’s remarkable courage, Paris Undercover is also a vivid, gripping account of deceit, betrayal, and personal redemption.