Best workd war ii history books according to redditors
We found 775 Reddit comments discussing the best workd war ii history books. We ranked the 352 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 775 Reddit comments discussing the best workd war ii history books. We ranked the 352 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
I thought it was a joke...I can't believe it's a real book: http://www.amazon.com/In-Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling/dp/0895260514/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1396403690&sr=8-3&keywords=michelle+malkin
Both of their actions should be appreciated.
People should be commended for owning up to their mistakes and for forgiving others.
While I'm here, linking this book on forgiveness
In the last decade or so there has been a serious revision of the importance of the atomic bombs in ending World War II, due primarily to the work of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. His book Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan argues pretty effectively that in the minds of the Japanese Imperial government, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria is what really caused them to surrender when they did, not the atomic bombs. He has done quite a good job of going over the Japanese sources to really fill out their side of the story in a way that had been conspicuously lacking in previous historical work.
Not everyone is convinced (I'm a bit on the fence myself), but his book has certainly changed the terms of debate, and, at least with respect to every historian of the bomb I know (which is quite a lot of them!), pretty much everyone is willing to at least go half-way with Hasegawa, in that they are de-coupling the old cause-and-effect implications about the bomb and the end of the war.
That is, the typical story has always gone, "the US wanted to end the war quickly, they dropped two bombs, and Japan surrendered." Which is true! It's just that the correlation of those last two clauses may not actually equate with causation. The old debate about the "decision to use the bomb" always took for granted that the bomb actually mattered, in the end, but Hasegawa has really opened that up again as a live historical issue, and one which is actually in many ways entirely separate from the question of the motivation to use the bomb.
> Hitler and Mussolini had their first meeting in 1934 after the Italian Fascists had been in power for over a decade. Following the meeting Churchhill would quote Mussolini saying to an aide that he 'didn't like the look of him'. Whether there is any actual truth to this is questionable but it captures how Mussolini saw Hitler as a weak and 'unmanly' figure leading a nation of semi-barbarians.
From what I've read, it was Hitler who mimicked Mussolini (fascism, goose-stepping, Roman/Nazi salutes, and so on) up until September of 1937, when Mussolini visited Germany and was, as I recall, impressed with what he saw. Following that visit, Mussolini and Hitler had, more or less, switched roles of master and admirer.
Source: "Italy at War" from the Time-Life series on WWII
It’s actually a really interesting view that is posited by Japanese historians. Racing the Enemy is an amazing Japanese paper on the realities of the final days of the war from the internal view of the Japanese government.
I highly recommend reading the entirety of the work, but the summary goes along the lines of this:
The Japanese knew they were going to lose the war. They knew the Soviets were going to enter the war with the European front at peace. The Japanese government was terrified of what a Soviet-occupied Japan would look like and they preferred an American occupation. The problem was how to surrender while saving face and hopefully keeping the imperial system intact. The Soviets would have established a communist satellite state like they had done in Europe, while the Truman administration was at least amenable to keeping the emperor in place for public peace. The Japanese code of honour meant surrendering at all was problematic, but the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki allowed the Japanese to a) surrender to the Americans before the Soviets could enter the war, and b) save public face amongst the population of Japan by pointing to an apocalyptic bombing and say “we have to surrender”.
Don't forget that she'd include a comment about how the she thinks the internment of Japanese Americans in World War 2 was totally justified, an opinion that she literally wrote a book about.
Take a few hours and read 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad.
It's worth it.
Michelle Malkin wrote "In Defense of Internment" -
http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Internment-Round-Up-Americas-Terror/dp/0895260514
I don't think we should take anyone like that seriously. In the interview, she wasn't even following her own pledge of ignoring Atheists.
The Soviet army was wholly unprepared for any large long term conflict. They learned that lesson in Finland and was common knowledge among the whole command structure, and punctuated by the initial German invasion. It's amazing the kind of things you can learn when you actually read books about history and study things. Here's a great book that you would learn a lot from (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0700608990/ref=yo_ii_img?ie=UTF8&psc=1). Only 9 bucks! You have to be willing to learn of course.
Also, holy shit 100 million people! It's so crazy that Europe, with a population of only around 400 million people at the this time, had literally 1/4 of their population killed in Soviet prisons and yet people remember the Nazis as being bad. Yep, that sure is a crazy and I'm sure wholly realistic and rational numbers and not you just pulling numbers out of your own asshole.
When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler
You can find it on Amazon here, or, if you're a university student like me, you might be able to download a free e-book using online library resources.
> conservative personality Michelle Malkin
Just a reminder that Michelle Malkin became famous by using her Japanese heritage to advocate for the internment of Muslim Americans after 9/11
https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling-Terror/dp/0895260514
This article is a fairly succinct summation of the revisionist argument.
This book by a Japanese historian is the long form.
EDIT: Since I was asked to be a bit more explicit about the context of these links, I'll summarize. The basic argument here is that the dropping of the atomic bombs and Japanese surrender coming so close together is, in a way, coincidental. Japanese cities had basically been flattened (see this link for a comparison of Japanese cities destroyed to similar-sized American ones. Sorry I can't find a better page on short notice) and many of the conventional attacks were just as destructive as the atomic ones.
The Japanese high command weren't idiots, although some of them were nationalist fanatics. They knew they were losing the war, and indeed always stood very little chance of winning. However, they were hoping that a deal mediated through the Soviets, with whom they had a non-aggression pact, would allow them to hold on to some of their colonial possessions. Remember they had ruled Korea for decades, and were accustomed to it being fully in their control. They didn't see why surrender should necessarily end that.
The Soviets ultimately decided to break their pact with the Japanese, though and attacked Manchuria (with many many atrocities committed against Japanese colonists, btw. Read Japan at War for some first person accounts.) Their massive war machine, having been done with Germany for months, could have been in Hokkaido in weeks, rather than the months it would have taken to mount the American invasion of Kysushu. The Japanese military had been fortifying Kyushu with its best veteran troops in anticipation of American landings there. They would have been completely rolled in the north and Tokyo would have fallen by December.
The argument is that it was the prospect of occupation by the hated Russians that drove the high command to surrender, not the atomic bombs.
Granted, they are correct about the economic growth of the country. Intentionally or not Joseph Stalin took crib notes from the Imperial Russian Finance Minister who famously stated that given the choice between industrialization and allowing people to starve in the streets, people were just going to have to go hungry.
In that sense- and ironically doing what the Nazis could only imagine themselves doing under General Plan Ost- it's quite easy to grow your economy when you have no respect for human life or human rights and the rumbling of mouth breathing Germans on your border all collectively convinced there's a conspiracy of Jewish communists running your country to destroy western civilization then forced those people who generally loathed you into your 'loving' embrace. Seriously, to get a picture of what the early years of the Soviet Union was like, go read Ivan's War. Germany invading in some respects saved Stalin's experiment.
>Zero Unemployment
Because employment was a duty, even if your job was to sit in a stairway and read the newspaper.
>Zero homelessness
Man, who can say no to this? Construction companies are a brilliant way to build a fledgling economy but lets completely forgo that so everyone can live in concrete coffins.
>End Famine
You mean that thing you intentionally inflicted on the Ukrainians to cripple them? Or that thing where you forced everyone in bread lines? Jokes from the era were about how even heroes of the Soviet Union like cosmonauts had to wait in bread lines. Let that sink in: the Soviets could put man in space and achieved many important firsts in the wider space race but when tasked with making sure a country was fed they could not run an efficient bakery.
>Higher Calorie Consumption than the US
Someone's going to have to point me to this statistic but I don't see how they're not lying here. This certainly would not have started until the late 50's or early 60's because the Soviet Union was trashed in the wake of WW2 and the parts that were treated the worst was the bread basket.
NOOOOO!!!!!!!
Okay, that's out of my system. But I think that this is a poor example for /r/BadHistory simply because it isn't particularly BadHistory. Plenty of reputable historians have argued for the Soviets being the primary reason for Japan's Surrender, Hasegawa being the most famous one. While it's definitely not cut and dry, "The Soviets forced Japan to surrender" it's a completely reasonable position to take and IMO, makes more sense as the primary motivator for surrender than the A-Bomb.
Did a bit of searching and, as it turns out, this is far from an isolated, one-off position by the Republican Party platform. Michelle Malkin wrote an entire book on it! See here
Fred Korematsu's rebuttal
Eric Muller's rebuttal, in a nutshell, much more substantive
She also wrote a book titled [In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror] (http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling-Terror/dp/0895260514/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1449718002&sr=8-7&keywords=michelle+malkin) in 2004. Here is the description of the book on Amazon:
Everything you've been taught about the World War II "internment camps" in America is wrong:
They were not created primarily because of racism or wartime hysteria
They did not target only those of Japanese descent
They were not Nazi-style death camps
I see what you guys meant by the term "mental colonized".
The Kennedy bonds offer some more food for thought, as Farrell continues:
>I submit that there is a message being sent by this bond, and it is a message that works regardless if one views this strange securities instrument as legitimate or faked, for note the reverse of the bond: we have a clear image of the Moon, a clear image of the space shuttle lifting off.
>Consider then the imagery and the message being sent here. A red seal of the US treasury only appears on American currency notes, United States Notes, issued directly and debt-free by the US Government. Kennedy was the last president to order the issuance of such money.
>There is another message being sent in the bearer bonds episode...it has something to do with space. Why would a bond-smuggling operation, whether or not the bonds were real or counterfeit, be smuggling such instruments?
>We may be looking at a part of the funding mechanism for a vast covert space program, with the “collateral” clearly imaged on the reverse of the bond header itself: space, and whatever might be found out there. Hence, the use of a red seal, connoting a debt-free money, might be significant.
>We might be looking at a hidden funding mechanism for Mr. Richard Dolan’s idea of a “breakaway civilization.” If so, that would account for the virtually total absence of news coverage of the story in American media and its virtual disappearance as a story in the rest of the world’s media.
As Farrell concludes in his recent book Covert Wars and Breakaway Civilizations: The Secret Space Program, Celestial Psyops and Hidden Conflicts:
>A more basic message is present: a hidden tier of finance exists, represented by bearer bonds denominated in extraordinary amounts of money, amounts that imply that the owners of such bonds are in an elite circle of wealth, power, and knowledge.
The Spanish Bearer Bonds Scandal: $1.64 Trillion of Federal Reserve Note Series 1934 Bonds in Spain Seizure
This story originated in Barcelona in 2009, and was scarcely reported on by the MSM or independent media in the US. Here are a few important points:
The financial institutions involved were in Terrassa and Barcelona, Spain; the scam was detected in Catalonia; they believe the origin of the scam and faked securities was the Philippines; two unidentified businessmen were involved; the bearer bonds totaled $1.5 trillion; $126.5 billion were in 1934 Federal Reserve bonds with coupons; $20 billion were in international Bills of Exchange; $1 billion was in US gold certificate currency notes, banded with JP Morgan-Chase metals bands of bundles of $10 million each; an unspecified amount gold coins were found. They were accompanied by a bronze strong box, engraved with the letters Dallas Federal Reserve Bank.
It's important to note that all of these bonds emerged just as the BRICS nations began moving away from the dollar, suggesting that these separate incidents are connected and are evidence of covert economic warfare.
The Philippine connection also brings to mind the gold supposedly hidden by Japanese general Yamashita, gold which in turn represents the looting of China by Japan, a potentially extremely important point in this whole narrative.
Taking both the Japanese and Spanish bearer bonds incidents into consideration, Farrell concludes the following:
>Discrete steps were put into place by the American financial elite during the 1930s to establish a covert two-tiered system of finance, with the covert system being based upon bullion-backed currency and securities.
>This effort was renewed after WWII with the addition of Japanese gold stocks looted form China during the war, thus enabling a vast, though covert, expansion of the American Federal Reserve's credit making ability. These hidden securities were employed in the funding of covert operations and projects.
>The Japanese and Spanish bond scandals thus imply that someone else, some other faction external to this covert financial structure, was aware of this arrangement, and has begun to obfuscate and interfere with the stability of this structure.
The Italian Bearer Bonds Scandal: $6 Trillion In US Bonds Seized In Zurich, Said To Pose "Severe Threats To International Financial Stability"
From Farrell: More faked bonds seized again!
Madison Rupert reported on the story as well: $6 trillion in allegedly fake US bonds hidden in Federal Reserve Mother Box seized
From zerohedge, quoting from a Bloomberg article:
>"Italian anti-mafia prosecutors said they seized a record $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that’s almost half of the U.S.’s public debt." From here the story just gets weirder: "The bonds were found hidden in makeshift compartments of three safety deposit boxes in Zurich. The U.S. embassy in Rome has examined the securities dated 1934, which had a nominal value of $1 billion apiece, they said in the statement.
>And weirder: "The individuals involved were planning to buy plutonium from Nigerian sources, according to phone conversations monitored by the police." And really, really weird: "The fraud posed “severe threats” to international financial stability, the prosecutors said in the statement." Ok great, however one thing we don't get is just how can $6 trillion in glaringly fake bombs be a "threat to international financial stability."
Farrell continues:
>The bonds were seized in Zurich, an important clue, for Switzerland would be a likely place to sell or trade large denomination securities on the international market. The bonds were once again dated 1934, and they were stated to be a “threat to international stability”. How could denominations of bonds that never existed pose any sort of threat to international financial stability unless there was a real exemplar? One does not counterfeit a seven dollar bill.
>Such bonds can only exist if there is a market for them, and such a market can only exist if indeed there is some kernel of truth to the existence of such bonds, dated from that period. The amount seized in this particular episode of the Bearer Bonds Soap Opera was 6 trillion, and these were in bonds that were backed by gold. Is the amount of gold in existence able to cover such an astronomical amount of money? What is the actual amount of gold in existence?
That implication brings us to the strange allegations of Lord Blackheath, made almost at the same time as the bearer bonds scandals
Can you say “breakaway civilization?”
Yeah, interestingly the same chemist who re-synthesized heroin discovered aspirin a few days later. The book is called 'Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich.' So far, I like it, but the author is very anti-drug, it seems. I generally dislike writers that personify drugs. Meth isn't 'evil.' It's a chemical, it's inanimate, it can't be evil. But the research is really good.
https://www.amazon.com/Blitzed-Drugs-Germany-Norman-Ohler/dp/0241256992/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1502138418&sr=8-2&keywords=blitzed
https://www.amazon.com/Blitzed-Drugs-Germany-Norman-Ohler/dp/0241256992
the entire Third Reich was permeated with drugs: cocaine, heroin, morphine and, most of all, methamphetamines, or crystal meth, used by everyone from factory workers to housewives, and crucial to troops' resilience - even partly explaining German victory in 1940. The promiscuous use of drugs at the very highest levels also impaired and confused decision-making, with Hitler and his entourage taking refuge in potentially lethal cocktails of stimulants administered by the physician Dr Morell
Is the book it's a pretty good read and funny because of how fucked up they got
In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror By Michelle Malkin
Are you referring to PROMIS?
I just submitted a link about that too.
This stuff is crazy.
From the book Covert Wars and Breakaway Civilizations by author Joseph P. Farrell:
>The story was so real, and so huge, that the indefatigably lazy American lamestream media would barely touch it. Cheri Seymour, whose "The Last Circle" was eventually published as a book, delved deeply into the Danny Casolaro investigation of the Inslaw affair, and deeply into Casolaro's "murder by suicide" in a motel in West Virginia.
>Casolaro, who has been hired by Inslaw company founder Bill Hamilton to investigate the theft of the company's software, soon uncovered so many tendrils and threads of conspiracy leading so many places that he dubbed the entity "The Octopus," and was in the final stages of investigation and beginning to compile notes for a book on the subject. Summoned to Martinsburg, West Virginia by an unnamed source who indicated that he would reveal the final missing key to Casolaro, and that Casolaro should bring his important files and notes on the subject, Casolaro never returned from the meeting. He was found by a cleaning maid on August 10th, 1991, in the bathtub of his room, with numerous deep cuts to both wrists.
>Retracing Casolaro's steps and contacts, Seymour quickly confirmed that Casolaro's sources did indeed maintain that the PROMIS software had been stolen, and that the program had subsequently been modified to include "backdoors". The program had then been sold under a variety of names to various banks, corporations, and most importantly, foreign intelligence services. The backdoor allowed the U.S. intelligence community to access the computer systems and databases of wherever the program went.
>The software was so flexible in its management capabilities for different types of databases that it allowed the easy tracking of arms, of people, of drugs, to such an extent that it allowed the "enterprise" behind the Iran-Contra controversy to be essentially a self-supporting system, or to put it differently, Iran-Contra was but one operation of a completely self-sustaining system that required, and hand, no government oversight, from anywhere. It was, in short, a manifestation of the breakaway civilization.
>According to Seymour, Casolaro had even told close friends that he had been able to link the Inslaw scandal and similar episodes "back to a dirty CIA 'Old Boy' network" that had begun in the 1950s. Some of the connections between the Inslaw affair and the rogue CIA group that Casolaro had uncovered were the now infamous banking scandals that began to rock the world beginning with the Reagan Administration and continuing for the rest of the century: The BCCI, or Bank of Credit and Commerce International, somewhat more accurately called by researchers the Bank of Crooks and Criminals, International. Casolaro had also uncovered connections to the Savings and Loan scandal, the Keating Five, and on and on it went.
>Most importantly, Seymour stated, that Bill Hamilton, the founder of Inslaw, and told her that one version of PROMIS had been modified by the NSA specifically in a "bank surveillance version" to monitor proceeds from drugs sales. In other words, the technology was intimately tied to the financial community, and to the vast underground economy of the international drug cartels and criminal syndicates.
>The software was, so to speak, the gatekeeper of the interface between the "overworld", the visible system of finance, and the hidden system, a system that used drugs as an international currency, and referred to them as gold. The system, via its backdoor, could be used as a valuable tool to track money laundering.
>In short, Casolaro had uncovered a "rogue group," an international "breakaway group" operating entirely on its own, but that groups was not at its core a cabal of international bankers, but rather, a core of intelligence operatives, rogue military men, technocrats, and, of course, corrupt, or compromised, bankers.
>According to Seymour, Inslaw founder Bill Hamilton had come to his own similar conclusions. He believed "...after more than two decades of research, that the modified version of his PROMIS software had been used for money laundering of drug profits to fund unauthorized intelligence operations..."
>Indeed, such a powerful program would not only allow the tracking of covert financial activities, and even for the existence of an entire covert financial system, but it would also allow something equally important for such a system to exist, namely, the ability to cover its tracks and obfuscate its activities by using the "backdoor" to modify the actual numbers of transactions...say, for example, the amounts of gold actually in existence. such a tool would allow the same amount of gold to be used as the backing or collateral to float securities over and over in different issues.
This trend went pretty mainstream among conservatives ten or fifteen years ago.
Nixon went from pariah to great president who made a single mistake.
Vietnam went from a bad idea and a huge clusterfuck to a just and righteous war that the damn democrats deliberately sabotaged.
Japanese internment during wwii went from a horrible injustice to a perfectly reasonable precaution. Michelle Malkin even wrote a book about it in 2004.
And I'm sure there are lots of other examples I'm forgetting.
The Trumpkins didn't start all this, but it's unsurprising that they'd latch on to it. Particularly Nixon.
That’s US education at its finest.
The public estimate used to justify the bombing after the war was 500,000 casualties, not lives. Strange how it’s become so inflated as people began to question the use of the bomb...
The Army did at one point used a worst case “strategic planning” estimate of 750,000 replacements needed to cover all types of casualties and soldiers rotating out. 135k deaths would have be in-line with other pacific theater operations. 300k Purple Hearts were ordered to cover everything through the end of the war. There is zero evidence to support the idea that the US was preparing for “well over a million” American deaths in an invasion without the atomic bomb.
Today, we know that the number used to justify the bombings and given to us post war might have been inflated by as much as ten times, as the records we have now show that the US Joint War Plans Committee wrote in June 1945 (a month before we had a testable-bomb) that they expected a Nov. 1 invasion date and “only” 40k American deaths — 75k casualties.
Roosevelt’s and Truman’s own advisors wanted to allow conditional surrender, as the “emperor clause” was a major barrier to Japan’s surrender. There’s evidence the bomb wouldn’t have been necessary if they would have allowed the emperor to remain, but Truman continued to refuse (fun fact, after the bombing we did allow him to remain anyway, despite refusing to do so before the bombing, partially because of concerns it would drive post-war Japan into bed with the soviets).
Truman’s entire negotiation tactics with the Soviets changed after the first successful bomb test, and he used the first bomb to force them into Japan (which, Japan’s own records showwas more influential in their surrender than the bombing of Hiroshima was).
We dropped bombs as a show of force, and killed 200,000+ Japanese non-combatants in doing so. Here’s a good book to help correct some of what we were taught in schools.
because: these information emerged much after the incidents? The japaneese did horrible things during the war. But tired of this recent trend of the immediate Bosa bashing following a Japan in WW2 post ...
Edit: Also, read http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Second-World-Antony-Beevor/dp/0297844970 which details how the Japaneese went out of the way to hide it specifically from Bose when he was visiting the Andamans ...
> source
It's from a book called "Ivan's War"
https://www.amazon.com/Ivans-War-Life-Death-1939-1945/dp/0312426526
unfortunately I got rid of the book, so I can't check the actual material cited.
Hitler sincerely believed that the natural state was for all races be in conflict over limited resources, a collective Darwinian struggle, a view inspired by the starvation of roughly a half million Germans during WWI. If the German race could not seize and keep agricultural lands (lebensraum) in the East and was defeated, then in his view the German race was doomed to extinction in any case.
The first chapter of Tim Snyder's Black Earth clarified a lot of Nazi ideology that to me previously just seemed an incoherent dumpster full of racism, genocidal violence, pseudo-science and anti-intellectualism.
This article is about the same theory and historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy. I think it's considered a big deal because it's saying that neither the atomic bomb nor the conventional bombing that preceded it broke Japan's will, i.e. city-bombing doesn't break wills, i.e. military thinking and the political narrative of WWII has been wrong and needs to change, and leaderships basically don't care about population loss.... and thus, there is likely to be political unwillingness to accept such a theory in both the U.S. (the atomic bombs didn't do anything) and Japan (the government didn't really care that the people were being bombed to death).
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy is the source.
Hasegawa presents an international history of the end of the Pacific War and although the atomic bombings were important in bringing about Japan's surrender, Hasegawa posits that the USSR's entry into the war provided a bigger shock to the Japanese government compelling surrender. Before the USSR's entry, the Japanese government was divided between those wanting unconditional surrender and those wishing to surrender under the condition that they'd retain the Emperor.
The Japanese approached Stalin with an offer to mediate a settlement with the US and Stalin exploited this situation to his own ends, keeping Japanese hopes alive that peace could be mediated. Once the USSR entered the war though, Japanese hopes were shattered and those in the government advocating unconditional surrender were empowered. After the surrender, the US occupational force decided to retain the Emperor anyways in the interest of a speedier, more stable reconstruction.
Hasegawa's argument is a mix of synthesis and original work and is an excellent history. There are the more radical interpretations though that are ludicrous because they remove the act of the bombings out of the context of the war and mobilization (See Gar Alperovitz's Atomic Diplomacy). The fact is that the US leadership from Truman to the generals never considered not using the bombs. The bombs were developed to be used and FDR green-lighted the Manhattan Project because he feared the Axis would get the bomb first and use it. Once the bomb was tested, the US leadership knew it was a powerful weapon but they never conceived that it would be a long-term game changer in warfare. The total war was still going on; there was no debate about using them, Truman just gave the order.
Well, Russia was eyeballing some northern Japanese islands and playing games with the Japanese government; it was a mess.
I don't know the text books, but I highly highly recommend Racing the Enemy:
https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Stalin-Truman-Surrender/dp/0674022416
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Most importantly! Buy this book!: http://www.amazon.com/Covert-Wars-Breakaway-Civilizations-Celestial/dp/1935487833
Wait, wait, wait.
So The American Spectator is reporting that Michelle Malkin started this or was one of the first people out of the gate on it.
Yes, that Michelle Malkin, friend of Asian-Americans Everywhere.
And there are Social Justice people fucking supporting her?
These people seriously need to pack it in.
This is wrong headed to say the least. I would strongly recommend reading a book such as Richard Overy's Russia's War or something similar before making such a claim. Hard to beat Overy's work though.
The lend-lease programme was not really a factor during the battle of Moscow:
>That the Soviet victories of late 1941 were won with Soviet blood and largely with Soviet weapons is beyond dispute...Lend-Lease aid did not “save” the Soviet Union from defeat during the Battle of Moscow. But the speed at which Britain in particular was willing and able to provide aid to the Soviet Union, and at which the Soviet Union was able to put foreign equipment into frontline use, is still an underappreciated part of this story.
It was a factor during the battle of Stalingrad, but, operation Uranus would have succeeded either way as the 6th Army was left very depleted and without adequate support after Army Group South was broken up into Army Groups A & B with most of the good stuff (Hoth's 4th Panzer Army, etc) going to Army Group A on the ill fated Caucasus adventure. The 6th Army, part of Army Group B, was stuck in Stalingrad on an island surrounded by satellite divisions (Romanian, etc) holding its flanks. Those divisions were promptly brutalised by the Red Army and thus began the infamous encirclement of Stalingrad.
In the latter part of the war, /u/artoduhslord is essentially correct. I will quote my favourite answer on this topic:
> The need to have to fight on a second front in the west did weaken Hitler and hastened the demise of the Third Reich; however, Germany had received so many body blows even before Torch and Normandy that its defeat was assured at Soviet Hands.
Operation Torch, the landings in North Africa, happened in October 1943Edit: Original author was probably referring to the opening of the Italian front.; however, the German march eastward was forever stopped at Kursk earlier that year, in August 1943 (see Battle of Kursk). After Kursk, the Germans were in constant retreat. Normandy happened in June 1944; however, the success of Normandy, which merely established a beachhead in Northern France for allied forces to land and invade the continent, was massively eclipsed (though much less reported in the western press) by the much more successful Operation Bagration (Edit: Russian documentary on Operation Bagration in English), which commenced on June 22 (three years from the start of the German-Soviet conflict in 1941) and ended on August 19, resulting in the deaths of 1.5 million Germans, the destruction of an entire Army Group (Army Group Center), the loss of about 17 army divisions, and the liberation of Belarus.>So my conclusion is that had America and Britain not invaded German-ruled Europe through Torch and Overlord, the Russians would still have won. The difference is that the map of Europe would have looked very different after the war. Instead of a democratic western Europe and a communist eastern Europe, the whole of Europe would have been painted red, and probably another few million Soviets would have died fighting.
>Could Russia have defeated the Germans without the substantial assistance of the US in terms of jeeps, trucks, food, and the like? I aver that it could have, but it would have doubtless taken them longer. The Soviets proved even in 1941 that they could defeat the Germans, with no allied aid, when they caused a million casualties to the German armies in front of Moscow (aided by General Winter), so I believe they could have single-handedly defeated the Germans - in time. Instead of the war ending in 1945, maybe it would have taken the Soviets until 1950 to finish the war on their own terms - by conquering the whole of continental Europe."
>It would have taken longer because they would not have had the advantage of speed which the jeeps and trucks gave them, and the battles with the Germans would have been longer and bloodier, but there was really no question that the manufacturing capacity of the Russians was continually increasing and the manufacturing capacity of the Germans was continually decreasing - so in time, the Soviets would have been able to - maybe by 1945 - been able to get their own production to a high enough level to be able to manufacture enough trucks and jeeps of their own to finally defeat the Germans by 1950. It would have been a battle of attrition, but one that the Soviets would have won.
This tape seems to confirm Victor Suvorov's thesis that Stalin was preparing for massive aggression against Germany and Western Europe. That is the significance of the large number of tanks Hitler is talking about at the start of the tape. Suvorov claims that Stalin's military position was 100% aggressive toward Poland/Germany/Europe. He also claims that if Stalin had attacked Romanian oil (mentioned in the tape), it would have been all over for Germany. Lastly, Suvorov says that Stalin was so easily overwhelmed by Hitler's sudden attack because Stalin's military position was totally aggressive, which is a bad position for defense.
Suvorov's book can be found in PDF for free or on Amazon - Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?.
I just read The Second World War and it was remarkable how long the US slow-played entry for political gain, extorted Great Britain on lending terms (albeit even that act was opposed by congress at the time, so it may have been necessary), and reneged on the "Germany first" policy, diverting the lion share of resources to the pacific where it seemed there was more to be gained. And, meanwhile, was charmed by Stalin into what amounted to an Allied betrayal of Poland (Stalin unfortunately had a knack for charming everyone while convincing world leaders that he was being charmed, to the point where the US/Allied can proudly say we fought beside the worst and most violent dictator of the time, and not for lack of competition).
The aid of the US was pivotal to be sure, but (as an American) I just wish we hadn't made such an embarrassing job of it.
I've done a bit of reading regarding fascism. Well before Trump got elected I read Fascism: A Very Short Introduction out of morbid curiosity. I noticed a trend back in 2014-2015 that nationalism was staunchly on the rise. So I figured I'd read about what I consider to be the most complicated of all ideologies.
Fascism put quite simply from articles I've read is just an outright rejection of Feminism, Multiculturalism, and any type of actual leftist economics. Instead it's replaced with an adherence to Paternalism, a struggle of racial/ancestral identities, and an embracing of violence to further advance one's Nation. From what I've read and have seen from the rise of the alt-right these people I fully consider to be fascist. However there is a key component missing from many of these groups that the traditional fascists movements of the mid 20th century had; which is an actual functioning para-military wing of the group.
>which is an actual functioning para-military wing of the group.
I'm quoting myself here for emphasis. In doing so I'm going to reject that the current paramilitary groups that align with the alt-right currently are not nearly as powerful, nor as large as their former mid-20th century counterparts in regards to their paramilitary groups. Sure, I'm willing to bet a few people here will link to articles showing paramilitary groups, but when compared with the amount of soldiers left over from WW1 that formed into the paramilitary groups of the 20th century , today's groups are small in comparison.
This I think is the biggest thing as to why we're not seeing a larger enforce alt-right movement with some actual heft to it. It's missing one of the largest components to fascism. Even in the book Nazis talked about bringing fascism to America; they believed America was ripe for fascism however the thing holding them back was the strict adherence and reverence for the Constitution (IIRC) which emphasized a federalized government vs a centralized government.
I'm currently reading When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, by David Glantz.
It is based mostly on Soviet archives which opened to the West after the Iron Curtain fell. It is quite interesting, but can be incredibly dry at times. Lots of "General Sosoandsovski's Xth Rifle Division attacked General von Soandsohoffen's Xth Panzer Corps near Bumfuckėžys, Lithuania, supported by..." for pages and pages and pages.
> Ordinary German soldiers were massacring, raping and burning everything just like their SS brethren.
Tim Snyder, too, makes that point in his book and how the Nazis discovered non-SS Germans would behave in atrocious ways (soldiers, police) w/o special indoctrination (and non-German collaborators too). He goes on to point out that the staff who behaved OK in the Nazi-occupied West could get an Eastern assignment and turn into monsters.
The lesson from this is not about Germans, IMHO, but about human behaviour in general. Many people stress this about other occasions too, and for good reason. Civilization is fragile regardless of nationality or ethnicity.
There's so much to say on this topic. I would recommend getting a hold of Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (on Kindle if you can) and reading through it, then you'll have a good idea about what fascism is and its pros and cons.
But just to get you started:
Pros:
Cons:
etc.
[Fascism: A Very Short Introduction] (http://www.amazon.com/Fascism-A-Very-Short-Introduction/dp/0192801554) is a really condensed and informative little book.
> The USSR had no interest in Western Europe
Kek. Read Icebreaker
Glantz, David M and Jonathan M. House. When Titans Clashed: How The Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2015. 384 pages, available as paperback, hardback, and ebook.
This is one of the best single-volume operational histories of the Nazi-Soviet War. It is not as in-depth as, say, Erickson's duology, but it's relatively quick and easy to read. Glantz is still the English-language historian par excellence of the operational aspect of the Nazi-Soviet War and of Soviet doctrine and theory, though he is unfortunately semi-retired now. Jonathan House's coauthorship saves When Titans Clashed from the worst of the usual criticisms of Glantz's writing, namely his dry "I have copy-pasted and translated this section of a Russian field manual" style.
​
Smelser, Ronald M., and Edward J. Davies. The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 342 pages, hardback or paperback.
I recommend this book as a companion to Titans, as the two of them dismantle many Western assumptions & myths about the so-called "Eastern Front," albeit from different angles. Where Titans presents a less Wehrmacht-centric perspective on the purely military aspects of that conflict and sheds light on the actual military skill of the Red Army, The Myth of the Eastern Front explains the origins of many of those assumptions and is an important historiographic piece.
​
Merridale, Catherine. Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945. New York: Picador, 2006. 462 pages, paperback, hardback, or audiobook.
Ivan's War is a social history of the Red Army, told partly through interviews with veterans and civilians and partly through memoirs, and contextualized by improved access to archives during the post-Soviet, pre-current-unpleasantness era. It is less academically rigorous than, say, Reese's Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers: A Social History of the Red Army, 1925-1941, but more approachable and quite compelling. If you're wondering what it was like to be an anonymous frontovik in the wartime Red Army, this is a good place to start. By dispelling the implicitly dehumanizing and racist narratives of the largely Wehrmacht-influenced prevailing Western literature on the Nazi-Soviet War, Ivan's War also rounds out a sort of mythbusting trilogy with Titans and Myth of the Eastern Front.
​
Continuing the World War II theme, Robert Citino's Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942 (448 pages), The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943 (440 pages), and The Wehrmacht's Last Stand: The German Campaigns of 1944-1945 (632 pages) are, as a trilogy, a good look into the institutional culture of the German officer corps. Citino posits that, in addition to the distortive effects of Nazism on that culture, the officer corps embodied a long tradition of a particular way of war - short, sharp, lively wars of strategic preemption and the pursuit of the rapid defeat by encirclement of enemy armies - that proved unsuited for modern industrialized total war, and ultimately contributed to the Reich's defeat. Citino is quite readable; his prose is actually *enjoyable* which can be quite rare for military history.
​
Glantz, David M. Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle. New York: Frank Cass, 1991. 320 pages, paperback.
Returning to Glantz and the Soviet focus, this is a good surface-level (but satisfactorily deep) introduction to the history, theory, and practice of the Soviet concept of operational art - the intermediate level of war between tactics and strategy, involving the use of large formations like armies to achieve coordinated tactical successes, the sum of which contribute to strategic victory. It is, as I mentioned before, rather dry, but compared to some of Glantz's other stuff it's still perfectly readable. In my opinion, this text is an indispensable primer for understanding how the Red Army expected to fight at various points in its history, but also the roots of modern Russian theories of war. It is unfortunately a little expensive, however. I think Glantz might have long-form essays floating around on dtic.mil that summarize some of the book's content but I'm not sure.
​
Ferriter, Diarmaid. A Nation and Not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913-1923. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2017. 528 pages, paperback.
A departure from the rest of the list, I really like this book as a survey of the Irish Revolution and the beginnings of the IRA. It covers military matters, but mostly social and political matters, and for that reason alone I think it's a good introduction to the (arguably much more important) broader & less technical-tactical parts of military history. The first ten chapters cover the historiography of the Revolution, and a few chapters in the last third of the book discuss memory and how different communities have constructed different histories of the Revolution. These sections helped me, as a student of military history, to learn to look beyond the pure battlefield matters and examine the impact of war on society as a whole, because war is nothing if not a social phenomenon.
https://www.amazon.com/When-Titans-Clashed-Stopped-Studies/dp/0700608990
Fantastic recommendation, I got to read Junger's memoir last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Absolutely horrifying and enlightening.
One of my favorite WWI books is A World Undone, by G. J. Meyer. Which is ironic since I don't think I've ever posted a single anecdote from it (an error I need to severely correct).
It's super dense, but probably one of the best overviews of the war, encapsulating a deep amount of academic research, primary sources from soldiers, civilians, leaders- all the while providing important historical context and background for the many many actors/nations involved, their motives, and goals.
I recommend this book to ANYONE interested in WWI besides a passing understanding. At 816 pages it can be daunting to most readers, but if you have the interest, absolutely check out this book.
Another great book is Max Hastings's Inferno, which is one of the best "social histories" of the war IMO. The wide-range of intimate, tragic, surprising, and sometimes funny testimonies collected in the book, along with Hastings's excellent prose, is one of the most "human" retellings of WWII, I've ever read and is a must for anyone who is interested in the war beyond just the military and political aspects.
Edit: I also want to include Hastings's Retribution which covers the Pacific campaign (1944-45) in equally masterful prose and heartwrenching testimony. Learned not only a lot about the Japanese perspective but also of people's lives under Japanese occupation.
Also Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy, which is a fantastic (American POV) of the war and incredibly well written.
They were totally screwed by the Allied forces (British and US) who left them hanging. Thanks for your service, loyalty and commitment to freedom but fuck off now that the Nazi's are gone.
Source: The Western Betrayal and Max Hastings Inferno
https://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-Antony-Beevor/dp/0316023752/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
is what I'm reading. I'm about 2/3rds through before I kinda lost interest a few weeks ago in the airport(basically when US enters teh war/pacific theatre which I already knew tons about before the book)
This is a fantastic book from a pretty objective point of view, and covers from the end of the first world war to the end of the second. All the dumb strategic decisions, errors, etc. by all sides are covered. It's also pretty long http://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-Antony-Beevor/dp/0316023752/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450295011&sr=8-1&keywords=beevor+the+second+world+war
If you can find Churchill's chronicles of the World War II, they are thoroughly enjoyable. Maybe he read them already:
http://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-Six-Boxed/dp/039541685X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324409954&sr=8-1
I read an abridged version (still 2000 pages long in 2 volumes) and felt I was missing out on the whole thing.
I read finished Volume 5 of Churchill's WW2 memoirs, and then took a break and read the first three trades of The Wicked + The Divine and The Rise And Fall of D.O.D.O.
Churchill remains an extremely rewarding read, even though it's taken me ages, I'm really glad I've done it. It really gives a strong perspective on the period, supported by so many documents.
Wicked and Divine is fantastic from the stuff I've read so far. Definitely gonna continue reading it when I get a chance.
Rise and Fall of DODO was kind of disappointing, but it was a halfway decent novel. Just not as good as I was hoping. Having Stephenson co-write is probably a good idea, because there are actual coherent characters other than the Competent Nerd Dude. In point of fact, the Competent Nerd Dude is a super-minor character, and the book is actually written partially first person from a lady's perspective!
Definitely looking forward to August or so, when I finish up the Churchill memoirs and read a whole stack of novels for a break.
>I remember reading about a (recent) book that attributed the end of WW2 in the Pacific to the Soviet involvement more so than the atomic bombs dropped upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I can't recall the title. Maybe someone on here will be able to help with that...
You're talking about the following:
http://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Stalin-Truman-Surrender/dp/0674022416/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319085719&sr=8-1
Although it doesn't fall into the category of a general history of the Eastern Front, it is an excellent monograph on the subject(s) it concentrates on.
Many of those figures were exaggerated and fabricated after the war, as historians have known for around fifty years.
Even the pre-war figures were also based on faulty, often racist assumptions, about the unwavering tenacity and fanaticism of the Japanese population, in which they argued that much of the civilian population would either fight invaders with their bare hands, or commit suicide rather than be conquered.
Both left out the fact that eight straight years of war, and being completely cut off from their empire in the last year, the Japanese were only months away from being completely without the resources, gasoline/oil/rubber/steel etc... necessary to continue the war. A fact which was not unknown to us, nor does it mention that Japanese were seeking conditional surrender for months before we dropped the bomb.
Edit: For further reading on the topic, I would recommend John Dower's War without Mercy, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy, Gar Alperovitz's Atomic Diplomacy and The Decision to use the Atomic Bomb
>WARNING:LONG POST
>Whether they had an accurate appraisal of the situation or not, the only things that matter in determining what ended the war are the subjective reasons that Japanese leaders chose to surrender when and how they did. Whether the US made the right choice is a separate question.
>Using the diaries and records of the meetings among Japanese leaders, Hasegawa has conclusively demonstrated that the atomic bomb had less of an influence on the debates in Tokyo than the standard American narrative would suggest. These strongly suggest that Soviet entry into the war was the critical point that made fighting on untenable, and also that up until that point, they were still expecting to fight the Allies on Japanese soil, despite the use of the bombs.
>It’s important to realize that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not, at first, particularly novel experiences for Japan. The firebombing of Tokyo had a higher death toll (estimates from 80,000-200,000; 130,000 a commonly cited figure) than either in terms of people killed outright. The true horror of the atomic bombs did not become clear until weeks, months and years after the fact (For Hiroshima, roughly 70,000 people died in the initial blast, 100,000 by the end of the year, and over 200,000 in 5 years). While the new bomb did condense thousands of planes worth of destruction into a single bomb, the actual level of destruction was not higher at the time that the Japanese government was making the decision to surrender. Disease and deaths from radiation would later change the balance of destruction, but it is incorrect to assume that the Japanese command was aware of the delayed effects of atomic bombs.
>This is not to say that the bombs did not have an effect, because they undoubtedly did. They sped the decision to capitulate, even if the Soviet entry into the war was the deciding factor. The bomb was also influential in solidifying Hirohito's stance on surrender, and gave the peace faction some ammunition against the war faction.
Courtesy of /u/t-o-k-u-m-e-i.
Full comment here.
The point of this post is to dispel the myth that millions more Americans would have had to die if the bombs weren't used.
> This article seems to have some interesting points
I'm sorry, but it's nothing but pop history and armchair general's what-ifs IMHO.
It doesn't account for potential potent counter-attacks on the South flank of the over-stretched AGC, it assumes that the Soviets would themselves surround at Bryansk, it assumes that one of the most regular meteorological event of the Russian climate wouldn't happen, it assumes that AGC somehow has enough fuel and supplie to actually lead such a battle, it assumes that the Soviet would stand still and don't counter-attack everywhere they can, etc.
If you want an excellent book to get a good grasp on the situation of the Easter Front, I strongly commend When Titans Clashed from David Glantz – US Army historian specialized in Soviet military history – which is a cheap and incredibly good source of informations.
To be fair, shamefully enough there are some who do think it was ok.
Didn't Malkin also write a book dedicated to the idea that government can lock up a whole group of people simply based on their ethnicity? Yes she did.
Please read Richard Overy Russia's War
Very eye opening book that presents a gripping analysis of both the catastrophes and heroic effort by the Soviets on the eastern front.
If you're looking for nonfiction, I would recommend:
Gives a general overview on the inherent problems capitalism (waste, unequal oppurtunity, greed, monopolies) as well as dispelling false arguments against socialism (distinction between property for means of production and ownership of private product, redistributing material goods, laziness in the population). Also highlights the major difference between socialism and communism--socialism is the distribution of goods according to deeds and communism is the distribution of goods according to needs.
An obvious choice. Thousands of papers written on this originally 23 page pamphlet. He gives reasons for the inevitability to shift from capitalism to socialism as well as his 10 steps in doing so. Can't say much about it since Marx and Engels gets to the point rather quickly.
If you don't mind dry but succinct summarization of the history, people/leaders, and notion of types of government, look up A Very Short Introduction to Communism, A Very Short Introduction to Fascism, A Very Short Introduction to Socialism.
I'll give you some advice as well. These ideas are obviously complex and contrary to what the media tells you, there is no one concrete idea that is socialism, communism, fascism, or any other types of government. Many thinkers and revolutionaries mix and match ideas due to the particular needs of the society in that time period. But at the same time, while there is not one trait given to each of these ideologies, there are generalities that we can take and learn from. And just because one of these types of government fails, it does not entail the ideology was bad and will forever be obsolete.
edit: If you're looking for an interesting leader for socialism, Helen Keller was a radical socialist. Most Americans just think she was a blind and deaf person who overcame her disabilities and that should fill us up with hope but that was just her first 14 years of life. What about the next 60 years? So she became a socialist to try and obtain equal rights and oppurtunities for disabled people as well as women. If you can find any non-sensationalist books about her, it would be an interesting read.
It was mentioned at the same time as Blitzed was a big thing here on reddit. But a quick google for isis and amphetamine brings lots of articles captagon.
A drug that is critiqued to be mild but I believe its mildness help confuse people with newfound but not inhuman courage through their fate.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkey-seizes-11-million-captagon-amphetamine-pills-used-by-isis-fighters-to-keep-themselves-awake-a6744366.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/3688057/captagon-isis-drug-chemical-courage-sleep-disorders-terrorists/
edit: But the world of amphetamine and other drug usage in war is greatly interesting, it almost makes war more believable (and horrifying) if you knew people we're freaking jacked and killer each others.
I've heard great things about 900 Days.
https://www.amazon.com/Ivans-War-Life-Death-1939-1945/dp/0312426526
Here you go
It's based on WWII but the experiences cannot have been all that different for many in WWI. The difference in WWI is that divorce was much less widely available, certainly in Russia! Many men likely turned to drink and suffered dead marriages as a result.
I know you were jist giving an example question, but whilst we are on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-Antony-Beevor/dp/0316023744/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372582993&sr=1-1&keywords=antony+beevor
First, I have a very US-centric perspective, so you may notice that in my recommendations. I'm just looking at my bookcase recommending anything I've read and enjoyed (if it's on my bookcase, I enjoyed it). I have a lot more books in boxes, so if you want more recommendations do let me know. Also, if you want more information on any of the books, feel free to ask me.
Books:
History of the World by J.M. Roberts
A Study of History by Arnold Tonybee
Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization by Bruce Thorton
The Story of Civilization - Will & Ariel Durant
Separated at Birth: How North Korea Became the Evil Twin by Gordon Cucullu
The Fall of Japan: The Last Blazing Weeks of World War II by William Craig
The Century of Revolution: 1603-1714 by Christopher Hill
China's Imperial Past: An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture by Charles Hucker
Middle East Patterns: Places, Peoples, and Politics by Colbert Held
Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Ian Bickerton
The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict by Walter Lagueur
A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas Madden
The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture 1880-1950
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann
Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris
The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
The Second World War by Winston Churchill
Documentaries:
The World at War
Ken Burns: The Civil War
Civilisation: A Personal View
There's this great documentary about his life, absolutely insightful. Also his books are interesting to read, e.g.
Was waiting for someone to bring up Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Pretty cool that he is your prof.
He wrote a whole book on this specific issue: http://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Stalin-Truman-Surrender/dp/0674022416/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1
There is an interesting theroy out there that suggests that the Japanese simply didn't surrender solely because of the atomic bombs, but were in fact much more affraid of the Soviets invading. A fellow redditor pointed this out to me after i inquired about the esatern front in WWII .http://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Stalin-Truman-Surrender/dp/0674022416/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319085719&sr=8-1
TL;DR theory that the japanese were going to surrender anyway in fear of Soviet invasion
"when titans clashed" by david glantz
examines all military campaigns in the east in great detail and even details the 10+ years of turmoil and upheaval within the soviet ranks prior to 1939 - stalin's purges, internal politics etc - which left the red army woefully underprepared for the war when it hit in 1941.
http://www.amazon.com/When-Titans-Clashed-Stopped-Studies/dp/0700608990
You'd think they would learn a thing or two about Winter Warfare after the Winter War no? They ''failed'' in the Winter war because of poor leadership (result of the purges in the Army) that sent Divisions from the Kiev military district to Finland without proper equipment.
Russians in WWII were much better prepared for winter. Just look at how the Red Army's major offensive operations in 1941-1942 were performed exclusively in Winter, when they knew they had an edge on the Germans.
> they just had unlimited supply of cannon fodder.
The manpower balance never went beyond 3:1 in Soviet favor in the entire war. Also combat losses ratio was around 1:1.3 in German favor, when you exclude the murder of POWs by the Germans.
TL;DR pick up a book on the Eastern Front and educate yourself. I'd recommend this one
There are thousands of images from this time - too name all the sources on the internet and books would be impossible. The best site if you want to browse is http://www.yadvashem.org/
Just an FYI : It does not include any images - and is not a book about the facts of the Holocaust - but it is something I would recommend everyone read The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal.
I don't have an answer for you on the topic of forgiveness but I want to direct you to The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal which is a collection of essays on the topic. The moral dilemma of the book concerns a Nazi begging the forgiveness of a Jewish prisoner during the height of the holocaust and the Jewish prisoner refusing to give it. After setting up this tale the rest of the book is various writers, thinkers, religious and political leaders giving their two cents on the nature of forgiveness.
One common theme throughout the book is the idea that forgiveness is something that cannot be given on behalf of someone else. Who is this Jew to forgive the Nazi for what he has done to other Jews? Applied to this case, maybe direct family members have some standing to offer forgiveness, but the person who was killed is the person the killer should look to for forgiveness. Obviously the killer can't, murder is unforgivable with this logic.
However, the exact opposite opinion is also expressed by many writers. Rather than let the question languish in this paradox where the only person able to forgive is dead, these writers insist that the only way forward is to allow someone else to get the ball rolling. I don't know that I have an opinion on the issue, I just think if you are genuinely curious and want to be challenged on the issues by some of the best ethical theorists of our age - look into this book.
Had no idea this exists. A conservative, Asian! commentator making a defense of Japanese internment during WWII and racial profiling for the war on terror.
From what I can gather, historians didn't take too well to it considering it sounds as though she gets some basic chronology wrong (she works under the assumption Japan ruled most of the Pacific ergo attack on homeland imminent ergo internment is justified while in reality the internment didn't begin until after the Battle of Midway where the Japanese navy was dealt a pretty defining blow in the Pacific).
But yeah, i can try getting away with the argument that a few bad apples (or a rival nation) justifies removing the civil liberties of an entire ethnicity.
Has anyone read this book?
That is great. Her guest didn't let her get away with being nuts. Too bad he didn't study up on her history. She is warning about the dangers of Holocaust denial when she wrote a book defending the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII: http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling-Terror/dp/0895260514
There are parallels to discuss for sure. Interestingly a lot what is being said in this thread, in defense of blanket surveillance sounds a lot like Michelle Malkin and her book In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II. Even if they aren't rounding up muslims to be put into camp, they're still infringing on an entire group's civil rights because they share the same religion as many other terrorists in the world. Keep in mind there were far more actually armed and trained Japanese who were at war with America back then than there are radical islamists serving in the same capacity today. So, it was wrong to target innocent ethnic Japanese citizens then without cause but somehow it's ok now to target innocent muslims today? Go figure.
In Defense of Internment by Michelle Malkin
There was, indeed, substantial threat of sabotage, as well as collaboration with Imperial Japan.
I'm in the middle of Homo Deus currently. Its great so far, Yuval is a great writer and his books are a lot more accessible than traditional history books. I'm sure there are a lot of liberties taken with some of the history but I think Sapiens is a must-read. Homo Deus is more assumption based on current reality but its very interesting so far.
Gulag Archipelago is one I read based on the recommendation of Jordan Peterson. Awesome book if you are into WW1-WW2 era eastern europe. being an eastern european myself, i devour everything related to it so this book tickled my fancy quite a bit. good look into the pitfalls of what peterson warns against.
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning is another history book discussing that time period and how it all transpired and the lesser known reasons why WW2 went down the way it did. some surprising stuff in that book related to hitler modeling europe around how the united states was designed at the time.
apologies for inundating with the same topic for all my books so far but Ordinary Men is an amazing book chronicling the people that carried out most of the killings during WW2 in Poland, Germany and surrounding areas. The crux of the argument which I have read in many other books is that Auschwitz is a neat little box everyone can picture in their head and assign blame to when in reality most people killed during that time were taken to the outskirts of their town and shot in plain sight by fellow townspeople, mostly retired police officers and soldiers no longer able for active duty.
for some lighter reading i really enjoy jon ronson's books and i've read all of them. standouts are So You've Been Publicly Shamed and The Psychopath Test. Highly recommend Them as well which has an early Alex Jones cameo in it.
Bluntly stated, not really. As /u/TheGuineaPig21 stated, the closest thing to a "kernel of truth" the myth has is that Jews were overrepresented among the Communists, simply because they had been oppressed by the former Russian Empire. However, the same applied to many other ethnic groups as well--there were more Jews than you'd expect in the NKVD, but there were also more Latvians, for instance.
Indeed, Timothy Snyder has pointed out that the USSR became more anti-semitic, not less, as its persecutions heated up. Check out Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning:
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Earth-Holocaust-History-Warning/dp/1101903473/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479164517&sr=8-1&keywords=black+earth
And read chapters 5, 6, and 7. Here's an ace quote from page 119:
>In 1938, Stalin was able to turn the Soviet communist party, an early target of the purges, against the NKVD...As a consequence, the nationality structure of the NKVD was altered. It was no longer an exceptionally cosmopolitan elite with revolutionary prestige in which Jews (and Latvians and Poles) were highly represented. Polish officers were removed and often executed in the Polish Operation...By the end of 1938, the NKVD had become an organization dominated by Russians (65 percent of high officers) and Ukrainians (17 percent of high officers). Russians were now overrepresented in the NKVD by comparison to their share in the general Soviet population. The percentage of Jews was down from nearly forty percent to less than four percent. (my emphasis added) There were no longer any Poles at all.
As we can see, if the NKVD ever was a "Jewish" organization (spoiler: it wasn't), Stalin made it as Gentilicious as you could want by the end of the 1930s. Guess all our Wehraboo and neo-Nazi bonehead friends ought to start defending it as a bulwark against da joos, eh? Top lel.
I highly recommend Black Earth by Timothy Snyder.
It's mainly concerned about the Holocaust, but it also details very nicely the aspects of Nazism that generated German expansion into Eastern Europe, and their subsequent attempt to exterminate everyone who was already there.
It might be these: https://www.amazon.com/World-War-II-39-Set/dp/B000MC7H4I
This set is by the jukebox.
http://www.amazon.com/World-War-II-Volume-Set/dp/B000MC7H4I
"Partisans and Guerrillas" http://www.amazon.com/World-War-II-Volume-Set/dp/B000MC7H4I
It's a pretty good bathroom read, I've read it at least twice.
In another Eiffel Tower thread it is mentioned that the tower's designer was also the principal designer of the Statue of Liberty which was prominently featured in the first film. I have two ideas. It might have something to do with the recurring airplane theme (Cannibal Airlines VHS, Tom Clancy's Threat Vector on the bookshelf and the framed picture of a plane in the barrel shot). From Gustave Eiffel's Wikipedia page:
"...his writings upon the resistance of the air have already become classical. His researches, published in 1907 and 1911, on the resistance of the air in connection with aviation, are especially valuable. They have given engineers the data for designing and constructing flying machines upon sound, scientific principles"
So this guy had a lot to do with airplanes. Or his research led to the principles on which airplanes were developed.
Or, as Eiffel stated when asked of the Towers Symbolism:
"Not only the art of the modern engineer, but also the century of Industry and Science in which we are living, and for which the way was prepared by the great scientific movement of the eighteenth century and by the Revolution of 1789, to which this monument will be built as an expression of France's gratitude."
So the tower symbolized enlightenment, science and discovery. So maybe we created something led to whatever is out there. Could be the atom bomb (there is a Time Life World War 2 encyclopedia set on the same self as the Clancy novel).
https://www.amazon.com/Icebreaker-Who-Started-Second-World/dp/0241126223
Stalin was planning to invade July 7 1941, he got pre empted by Hitler who came June 22 as a response to the Soviet buildup of 300 divisions on the border.
The masks that "capitalism" and "communism " were bitter enemies dropped and they all came together to give stalin trucks tanks guns food bullets clothes fuel industrial equipment pesticide even.
Are you really here to spout the most often repeated mainstream nonsense that everyone has heard since they were a child thousands of times?
tachas y perico...literal. Hay un libro de eso, de cómo los nazis andaban drogadísimos todo el rato. Edit: Este merengues
https://www.amazon.ca/Blitzed-Drugs-Germany-Norman-Ohler/dp/0241256992
Hmm, typically most point to "Blitzed" though I never have read that book and it seems to get slammed for going a bit 'alternative' on the matter of history.
I'd say combat drugs used by German units was quite widespread and notable, and was key for the Germans advancing as much as they did without really stopping - leading to disorganisation amongst the Allies as throughout WW2 as they themselves typically only used combat drugs in terms of airforce pilots or medicines and so forth, whereas the Germans had used it quite extensively throughout its armed forces. Panzerschokolade and Stuka tablets are rather notable nicknames for these stimulants.
An article on such: http://www.spiegel.de/international/the-nazi-death-machine-hitler-s-drugged-soldiers-a-354606.html
Corroborating Wiki article tidbits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#History,_society,_and_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_and_culture_of_substituted_amphetamines#Military_use
Edit: Change Blitz into Blitzed, the proper book name and gave a link to it.
When I say they had a pretty good idea, I'm not implying that this was from experience, rather that they were more likely to have been aware of the realities of the awfulness of the eastern front due to the lack of cold war attitudes that were prevalent in the west. When I was a kid, the history books over here didn't want to portray the USSR as a victim.
Since the USSR dissolved, things are a bit more objective. And even before then, some of us did go out and find books that were more accurate than say, the works of 'Sven Hassel' which when I was younger, were some of the only first-hand (at least the first 2 books) accounts published in English. Apart from Harrison Salisbury's account of the Siege of Leningrad, it's difficult to think of a book about the eastern front that was written by Russian eye-witnesses and then translated into English before the collapse of the USSR. In more recent years, English speaking historians have been making a point of getting interviews with the few remaining eye witnesses. Part of the problem in this is, as you point out, that for many of the instances, there were no survivors to give an account.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make, was that it is possible for people to know how grim a series of events was, without having to have experienced it first-hand, as long as they've access to accounts from those who did get direct experience, like your great grandpa. And some of the more recent western authors have been putting the record straight, so some of us do have more of an idea than would have been the case a couple of decades ago.
I'll try and get a copy of When Titans Clashed, cheers for the reccomendation. By way of return, can I suggest Catherine Merridale's Ivan's war.
For Leningrad stuff, also of interest might be an online copy of Glantz's 900 Days, but I'd also say Salisbury's The 900 days is well worth a read.
I really enjoyed this book on Operation Mincemeat: https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Mincemeat-Bizarre-Fooled-Assured/dp/0307453286
More than $100? Are you looking at college textbooks?
I heard good things about this book: Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 by Max Hasting.
Also, here is a list of whatever comes up on Amazon when I searched "World War 2" - all definitely way less than $100.
Read Ivan's war https://www.amazon.com/Ivans-War-Life-Death-1939-1945/dp/0312426526
You are wrong about the Soviets.
Read this Book, one of the best books about second world war and incredibly intense!
https://www.amazon.com/Unwomanly-Face-War-History-Women/dp/0399588728
Also great: https://www.amazon.de/Ivans-War-Life-Death-1939-1945/dp/0312426526
Ivan's war isn't quite diary level, but it is still a very intimate look at soviet soldiers and their feelings of war.
The war was not given the title of "World War" for nothing. If we look beyond the European theater of operations, you have the eastern front for example (which some include in the ETO). Further beyond that, you've got the African campaigns (North, East, West) and the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon and Iraq to name the major ones). The Pacific portion of the war was a very large part of the war, something you could easily look up by a simple Google search. In there, you will find things such as fighting on pacific islands, in India and Burma, on mainland China and even on the Aleutian Islands, a part of Alaska.
This is an incredibly quick summary of some of the battlegrounds of WWII. There is certainly more to add. You can easily find more information through any general book on World War II. I know, for example, that the popular historian Antony Beevor recently released an all-covering book on WWII.
The historian Antony Beevor recounts this event in his book The Second World War.
Beevor writes,
> The gleaming carriages of the Amerika carried on towards the Spanish frontier at Hendaye, where [Hitler] met Franco the next day. The Caudillo’s train had been delayed due to the dilapidated state of the Spanish railways, and the long wait had not put Hitler in a good mood. The two dictators inspected a guard of honour from his personal escort, the Führer-Begleit-Kommando, drawn up on the platform. The black-uniformed troopers towered over the pot-bellied Spanish dictator, whose smile, both complacent and ingratiating, seldom left his face (Beevor 2012, 144).
>When Hitler and Franco began their discussions, the Caudillo’s torrent of words prevented his visitor from speaking, a state of affairs to which the Führer was not accustomed. Franco spoke of their comradeship in arms during the Spanish Civil War and his gratitude for all that Hitler had done, and evoked the ‘alianza espiritual’ which existed between their countries. He then expressed his deep regret for not being able to enter the war immediately on Germany’s side as a result of Spain’s impoverished condition. For much of the three hours, Franco rambled on about his life and experiences, prompting Hitler to say later that he would prefer to have three or four teeth pulled than go through another conversation with the Spanish dictator (Beevor 2012, 145).
Source: Beevor, Antony. The Second World War. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012.
Also, I recommend reading Antony Beevor's book The Battle for Spain.
Super lame way to do it, but if you go to Amazon, and do the "Look Inside" option, you can see most of the notes, although some pages aren't available in the preview. Really a criminal oversight to take them out of the paperback and not make them easily available elsewhere.
I don't have an article but I listened to the audio book The Second World War by Antony Beevor. He talks about Rommel.
I haven't read it myself, so I can't comment, but Winston Churchill himself wrote a six-part series called, simply, The Second World War. It is available on Amazon in a styling box-set for $75. Bit pricy but seems like a wonderful gift.
Churchill wrote a set of books about WW2. I don't know if you're looking for fiction or non fiction, but you might be interested in these.
It is impossible to resolve the question as to whether or not Truman could have got an unconditional surrender from the Japanese government without the atomic bombs. It's one of the greatest 'What ifs..?" in history. Efforts were made and he and his advisors didn't believe they could have so we have to take them at their word. Truman was too good a man to have used those bombs unless he had felt that there was no other option to bring the war to a quick end. Truman and his staff did not know, and could not have known, how the Japanese cabinet was viewing the situation.
But Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's 2006 book, Racing The Enemy, based on the most comprehensive examination of archival resources in Japan, argues that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific war that was decisive. The Soviets declared war on Japan just two days after the Hiroshima bombing. Most Americans look at that event and just see it as Stalin trying to score some glory and territorial gains on the back of America's efforts and never consider how that news played with the Japanese leadership.
Hasegawa's research argues that it was this Soviet entry into the war that was the final straw that broke the camel's back. Communism was something totally anathema to japan's extremely conservative leadership. Losing the war to the Soviets would have meant, with no doubt, an end to the Japanese way of life and a far, far more brutal occupation. Surrendering when they did allowed them to escape any level of Soviet occupation. And in the end the Soviets only occupied (and Putin's Russia still occupies) some small fishing islands off the northern coast of Hokkaido.
Even if the ratio was 1:2, that's still a far cry away from the soviets using human waves
This essay does a good job evaluating german and soviet causalities: http://sti.clemson.edu/publications-mainmenu-38/publications-library/cat_view/33-strom-thurmond-institute/153-sti-publications-by-subject-area/158-history
Skip to page 13-14 to dig right into casualty comparison.
For further reading this book is high quality and on the shorter side:
https://www.amazon.com/When-Titans-Clashed-Stopped-Studies/dp/0700608990
My understanding is that there is consensus on the USSR's motives for invading Poland, which was to by time for the inevitable war with Germany.
I've been reading this recently, and the author sure interprets the things that way.
https://www.amazon.com/When-Titans-Clashed-Stopped-Studies/dp/0700608990
The T-34, and especially in terms of its sloped armour, was some of the most advanced in the world at that time. Initially in 1941 the Pz IV was armed with a low velocity 75mm gun. This was entirely inadequate against both the T-34 and the KV-1. Later, the F and G series would reach parity with the T-34, being armed with a High V 75mm. But by the time the G series came out, 1943, the Panther outclassed the Pz IV, and tank like the IS-2 and T-34-85 also outclassed the Pz IV.
As for the Russian deficiencies, they largely came from the Great Officer Purge of 1937. The Soviets and the Germans pioneered mobile warfare during the joint research Treaty of Rapallo. Yet by 1937, while Heinz Guderian was writing his book, basically outlining German wartime doctrine, the Soviets were busy arresting and executing all of its top leadership. This was especially true of the officers who championed armor theory similar to the Germans (who were also veterans of Rapallo). And, in classic Stalinist Purge fashion, these experienced officers were replaced by rookies who lacked experience commanding large formations, let alone any experience commanding in actual combat conditions. Further, these new officers had military regulations drummed into them. Officers were "encouraged" to follow only the textbook maneuvers and dispositions (and when you get your job because the last guy was executed, it makes a person far less likely to argue). When it came to the war, the Soviets were indoctrinated in how they should fight. This led to many mistakes which would have to be corrected during 1942 an '43. The real flaw of the Red Army in 1941 and early 1942 wasnt that they lacked technology or the tactics to use it. Its that they wernt able to properly employ it, except in rigid and obvious attacks which the Germans could easily identify, or simply ignore. By 1943, the Red Army resurrected theory developed at Rapallo and created an army very much the equal of the German army. Further, the Soviets perfected the maskirovka or deception. Not only could the Soviets create breakthroughs just as well as the Germans, they were able to deceive the German army as to where the attack would fall. This would draw off reserves from the initial breakthrough, which would only allow the exploitation phase to start earlier and last longer. In fact, by Operation Bagration, the Soviets were only really limited by their logistical train in how deep they could penetrate the German line.
If youre interested in a good book on the Eastern Front, David Glantz's When Titans Clashed. Glantz is an expert on the Eastern front, and he goes through the Eastern Front from the Russian perspective. He discusses their failings and their origins, then later how the Red Army overcame those flaws and created an army which, by 1944, resembled the German army of 1940.
read "The Sunflower" by Simon Weisenthal
I wish I was as optimistic as you, one-half. Published July 1, 2004: In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go look at some pictures of cats.
Just one of the millions of reasons: http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling-Terror/dp/0895260514
http://www.amazon.ca/Life-Fate-Vasily-Grossman/dp/0099506165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299084352&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.ca/Ivans-War-Catherine-Merridale/dp/0571218083/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1299084381&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.ca/Russias-War-Richard-Overy/dp/0140271694/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1299084464&sr=1-2
Just gonna keep digging the hole huh?
> This bullshit is how Russia rewrites history... not focusing on how they forced people to run at the Germans with no weapons, only to be cut down with machine gun fire, and if they turned back... cut down by their own people with machine gun fire.
This is a great example of an opinion that comes more from watching movies than it does from doing any actual reading on the subject. Yes there was great incompetence on the side of the Soviet, but you are ignoring the brutality of the conflict completely.
How many books have you read about the Eastern Front? Your opinions echo those of uninformed people who haven't read much on the subject, yet think they have a concise idea about the conflict.
Here are some you might learn something from:
(This one is a great place to start)
https://www.amazon.com/Ostfront-Hitlers-1941-45-General-Military/dp/1855327112
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(Dry at times, but captures the struggle from both perspectives well)
https://www.amazon.com/Russias-War-History-Soviet-1941-1945/dp/0140271694
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(A personal favorite of mine that focuses on the lives of Soviet Soldiers mostly using first hand accounts and interviews.)
https://www.amazon.com/Ivans-War-Life-Death-1939-1945-ebook/dp/B000SEGP2U
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You originally claimed
> They had it worst due to their government, not because the Germans were extra vicious against them.
Anyone who has studied the conflict at all knows that it was because their government was shit and the Germans were extra vicious. Much like the Soviets were often extra vicious to the Germans in ways that were not seen on the western front.
This book list may interest you.
Since you seem more interested in the Eastern Front, here are a few more books not on the list which focus on it:
[Stalingrad](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad_(book), and Berlin: The Downfall by Antony Beevor are must reads. Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945 by Richard Overy is also a great summary of the entire Russian war from start to finish. Finally, for a good account from the perspective of Soviet tank crews, might I suggest T-34 in Action, from the Stackpole military history series. It’s a short read, but quite interesting. Hope this helps.
Mad amounts of amphetamines. As was most of the Third Reich.
There is a reason why the combination of amphetamines and LSD lead to a 'bad trip'. One loosens awareness, the other contracts it.
Lol, maybe for those involved in the Manhattan Project, perhaps… Although Hitler took daily injections of meth, cocaine, and opiates according to a new book called Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany.
Worth a read
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blitzed-Drugs-Germany-Norman-Ohler/dp/0241256992
I don't know if it was a pact as much as Mao betraying Koumintang in an attempt to have Koumintang and the Japanese wear each other out, leaving the communist faction the strongest. It worked, and millions or tens of millions of Chinese civilians were the victims of that power play.
Source can be this book for instance https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-World-War-Antony-Beevor/dp/0297844970
I don't know what the current Chinese official history says, but most likely not the truth. China is very afraid of any kind of historical facts undermining the legitimacy of the Communist party and their current and previous actions.
Oh man. There's an interesting passage about Lenin's body in a book about the siege of Leningrad and the extreme measures they took to ensure its safety.
https://www.amazon.com/900-Days-Siege-Leningrad/dp/0306812983/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483886332&sr=8-1&keywords=900-Days-Siege-Leningrad%2F
A couple that I've read from Antony Beevor:
Stalingrad, and its follow up book The Fall of Berlin 1945. Beevor has also written books on the Ardennes, D-Day, and an all encompassing book on WWII. I have yet to read those but can attest that his two Eastern Front focused books are fantastic
I would also highly recommend The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison Salisbury. Absolutely haunting stuff.
Much like the locals learnt to do during the Siege of Leningrad, you need to avoid the one side of each street that is vulnerable to artillery.
The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad by Harrison Salisbury. This was one of the most compelling history books I've ever read. Beautifully written.
If you want to get close to imagining the horrific devastation that the nazis delivered, this book will get you closer. extremely well researched, etc, and explains why the soviets were so ill prepared. highly recommend.
http://www.amazon.com/900-Days-Siege-Leningrad/dp/0306812983
isbn 0306812983
Yes!
http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Mincemeat-Bizarre-Assured-Victory/dp/0307453286/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1462819898&sr=1-1&keywords=operation+mincemeat
It was a ruse to make the Germans think the Allies were going to invade Greece rather than Italy thus causing them to misallocate their defensive resources. It worked.
Operation Mincemeat - Ben Macintyre
or Agent Zigzag - Ben Macintyre
If you like Charlie Wilson's War you'll like either of these two. They are about the British counter-intelligence efforts during world war two. It is funny how bizarre, yet successful some of their efforts were.
I highly recommend them.
There is a book called Operation Mincemeat as well: https://www.amazon.ca/Operation-Mincemeat-Bizarre-Assured-Victory/dp/0307453286
It's amazing! There is so much detail about how every aspect of the operation was so meticulously planned, it'll leave you in awe of how amazing the British spies were. And you'll finally understand why Britain had hundreds of spies in Germany, while Germany had every single one of her spies caught and turned by British intelligence.
"Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victor" by Ben Macintyre is a wild ride: "Near the end of World War II, two British naval officers came up with a brilliant and slightly mad scheme to mislead the Nazi armies about where the Allies would attack southern europe. To carry out the plan, they would have to rely on the most unlikely of secret agents: a dead man." https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Mincemeat-Bizarre-Fooled-Assured/dp/0307453286/ref=sr_1_1?crid=21KI22HQYKNG4&keywords=operation+mincemeat&qid=1573404413&s=books&sprefix=Operation+min%2Cstripbooks%2C179&sr=1-1
The book about this by Ben MacIntyre is an insanely fun read. Highly recommend.
https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Mincemeat-Bizarre-Assured-Victory/dp/0307453286
Inferno: The World at War 1939-1945 is regarded as one of the best single-volume works on the Second World War.
You'll want to read Ivan's War, by Catherine Merridale. It's the best English-language treatment of the average soldier's experience.
This article has a detailed explanation. As I mentioned the "Hitler didn't use gas in the battlefield because of his own experiences" was a one theory and( I probably should have pointed out) not the most likely one. The article mentions also that chemical weapons were possibly used in battlefield at least one occasion.
> While Hitler may not have dropped chemical bombs, some believe the Germans did use poison gas against enemy soldiers in World War II. In her book “Ivan’s War,” Catherine Merridale writes that Nazis used poison gas to kill some 3,000 Soviet troops and civilians holed up in caves after the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula in 1942.
This also probably has some additional information.
Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army 1939 - 1945 by Catherine Merridale
The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Anthony Beevor
Ivans War is a solid start from there I've read a number of books about individual battles some of which include personal anecdotes from soldiers but I've yet to come across a book, in English, written from a Russian soldiers perspective.
>Thanks! Just ordered Merridale, Catherine. Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945. on the bay ($3.86freeshipping)
>
>Personal accounts are of interest. Have you read Tapping Hitler's Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations ...?
>
>Only just started but of interest especially the dissidents (?)
>
>for example pg 79 THOMA: I foresaw the whole thing....I regret every bomb, every scrap of material and every human life that is still being wasted in this senseless war. The only gain that the war will bring us is the end of the ten years of gangster rule...
>
>Every day the war continues constitute a crime. They must put Adolf Hitler in a padded cell. A gang of rogues can't rule forever. It would be a pity if any one of them was shot. They ought to be made to do heavy work until they drop down dead."
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One wonders if he suspected he was being recorded;playing for the audience. Of course, it's easier to be judicious when one is safe, and, also, correct in hindsight
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Thanks again!
I was able to find a few more sources of information about him.
This book isn't entirely about him, but apparently it starts off with his story.
Here's an essay written on him by the gentleman who wrote the book.
Here's where I found those other links.
You just need to find a more in-depth military history account of the Americans. Marshall probably doesn't get enough credit for his contributions to American war planning before and during the war, perhaps because he didn't get to take photos with fighting soldiers and battles are usually what's considered interesting about war.
I've been reading this book and Marshall does come across as the 'main character' of the American sphere, at least until Eisenhower was given more responsibilities.
No better place to start than Anthony Beevor's The Second World War ;)
https://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-Antony-Beevor/dp/0316023752 makes no bounds
Agree. Why, when I had history in high school, did no one think to mention that one of the primary figures of WWII wrote a history that earned him the Nobel prize in LITERATURE??? http://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-Winston-Churchill/dp/039541685X
My recollection of Churchill's account of this event from his (excellent) history of WW2 roughly matches your description.
I think the imminence of the fall of Singapore was far more evident to the commander on the scene than to Churchill, who seemed certain that the fortress city could withstand a long siege and was shocked when it fell so rapidly.
Well, there's always Winston Churchill's six-volume work on the subject, The Second World War: https://www.amazon.com/dp/039541685X/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_-ovzybAE3R3F1
This is what I'm talking about: abridged version on Amazon vs. the six volume set on Amazon
The Japanese historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa made the most thorough research on the matter to date, including all manner of Japanese political records from that time. It's always been known among people who know WW2 history, but the Soviet intervention that really pushed the Japanese over the edge at least to a substantial degree. Having dozens of their cities bombed and firestormed by the US already with similar or more destruction before the atomic bombs didn't cause them to surrender anyways, which is more telling than anything else.
One article regarding his research: http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/
He also wrote a book called Racing the Enemy. At the very least, it's a far deeper critical analysis than other existing works on the matter and especially the lazily-repeated "The nukes saved millions of lives."
Also, think about it this way: Do you really think the US government would admit their Soviet rivals pushed Japan over the edge after using nuclear weapons? Do you also think the US would give their Soviet rivals any credit for surrender of Japan? The biggest (and false) argument that is made to defend the use of nuclear weapons is "It saved lots of lives." Once that goes out the door, there's nothing left.
As I said above, this is a controversial issue, and there are many people who believe this would not have been the case.
Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs that he did not believe it to be strategically necessary:
>my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.
There is a good book on the factors that led to the surrender of Japan by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa which I recommend.
There is of course a lot of opposition to this thinking. This article comes to mind. To your point:
>"We would have kept on fighting until all Japanese were killed, but we would not have been defeated," by which he meant that they would not have been disgraced by surrender.
The Japanese parliament did approve a civilian defense force called Kokumin Giyū Sentōtai with a theoretical strength of 280,000. They were extremely poorly armed, but were charged with the defense of the mainland in the event of an invasion. They were disbanded without incident after the surrender was formalized. It is worth noting that Germany gave similar orders for a total defense of the homeland in the final weeks of the war - which went nowhere due to the lack of supplies, and tapped out manpower.
I have complex feeling on the subject, but I think I do believe that nuclear weapons were not a necessary part of why there was no insurgency within Japan after the war - the declaration of surrender, and the emperor's address to the nation was. Whether the declaration of surrender could only be obtained with nuclear weapons is a slightly different issue.
That's a discredited theory that's not supported by the evidence. Gar Alperovitz is a crank - he wants the history to support his clear moral vision re: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and he twists whatever facts he needs to, and ignore every source he can, to do so. His theory was at best speculative in 1964, and disproven since.
(Psst, if Japan was "going to surrender anyway," why did the Big Six dead lock on a *conditional* surrender after the nukes dropped? Why was unprecedented intervention of Hirohito necessary?)
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A much better, and much more comprehensive, account of the end of the Pacific War, based on American, Russian, and Japanese sources (the latter two virtually ignored by Alperovitz) is Downfall by Frank.
https://www.amazon.com/Downfall-End-Imperial-Japanese-Empire/dp/0141001461
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If you only trust "revisionist" historians, they've also concluded that Gar Alperovitz's thesis is wrong. I believe this is the standard text for contemporary revisionists: https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Stalin-Truman-Surrender/dp/0674022416
You're welcome. My next step will be to read the book mentioned in the article.
I, too, am hopeful that scholarship in this area will expand in the near future.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's book "Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan", to which the Counterpunch article refers, can be found here.
Seems relevant not only because today's August 6, but in light of the recent revelations about the US fabrications of the rationales for and progress of the wars in the Middle East.
Read this book, it's written by a German soldier from his eastern front experiences.
What exactly do you mean by Nazi anyway, do you mean a solider specifically in the Waffen SS (the military wing of the Nazi party) or more broadly a German solider?
Not all Germans were Nazis, and not all Nazis were German. There were many in the German army that were no friends of the Nazis, indeed there were many times they planned attempts on Hitler's life.
If you want to learn more about WW2, then I would also suggest this written from the Soviet perspective. It's concerned mostly with overall strategy, so most people might find it boring, but I find it incredibly interesting. If you don't understand the eastern front in ww2 then you don't understand the history of the war, imho.
> 36,183 IL-2s were produced between 1941 - 1945.
IL-2s were known for being dependable after working out teething problems during first trials. Very widely known of taking awful amounts of damage and still being able to fly home. Pilots loved them mostly because of this fact. It was dubbed the "Flying Tank" due to the amount of damage it could handle and still be flyable. I'd say that is some great quality. Just because an aircraft is produced in huge numbers, does not make it shit.
>Should I also check casualty numbers of WW2 alone to prove that Russia tends to take the brute force approach?
Being that Russia was on the offensive for nearly 4 years of the war, I'd say that's quite an easy thing to grasp. A defensive military will almost always take less casualties than a military on the offensive. This is a commonly accepted fact that has been known since the dawn of warfare.
>That's the thing with having lots of resources and a chain of command focused only on wining.
What else are you supposed to concentrate on during a war? Kill ratios? Propaganda? I'd say winning is by far the most important aspect of a war. Wouldn't you agree?
>They can just keep throwing bodies at a problem until it goes away.
No. They did no such thing. I recommend reading this book and this book especially because it addresses the Goebbels propaganda of "Soviet human wave" bullshit. You realize that's where this thought comes from correct? Nazi propaganda. It was meant to make Soviets look like barbaric animals....and it apparently still holds salt in some minds today. Your's for example.
>Look at the battle of Stalingrad. 1,129,619 casualties, 4,431 lost tanks, and 2,769 lost aircraft.
First off, your numbers are ridiculously way off. Approximately 4400 tanks? The Soviets lost around 1500 tanks total. Your number is probably including half tracks, SPGs, and things of that nature which makes it look like something it is clearly not. When adding up Axis vehicles total, it nearly triples the losses if I simply pass them all off as "tanks".
"Look at the Battle of Stalingrad. ~900,000 casualties, ~1,000 aircraft, ~700 tanks (actual tanks, not armor in general) and 5,500 artillery pieces for the Axis." I'm unsure of the point you are trying to make. It was the absolute biggest loss of human life in the history of warfare and there were huge losses on both sides.
>This is also the same military force that had a secondary line of soldiers behind the front lines that was ordered to shoot any deserters running from the battle.
Enemy at the Gates is not a documentary. The NKVD attachments were there to corral deserters or broken down men who could not take the front anymore. Most were put into hospitals. A minuscule amount were executed. Let me make this a point, every one of the belligerents in WW2 executed deserters.
Back to the NKVD:
>The order also directed that each Army must create "blocking detachments" (barrier troops (заградотряд, заградительный отряд)) which would capture or shoot "cowards" and fleeing panicked troops at the rear. Both measures were cited in the preamble of the order as having been successfully used by the Germans during their winter retreat. The requirement for Armies to maintain companies of barrier troops was withdrawn after just three months, on October 29, 1942. Intended to galvanize the morale of the hard-pressed Soviet Army and emphasize patriotism, it had a generally detrimental effect and was not consistently implemented by commanders who viewed diverting troops to create barrier units as a waste of manpower, so by October 1942 the idea of regular blocking units was quietly dropped.[3] By 20 November 1944 the blocking units were officially disbanded.
So after 3 whole months the blocking detachments were not a thing anymore. And most commanders did not execute anyone retreating. A lot were simply put back at the front. To think this happened throughout the war is naive at best.
So much of what you said is just ignorance. Hopefully not willfully. I'd highly recommend the two books I mentioned. It shows the way the Soviets truly operated and quite frankly, it's damn impressive.
Edit for quotes
Most of my information is from sporadic readings of Wikipedia over the years and following /r/AskHistorians and /r/badhistory. I can recommend the Soviet Storm documentary series, which should be on YouTube. It gives an almost neutral overview of the Eastern Front, although it kinda glosses over Soviet war crimes.
I've also heard good things about When Titans Clashed, but I haven't read it myself.
Thanks for the video with barebones information and kids animation. Here are some academic sources that you can cross-reference it with.
https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-26324710/the-rommel-myth
https://www.amazon.com/When-Titans-Clashed-Stopped-Studies/dp/0700608990
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbim2kGwhpc
Eigentlich war der Krieg an der Ostfront schon von Anfang an verloren. Wen das Thema interessiert:
When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler
There's some cool stuff in "The Sunflower". It's a collection of essays and short stories written by average people as well as some famous ones. I think the Dalai Lama wrote one of the essays. It might give you some inspiration.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Sunflower-Possibilities-Forgiveness-Paperback/dp/0805210601
I personally cannot give you advice on what you should do. But you might find it helpful in the long term to read The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal .
This debate on whether you should forgive or even if you can forgive reminds me of a book on the same question. It's called The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness and is basically about Simon Wiesenthal; him being asked forgiveness by a Nazi officer on his deathbed during his internment at a concentration camp, his response, and various other notable people's opinions on how he should have responded.
It's a fantastic book on the nature of forgiveness, might help you on your decision.
This will get buried, but read the book: "The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness"
Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/The-Sunflower-Possibilities-Forgiveness-Paperback/dp/0805210601
You do not have to click it, but it is not a referral link. Basically the premise of the book is a Jewish man in a concentration camp was brought to an SS officer (this is a true story). The man was dying and wanted forgiveness. He wanted absolution from a Jew, and had one brought to him, who he then proceded to confess to. When asked for forgiveness, he said nothing.
He always wondered whether he did the right thing and wrote this book to explore that idea. Should he have forgiven him? Condemned him? It also has writings from others on the same topic. Anyway, it might be worth checking out.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling/dp/0895260514
https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling-Terror/dp/0895260514
She wrote this book and then complains that liberals see racism where there is none.
she's been a fighter on the right for 2 decades; started journalism in '92; part of CRTV these days; been a regular on Foxnews since its early days.
some books:
https://www.amazon.com/Invasion-America-Welcomes-Terrorists-Criminals/dp/0895261464
https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling-Terror-ebook/dp/B00AXS5EEQ
https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Corruption-Cheats-Crooks-Cronies/dp/1596986204
https://www.amazon.com/Sold-Out-Billionaires-Bipartisan-Crapweasels-ebook/dp/B00VBW3SYQY
You should be able to youtube her appearances on Fox with Hannity or Oreilly and others.
CRTV: https://www.crtv.com/category/michelle-malkin-investigates
There are very few happy warriors that have fought as long as she has for what we call the Trump movement, MAGA, KAG, Trump Train, America 1st, etc
axolotl_peyotl: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link
Are you referring to PROMIS?
I just submitted a link about that too.
This stuff is crazy.
From the book Covert Wars and Breakaway Civilizations by author Joseph P. Farrell:
>The story was so real, and so huge, that the indefatigably lazy American lamestream media would barely touch it. Cheri Seymour, whose "The Last Circle" was eventually published as a book, delved deeply into the Danny Casolaro investigation of the Inslaw affair, and deeply into Casolaro's "murder by suicide" in a motel in West Virginia.
>Casolaro, who has been hired by Inslaw company founder Bill Hamilton to investigate the theft of the company's software, soon uncovered so many tendrils and threads of conspiracy leading so many places that he dubbed the entity "The Octopus," and was in the final stages of investigation and beginning to compile notes for a book on the subject. Summoned to Martinsburg, West Virginia by an unnamed source who indicated that he would reveal the final missing key to Casolaro, and that Casolaro should bring his important files and notes on the subject, Casolaro never returned from the meeting. He was found by a cleaning maid on August 10th, 1991, in the bathtub of his room, with numerous deep cuts to both wrists.
>Retracing Casolaro's steps and contacts, Seymour quickly confirmed that Casolaro's sources did indeed maintain that the PROMIS software had been stolen, and that the program had subsequently been modified to include "backdoors". The program had then been sold under a variety of names to various banks, corporations, and most importantly, foreign intelligence services. The backdoor allowed the U.S. intelligence community to access the computer systems and databases of wherever the program went.
>The software was so flexible in its management capabilities for different types of databases that it allowed the easy tracking of arms, of people, of drugs, to such an extent that it allowed the "enterprise" behind the Iran-Contra controversy to be essentially a self-supporting system, or to put it differently, Iran-Contra was but one operation of a completely self-sustaining system that required, and hand, no government oversight, from anywhere. It was, in short, a manifestation of the breakaway civilization.
>According to Seymour, Casolaro had even told close friends that he had been able to link the Inslaw scandal and similar episodes "back to a dirty CIA 'Old Boy' network" that had begun in the 1950s. Some of the connections between the Inslaw affair and the rogue CIA group that Casolaro had uncovered were the now infamous banking scandals that began to rock the world beginning with the Reagan Administration and continuing for the rest of the century: The BCCI, or Bank of Credit and Commerce International, somewhat more accurately called by researchers the Bank of Crooks and Criminals, International. Casolaro had also uncovered connections to the Savings and Loan scandal, the Keating Five, and on and on it went.
>Most importantly, Seymour stated, that Bill Hamilton, the founder of Inslaw, and told her that one version of PROMIS had been modified by the NSA specifically in a "bank surveillance version" to monitor proceeds from drugs sales. In other words, the technology was intimately tied to the financial community, and to the vast underground economy of the international drug cartels and criminal syndicates.
>The software was, so to speak, the gatekeeper of the interface between the "overworld", the visible system of finance, and the hidden system, a system that used drugs as an international currency, and referred to them as gold. The system, via its backdoor, could be used as a valuable tool to track money laundering.
>In short, Casolaro had uncovered a "rogue group," an international "breakaway group" operating entirely on its own, but that groups was not at its core a cabal of international bankers, but rather, a core of intelligence operatives, rogue military men, technocrats, and, of course, corrupt, or compromised, bankers.
>According to Seymour, Inslaw founder Bill Hamilton had come to his own similar conclusions. He believed "...after more than two decades of research, that the modified version of his PROMIS software had been used for money laundering of drug profits to fund unauthorized intelligence operations..."
>Indeed, such a powerful program would not only allow the tracking of covert financial activities, and even for the existence of an entire covert financial system, but it would also allow something equally important for such a system to exist, namely, the ability to cover its tracks and obfuscate its activities by using the "backdoor" to modify the actual numbers of transactions...say, for example, the amounts of gold actually in existence. such a tool would allow the same amount of gold to be used as the backing or collateral to float securities over and over in different issues.
I learned this tidbit from Antony Beevor's book The Second World War.
The internet seems very sparse on information regarding such a remarkable story; searches on Google and DuckDuckGo only bring up short mentions at best just repeating the same few lines.
Apparently, Yang Kyoungjong was one of a few Korean nationals captured, and the only one of them to make it to the US, where he died in 1992, having never spoken a word of his past.
I'm starting to get the sense that you didn't read my first comment. I literally said a very specific two year period before the end of stalingrad.
I then went on to talk about the people who joined the red army in the early war after the shock of operation barbarossa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa
Read the following Books for more information:
Ivan's war
Stalingrad
Leningrad
The Fall of Berlin
I don't know why you keep posting things from after the date range I specified. So many of the men who faugh in the early battles were dead by the time even operation Uranus took place, let alone during invasion of Germany.
Here's the book I read that went into detail on this:
http://www.amazon.com/Ivans-War-Life-Death-1939-1945/dp/0312426526
It's about 3/4 of the way through, talking about the average Soviet soldier's experience during and after the war.
Can you do a better job summing up WWII in one pithy sentence? If you want the more detailed version here you go.
https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling-Terror/dp/0895260514
I haven't had a chance to read this yet but it looks very interesting
>Everything you've been taught about the World War II "internment camps" in America is wrong:
They were not created primarily because of racism or wartime hysteria
They did not target only those of Japanese descent
They were not Nazi-style death camps...
>In Defense of Internment shows that the detention of enemy aliens, and the mass evacuation and relocation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast were not the result of irrational hatred or conspiratorial bigotry. This document-packed book highlights the vast amount of intelligence, including top-secret "MAGIC" messages, which revealed the Japanese espionage threat on the West Coast.
Malkin also tells the truth about:
who resided in enemy alien internment camps (nearly half were of European ancestry)
what the West Coast relocation centers were really like (tens of thousands of ethnic Japanese were allowed to leave; hundreds voluntarily chose to move in)
why the $1.65 billion federal reparations law for Japanese internees and evacuees was a bipartisan disaster
how both Japanese American and Arab/Muslim American leaders have united to undermine America's safety
Hi! I admit that FDR effected internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2 and that that was a terrible thing for him and America to do.
I think most liberals are now of the opinion that that was a terrible thing - that's why they don't like people suggesting the same be done for Muslims.
If you are looking for a prominent current figure who has endorsed internment and defended it, you can find her on Fox News or read her book:
http://www.amazon.com/In-Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling/dp/0895260514
> The difference though is that once a man is in a parachute, he's no longer a threat.
But those little German schoolchildren he bombed before bailing were obviously threats. It's a little nuts to hope a guy acts rationally and doesn't do something "out of spite" if you decide to drop bombs on civilians in his home country.
> The British exercised the same restraint during the blitz even when the Germans bombed civilian locations, of course they captured those who bailed as POW's but they didn't shoot them as they fell out of anger or bloodlust.
Not exactly accurate. Civilians went out to beat German pilots with farm implements and shotguns. Polish pilots flying for Britain during the Blitz flew over German parachutes to force their collapse, resulting in the Germans plummeting to their deaths. Antony Beever covers this in The Second World War.
> and complete surprise and lack of preparation for war on the part of the Soviets in 1941.
False
> It was only the sheer certainty of systematic destruction of every major Japanese city by atomic bombings that got the Japanese to surrender.
>
> A conventional invasion, the next and only other option, would have killed millions of Japanese civilians, directly and indirectly.
It really wasn't.
America were too slow, and it could be argued that the soviet invasion of Manchuria was far more influential towards ending the war as the japanese government feared a russian invasion far more than nuclear weapons.
this book makes a fairly good case into how it was the entry of the Russians that became the deciding factor, not the bombs:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674022416
Which book are you referring? "The man who never was" (that also inspired the movie of the same name); "Operation Heartbreak" (by Duff Cooper); or "Operation Mincemeat" (by Ben Macintyre)?
It was a preemptive war
>Further evidence cited by von Thadden about the German-Russian clash was provided by Andrei Vlassov, a prominent Soviet Russian general who had been captured by the Germans. During a conversation in 1942 with SS general Richard Hildebrandt, he was asked if Stalin had intended to attack Germany, and if so, when. As Hildebrandt later related:
>Vlassov responded by saying that the attack was planned for August-September 1941. The Russians had been preparing the attack since the beginning of the year, which took quite a while because of the poor Russian railroad network. Hitler had sized up the situation entirely correctly, and had struck directly into the Russian buildup. This, said Vlassov, is the reason for the tremendous initial German successes.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v18/v18n3p40_Michaels.html
http://www.amazon.com/Icebreaker-Who-Started-Second-World/dp/0241126223
http://wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/stalwarplans.html
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II&ved=2ahUKEwjB6Ynr9sHlAhVtwcQBHTHVAmkQFjAaegQIBhAP&usg=AOvVaw0f-Zu4889XYPIL7_vqNYH0
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943&ved=2ahUKEwich7aD98HlAhVS0aYKHW02BgkQFjAUegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw1yx2CdhanuhqHxo-kYK6YV
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers-el-K%25C3%25A9bir&ved=2ahUKEwjpvp7X98HlAhU54KYKHfD6DogQFjAcegQIBxAX&usg=AOvVaw1sKVt554Rvtv18gzd6_5_m
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany&ved=2ahUKEwjW5-P398HlAhXHwqYKHQ-FCAIQFjAJegQIBBAI&usg=AOvVaw0vEdSlpE5N1_b4jz0bsYUy
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans&ved=0ahUKEwjRk8eN-MHlAhUO06YKHURACOMQFgh5MA4&usg=AOvVaw2_y4sEZdcrOYMuwJ9ow6KC&cshid=1572368442040
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Stalin-Truman-Surrender/dp/0674022416&ved=0ahUKEwjHn8PF-MHlAhUVxMQBHYZeA6UQFghbMAU&usg=AOvVaw0ZQqZOxoHohKuP9t0uRhdv