Belgium in the Great War

Belgium in the Great War
Author: Jean-Michel Veranneman
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2018-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526716623

A historian and former Belgian diplomat sheds light on the country’s tumultuous experience during WWI. In August of 1914, the German Empire invaded neutral Belgium in order to outflank the defenses of the French army. Yet the Belgian army resisted, managing to hold a small part of unoccupied Belgian territory north of Ypres until the Armistice of 1918. Because of their heroic defense, Belgium and its King enjoyed enormous international prestige after the war. Occupied Belgium suffered civilian executions and severe destruction. It was widely stripped of its highly developed industrial infrastructure. It was saved from starvation by food shipments from the United States which came in via neutral Holland. Four and a half years later, Belgium emerged a different country with experiences that would leave a lasting on its spirit as well as wide-ranging political implications.

A Small Nation in the Turmoil of the Second World War

A Small Nation in the Turmoil of the Second World War
Author: Herman van der Wee
Publisher: Leuven University Press
Total Pages: 495
Release: 2009
Genre: Banks and banking
ISBN: 9058677591

This monograph presents an in-depth analysis of Belgium's monetary and financial history during the Second World War. Exploring Belgium's financial and business links with Germany, France, The Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the study focuses on the roles played by the Central Bank and private bankers in Brussels, by the Belgian government in exile in London, and by the Belgian minister plenipotentiary in New York. Among the subjects arising are: German attempts to plunder Belgium and Belgian resistance strategies; the peripeteia of the Belgian gold reserve; the role of the Belgian Congo; Belgium's participation in the discussions leading up to the Bretton Woods conference; and the negotiations for creating a Customs Union, blueprint for the 1958 Treaty of Rome. The final part of the book analyzes the famous monetary reform devised by Belgian Minister of Finance Camille Gutt at the liberation of the country in September 1944.

An English Governess in the Great War

An English Governess in the Great War
Author: Mary Thorp
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2017
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0190276703

Mary Thorp, an English governess working for a Belgian-Russian family in German-occupied Brussels, kept a secret war diary from September 1916 to January 1919. This long-forgotten diary sheds light on an important aspect of the First World War: civilian life under military occupation in a transnational conflict.

Mussolini's War

Mussolini's War
Author: John Gooch
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 164313549X

A remarkable new history evoking the centrality of Italy to World War II, outlining the brief rise and triumph of the Fascists, followed by the disastrous fall of the Italian military campaign. While staying closely aligned with Hitler, Mussolini remained carefully neutral until the summer of 1940. At that moment, with the wholly unexpected and sudden collapse of the French and British armies, Mussolini declared war on the Allies in the hope of making territorial gains in southern France and Africa. This decision proved a horrifying miscalculation, dooming Italy to its own prolonged and unwinnable war, immense casualties, and an Allied invasion in 1943 that ushered in a terrible new era for the country. John Gooch's new history is the definitive account of Italy's war experience. Beginning with the invasion of Abyssinia and ending with Mussolini's arrest, Gooch brilliantly portrays the nightmare of a country with too small an industrial sector, too incompetent a leadership and too many fronts on which to fight. Everywhere—whether in the USSR, the Western Desert, or the Balkans—Italian troops found themselves against either better-equipped or more motivated enemies. The result was a war entirely at odds with the dreams of pre-war Italian planners—a series of desperate improvisations against an allied force who could draw on global resources, and against whom Italy proved helpless.

Europe after Empire

Europe after Empire
Author: Elizabeth Buettner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 565
Release: 2016-03-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521113865

A pioneering comparative history of European decolonization from the formal ending of empires to the postcolonial European present.

The Rape of Belgium

The Rape of Belgium
Author: Larry Zuckerman
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2004-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780814797044

The author presents a compelling and untold story of Germany's occupation of Belgium after WW1. It's a great, trade history book from a wonderful storyteller.

The Ardennes

The Ardennes
Author: Hugh Marshall Cole
Publisher:
Total Pages: 772
Release: 1994
Genre: Ardennes, Battle of the, 1944-1945
ISBN:

Joining Hitler's Crusade

Joining Hitler's Crusade
Author: David Stahel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316510344

A ground-breaking study that looks at why European nations sent troops to take part in Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.