Six Years After D-Day

Six Years After D-Day
Author: Marie Bennett Alsmeyer
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780929398822

In 1950, a young couple (both WWII veterans—a WAVE and an airman—and both with GI Bill journalism degrees) quit their jobs on a South Texas weekly newspaper and embarked upon a 1200-mile bicycle tour through Europe. “Such a trip made no sense at all in 1950," writes Alsmeyer, “but it was a gloriously crazy, senseless thing to do.” Based on notes, diaries, and letters, the book is more than a mere travelogue. It chronicles the people and places of postwar western Europe–including the citizens of Vimoutiers, France, a town accidentally bombed by Americans. “One family with twelve children lived in one of the houses that fell during the first wave of the raid. The children crouched under a sturdy dining room table until the last of the bombs had hit. As rescuers went about their tasks in the smoldering debris, these twelve children—in single file—walked out of the rubble, hand in hand. They said that only the night before, their father had warned them that if there was ever a bombing raid, they must hide under the sturdy round table.” Bicycle enthusiasts, war historians, sociologists, women's studies scholars, and readers of travel narratives will all find something of interest in this charmingly written narrative.

D-Day +60 Years

D-Day +60 Years
Author: Jerome J. McLaughlin
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2004-04-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1418402680

This unique account of D-Day history provides an unusual look into the US Armys preparation of a new type of World War II warfare, that of airborne operations. The book describes, using personal interviews with the veterans involved, how young men who had never even flown in an airplane before the war were trained to fly into combat, or to parachute into the dark of night. The narrative personalizes the events of D-Day for a small group of men of the 77th Troop Carrier Squadron and G Company of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. Most, including the authors uncle, did not survive to see the dawn on D-Day morning. The story then moves forward more than half a century, when research to find out what happened to his uncle led the author to meet some of the survivors of that night, resulting in what is believed to be the first reunion of a D-Day pilot with the men he dropped on that fateful morning, 56 years earlier. Many children of the next generation are making efforts to find out what happened to their fathers and uncles in World War II. This story is a classic example of the joy and heartbreak that can result from the success of such a search.

D-Day Invasion

D-Day Invasion
Author: iMinds
Publisher: iMinds Pty Ltd
Total Pages: 6
Release: 2014-05-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1921746939

The story behind D-Day begins in 1939 when Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, attacked Poland and ignited World War Two. The following year, the Germans occupied France and Western Europe and launched a vicious air war against Britain. In 1941, they invaded the Soviet Union. Seemingly unstoppable, the Nazis now held virtually all of Europe. They imposed a ruthless system of control and unleashed the horror of the Holocaust. However, by 1943, the tide had begun to turn in favor of the Allies, the forces opposed to Germany. In the east, despite huge losses, the Soviets began to force the Germans back.

Six Armies in Normandy

Six Armies in Normandy
Author: John Keegan
Publisher: Penguin Books
Total Pages: 426
Release: 1994-06
Genre: History
ISBN:

The man "who writes about the war better than almost anyone in our century" ( The Washington Post Book World) here details how the armies of six nations met on the battlefields of Normandy in what was to be the greatest allied achievement of World War II.

Cross Channel Attack

Cross Channel Attack
Author: Gordon A. Harrison
Publisher: BDD Promotional Books Company
Total Pages: 552
Release: 1993-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780792458562

Discusses the Allied invasion of Normandy, with extensive details about the planning stage, called Operation Overlord, as well as the fighting on Utah and Omaha Beaches.

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach
Author: Joseph Balkoski
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2006-05-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0811741192

Balkoski's depiction of 'Bloody Omaha' is the literary accompaniment to the white-knuckle Omaha Beach scene that opens Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. -- John Hillen, New York Post

Martyred Village

Martyred Village
Author: Sarah Bennett Farmer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2000-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520224833

A full-scale study of the destruction of Oradour and its remembrance over the half century since the war. Farmer investigates the prominence of the massacre in French understanding of the national experience under German domination.

The Liberation of Paris

The Liberation of Paris
Author: Jean Edward Smith
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-07-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501164937

Prize-winning and bestselling historian Jean Edward Smith tells the “rousing” (Jay Winik, author of 1944) story of the liberation of Paris during World War II—a triumph achieved only through the remarkable efforts of Americans, French, and Germans, racing to save the city from destruction. Following their breakout from Normandy in late June 1944, the Allies swept across northern France in pursuit of the German army. The Allies intended to bypass Paris and cross the Rhine into Germany, ending the war before winter set in. But as they advanced, local forces in Paris began their own liberation, defying the occupying German troops. Charles de Gaulle, the leading figure of the Free French government, urged General Dwight Eisenhower to divert forces to liberate Paris. Eisenhower’s advisers recommended otherwise, but Ike wanted to help position de Gaulle to lead France after the war. And both men were concerned about partisan conflict in Paris that could leave the communists in control of the city and the national government. Neither man knew that the German commandant, Dietrich von Choltitz, convinced that the war was lost, schemed to surrender the city to the Allies intact, defying Hitler’s orders to leave it a burning ruin. In The Liberation of Paris, Jean Edward Smith puts “one of the most moving moments in the history of the Second World War” (Michael Korda) in context, showing how the decision to free the city came at a heavy price: it slowed the Allied momentum and allowed the Germans to regroup. After the war German generals argued that Eisenhower’s decision to enter Paris prolonged the war for another six months. Was Paris worth this price? Smith answers this question in a “brisk new recounting” that is “terse, authoritative, [and] unsentimental” (The Washington Post).

Six Days: the Incredible Story of D-Day's Lost Chapter

Six Days: the Incredible Story of D-Day's Lost Chapter
Author: Robert Venditti
Publisher: Vertigo
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2020-05-19
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9781779500038

Six Days: The Incredible Story of D-Day's Lost Chapter is an original graphic novel from DC Vertigo that tells the true story of a World War II battle that took place in the small village of Graignes, France, for six days and the people who survived to tell the tale. June 1944. World War II. D-Day. 182 members of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division parachute into the French countryside--a full eighteen miles southeast of their intended target. In the worst mis-drop of the D-Day campaign, a group of soldiers are rattled to find themselves even deeper behind enemy lines than anyone had intended. Miraculously, the citizens of Graignes vote to feed and shelter the soldiers, knowing that the decision would bring them terrible punishment if their efforts were to be discovered by the Germans. That day of reckoning comes faster than anyone could expect. As a small German militia passes through, the world's war comes to their remote town in the countryside, and for the the next six days, the small band of American paratroopers and French citizens must fight for their lives to hold back 2,000 enemy combatants. Six Days: The Incredible Story of D-Day's Lost Chapter is a true story of survival, loyalty, the brutality of war and a triumph of the human spirit so rarely brought to the comics form. Writers Kevin Maurer (#1 New York Times bestseller No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden) and Robert Venditti (Green Lantern)--whose uncle fought in the Battle of Graignes and is a key character in the tale--completed exhaustive archival research in preparation for this unbelievable untold story from World War II.

Six Days of War

Six Days of War
Author: Michael B. Oren
Publisher: Presidio Press
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2017-06-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0345464311

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first comprehensive account of the epoch-making Six-Day War, from the author of Ally—now featuring a fiftieth-anniversary retrospective Though it lasted for only six tense days in June, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war never really ended. Every crisis that has ripped through this region in the ensuing decades, from the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to the ongoing intifada, is a direct consequence of those six days of fighting. Writing with a novelist’s command of narrative and a historian’s grasp of fact and motive, Michael B. Oren reconstructs both the lightning-fast action on the battlefields and the political shocks that electrified the world. Extraordinary personalities—Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin—rose and toppled from power as a result of this war; borders were redrawn; daring strategies brilliantly succeeded or disastrously failed in a matter of hours. And the balance of power changed—in the Middle East and in the world. A towering work of history and an enthralling human narrative, Six Days of War is the most important book on the Middle East conflict to appear in a generation. Praise for Six Days of War “Powerful . . . A highly readable, even gripping account of the 1967 conflict . . . [Oren] has woven a seamless narrative out of a staggering variety of diplomatic and military strands.”—The New York Times “With a remarkably assured style, Oren elucidates nearly every aspect of the conflict. . . . Oren’s [book] will remain the authoritative chronicle of the war. His achievement as a writer and a historian is awesome.”—The Atlantic Monthly “This is not only the best book so far written on the six-day war, it is likely to remain the best.”—The Washington Post Book World “Phenomenal . . . breathtaking history . . . a profoundly talented writer. . . . This book is not only one of the best books on this critical episode in Middle East history; it’s one of the best-written books I’ve read this year, in any genre.”—The Jerusalem Post “[In] Michael Oren’s richly detailed and lucid account, the familiar story is thrilling once again. . . . What makes this book important is the breadth and depth of the research.”—The New York Times Book Review “A first-rate new account of the conflict.”—The Washington Post “The definitive history of the Six-Day War . . . [Oren’s] narrative is precise but written with great literary flair. In no one else’s study is there more understanding or more surprise.”—Martin Peretz, Publisher, The New Republic “Compelling, perhaps even vital, reading.”—San Jose Mercury News