World War II
Published: October 22, 2011 at 11:37 pm
I've dreaded writing this column. I've been dancing around it, in fact, with a lot of talk about the meaning of history, about post-modernism and the accepted "narrative" of World War II. Frankly, all that intellectualizing–in other words, what I …
Published: October 07, 2011 at 9:59 am
I received some good discussion on my last post. Some took me to task, others were supportive, and still others were non-committal. At issue was the notion of how much of history is an eye-of-the-beholder narrative and how much is—to …
Gene Santoro |
Published: October 05, 2011 at 8:35 am
In May 1942, the Warsaw Ghetto became a movie set. The SS filmed a combination of real scenes (crammed streets with tattered figures, corpses stretched along the edges) and staged scenes (wealthy Jews dining in sumptuous restaurants, shopping at well-stocked …
Dennis Showalter |
Published: October 05, 2011 at 8:34 am
Demolishing the Myth
The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative
By Valeriy Zamulin. 672 pp.
Helion & Company, 2011. $69.95.
For anyone interested in the war between Russia and Germany, the battle of Prokhorovka …
Alex Kershaw |
Published: October 05, 2011 at 8:33 am
Black Sheep
The Life of Pappy Boyington
By John F. Wukovits 228 pp.
Naval Institute Press, 2011. $34.95.
Mavericks win wars. And the legendary alcoholic Marine Corps ace Gregory "Pappy" Boyington was surely one of the most colorful mavericks of …
Published: October 05, 2011 at 8:33 am
His last letter home before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Andrew Curry |
Published: October 05, 2011 at 8:32 am
Enter the Wolf Pack's Baltic lair.
Stephen Budiansky |
Published: October 05, 2011 at 8:31 am
Long before any airplanes approached the sound barrier, John Stack was traveling there in his mind.
As a teenager he worked to save enough money for a few hours of flying lessons in a Canuck biplane at an airfield …
Mark Grimsley |
Published: October 05, 2011 at 8:30 am
On a mid-spring morning in 1943, 160,000 Allied troops storm ashore in Normandy to create the "Second Front" long desired by American strategists and long demanded by the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. In the days that follow, additional Allied …
Duane Schultz |
Published: October 05, 2011 at 8:29 am
As the men of the Lost Battalion fought for their lives, a gutsy group of Japanese American GIs fought to save them.
Alan D. Zimm |
Published: October 05, 2011 at 8:28 am
A new analysis shows the ‘brilliant’ Japanese attack was riddled with surprising blunders
Madhusree Mukerjee |
Published: September 29, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Churchill's friend and scientific adviser had the prime minister's full faith—even when he shouldn't have
Robert M. Citino |
Published: September 20, 2011 at 8:50 am
OK, all you postmodernists, you intellectuals who think that there is no such thing as reality, that it is all about the narrative, that each participant in a historical event has a separate and equally valuable experience that is as …
Robert M. Citino |
Published: September 06, 2011 at 11:21 am
Last time out we discussed Philip K. Dick's great "alternate history" of World War II, The Man in the High Castle. In this award-winning novel, reality has apparently been turned upside down. President Roosevelt has died by an assassin's …
Robert M. Citino |
Published: August 22, 2011 at 9:31 am
We've been discussing the accepted "narrative" of the war, the ways that we Americans have tended to interpret it. Others have their own "histories" of World War II, and they can vary wildly by era, by place, by perspective. To …
Robert M. Citino |
Published: August 12, 2011 at 10:11 am
Last week I wrote about Frank Capra and his incomparable Why We Fight series of wartime propaganda films. From our own perspective, it's easy to pick apart the details of Capra's vision. Some of the argumentation is simplistic, sure, the …
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