WORLD WAR TWO STUDIES ASSOCIATION
(formerly American Committee on the History ofthe Second World War)
Mark P. Parillo, Secretary (Iml
Newsleller E,litor
Departmem or History
208 Eisenhower Hall
Kansas State University
Manhanan. Kansas 66506·1002
785-532-0374
FAX 785-532-7004
parillof!)lksu.e<lu
Donald S. Detwiler, Chairman
Department of History
Southern Illinois University
at Carbondale
Carbondale, Illinois 62901-4519
tleJwiler@midwesl.neJ
Permanent Directors
NEWSLETTER
Charles F Delzell
Vanderbilt University
James Eluman, Associate
Editor al/(I Webmaster
Department of History
208 Eisenhower Hall
Kansas State University
Monhallon, Kansas 66506·1002
ISSN 0885-5668
Arthur L. Funk
Gainesville, Florida
Terms expiring 1000
Carl Boyd
Old Dominion University
James L. Collins, Jr.
Middleburg, Virginia
Spring 2000
No. 62
Contents
Robin Higham. ArchiYlsl
DCp311ment of History
20& Eisenhower Hall
Kansas State, University
Manhallan. Kansas 66506-1002
The WWTSA is affiliated with:
John Lewis Gaddis
Ohio University
Robin Higham
Kansas State University
Warren F Kimball
Rutgers University, Newark
Allon R. Millen
Ohio State University
American Historical Association
400 A Street. S.E.
Washington. D.C. 20003
http://www.tluwhfl.org
World War Two Studies Association
General Infonnation
The Newsletter
Annual Membership Dues
2
2
2
News and Notes
WWTSA Annual Business Meeting
WWTSA Web Site Update
3
3
4
WWTSA Session on World War II Issues in the 1990s
Report submitted by Ed Drea
5
Reviews by Donald S. Detwiler
7
Agnes F. Peterson
Hoover Institution
Russell F Weigley
Temple University
Janet Ziegler
University of Cal ifomia,
Los Angeles
Terms e.<piring 100/
Manin BJumenson
Washington, D.C.
D'Ann Campbell
Sage Colleges
Robert Dallek
University ofCalifomia,
Los Angel..
Stanley L. Falk
Alexandria, Virginia
Emest R. May
Harvard University
Dennis Showalter
Colorado College
Mark A. Sioler
University or Vermont
Gerhard L. Wei nberg
University ofNonh Carolina
at Chapel Hill
Terms apiring 1001
Dean C. Allard
Naval Historical Center
Stephen E. Ambrose
University of New Orleans
Edward 1. Drea
Department of Defense
David KMn
Great Neck, New York
Carol M. Petillo
Boston Coli ege
Ronald H. Speclor
George Washington University
Robert Wolfe
National Archives
Earl Ziemke
University of Georgia
Recently Published Articles in English on World War II
26
Selected Titles from an Electronic Compilation by James Ehrman
Recently Published Books in English on World War II
31
Selected Titles from an Electronic Compilation by James Ehrman
Comitc Intcmalional d'Histoire
de 1a Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale
Henry Rousso, Sec.n!tary Genual
Institut d'Histoire du Temps Present
(Centre national de la recherche
scienlifique [CNRS])
Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan
61, avenue du President Wilson
94235 Cachan CMex. France
rousso([l! ihtl'-cllrs.ells-c(lchfll1jr
H· War: The Mi/i/ary History Nelwork
(sponsored by H-Net: Humtllli'ies &
Social Sciellces OnLillc). which sup­
pollS the WWTSA's website on (he In­
ternet al Ihe following address (URL):
IUfl': //h-l/ctJ.msu.cc/u/-wflr/wwfsa
General Information
Established in 1967 "to promote historical research in the period of World War II in all its
aspects," the World War Two Studies Association, whose original name was the American
Committee on the History of the Second World War, is a private organization supported by the
dues and donations of its members. It is affiliated with the American Historical Association, with
the International Committee for the History of the Second World War, and with corresponding
national committees in other countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech
Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and the
Vatican.
The Newsletter
The WWTSA issues a semiannual newsletter, which is assigned International Standard Serial
Number [ISSN] 0885-5668 by the Library of Congress. Backissues of the Newsletter are
available from Robin Higham, WWTSA Archivist, through Sunflower University Press, 1531
Yuma (or Box 1009), Manhattan, KS 66502-4228.
Please send information for the Newsletter to:
Mark Parillo
Department of History
Kansas State University
Eisenhower Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506-1002
Tel.: (785) 532-0374
Fax: (785) 532-7004
E-mail: parillo@ksu.edu
Annual Membership Dues
Membership is open to all who are interested in the era of the Second World War. Annual
membership dues of $15.00 are payable at the beginning of each calendar year. Students with
U.S. addresses may, if their circumstances require it, pay annual dues of $5.00 for up to six
years. There is no surcharge for members abroad, but it is requested that dues be remitted directly
to the secretary of the WWTSA (not through an agency or subscription service) in U.S. dollars.
The Newsletter, which is mailed at bulk rates within the United States, will be sent by surface
mail to foreign addresses unless special arrangements are made to cover the cost of airmail
postage.
Spring 2000 - 3
News & Notes
WWTSA Annual Business Meeting
The World War Two Studies
Association's annual business meeting
was called to order at 5:30 p.m. on Friday,
January 7, 2000, in the Miami Room of
the Chicago Marriott Hotel. Association
secretary Mark Parillo opened the
proceedings with special mention of the
recent death of WWTSA Permanent
Director
H. Stuart Hughes.
It was noted that Professor Hughes served
in the OSS in World War II and
subsequently became a full professor at
Harvard University and, later, at the
University of California at San Diego. He
was best known for his contributions to
intellectual history, producing such
seminal works as Consciousness and
Society (19~8), though his history of
contemporary Europe (Contemporary
Europe: A History) was also very
successful, going through four editions.
While still at Harvard, Professor Hughes
ran unsuccessfully against Edward
Kennedy for the Democratic nomination
~or the U.S. Senate, then campaigned as an
mdependent against Mr. Kennedy that fall.
His involvement with the World War Two
Studies Association began when Henri
Michel, a historian who published a World
War II journal from the Prime Minister's
office in Paris, set up the French
Committee on the History of the Second
World War and helped organize the
International Committee on the History of
the Second World War as well. Michel
knew Professor Hughes and ;o~ght his
assistance in establishing all American
Committee. The World War Two Studies
Association thus owes a debt to H. Stuart
Hughes as one of the organization's
founders.
It was also announced that the
International Committee for the History of
the Second World War will be sponsoring
a two-part symposium at the 19th
International Congress of Historical
Sciences, to be held in August 2000 in
Oslo, Norway. The first session, "National
and International Dimensions of the War"
.
'
WIll take place on Friday, August 11 1\
with the second, titled ''The Legacy of the
War in a Long-Term Perspective,"
occurring the following day. Professor
Mark Stoler of the University of Vermont
will be offering a paper, "The Second
World War in American History and
Memory," on behalf of the World War
Two Studies Association. We greatly
appreciate his efforts. Those interested in
attending the congress or viewing the
program can visit the conference World
Wide Web site at
http://www.oslo2000.uio.no/english/index.htm.
As WWTSA treasurer, Parillo reported the
association's continued solvency and
noted that there is now a small reserve in
the "Friends of the WWTSA" account
recently established at the Kansas State
University Foundation. He reported that
last year's switch to a different mailing
service for the newsletter has provided
some moderate savings in operating
expenses. He expressed appreciation of the
Department of History and the College of
Arts & Sciences at Kansas State
4
- Spring 2000
University for their continued support or
the association.
Members were urged to take note that the
WWTSA-sponsored scholarly session,
"The Battles Continue: World War II
Issues in the 1990s" would take place the
following morning, January 8th , at the
Marriott. Parillo thanked Dr. Ed Drea of
the Department of Defense, Professor
Emeritus Grant K. Goodman of the
University of Kansas, Professor Jeffrey
Roberts of Tennessee Tech University, and
Professor Robert Pois of the University of
Colorado at Boulder for their participation
in the upcoming program.
The secretary announced plans to organize
a session for the 2001 American Historical
Association annual meeting in Boston on
the ongoing efforts of World War II
historians in the field of oral history. There
was some discussion of other possible
sessions and a call for further suggestions.
Members interested in organizing or
participating in scholarly sessions in
conjunction with future AHA meetings
were invited to contact WWTSA secretary
Parillo. The next AHA annual meeting
will be at the Sheraton Boston, Westin
Copley Place Boston, and Boston Marriott
Copley Place hotels on 4-7 January 2001,
and the following year the meeting will
take place in San Francisco, at the San
Francisco Hilton, Renaissance Pare 55,
and Hotel Nikko on 3-6 January 2002.
Members were reminded that the WWTSA
may sponsor as many panels as it wishes
for these meetings and that, as an affiliated
society of the AHA, the association gets
its sessions listed in the AHA program but
•
does not necessarily have to submit its
program proposals to the AHA Program
Committee for approval, which means that
the deadline for proposals is three months
later than for the AHA Program
Committee.
Under the heading of new business, Parillo
reported that Roger Pao of the History
Tournament Station had requested
WWTSA sponsorship for the American
History Bowl competition for high school
students. Members wishing to support or
assist this venture should contact Roger
Pao at 405 Glen Bonnie Lane, Cary, NC
27511 (e-mail:
hsttournamentstation@MailCity.com).
The floor was opened to other business.
Some general discussion of trends in
World War II studies historiography
ensued, including some suggestions for
features in future newsletters. The meeting
adjourned at 6:25 p.m.
WWTSA Web Site Update
WWTSA Associate Editor and webmaster
James Ehrman has updated the association
Web site by compiling cumulative files of
bibliographic listings from recent issues of
the newsletter. There is a collection of
recently published books and another of
recently published articles. This will make
searching the bibliographic listings
quicker and more convenient. The Web
site URL is:
http://h-net2. msu. edu/-war/wwtsa.
Spring 2000 - 5
WWTSA SESSION ON WORLD WAR II ISSUES IN THE 1990s
On January 7, 2000, at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association held in
Chicago, Illinois, the World War Two Studies Association sponsored a session titled "The
Battles Continue: World War II Issues in the 1990s." Edward Drea, U.S. Army Center of
Military History (retired), chaired and commented on a three-member panel whose common
theme was memory and history -- that is the participants' recollection of events and the
historian's reconstruction of those events. The session was well attended by a diverse mixture of
academic and government historians, museum curators, and World War II veterans. A lively
question and answer period followed the papers.
Dr. Grant K. Goodman, Professor Emeritus in History, University of Kansas, recounted
the Japanese Foreign Ministry and cabinet's reluctance in 1993 to confront incontrovertible
documentary evidence ofsexual slavery and the Japanese government's attempts to ignore,
downplay, or dismiss the historical evidence and participants' memory. Professor Goodman's
"My Own Gaiatsu (Foreign Pressure) or, Whatever Happened to the "Comfort Women" first
described the Foreign Ministry's reaction to his role in disclosing the Imperial Japanese Army's
official sponsorship of organized prostitution. From that departure point, he addressed the larger
issue of Japan's unwillingness to confront its wartime past. This well-organized, witty, and
insightful paper provoked numerous questions from the audience about Japan's selective
memory of World War II, the role of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, and the continuing
confrontation between former comfort women and the Japanese government.
Dr. Jeffrey Roberts, Associate Professor, Tennessee Tech University, used the 1995
Smithsonian Air & Space Museum's failed Enola Gay exhibit as a vehicle to question first the
motives of the display's advocates in the professional historical community and second, by
extension, to underscore the changing and growlingly exc1usivist nature of the American
Historical Association, which, at least by implication, favors only selective memories. "The
Enola Gay Exhibit as a Failure of the Historical Profession" forcefully argued that exhibit
supporters dismissed any criticism of the original exhibit as products of "myth or ignorance of
relevant scholarship." Despite apologists' assertions of violation of academic freedom, Roberts
saw the academic campaign and the American Historical Association's role as displaying a
hypersensitivity to race and disturbing willingness to marginalize dissenting views, particularly
those of military or diplomatic historians. As might be expected, Roberts' views stimulated a
discussion not only about the AHA situation, but also over the ripple effect cancellation of the
exhibit has exerted On subsequent museum displays. We should all look forward to Dr.
Roberts's forthcoming book on the atomic bomb debate which Prager will publish late this year
or early next.
Finally Dr. Robert A. Pois, Professor University of Colorado, raised the fundamental
issue of preserving memory within a secular experience in "The Uniqueness of National
Socialism and the Question of Historical Judgments." In an academic age when the impotence
of human reason and the impossibility of universal moral judgments are regarded as positive
attributes when writing history, Professor Pois confronted the audience with the basic question of
[
6
- Spring 2000
memory and history involving the preservation of the memory of the Nazi destruction of
European Jewry without either 1) submerging the Holocaust into superficial and unrelated
generalities, or 2) insisting the Holocaust is so unique as to become immune to historical analysis
and judgment. He concluded that reasoned argumentation and empathetic understanding offer
the guide that enables historians to draw conclusions about the past and form hypothesis about it.
Such an approach allows for individual manifestations to be seen in a wider general
developments. Professor Pois paper and his remarks on attempts to trivialize veterans'
recollection of events added fuel to the discussion.
All three papers tackled the disturbing but fashionable notions that belief and emotion,
not reason and empiricism, govern the writing of history; in short, that different intellectual and
political movements create their own forms of relative "knowledge." One believes the Japanese
government coerced young women into organized, state-sponsored prostitution, or one does not.
One believes the atomic attack on Hiroshima was either a necessary act of war, or one does not.
One believes the Holocaust was a unique event transcending analysis, or one does not. The three
fine presentations addressed particular historical events of World War II and by so doing
illuminated larger contemporary issues of the historical profession particularly relevant to the
current study of military history. After all, if history is merely today's agenda, then it holds no
claim to a discipline.
Submitted by Ed Drea.
Spring 2000 - 7
Reviews by Donald S. Detwiler
John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1999. xvi & 236 pp. (ISBN 0300080301) $19.95.
Known to historians of the Second World War for The Last European War-September
1939/December 1941 (Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976), his more recent
study, The Duel: 10 May - 31 July 1940: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler
(New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1991), and several other works dealing with the period l , John
Lukacs has now produced a detailed account of events in London during five of the eighty days
considered in The Duel. In his new volume, Lukacs reconstructs Winston Churchill's
achievement, from Friday, May 24th, through Tuesday the 28th, in rallying the government he
had been appointed to lead on May 10th in its firmly uncompromising stance against Hitler.
Effectively drawing on primary sources at the Public Record Office in Kew, the Churchill
Archives at Cambridge, and the Mass-Observation Archives at the University of Sussex, in"
addition to specialized studies and contemporary press reports, Lukacs presents a carefully
documented day-by-day account of that five-day span, juxtaposing the public perception of the
catastrophic reverses in France with the secret deliberations during no fewer than "nine War
Cabinet sessions during the three days of26 and 27 and 28 May."2
On Monday, May 20th, a German armored spearhead under General Ewald von Kleist had
reached the English Channel. By Friday the 24th, when Lukacs' detailed account begins,
following an introductory background chapter, "The Hinge of Fate," the magnitude ofthe
catastrophe that had befallen the Allies in France was apparent. On Sunday the 26th, the French
premier, Paul Reynaud, flew to England and informed Churchill and his War Cabinet colleagues
of "the near hopelessness of the French military situation,"3 and that although "he himself would
fight on, ... he might soon be replaced by others ofa different temper."4 Reynaud proposed a
joint Anglo-French request to Mussolini (coupled with concessions as an inducement) that he
explore with Hitler the prospects for a settlement. s In supporting Reynaud's initiative at a War
Cabinet session that same afternoon, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, said that he
IFor a concise overview, see Robert H. Ferrell, "Appreciating John Lukacs," The Review of
Politics, Vol. 54, No.2 (Spring 1992), pp. 303-310.
2Lukacs, Five Days, p. 146. "After 10 May 1940, the War Cabinet consisted of five
men-Churchill, Halifax, and Chamberlain and the two leaders of Labour, Clement Attlee and
Arthur Greenwood, who were brought into the coalition, making it a National Government" (ibid.,
p.68).
3Lukacs, p. 111.
4Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Their Finest Hour (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1949; paperback repr., New York: Bantam, 1962), p. 106.
SLukacs, pp. 105-112; Churchill, p. 107.
8
- Spring 2000
'''thought that if we got to the point of discussing the tenns of a general settlement and found that
we could obtain tenns which did not postulate the destruction of our independence, we would be
foolish if we did not accept them'."6 Churchill opposed the proposal because, as he later put it in
his memoir-history of the war, "once we started negotiating for the friendly mediation of the
Duce, we should destroy our power of fighting on."7 But he gives no hint of the pains to which
he went to convince his Tory colleagues, Chamberlain and Halifax, of the importance of
rejecting Reynaud's proposal. Lukacs' vivid account of these three men and of their interaction
enables the reader to appreciate an aspect of the prime minister's leadership during that time that
is not even remotely suggested in Churchill's own postwar account. 8
John Lukacs, The Hitler ofHistory. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. xiv & 279 pp. (ISBN
0679446494) $26.00; paperback repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1998 (ISBN 0375701133)
$14.00.
This "history of the evolution of our knowledge of Hitler" (p. xi) is a copiously annotated,
critical study of the development of scholarship on the Gennan dictator since his emergence as a
figure on the world stage. In his opening chapter, Lukacs reviews the "extraordinary, and
continuing, interest in Hitler during the last fifty years" (p. 2) and surveys the most important
works on him from the account of his rise to power by Konrad Heiden to Ian Kershaw's
preliminary profile of the dictator. 9
6Lukacs, p. 117, noting that he supplied the italics.
7Churchill, p. 107.
8Rather than suggesting that there had been serious consideration (let alone advocacy) of
compromise in the War Cabinet, Churchill wrote that he "found ... [hisJ colleagues very stiff and
tough" (ibid., p. 107). On page 186, Lukacs concludes his account of the episode with the
acknowledgment by Lord Halifax's biographer that Churchill had been right: "'Churchill's instincts
proved correct. Halifax had attempted to bring logic and reason to a problem long since devoid of
either'" (citing Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox: A Biography ofLord Halifax [London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 1991J, p. 226). In a footnote on the same page, Lukacs cites Roberts further:
"'Churchill wrote in Their Finest Hour, "Future generations may deem it noteworthy that the
supreme question of whether we should fight on alone never found a place upon the War Cabinet
agenda.... We were much too busy to waste time upon such academic, unreal issues." In fact,
future generations might find it just as noteworthy that there were five meetings [in reality, nine
(Lukacs' insertion)J, some of which went on for as long as four hours, solely on that very subject'"
(ibid., 227-28). The passage in Their Finest Hour that Lukacs quotes Roberts as citing occurs at
the beginning of the ninth chapter, "The French Agony" (loc. cit, p. 153).
9Heiden's study of Hitler until the end of June 1930, not long before the death of
Hindenburg, and Hitler's merger of the powers of the presidency with those of the chancellorship
in 1934, published by Europa Verlag in ZUrich in 1936, appeared in translation by Ralph Manheim
as Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1944) and has recently been
[
Spring 2000 - 9
In his second chapter, Lukacs considers historians' treatment of the first thirty years of
Hitler's life, i.e., to 1919, as well as Hitler's own self-portrayal, not only in Mein Kampf, but also
in his earlier writings and speeches, with particular attention to what seem to have been the
milestones in his life and the points at which his political ideas and world-view crystallized. 10
Hitler, blinded in October 1918 in a gas attack at the front, was in a hospital in Pomerania at the
time of the armistice and the abdication of the emperor in November. "One man," Lukacs notes,
"who understood the searing experiences of Hitler," hearing the crushing news of the defeat and
collapse of the German Empire during his convalescence, "was Churchill. In the first volume of
his memoirs of the Second World War, Churchill began a chapter with the description of Hitler
in that hospital. Written in 1948, it is still a most penetrating summary description." II
reissued as a paperback (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999). Lukacs takes into account Kershaw's
Hitler (London and New York: Longman, 1991), a concise volume in the "Profiles in Power"
series, edited by Keith Robbins, as well as the British historian's earlier works, The 'Hitler Myth':
Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) and
Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, Bavaria, 1933-1945 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1983). But the first volume of Kershaw's major biography, Hitler, 1889-1936:
Hubris (London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 1998; New York: Norton, 1999), appeared only after
Lukacs' book had been published. In a review of Kershaw's new work in The Spectator (19
September 1998), Lukacs described it as "the most impressive biography of Hitler in the English
language," noting that it " is near-encyclopaedic, demonstrating his extensive acquaintance with
German sources and studies. It rests on the solid fundament of his earlier studies and researches
about German opinion and sentiment during the Hitler era" (p. 39).
i
JOAdolfHitler, Samtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905-1924, ed. by Eberhard Jackel together with
Axel Kuhn (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980, 1315 pp.). Lukacs mentions that the
editors, on learning that several items-"sixteen or seventeen out of a total of nearly seven
hundred documents"(p. 60)-were spurious, published a note regarding them in the prominent
Munich journal of contemporary history, Vierteljahrshefte fir Zeitgeschichte (April 1981, p. 304).
llLukacs, The Hitler ofHistory, p. 61, footnote, citing the chapter "Adolf Hitler," dealing
with the early rise of Hitler and Weimar Republic, in the first volume of Churchill's work on The
Second World War: The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948; paperback repr., New
York: Bantam, 1961), pp. 47-59. In The Duel-10 May-31 July 1940: The Eight-Day Struggle
Between Churchill and Hitler (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1991), pp. 40-41, Lukacs pointed out
that Churchill, as a practicing journalist, had "composed a portrait of Hitler in 1935: 'What manner
of man is this grim figure who has performed these superb toils [meaning the raising up of
Germany] and loosed these frightful evils [meaning Hitler's persecutions and terror]?' In
November 1935 he wrote: 'Those who have met Herr Hitler face to face in public business or on
social terms have found a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable
manner, a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism.' As late
as September 1937 he wrote: 'If our country were defeated I hope we should find a champion as
indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.' There was
nothing hypocritical in these phrases. They were not the results of the sometimes undue, and
10
- Spring 2000
In his third, fourth, and fifth chapters, Lukacs considers in tum the treatment of Hitler as a
reactionary or a revolutionary of a new kind; the character of his radically nationalist regime; and
his abilities as a statesman and a strategist. In the sixth chapter, "The Jews: Tragedy and
Mystery," Lukacs turns to the historiography of the Holocaust, noting the extent to which
allegations "that the Holocaust had been arranged behind Hitler's back by Himmler, Heydrich
and others, and against Hitler's intentions" have been effectively refuted,12 and commending as
"most valuable" books by Uwe Dietrich Adam and Gerald Fleming and an "extraordinarily
intelligent and relatively small volume by the Swiss Philippe Burrin." 13
The seventh chapter is about the treatment of Hitler's place in German history; the question of
the responsibility for his rise to power of conservative, nationalist elites; the challenge of
understanding Hitler's support among the German people; and the complex and controversial
question of the relationship between his regime and the Roman Catholic Church. 14
therefore exaggerated, British habit of rhetorical fairness. Nor were they polite phrases masking
hate. The hate-if that is what it was-that would animate Churchill against Hitler came later.
Even then it was less of a hate for a man than the hate of what that man had wrought. Even after
the war, writing about Hitler, Churchill described how Hitler's sufferings in 1918 'did not lead him
into Communist ranks. By an honourable inversion he cherished all the more an abnormal sense of
racial loyalty and a fervent and mystic admiration for Germany and the German people.' The
italics are mine." (For the relatively positive impression Hitler made on another seasoned foreign
observer in early March 1938, see Lukacs' account of Hitler's meeting with a former President of
the United States in his chapter on the year "1938" in A Thread oJ Years [New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1998; paperback repr., 1999], pp. 261-67, and his article "Herbert Hoover
Meets Adolf Hitler" in The American Scholar, Vol. 62, No.2 [Spring 1993], pp. 235-38.)
12Loc. cit., p. 179, where Lukacs cites several articles by Martin Broszat, Eberhard Jackel,
and Jost Dtilffer in German publications, but also Gitta Sereny and Lewis Chester in the London
Sunday Times, 10 July 1977. Lukacs also discusses (on pp. 195-96) the relationship between Adolf
Hitler and the Jewish physician Dr. Eduard Bloch, who cared for his mother during her terminal
illness, citing the documentation from Bloch quoted in Ernst Gunther Schenck, Patient Hitler.
Eine medizinische Biographie ["Hitler as a Patient: A Medical Biography"] (Dusseldorf: Droste,
1989) and referring to Bloch's article about Hitler in Collier's, 15 and 22 March 1941.
t3Loc. cit., p. 179. Lukacs refers to Uwe Dietrich Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich
["Jewish Policy in the Third Reich"] (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1972; repr., Konigstein/Taunus:
Athenaum, 1979); Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1982; paperback repr., 1987); and Philippe Burrin, Hitler et les juifs. Genese
d'une genocide (Paris: Seuil, 1989), translated by Patsy Southgate as Hitler and the Jews: The
Genesis oJthe Holocaust, with an introduction by Saul FriedHmder (London: Edward Arnold,
1994; paperback repr., 1998).
14Lukacs cites the conclusion reached by the Austrian Roman Catholic historian Friedrich
Heer that "'neither in German Catholicism nor in the Vatican did Hitler meet an opponent who was
worthy of him [der ihm gewachsen war]'" (p. 217, where Lukacs, in his own English translation,
Spring 2000 - 11
In the eighth chapter, Lukacs first considers apologists and revisionists, including David
Irving, noting the unfortunate influence of this "amateur historian" and citing examples of his
"methods," 15 and then turns to the German "Historians' Controversy" (Historikerstreit) of the
1980s, which arose, he writes, because the time had arrived when "respectable German
professional historians had come to find it proper to reconsider the place of the Third
Reich-and, at least indirectly, of Hitler-in the history of Germany and of Europe in the
twentieth century."16 Referring to two of the more prominent conservative participants in the
controversy, Ernst Nolte and Andreas Hillgruber, Lukacs concludes that in their "defense it must
be said, in all fairness, that while elements of a rehabilitation of Hitler may be implicit in some of
their writing, that does not seem to have been their purpose. They were moved by a passionate
bitterness against what to them seemed an unfortunately broad-yet inadequate-and antinationalist consensus among German historians. They wanted not to rehabilitate but to explain.
Yet many of their explanations amounted to a kind of relativatization that ought to be dismissed.
Nolte and Hillgruber, as well as most of their supporters and followers, are not admirers of Hitler
but defenders of Germany and of the history of the German people during the Third Reich. But
since the history of the Third Reich is inseparable from that of Adolf Hitler, they inevitably find
themselves (at times at least) defending Hitler, toO."17
In his concluding chapter, "The Historical Problem," Lukacs writes that "on 2 June 1945,
hardly a month after Hitler's suicide, Pope Pius XII spoke before the College of Cardinals about
'the satanic apparition ... of National Socialism.' With all respect due to this much, and
sometimes unjustly, criticized pope, I am inclined to agree with Friedrich Heer: 'Again this is
being metaphysical, removing something from history and from the responsibility for history,
acquitting Catholics of their responsibilities. For a "satanic apparition" no one is responsible-at
best, an exorcist. ... The pope overlooks entirely that this "satanic apparition" was a very
concrete human incarnation who, before all in the Munich so loved by the pope but also
elsewhere, was promoted and helped into power by very responsible and notable men...."'18
cites Heer's study, Der Glaube des AdolfHitler. Anatomie einer politischen Religiositat ["The
Belief of Adolf Hitler: The Anatomy of a Political Religiosity"] [Munich: Bechtle, 1968], p.471).
Lukacs goes on to acknowledge the at times "even inspiring record" of a number of the Catholic
crergy, but points out that "some of the responses to Hitler by otherwise non-Nazi or even antiNazi members of the hierarchy are less than inspiring, especially in retrospect" (and, in an
extended footnote on pp. 217-18, cites a number of specific examples).
15The characterization as an "amateur" occurs on p. 229, where Lukacs writes of the British
author's "evolution from a young sympathizer of Germany and things German to a 'rehabilitator' of
Hitler and then to his indubitable admirer and partisan"; in a long footnote on pp. 230-31, Lukacs
cites nine passages in David Irving, Hitler's War (New York: Viking, 1977) as "a very random
sampling ofIrving's 'methods'" (briefly noting his objection to each).
16Ibid., p. 233.
17Ibid., p. 236.
'8Ibid., p. 265, citing Heer (in Lukacs' translation), op. cit., pp. 535-36.
12
- Spring 2000
With a text that is stimulating and sometimes provocative for the specialist, yet accessible to
the general reader and informative for the student, and with a wealth of footnotes providing
judiciously selected excerpts from and often incisive commentary on the extensive literature,
Lukacs' concise volume of slightly less than three hundred pages is a very welcome contribution
to our understanding of Hitler and to the scholarship devoted to him and to his place in history.
Christian Leitz, Economic Relations Between Nazi Germany and Franco's Spain 1936-1945,
Oxford Historical Monographs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). xiv & 255 pp. (ISBN
0198206453) $72.00.
Michael Richards, A Time ofSilence: Civil War and the Culture ofRepression in Franco's
Spain, 1936-1945, Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare
(Cambridge: University Press, 1998), xii & 314 pp. (ISBN 0521594014) $59.95.
These two readable, extensively documented monographs, published as revisions of British
doctoral dissertations, are valuable and well-informed contributions to the study of Spain during
the Civil War and the Second World War.
Leitz' book, based on a wide reading of the scholarly literature in English, French, German,
and French and on extensive research in German, British, Spanish, and American archival
sources, provides a far more detailed account of Spanish-German economic relations from the
beginning of the Civil War to the end of World War II than has heretofore been available. 19
In the first two chapters, dealing with the Civil War, Leitz brings out the extent to which
Franco succeeded in limiting German penetration of the Spanish economy, even though the
Germans had "put Franco's victory at risk by withholding war material in the second half of
1938," with the consequence that, when the war ended, "Nationalist Spain was far from having
become an economic colony of National Socialist Germany" and Berlin's principal leverage was
the enormous debt incurred for German aid during the conflict. 20 After the beginning of World
War II, moreover, Spain "became increasingly reliant on Britain for imports.... Franco
benefited from a British policy of economic appeasement which included the provision of wheat
and the organization of American oil and cotton supplies."21 Another factor that reduced German
'9Leitz was able to use Spanish archival materials opened only in the 1990s, but mentions
that "access to Franco's personal records remains limited" (p. 224).
2°Leitz, p. 90.
21Ibid., p. 224. On 8 October 1940, at a time when Hitler was planning ajoint Spanish­
German attack on Gibraltar that would be thwarted by Franco, Churchill explained in the House of
Commons the policy of his government to provide Spain desperately needed imports: "There is no
country in Europe that has more need of peace and food and the opportunities of prosperous trade
than Spain, which has been tom and tormented by the devastation of a civil war into which the
Spanish nation was drawn by a series of hideous accidents and misunderstandings and from the
ruins of which they must now rebuild their united national life in dignity, in mercy, and in honour.
Far be it from us to lap Spain and her own economic needs in the wide compass of our blockade"
(The Times, 9 Oct. 1940, cited by E. Allison Peers, Spain in Eclipse, 1937-1943 [London:
Spring 2000 - 13
influence in Spain was that the value of the Spanish debt was severely discounted by the bidding
war for the one natural resource that Gennany most needed from Spain, wolfram-the ore
containing tungsten, used for hardening steel for annor-plating and annor-piercing projectiles. 22
In his conclusion, Leitz writes that it was clear even during World War II that Gennan aid
totalling "nearly RM580 million ... to support Franco in the Spanish Civil War had not yielded
long-tenn economic benefits. Although the abnonnal conditions created by [the] Second World
War did have an impact on this failure, it is doubtful whether Franco would have allowed an
economic colonization of Spain even under peacetime conditions.... In the end, only a total
Gennan victory in Europe would have brought Nationalist Socialist plans for an economic
colonization of Spain back on course."23
The purpose of Michael Richards' study of the Franco regime is "to analyse the interaction of
the ideological, social and economic aspects of Francoism's establishment in power during and
immediately after the Civil War. ... In large part, it is a study of the brutalities of everyday life
as lived by substantial sections of the population in the course of the Civil War and in its
aftennath, and an attempt to suggest some ways in which they may be explained. "24 "The
Francoist ideology," as Richards explains in detail, "was composed of Catholicism, specifically
Spanish myths, exacerbated nationalism and European fascism. ,,25 The "brutalities of everyday
life" to which he refers were suffered most acutely by the working classes, particularly in the
urban centers that had supported the defeated Republicans, as a consequence of the authoritarian
regime's attempt to implement a policy of economic autarky (i.e., economic self-sufficiency),
even at the cost of widespread deprivation, especially during the early years ofW6rld War II. 26
Methuen, 1943], p. 182).
22This is treated in detail in Chapter 5, "Nazi Gennany's Struggle for Spanish Wolfram and
Allied Economic Warfare" (ibid., pp. 170-199, including 125 footnotes). Regarding the bidding
war for wolfram, a fonner U.S. diplomat who served in Spain during the Second World War
subsequently wrote that the Anglo-American "device for depriving the Gennans of wolfram was to
offer higher and higher prices for it, and we raised prices to what must have seemed to the
Spaniards (and to the Gennans) astronomical levels. Since we had dollars to spare, and since the
sums were chicken-feed to us, there was almost an element of unfair competition in what we
did-particularly since we doubled and tripled the price of the petroleum we were selling to Spain
in order to recover a part of our costs" (Willard L. Beaulac, Franco: Silent Ally in World War II
[Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986], p. 24).
23Leitz, loco cit., pp. 226-27.
24Richards, p. 2.
25Ibid., p. 16.
26"The US Red Cross found 'appalling conditions of starvation and need of every kind' in
the capital. In the summer of 1941 this organisation was 'feeding more than 20,000 starving people
in Madrid [and] 30-40,000 [were] living in ruins without a roof over their heads"' (Richards, p.
143, citing a report, dated 19 August)941, in the Foreign Office records at the Public Record
14
- Spring 2000
Richards' study is based on extensive research in contemporary records not only in Madrid,
but in regional archives, and on the increasingly critical and objective body of Spanish
scholarship on the Franco era published since the death of the dictator and the accession of King
Juan Carlos in 1975. 27 Richards systematically analyses the political economy of Franco Spain
during the era from the-outbreak of the Civil War to the end of the Second World War, showing
how the deprivations resulting from a radical policy of autarky were rationalized (and approved
by the authorities) as a necessary element in "the ascetic regimen that Francoism imposed," for
the sake of the "moral and economic reconstruction" of Spain 28.
Although the conservative Spanish Catholic church had been very closely allied during the
Civil War with the Franco regime in the bitter struggle against the anti-clerical Republic,
differences between the church and the Falange emerged during the Second World War "over
relations with Nazi Germany, for example, or because of the apparent social radicalism of some
fascist 'revolutionaries', or the evident contradiction between Christian charity and the unending
repression and domination. By this time, church, party and military were eruneshed, not only in a
network of common ideas, but in a 'pact of blood' entered into during the war itself. The fall of
Mussolini, moreover, and the social conflict in Italy that followed, made elite groups and much
of society generally adhere desperately to the dictatorship one way or another for fear of a return
to civil war. "29
Richards observes that in Spain "writing the history ofFrancoism with any claim at all to
objectivity was hardly initiated until the 1980s. Forgetting the recent past in postwar Spain was
both enforced by authority and employed as personal and collective strategies of survival. ...
This 'pact of oblivion', as it was known in political circles, became an important condition of the
Office, and adding a reference to a Spanish government source estimating home1essness in Madrid
in 1940 at 60,000). In endnote 30 on p. 179, Richards cites a calculation in an article by Juan Diez
Nicolas in the Boletin de demografia historica, Vol. 3, No.1 (March 1985), pp. 52-53, estimating
that in the period 1940-42, hunger, disease, and political repression in Spain resulted in 214,000
deaths.
27Richards' book was begun as a dissertation supervised by Paul Preston, author of Franco:
A Biography (New York: Basic Books, 1994), which he describes as "a recent major
deconstruction of myths about Franco" (p. 175), of The Politics ofRevenge: Fascism and the
Military in Twentieth-Century Spain (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), and of The
Triumph ofDemocracy in Spain (London and New York: Methuen, 1986), and general editor,
together with Michael Partridge, of British Documents on Foreign Affairs-Reports and Papers
from the Foreign Office Confidential Print; Part III, From 1940 through 1945, Series F, Europe
(Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of America, 1997), and of British Documents on Foreign
Affairs-Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print; Part III, From 1940
through 1945, Series L, World War II and General (Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of
America, 1998).
28Ibid, pp. 3 and 4.
29Ibid., p. 172.
Spring 2000 - 15
9
process of the peaceful transition to democracy in the 1970s and 1980s."30
Richards' monograph, which draws on recent Spanish scholarship as well as on contemporary
records and publications, provides so unsparingly clear a picture of the era he takes under
consideration that one can understand why it was for so long passed over in silence.
Maochun Yu, OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1996. xxii & 340 pp. (ISBN 0300066988) $40.00
Archimedes L. A. Patti, Why Vietnam? Prelude to America's Albatross. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1980. xx & 612 pp. (ISBN 0520041569) $19.50; paperback rept., 1980
(ISBN 0520047834) $15.00
An historian from China now teaching at the US. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maochun
Yu wrote his monograph on the US. intelligence effort in China during World War II as a .
doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley. Primarily on the basis of recently
declassified records of the Office of Strategic Services (aSS) at the National Archives (Record
Group 226) and "newly published Chinese materials"3l, Yu provides a narrative account of his
subj ect from the time of the establishment, in summer 1941, of the office of Coordinator of
Information (Cal), the predecessor of the ass, until the transfer to the U.S. Navy of the China
detachment of the ass successor organization, the War Department's Strategic Services Unit, in
fall 1946. 32
30Ibid., pp. 9-10.
3ly
u, p. xv.
32President Roosevelt created the office of Coordinator ofInformation, under (then)
Colonel (later Major General) William J. Donovan, by executive order on 11 July 1941. On 13
June 1942 he divided it "into two parts: the Office of War Information, or OWl, [that] would 'plan,
develop, and execute all phases of the federal program of radio, press, publication, and related
foreign propaganda activities involving the dissemination of information' ... [and] the Office of
Strategic Services, to be headed by Donovan, [that] would handle everything else" (ibid., pp. 70­
71). The "aSS was disbanded by Executive Order 9621, dated 20 September 1945 and effective 1
November" (H. Bradford Westerfield, ed., Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from
the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992 [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995],
p. 127). Many of its personnel were transferred to the State Department's Interim Research and
Intelligence Service (IRIS), others to the War Department's Strategic Services Unit (SSU) under
Brigadier General John Magruder, the former Deputy Director of ass for Intelligence (yu, p.
251). Before the SSU was abolished in turn in 1946, its operating unit in China was transferred,
for "limited control and full logistical support," to the US. Navy's Seventh Fleet (ibid, p. 262). For
an early but well-informed overview of the dismantling of the ass and the establishment two
years later of the CIA, see chapter 11, "aSS and CIA: The Espionage Gap," in OSS: The Secret
History ofAmerica's First Central Intelligence Agency, by R. Harris Smith [Berkeley: University
16
- Spring 2000
In his extensively annotated study, Yu describes the complexity of the setting in which the
OSS functioned in China, where the Allied war effort against Japan was handicapped by the
implacable hostility between Chinese Nationalists and Chinese Communists, by divisions within
the Chinese Nationalist camp and turf battles among rival American agencies, and by
fundamental differences in outlook, policy, and war aims between the Americans, British,
French, and Chinese. In the course of the war, the OSS collaborated in China, at one time or
another, with "virtually all of the major players-with Detachment 101 under army commander
Stilwell, with SACO under the navy and Tai Li's BIS, with AGFRTS under Chennault of the
14th Air Force, [and] with the Chinese Communists in Yenan ... ,'133 Augmented by transfers
from the European Theater following the defeat of Germany, the personnel strength of the OSS
in China peaked in July 1945 at 1,891. 34
After the dissolution of the ass late in 1945, intelligence work was continued in China by
former OSS personnel under the aegis of the China Detachment of the War Department's
successor organization, tne Strategic Services Unit (SSU/China), in order to provide continuing
intelligence coverage of "the Soviet Union's expansion in China and adjacent areas. ,,35 Once it
had been decided, in fall 1946, that U.S. ground forces would be withdrawn from China, leaving
only a military advisory group, the intelltgence unit that had functioned in China under the SSU
was transferred, for logistical support, to the U.S. Seventh Fleet, "in order to disassociate officers
of California Pres, 1972; paperback repr., New York: Dell, 1973], pp. 361-383)
33Loc. cit., p. 268; ass Detachment 101 functioned as a guerilla warfare unit in Burma;
SACa, the Sino-American Special Technical Cooperative Organization, was a collaborative
enterprise of the Chinese Nationalist Bureau ofInvestigation and Statistics (BIS) under General
Tai Li and the U.S. Naval Group, China, under Captain (later Rear Admiral) Milton E. Miles, who
reported directly to the Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, Admiral King, in Washington, while
simultaneously serving, from September 1942 until November 1943, as OSS coordinator in China
(Yu, pp. 75 and 127); AGFRTS was the "Air and Ground Forces Resources and Technical Staff,"
based in Kunming, China, several hundred miles southwest of the wartime Nationalist capital of
Chungking; and the "Dixie Mission" to the Chinese Communist headquarters in Yenan, China,
included an OSS contingent "to report on the military capabilities of the Japanese in north China
and to assess as well the military potential of the Communists" (Smith, OSS, p. 263). In his
treatment of SACO and ofTai Li, Yu draws on new Chinese material, the memoirs of the late Vice
Admiral Milton E. Miles, A Different Kind of War, prepared by Hawthorne Daniel, with a
foreword by Arleigh Burke (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967 [authorized reprint, Taipei:
Caves Books, 1986]), and an unpublished manuscript by Admiral Miles at the Naval War College,
Newport, R.I., and he also includes eleven photographs provided by Admiral Miles' family among
the twenty illustrations in his volume. (Further information on the role,JJ_ackground, and
connections ofTai Li is provided by Archimedes L A. Patti in the biographical sketch on pp. 491­
92 of his book reviewed below.)
34yu, p. 226.
35Ibid., p. 258.
Spring 2000 - 17
in the military advisory and executive groups from connection with an intelligence agency," and
it was that unit, Seventh Fleet's External Survey Detachment 44, as it was known, that became,
after the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the following year, "the [new]
Agency's first China contingent."36
The subtitle ofYu's book, "Prelude to Cold War," refers to the conflict between the United
States of America and the Chinese Communists, which was heralded by the killing in north
China of an ass officer, Captain John Birch, on 25 August 1945. When the Japanese
capitulated earlier that month, Birch headed one of the ass teams immediately sent to strategic
areas previously under Japanese control. Yu summarizes the account of the incident given in
U.S. Army records (based on the testimony ofa surviving member of Birch's team) and cites the
conclusion of "an investigation conducted by the U.S. judge advocate of the China theater ...
[that] 'Capt. Birch's conduct immediately prior to his death indicated a lack of good judgment
and failure to take proper precautions in a dangerous situation, [but] nevertheless the actions
taken by the Chinese Communist Army personnel fell short of according the rights and privileges
due even to enemy prisoners of war and constituted murder....The shooting was done
maliciously.... The killing was completely without justification.' "37 However, writes Yu, it
"was by no means an isolated incident 'provoked' by the murdered man.... It transpired because
the Communists tenaciously tried to keep all American influence out of the geographically
important Shandong Peninsula and Northern Jiangsu, which guard the entrance in the Gulf of
Chihli (Bo Hai Gulf) to Port Arthur (Lti Shun) and Dairen (Da Lian)-both under Soviet
occupation since mid-August 1945; and because the CCP troops were actively searching for the
Birch party to prevent it at any cost from meeting the person Captain Birch was instructed to see,
General Hao Pengju, formerly a puppet collaborator, with whom the CCP was conducting a hasty
and most secret negotiation."38
In his "Epilogue," Yu points out that the ass, focussed on the struggle against Japan, was
oblivious to Chinese Communist espionage against the Chinese Nationalists, as illustrated by an
ass intelligence digest on Yenan compiled in June 1945, where, in a listing of Communist
personalities, "Kang Sheng, intelligence chief of the entire Chinese Communist Party, who ran
an overarching espionage system all over China, was called simply an 'intellectual'."39 Under the
36Ibid., pp. 261-62. Yu explains that the transfer ofSSU/China to the U.S. Navy had been
initiated by General George C. Marshall, who at the time was in China attempting to mediate the
conflict between the Chinese Nationalists and Chinese Communists, and who "wanted to
dissociate his mission from SSU" (ibid.).
37Ibid., pp. 239-240.
38Ibid., pp. 235-36.
39Ibid., p. 276. In his subchapter on "Communist Intelligence and Tai Li's Tum to
America" (pp. 40-44), Yu recounts the penetration of the Chinese Nationalist BIS by Communist
agents, the discovery of which, early in 1942, mortified General Tai Li, bringing him "to the
lowest point in his career." Tai Li's consequent determination "to modernize and overhaul his
internal security and counterespionage system at any cost," Yu writes (citing an "unpublished
18
- Spring 2000
circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the OSS itself was vulnerable to Conununist Chinese
infiltration. "There is ample evidence," Yu writes, "that throughout the war, Conununist
intelligence was able to penetrate OSS operations in China.... Many Chinese typists and
interpreters ... were secret agents working for Yenan. As revealed in recent materials published
in China, they stole US. documents, organized secret Conununist Party activities, often forged
intelligence, and fed American intelligence agencies in China falsified information. "40
In connection with his account ofOSS operations in China during the Second World War,
Yu provides concise coverage of Allied intelligence operations, conducted from southern China,
in Indochina, which the Japanese had occupied but left under French administration until 1945.
On 9 March of that year, however, the Japanese suddenly took control, arrested the French
governor general, seized administrative buildings and public utilities, interned all French troops,
and, as champions of a policy of "Asia for the Asiatics," proclaimed Vietnamese independence
and set up a puppet regime. Yu recounts how, shortly after this Japanese coup, which led to the
collapse of the Allied network for rescuing fliers downed in Indochina, Ho Chi Minh and his
followers were engaged as agents of the Air Ground Aid Service (AGAS).41 However, Yu does
not discuss in depth Ho Chi Minh's role before March 1945 or OSS operations in Indochina
(handled from the OSS base in Kunming, China), drawing, as he might have, from the detailed
treatment to be found in Archimedes Patti's book on Vietnam. 42 The fact that Patti's work on "the
last battle of World War II," as he calls the Vietnam conflict (on the first page of chapter 1) is
manuscript by Milton Miles, 'The Navy Launched a Dragon,' chapter 28, Naval War College"),
"led him to join hands with American intelligence and establish the most controversial unit in the
OSS/SACO enterprise-one that would eventually involve many internal security experts from the
FBI, the narcotics bureau, the US. Navy, and OSS" (p. 44).
4°Ibid., p. 276.
4IIbid., pp. 203-208, citing on p. 207 the account by Charles Fenn in Ho Chi Minh: A
Biographical Introduction (London: Studio Vista [and New York: Scribner], 1973) ofHo's
emergence in 1945 as a revolutionary leader in Vietnam. Yu notes that when Fenn (the OSS
officer in Kunming who recruited Ho) was warned by Chinese Nationalist intelligence that "Ho
and most of his people were Communists," he checked with his headquarters in Chungking and
was instructed to go ahead with him '"regardless''' (p. 206). On page 39 of Advice and Support:
The Early Years, 1941-1965-The United States Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: US. Army
Center of Military History, 1983), Ronald H. Spector writes that "in March 1945 officers of the
U.S. Army Air Forces Air Ground Aid Service contacted Ho Chi Minh in Kunming and agreed to
supply him with conununications equipment, medical supplies, and small arms in return for
intelligence and assistance in rescuing Allied pilots," citing Fenn and referring also to Lloyd
Shearer, "When Ho Chi Minh Was an Intelligence Agent for the US.," Parade, 18 March 1973, p.
8.
42In "Part Two: Kunming,!' pp. 61-147 (with endnotes on pp. 544-552), in Patti, Why
Vietnam? Prelude to America's Albatross (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
Spring 2000 - 19
neither cited in Yu's monograph nor listed in the AHA Guide to Historical Literature43 suggests
that it may have come to be overlooked in the deluge of publications on Vietnam, so it is
reviewed here, as an authoritative contribution to the historiography of the end of the Second
World War in Southeast Asia and the background of the Vietnam War, complementing Yu's
important contribution on the OSS in China and the origins of the Cold War in central and
northern East Asia.
Archimedes L. A. Patti's Why Vietnam? Prelude to America's Albatross (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980) is both a history and a memoir. 44 It is a uniquely well­
infonned, readable history of the Vietnam conflict from its background in World War II until the
withdrawal of the French Expeditionary Corps and the disestablishment of the French High
Command in Saigon in mid-1956. At the same time, it is an engaging personal memoir by the
French Indochina desk officer first in OSS headquarters in Washington, D.C., and then in
Kumning, China, who led the OSS mission to Hanoi, in August and September 1945, to arrange
for the release and repatriation of Allied prisoners of war and for the fonnal surrender of the
Japanese in northern Vietnam.
In "Part One: Washington," in which he writes of his service at OSS headquarters before he
was transferred to China, Patti provides background infonnation on Indochina during the war, on
President Roosevelt's opposition to seeing it returned to colonial status, on preparations by the
French to take control ofIndochina as soon as the Japanese were defeated, and on Ho Chih Minh.
By late 1944, Patti writes, Ho was already engaged in southern China in "part-time work with
OSS and OWl [Office of War Infonnation] officials in conducting Allied propaganda. In
Kumning, Kweilin, and Liuchow he made good use of OWl's facilities to improve his English
and knowledge of American history, customs, and current world events. Betweentimes he
provided the BIS with Japanese military infonnation from Indochina, carried out his Viet Minh
organizational work, and proselyted among rival nationalist groups. "45 Meanwhile, Ho's
43The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature, 3rd ed., 2 vols.,
edited by Mary Beth Norton and Pamela Gerardi (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
44In the "Bibliographical Note" at the end of Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941­
1965-The United States Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military
History, 1983), Ronald H. Spector writes that although Patti's book "appeared too late to be used
in ... [his work,] ... Mr. Patti generously called the attention of the author to the documents on
which his account is based" (p. 384). Patti's book was written years before the OSS records
utilized by Yu were transferred to the National Archives and declassified for public use, but Patti
states in his preface that his "dispatches and reports ... stored with the Department of State and
the Central Intelligence Agency were almost intact and were made available" to him (pp. xviii­
xix). Readers familiar with R. Harris Smith's history of the OSS (cited in an earlier note) may
remember the photograph taken on the occasion ofHo Chi Minh's proclamation of the
independence of Vietnam, on 2 September 1945, showing how, when "the band struck up the 'Star
Spangled Banner,' ... OSS Col. Archimedes Patti (left foreground) and Viet Minh military genius
Vo Nguyen Giap (right foreground) saluted" (caption to the illustration on p. 355).
45Loc. cit., p. 55.
[
20
- Spring 2000
followers, under Vo Nguyen Giap, carried out forays in Vietnam against French and Japanese
outposts, provoking severe French reprisals. Giap was planning to unleash a rising against both
the French and the Japanese when, late in November 1944, Ho returned from China to Tonkin,
"met with Giap and other militants ... , and persuaded them that an armed insurrection at that
moment would be premature and doomed. To keep up their spirits while discouraging any rash
course which would jeopardize the whole movement, Ho created the Propaganda Brigade for the
Liberation of Viet Nam and placed Giap in full charge. Initially the Brigade concentrated on the
dissemination of propaganda and instructions to the general population on resistance tactics, but
it became the precursor ofthe ... People's Army with Giap at its national commander .... ,,46
On his way back to China, Ho learned that "a downed American pilot ... [who had] bailed
out after a raid on Saigon" was with one of Giap's units and instructed that "the flyer ... [be]
escorted not merely to the border but to the American authorities in China. ,,47 On his return to
Kunming in February 1945, Ho reported to "his ass and OWl friends ... that the French army
was deploying its forces in the mountainous areas of Tonkin and Laos and that the Japanese
forces were doing the same thing.... What he did not know was that his new Propaganda
Brigade was about to be the target of a French Army mop up operation in which the 'rebels' were
to be decisively eliminated. The operation had been scheduled for the week of 10 March....
[But] ifHo ... [and Giap, who had remained in Tonkin] were ignorant of the intended
eradication of their little force," Patti continues, "the French were taken even more unaware by
the Japanese, who struck on the evening of9 March, before the French operation could begin....
The Japanese disarmed and confined the French military forces and their leaders .... and
stripped French officials of all authority-from [Governor General Jean] Decoux to the lowest
clerk.... Thus Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh became double beneficiaries of a great stroke of
good fortune. They were saved from their would-be French exterminators ... and the
Vietnamese people were temporarily 'liberated' from their French 'masters'. "48 Moreover, the
Japanese coup severed the channels of political and military intelligence from Indochina,
denying General Claire Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force target intelligence and an underground
rescue system for downed fliers and depriving the Chinese Nationalists information on Japanese
troop dispositions, which they needed in order "to deploy their meager and ill-equipped forces
along the Indochina border." Despite American reluctance to become involved in Indochina, "it
was imperative that clandestine communications and operations be reopened if Allied plans
against the Japanese in China and the Pacific were to prosper," so in March 1945 arrangements
were made with Ho Chi Minh for the Vietminh to set up a network to provide intelligence and
assist in rescuing downed Allied fliers, in return for communications equipment, medical
supplies, and small arms. 49
46Ibid., p. 56.
47Ibid.
48Ibid., pp. 56-57.
49Ibid., p. 57; on pp. 53-55 Patti recounts how a Vietminh request in August 1944 "for
American help in their struggle for independence and for the opportunity to fight alongside the
Spring 2000 - 21
In "Part Two: Kunming" (pp. 61-147, with endnotes on pp. 544-552), Patti writes of his
service as Indochina desk officer with the OSS in China from his arrival in Kunming on 13 April
1945 until his flight to Hanoi on 22 August 1945, describing his first personal meeting, on 27
April, in a Chinese village near the Indochinese border, with Ho Chi Minh,50 and noting British
support to the French in Indochina in May 1945, provoking an American protest, and the
subsequent decision at the Potsdam Conference in July to divide Indochina at the sixteenth
parallel, with operations in the north assigned to the China Theater and in the south to the
Southeast Asian Theater. 51
In "Part Three: Hanoi" (pp. 151-374, with endnotes on pp. 552-568), Patti provides a detailed
account of his mission to Hanoi from 22 August through 30 September 1945 as head of the OSS
Mercy Team charged with arranging for the release and repatriation of Allied prisoners-of-war in
northern Indochina and also "acting as the initial intermediary in arranging for the surrender of
Allies against the Japanese" was delivered by an OSS officer to the US. Consul General in
Kunming, but that consideration of any such collaboration was quashed in October 1944 when
President Roosevelt instructed Secretary of State Cordell Hull to IIIdo nothing in regard to
resistance groups or in any other way in relation to Indochina'."
50Ibid., pp. 83-88, where Patti writes that "in his astuteness, Ho had asked for nothing; he
had merely exposed me to the potential value of his political-military organization. And he would
bide his time, asking no commitments" (p. 87). At this meeting Patti first learned of the famine of
1944-45, of which he later wrote, "with the passing months I came to a better understanding of
Ho's concern and grief. Aside from the loss of nearly two million people-many of them
children-the famine had seriously affected the health of the surviving Tonkinese [north
Vietnamese]. It had also fanned their hatred for the Japanese and French oppressors and
strengthened the people's determination to fight and win back the right to live" (p. 133, italics in
original).
51When the China-Burma-India Theater had been divided late in 1944 into the Southeast
Asian Theater under Admiral Mountbatten and the China Theater under Generalissimo Chiang
(with General Albert Wedemeyer as Chief of Staff), Indochina had been assigned to the latter.
When Mountbatten informed Wedemeyer in mid-May of his intention to support the French
'"guerilla''' groups in Indochina, Wedemeyer asked what arrangements had been made to insure
that equipment provided would be used against the Japanese. Mountbatten did not answer the
question, gave no information regarding the number or locations of the French units involved, and
went ahead with the operation without "consent from either Wedemeyer or Chiang," provoking
Wedemeyer's protest on 25 May and report to the US. Joint Chiefs of Staff (p. 122). The division
ofIndochina between the two Allied commands, with the area north of the sixteenth parallel
assigned to the China Theater under Chiang and Wedemeyer and the area to the south under
Mountbatten, was approved at the Potsdam Conference on 24 July. On 1 August 1945 the US.
ambassador in Chungking delivered to Chiang President Truman's message advising him "of the
decision at Potsdam and expressing the hope that he would concur. Truman's message, carefully
worded and emphasizing that the division was 'for operational purposes,' implied it had no other
connotations. Ten days later Chiang replied with a conditional concurrence" (p. 131).
22
- Spring 2000
In "Part Two: Kunming" (pp. 61-147, with endnotes on pp. 544-552), Patti writes of his
service as Indochina desk officer with the OSS in China from his arrival in Kunming on 13 April
1945 until his flight to Hanoi on 22 August 1945, describing his first personal meeting, on 27
April, in a Chinese village near the Indochinese border, with Ho Chi Minh,50 and noting British
support to the French in Indochina in May 1945, provoking an American protest, and the
subsequent decision at the Potsdam Conference in July to divide Indochina at the sixteenth
parallel, with operations in the north assigned to the China Theater and in the south to the
Southeast Asian Theater. 51
In "Part Three: Hanoi" (pp. 151-374, with endnotes on pp. 552-568), Patti provides a detailed
account of his mission to Hanoi from 22 August through 30 September 1945 as head of the OSS
Mercy Team charged with arranging for the release and repatriation of Allied prisoners-of-war in
northern Indochina and also "acting as the initial intermediary in arranging for the surrender of
Allies against the Japanese" was delivered by an ass officer to the U.S. Consul General in
Kunming, but that consideration of any such collaboration was quashed in October 1944 when
President Roosevelt instructed Secretary of State Cordell Hull to "'do nothing in regard to
resistance groups or in any other way in relation to Indochina',"
50Ibid., pp. 83-88, where Patti writes that "in his astuteness, Ho had asked for nothing; he
had merely exposed me to the potential value of his political-military organization. And he would
bide his time, asking no commitments" (p. 87). At this meeting Patti first learned of the famine of
1944-45, of which he later wrote, "with the passing months I came to a better understanding of
Ho's concern and grief. Aside from the loss of nearly two million people-many of them
children-the famine had seriously affected the health of the surviving Tonkinese [north
Vietnamese]. It had also fanned their hatred for the Japanese and French oppressors and
strengthened the people's determination to fight and win back the right to live" (p. 133, italics in
original).
51When the China-Burma-India Theater had been divided late in 1944 into the Southeast
Asian Theater under Admiral Mountbatten and the China Theater under Generalissimo Chiang
(with General Albert Wedemeyer as Chief of Staff), Indochina had been assigned to the latter.
When Mountbatten informed Wedemeyer in mid-May of his intention to support the French
"'guerilla'" groups in Indochina, Wedemeyer asked what arrangements had been made to insure
that equipment provided would be used against the Japanese. Mountbatten did not answer the
question, gave no information regarding the number or locations of the French units involved, and
went ahead with the operation without "consent from either Wedemeyer or Chiang," provoking
Wedemeyer's protest on 25 May and report to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (p. 122). The division
ofIndochina between the two Allied commands, with the area north of the sixteenth parallel
assigned to the China Theater under Chiang and Wedemeyer and the area to the south under
Mountbatten, was approved at the Potsdam Conference on 24 July. On 1 August 1945 the U.S.
ambassador in Chungking delivered to Chiang President Truman's message advising him "of the
decision at Potsdam and expressing the hope that he would concur. Truman's message, carefully
worded and emphasizing that the division was 'for operational purposes,' implied it had no other
connotations. Ten days later Chiang replied with a conditional concurrence" (p. 131).
Spring 2000 - 23
the Japanese military forces ... to the Allied Powers," as he told the Japanese commander in
HanoiY On 19 August 1945, three days before Patti arrived there, the Vietminh had taken
control of Hanoi, where, on 2 September, the day the Japanese signed the terms of surrender on
the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, he witnessed Ho Chi Minh proclaim the independence of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and announce the formation of a provisional
government. 53 On 28 September the surrender of the Japanese commander in Hanoi was accepted
by General Lu Han on behalf of the Allied Commander of the China Theater, Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek. 54
In southern Indochina, in the Southeast Asian Command under Mountbatten, Indian Gurkhas
and French paratroopers arrived on 12 September 1945, followed the next day by their British
commander, Major General Douglas D. Gracey, who "imposed censorship on the indigenous
press, proclaimed martial law, declared a strict curfew, and banned all demonstrations and public
meetings. "55 His restrictive measures soon provoked a strike and demonstrations in Saigon,
which led him to agree to the recommendation of the Commissioner of the French Republic
(appointed by General de Gaulle), Jean CMile, that the French colonial troops still confined· as
POWs after having been interned by the Japanese in March be released and rearmed. This was
done and in what Patti describes as "O~dile's coup," they seized control of Saigon on the night of
22-23 September. 56 The next day saw "an orgy" of random, racist violence on the part of the
French colonials against the native Vietnamese in the city that severely exacerbated the racist­
nationalist-colonialist polarization in Cochinchina (i.e., southern Vietnam) that was among the
ugliest features of the coming war.57
52Ibid., pp. 159.
53Patti's paraphrased description and interpretation ofHo's speech, as sent to Kunming at
the time, is on pp. 251-52 of his book.
54patti, pp. 360-62. Insofar as northern Indochina was in the theater of which Chiang was
supreme commander, it was appropriate for his representative to accept the Japanese surrender. As
a corollary to accepting the surrender, it had also been agreed, over French objections, that
Chinese Nationalist forces would monitor the withdrawal of the Japanese forces from Indochina.
However, as Patti puts it, "the Chinese lingered long enough to get the maximum 'squeeze' from
the French: between 28 February and 14 March 1946 the French signed a series of agreements
with the Chinese yielding their prewar rights and privileges in China. According to the 14 March
agreement, the relief of the Chinese occupation army would begin on 15 March and be completed
by the thirty-first, but in fact the last Chinese unit did not leave Haiphong until October 1946" (p.
381).
55Citation from R. Harris Smith, op. cit., p. 340; for detailed treatment, see Patti, pp. 307ff.
56patti, pp. 315-318.
57Patti writes of "an orgy of French violence," explaining that the French civilian
population of Saigon that "had lived in fear ... rejoiced [that the soldiers of the regular army and
the French Foreign Legion had been released, had been permitted by the British to take over the
I
24
- Spring 2000
Patti concludes the third part of his book with a detailed account of his conversation with Ho
Chi Minh on the evening of30 September 1945, after the formal surrender of the Japanese in
northern Vietnam and CMile's coup in Saigon and on the eve of his departure from Hanoi (soon
followed by his assignment to the Indochina desk of the Strategic Services Unit in Washington).
The Vietnamese leader, deeply concerned about what had happened in southern Vietnam,
expressed his hope that, with American help, it might still be possible to avert open conflict. He
told Patti about his personal life and political background, and about having been a communist
since 1920, but "he ... reflected aloud," Patti writes, "how wrong he had been ever to believe
that the French, British, or Russian communists would concern themselves with the Vietnamese
problem. 'In all the years that followed, no one of the so-called liberal elements have come to the
aid of colonials. I place more reliance on the United States to support Viet Nam's independence,
before I could expect help from the USSR"'58
In "Part Four: Aftermath" (pp. 377-449, with endnotes on pp. 568-570), Patti writes that Ho,
during the months following the end of the war, "was desperately trying to align his newborn
nation with the West and ... wanted to put to rest the French charges that he and his Viet Minh
were tools of Moscow, but we took no notice of his signal."59
On 6 March 1946, "Ho Chi Minh entered into a tenuous 'accord', ... not with the Paris
government but with a lesser official representing the military in Indochina. As Ho was soon to
learn, the accord did not bear the imprimatur of the Quai d'Orsay [i.e., the French foreign
ministry or the French government in Paris], and the provisions binding the French to recognize
city, and had made it possible, after years of Japanese occupation, finally to put the native
'Annamites' (Vietnamese) in their place]. Their moment of victory had arrived, so also their
moment of revenge. Instantly they reacted as one savage mob on the rampage. Banding in gangs of
three, four, six, and even more, French men and women roamed the streets of Saigon in search of
Vietnamese. They found many still unaware of the French coup and set upon them savagely with
sticks and fists. In their orgiastic fit the French broke down doors to ferret out cowering
'Annamites' from their homes or places of business to administer 'a well-deserved and proper
thrashing.' No one they found was spared-men and women, young and old, even children were
slapped around, spanked, and shaken. For most victims the beatings were severe; some were
maimed for life. In _general, after the beatings, the victims were pushed and shoved into cars or
trucks and sent off to the nearest jail for the crime of being Vietnamese. Some with deep gashes
and bleeding wounds were just left lying in the streets as being too messy to handle. The number
of victims was reckoned, even conservatively, in the high hundreds and probably reached into the
thousands.
"All this took place before the eyes of the French and British military who stood idly by,
apparently enjoying the sport" (pp. 316-317, where Patti also mentions that his counterpart, the
head of the ass team in southern Vietnam, the ranking American in Saigon at the time, "called on
General Gracey to protest the French behavior and British collusion, but Gracey would not receive
him").
58Ibid., p. 373.
59Ibid., p. 381.
Spring 2000 - 25
the DRV as a 'Free State' having 'its own parliament, it own Army, and its own finances' was
never honored."60 Instead, French troops occupied Viet Nam's major cities and the cycle of
violence begun with CMile's coup in Saigon in September 1945 began in the north, as related by
Patti:
"The end began on 20 November [1946] when an armed clash took place in the port of
Haiphong between the French Navy and Viet Minh shore troops over customs control. The
exchange lasted two days before a local agreement ended the dispute. But [the High
Commissioner of France for Indochina], ... then in Paris and indignant at what he deemed
Vietnamese effrontery, cabled his deputy in Saigon ... to 'teach those insolent Annamites a
lesson.' Three days later the French delivered an ultimatum to the Viet Minh authorities
demanding the withdrawal of their troops from the area within two hours. When it was ignored,
French troops supported by offshore batteries from the cruiser Suffren attacked the Chinese
quarters in the port city resulting in some twenty-five thousand casualties, including six thousand
dead.
"Surprised by the ruthless attack, Ho, still the negotiator, tried to avoid a full-scale
confrontation and appealed to the French for a cease-fire. The French military ... ignored Ho's
call for moderation and intensifie~ their attacks. On 19 December the local militia (Tu Ve)
destroyed the Hanoi power station, signaling a general attack on the French. Ho and his
government fled into the jungle. Thus the Indochina war, which had been originally sparked by
CMi1e's coup in Saigon but to some extent contained through French military force and Ho's
attempts to negotiate, became a full-scale reality. "61
Patti concludes his narrative with an overview of the course of the war, and the increasing
involvement of the United States, until the final French withdrawal in July 1956. With a
chronology extending through 1976 (Appendix I, pp. 451-474), a detailed "List of Abbreviations
and Terms" (pp. xi-xvi), "Selected Biographical Briefs" (Appendix II, pp. 475-497), short essays
on "Political Parties" in Vietnam in the 1940s (Appendix III, pp. 498-534), four charts on parties
and organizations (pp. 535-38), a "Selected Bibliography" (pp. 571-76), and a detailed index (pp.
577-612), Patti's book is not only a readable, first-hand account of the end of World War II in
Indochina and an accessible introduction to the background ofthe Vietnam War, but a useful
reference work as well.
6OIbid., p. 382.
6IIbid., p. 383.
26
- Spring 2000
Articles from an Electronic Compilation, Spring 2000
Selected Titles from an Electronic Compilation by James Ehrman
Agoratus, Steven. "Clark Gable in the Eighth Air Force." Air Power History 199946(1): 4-17.
Ammennan, Gale R. "An American Glider Pilot's Story." Air Power History 199946(1): 18-25.
Barnes, Wyatt E. "My First Day in Combat." MHQ: The Quarterly Journal ofMilitary History
1999 11(3): 86-89.
Beach, Edward L., Jr. "Breakers Ahead!" Naval History 1999 13(2): 42-44.
Beck Newman, Victoria. "The Triumph of Pan: Picasso and the Liberation." Zeitschriftfur
Kunstgeschichte [Gennany] 199963 (1): 106-122.
Benn, David Wedgwood. "Nazism and Stalinism: Problems of Comparison: A Review Article."
Europe-Asia Studies [Great Britain] 199951(1): 151-159.
Biddiscombe, Perry. "The End of the Freebooter Tradition: The Forgotten Freikorps Movement
of 1944/45." Central European History 199932(1): 53-90.
Blackburn, Kevin. "Changi: A Place of Personal Pilgrimages and Collective Histories."
Australian Historical Studies [Australia] 199930(112): 152-171.
Borgquist, Daryl S. "Advance Warning? The Red Cross Connection." Naval History 1999 13(3):
20-26.
Bosworth, R. J. B. "Explaining "Auschwitz" After the End of History: The Case ofItaly."
History and Theory 1999 38(1): 84-99.
Bradsher, Greg. "Nazi Gold: The Merkers Mine Treasure." Prologue: Quarterly ofthe National
Archives and Records Administration 199931(1): 6-21.
Brandler, Sondra, "Practice with Holocaust Survivors-Practice Issues: Understanding Aged
Holocaust Survivors." Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human
Services 200081 (1) 66-75.
Cahoon, Esther L., and Cahoon, Douglas W. "Artist on the Wing." Naval History 1999 13(3):
27-31.
Cannadine, David. "Historians as Diplomats? Roger B. Merriman, George M. Trevelyan, and
Anglo-American Relations~" New England Quarterly 1999 72(2): 207-231.
Spring 2000 - 27
Clout, Hugh. "The Reconstruction of Upper Nonnandy: A Tale of Two Cities." Planning
Perspectives [Great Britain] 1999 14(2): 183-207.
Cole, Wayne S. "Roosevelt and Munich." Diplomatic History 199923(1): 107-110.
Connelly, John. "Nazis and Slavs: From Racial Theory to Racist Practice." Central European
History 1999 32(1): 1-33.
Csete, Anne. "Perceptions of the Enemy: The United States and Japan during World War II."
Radical History Review, 2000, 76: 212-222..
Danchev, Alex. "Heroes." Diplomatic History 199923(1): 111-114.
Delacor, Regina M. "Auslieferung aufVerlangen? Der Deutsch-Franzoisiche
Waffenstillstandsvertrag 1940 and the Schicksal das Schicksal der Sozialdemokratischen
Exilpolitiker Rudolf Breitscheid and Rudolf Hilferding." ["Extradition on demand?" The
Franco-Gennan annistice treaty of 1940 and the fate of exiled Social Democratic
politicians Rudolf Breitscheid and Rudolf Hilferding]. Vierteljahrshefte fur
Zeitgeschichte [Gennany] 199947(2): 217-241.
DiScala, Spencer M. "Resistance Mythology." Journal ofModern Italian Studies [Great Britain]
19994(1): 67-72.
Domenico, Roy. "The Many Meanings of Anti-Fascism." Journal ofModern Italian Studies
[Great Britain] 19994(1): 54-59.
Edele, Mark. "Paper Soldiers: The World of the Soldier Hero According to Soviet Wartime
Posters." Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas [Gennany] 199947(1): 89-108.
Estes, Donald H. and Estes, Matthew T. "Letters from Camp: Poston-The First Year." Journal of
the West 199938(2): 22-33.
Fiset, Louis. "Health Care at the Central Utah (Topaz) Relocation Center." Journal ofthe WeSt
199938(2): 34-44.
Garrett, Stephen A. "Ethics and Air Power in World War 11." Technology and Culture. 2000 41
(1): 187-189.
Geller, Jay Howard. "The Role of the Military Administration in Gennan-Occupied Belgium,
1940-1944." Journal ofMilitary History 1999 63(1): 99-125.
Gozzer, Vittorio. "OSS and OR!: The Raimondo Craveri and Max Corvo Partnership." Journal
ofModern Italian Studies [Great Britain] 19994(1): 32-36.
28
- Spring 2000
Grant, Mariel. "Towards a Central Office ofInformation: Continuity and Change in British
Government Information Policy, 1939-51." Journal of Contemporary History [Great
Britain] 199934(1): 49-67.
Greenberg, Gershon. "Yehudah Leb Gerst's Religious 'Ascent' Through the Holocaust."
Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1999 13(1): 62-89.
Hansen, Arthur A. "The Evacuation and Resettlement Study at the Gila River Relocation Center:
1942-1944." Journal ofthe West 1999 38(2): 45-55.
Harvey, A. D. "Army Air Force and Navy Air Force: Japanese Aviation and the Opening of the
War in the Far East." War in History [Great Britain] 19996(2): 174-204.
Hasegawa, Junichi. " Governments, Consultants and Expert Bodies in the Physical
Reconstruction of the City of London in the 1940s." Planning Perspectives [Great
Britain] 1999 14(2): 121-144.
Hay, Robert Alan. "Bold Band From Brooklyn." Naval History 1999 13(3): 38-41.
Henig, Ruth. "Appeasement and the Origins of the Second World War." Modern History Review
[Great Britain] 1999 10(3): 28-31.
Hoagland, Edgar D. "PT Boats Raid Bongao Island." Naval History 1999 13(3): 42-45.
Inouye, Mamoru. "Heart Mountain High School, 1942-1945." Journal ofthe West 199938(2):
56-64.
Johnston, Deirdre. "A Series of Cases of Dementia Presenting with PTSD Symptoms in World
War II Combat Veterans." Journal ofthe American Geriatrics Society. 200048 (1): 70­
73.
Kroger, Martin, and Roland Thimrne. "Das Po1itische Archiv des Auswartigen amts im Zweiten
We1tkrieg: Sichergun, F1ucht, Verlust, Ruckfuhrung." [The political archive of the
foreign office in World War II: safeguarding, evacuation, losses, and return].
Vierteljahrsheftefur Zeitgeschichte [Germany] 199947(2): 243-264.
Li, Peter. "Review Essay - The Nanking Holocaust: Tragedy, Trauma, and Reconciliation."
Society 200037 (2): 56-66.
Mackey, Mike. "Introduction: Life in America's Concentration Camps." Journal ofthe West
199938(2): 9-13.
Margalit, Gilad. "The Representation of the Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies in German
Discourse After 1945." German History [Great Britain] 1999 17(2): 221-240.
Spring 2000 - 29
Matlock, JI. Jack F., and Martin Dean. "Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local
Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941-44." The New York Review ofBooks. 200047 (3):
41.
McIlvaine, Bill. "Lord Root of the Matter: Despite poor health that often left him on the brink of
death, Harry Hopkins became Franklin Roosevelt's unofficial 'Deputy President' and an
important liaison with Allied leaders during World War II." American History. April 1,
200035 (1): 30.
Miller, James Edward. "Who Chopped Down that Cherry Tree? The Italian Resistance in History
and Politics, 1945-1998." Journal ofModern Italian Studies [Great Britain] 19994(1):
37-54.
Miller, Jason Everett. "Quest at Midway." Naval History 1999 13(1): 31-33.
Morley, Patrick. "Allies on the Ajrwave." History Today [Great Britain] 199949(1): 28-33.
Musial, Bogdan. "NS-Kriegsverbrecher vor Polnischen Gerichten." ["Nazi war criminals in front
of Polish courts"]. Vierteljahrsheftefur Zeitgeschichte [Germany] 199947(1): 25-56.
Newland, Samuel J. "Die Militarische Fuhrung der USA in der Ardenneoffensive: Eine
Bewertung aus Heutiger Sicht." ["The US military command in the Ardennes
offensive."] Osterreichische Militarische Zeitschrift [Austria] 199937(1): 45-52.
Nobe, Lisa N. "The Children's Village at Manzanar: The World War II Eviction and Detention
of Japanese American Orphans." Journal ofthe West 199938(2): 65-71.
Perry, Hamilton Darby. "Patriot Painter at Sea." MHQ: The Quarterly Journal ofMilitary
History 1999 11(2): 106-111.
Petropoulos, Jonathan. "Business as Usual: Switzerland, the Commerce in Artworks During and
After World War n, and National Identity." Contemporary Austrian Studies 19997: 229­
243.
"Photo Mission: Truk." Naval History 1999 13(1): 43-46.
Rensmann, Lars. "Holocaust Memory and Mass Media in Contemporary Germany: Reflection on
the Goldhagen Debate." Patterns ofPrejudice [Great Britain) 1999 33(1): 59-76.
Rice, Rondall. "Bombing Auschwitze: US 15 th Air Force and the Military Aspects of a Possible
Attack." War in History [Great Britain] 19996(2): 205-229.
30
- Spring 2000
Rosenfeld, Gavriel D. "The Politics of Uniqueness: Reflections on The Recent Polemical Turn in
Holocaust and Genocide Scholarship." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1999 13(1): 28­
61.
Rossi, Mario. "Ambassador to De Gaulle." Naval History 1999 13(2): 28-31.
Schacht, Kenneth G. "A Thing of Fear, and Pain, and Strife: Images ofa POW in Japan." Naval
History 1999 13(2): 38-41.
Sloan, Don. "Springtime for Hitler" Revisited." Political Affairs 2000 79(1): 28.
Sofair, A. N. and L.c. Kaldjian. "Eugenic Sterilization and a Qualified Nazi Analogy: The
United States and Germany, 1930-1945." Annals ofInternal Medicine. 2000 132 (4) 312.
Sroka, Marek. "The University of Cracow Library under Nazi Occupation: 1939-1945."
Libraries & Culture 199934(1): 1-16.
Stevenson, Matthew. "Personal Perspectives on Peleliu." MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of
Military History 1999 11(2): 78-83.
Ward, David. "Fifty Years On: Resistance Then, Resistance Now." Journal ofModern Italian
Studies [Great Britain] 19994(1): 59-64.
Warner, Denis and PeggyWarner. "Surprised Off Savo." MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of
Military History, 199911(3): 32-40.
Waxman, Mayer. "Practice with Holocaust Survivors-Traumatic Hand-Me-Downs: The
Holocaust, Where Does It End?" Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary
Human Services 2000 81(1): 59-66.
White, Steven F. "Gentleman Rebel: H. Stuart Hughes, the ass and the Resistance." Journal of
Modern Italian Studies [Great Britain] 19994(1): 64-67.
Spring 2000 - 31
Recently Published Books in English on World War II
Selected Titles from an Electronic Compilation by James Ehrman
Agamben, Giorgio. Remnants of Auschwitz: the Witness and the Archive. (New York, NY: Zone
Books, 2000).
Agarossi, Elena. A Nation Collapses: The Italian Surrender of September 1943. (New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Alvares, David 1. Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy. 1930-1945.
(Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000).
Badsey, Stephen. The Hutchinson Atlas of World War II Battle Plans: Before and After.
(Oxford: Helicon, 2000).
Balas, Egon. Will to Freedom: A Perilous Journey Through Fascism and Communism.
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000).
Bar-On, Dan. The Indescribable and the Undiscussable: Reconstructing Human Discourse After
Trauma. (Boulder, CO: Central European University Press, 1999).
Bartov, Orner. The Holocaust: Origins. Implementation. Aftermath. (London: Routledge, 2000).
Bartov, Orner. Mirrors of Destruction: War. Genocide. and Modem Identity. (New York, NY:
Oxford University Press, 2000).
Bartrop, Paul R. Surviving the Camps: Unity in Adversity During the Holocaust. (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 2000).
Beer, Edith Hahn, and Susan Dworkin. The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman
Survived the Holocaust. (London: Little, Brown, 1999).
Berenbaum, Michael, and Michael 1. Neufeld, editors. The Bombing of Auschwitz. (New York,
NY: St. Martin's, 1999).
Bierman, John, and Colin Smith. Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma. Ethiopia. and Zion. (New
York, NY: Random House, 2000).
Billinger, Robert D., and Raymond Arsenault. Hitler's Soldiers in the Sunshine State: German
Pows in Florida. (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000).
32
- Spring 2000
Bisberg-Youkelson, Feigl, Rubin Youkelson, and Gene Bluestein. The Life and Death ofa Polish
Shtetl. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).
Blandford, Edmund L. Two Sides of the Beach: The Invasion and Defense of Europe in 1944.
(North Branch, MN: Specialty Press, 2000).
Braham, Randolph L. The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary. (Detroit, MI: Wayne
State University Press, 2000).
Brand, Sandra. I Dared to Live. (Rockville, MD: Shengold Books, 2000).
Breuer, William B. Top Secret Tales of World War II. (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2000).
Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Labor. German Killers. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000).
Burgett, Donald R. Seven Roads to Hell: A Screaming Eagle at Basto~e. (Novato, CA: Presidio
Press, 1999).
Carafano, James Jay. After D-Day: Operation Cobra and the Normandy Breakout. (New York,
NY: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000).
Cargas, Harry James. Problems Unique to the Holocaust. (Lexington, KY: University Press of
Kentucky, 2000).
Cederberg, Fred. The Long Road Home: The Autobiography of a Canadian Soldier in Italy in
World WarII. (Toronto: Stoddart, 2000).
Christophe, Francine. From a World Apart. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).
Cogan, Frances B. Captured: The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines,
1941-:1945. (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2000).
Colley, David P. The Road to Victory: The Untold Story of World War II's Red BaH Express.
(New York, NY: Brassey's, 2000).
Courtney, Richard D., and William F. Foley. Normandy to the Bulge: An American Infantry GI
in Europe During World War II. (Urbana, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000).
Cressman, Robert. The Official Chronology of the U.S. Navy in World War II. (Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press, 2000).
Spring 2000 - 33
Davies, Ian. Teaching the Holocaust: Educational Dimensions. Principles and Practice. (New
York: Continuum, 2000).
Dean, Martin. Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police jn Belorussia and
Ukraine. 1941-44. (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2000).
Diggs, J. Frank. Americans Behind the Barbed Wire: World War II Inside a German Prison
Cillnp. (Arlington, VA: Vandamere Press, 2000).
Diner, Dan. Beyond the Conceivable: Studies on Germany. Nazism. and the Holocaust. (Berkley,
CA: University of California Press, 2000).
Dunn, Walter S. Soviet Blitzkiieg: The Battle for White Russia. 1944. (Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner Publishers, 2000).
Frankfurter, Bernhard, and Susan Cernyak-Spatz. The Meeting: An Auschwitz Survivor
Confronts an SS Physicia!1. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000).
Fraser, David. The Jews of the Channel Islands and the Rule of Law. 1940-1945. (Portland, OR:
Sussex Academic Press, 2000).
Fremont, Helen. After Long Silence: A Memoir. (New York, NY: Dell Publishing, 2000).
Gamble, Bruce. The Black Sheep. (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 2000).
Gastfriend, Edward, and Bjorn Krondorfer. My Father's Testament: Memoir of a Jewish
Teenager. 1938-1945. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2000).
Guase, Damon Rocky, and Damon L. Gause. The War Journal of Major Damon 'Rocky' Gause.
(New York, NY: Hyperion, 2000).
Gotfryd, Bernard. Anton the Dove Fancier and Other Tales of the Holocaust. (Baltimore, MD:
JOMS Hopkins University Press, 2000).
Greene, Joshua, Kumar Shiva, and Joanne Rudof. Witness: Voices from the Holocaust. (New
York, NY: Free Press, 2000).
Harper, Stephen. Capturing Enigma: How HMS Petard Seized the German Naval Codes. (New
York, NY: Sutton Publishing, 2000).
Harrison, A. Cleveland. Unsung Valor: A GJ's Story of World War II. (Jackson, MS: University
Press of Mississippi, 2000).
34
- Spring 2000
Herbert, Ulrich, and Gotz Aly. National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary
German Perspectives and Controversies. (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2000).
Hilton, Stanley E. Hitler's Secret War in South America. 1939-1945: German Military Espionage
and Allied Counterespionage in Brazil. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University
Press, 1999).
Hohne, Heinz. Canaris: Hitler's Master Spy. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000).
Ioanid, Radu. The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the
Antonescu Regime. 1940-1944. (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2000).
Johnson, Eric A. The Nazi Terror: Gestapo. Jews and Other Germans. (London: John Murray,
2000).
Kaminski, Theresa. Prisoners in Paradise: American Women in the Wartime South Pacific.
(Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000).
Klajman, Jack, and Ed Klajman. Out of the Ghetto. (Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000).
Klein, Gerda Weissmann, and Kurt Klein. The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in
War's Aftermath. (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2000).
Kohler, Joachim. Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple. (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishers, 2000).
Kounio-Amarilio, Erika. From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back: Memories of a Survivor
From Thessaloniki. (Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000).
Kozhina, Elena. Through the Burning Steppe: A Wartime Memoir. O'l'ew York, NY: Riverhead
Books, 2000).
Kriloff, Herbert. Officer of the Deck: A Memoir of the Pacific War and the Sea. (Pacifica, CA:
Pacifica Press, 2000).
Kryder, Daniel. Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State During World War II. (New
York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Laks, Szyrnon. Music of Another World. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2000).
Lasker-Wallfisch, Anita. Inherit the Truth: A Memoir of Survival and the Holocaust. (New York:
Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2000).
Spring 2000 - 35
Lewendel, Isaac. Not the Germans Alone: A Son's Search for the Truth of Vichy. (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 2000).
Lewy, Guenter. The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press,
2000).
Lindemann, Albert S. Anti-Semitism Before the Holocaust. (Harlow: Longman, 2000).
Littner, Jakob, and Kurt Grubler.Journey Through the Night: Jakob Littner's Holocaust Memoir.
(New York: Continuum, 2000).
London, Louise. Whitehall and the Jews. 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy and the
Holocaust. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Lotchin, Roger W. The Way We Really Were: The Golden State in the Second Great War. .
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000).
MacLeod, Roy M. Science and the Pacific War: Science and Survival in the Pacific. 1939-1945.
(Boston, MA: Kluwer, 2000).
Manuel, Frank Edward. Scenes from the End: The Last Days of World War II in Europe. (South
Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2000).
Mapes, Victor L., and Scott A. Mills. The Butchers. the Baker: The World War II Memoir of a
United States Army Air Corps Soldier Captured by the Japanese in the Philippines.
(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 2000).
Mass, Wendy. Readings on Night. (San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 2000).
Minear, Richard H., and Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons
of Theodor Seuss Geisel. (New York: New Press, 2000)
Morris, Kate. British Techniques of Public Relations and Propaganda for Mobilizing East and
Central Africa During World War II. (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000).
Nafziger, George F. The German Order of Battle: Infantry in World WarII. (Mechanicsburg, PA:
Stackpole Books, 2000).
Newman, Richard, and Karen Kirtley. Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz. (Portland, OR:
Amadeus Press, 2000).
Novick, Peter. The Holocaust in American Life. (New York, ]'N: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
36
- Spring 2000
Parker, Danny S.Battle of the Bulge: Hitler's Ardennes Offensive. 1944-1945. (Conshohocken,
PA: Combined Books, 2000).
Polenberg, Richard. The Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933-1945: A Brief History with
Documents. (Boston, MA: BedfordlSt. Martin's, 2000).
Posner, Louis. Through a Boy's Eyes: The Turbulent Years, 1926-1945. (Santa Ana, CA: Seven
Locks Press, 2000).
Press, Bernhard. The Murder of the Jews in Lativa, 1941-1945. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 2000).
Roman Frister; translated by Hillel Halkin. The Cap: The Price ofa Life. (New York, NY: Grove
Press, 2000).
Rose, Daniel Asa. Hiding Places: A Father and His Sons Retrace Their Family's Escape From
the Holocaust. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
Rosenberg, Alan, James Watson, and DetlefLinke. Contemporary Portrayals of Auschwitz:
Philosophical Challenges. (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000).
Ryback, Timothy W. The Last Survivor: In Search of Martin Zaidenstadt. (London: Picador,
2000).
Samson, Naomi. Hide: A Child's View of the Holocaust. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska
Press, 2000).
Scalia, Joseph Mark. Germany's Last Mission to Japan: The Failed Voyage ofU-234.
(Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute Press, 2000).
Schellenberg, Walter. The Labyrinth: Memoirs of Walter Schellenberg, Hitler's Chief of
Counterintelligence. (New York, NY: De Capo Press, 2000).
Schmidt, David A. Ianfu. The Comfort Women ofthe Imperial AnnY of the Pacific War: Broken
Silence. (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000).
Schwarz, Daniel R. Imagining the Holocaust. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).
Sendyk, Helen. The End of Days: A Memoir of the Holocaust. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press, 2000).
Senho, Kappa, and John Bester, translator. A Boy Called H: A Childhood in Wartime Japan.
(New York, NY: KodanshaInternational, 2000).
I
Spring 2000 - 37
Sharp-Wells, Anne. Historical Dictionary of World War II: The War Against Japan (Historical
Dictionaries of War. Revolution, and Civil. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2000).
Shermer, Michael, and Alex Grobman. Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never
Happened and Why Do They Say It? Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
2000).
Showalter, Dennis. History in Dispute: World War II. (Detroit, MI: St. James Press, 2000).
Soule, Thayer. Shooting the Pacific War: Marine Corps Combat Photography in WWII.
(Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2000).
Stalcup, Brenda. Adolf Hitler. (San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 2000).
Stroup, Russell Cartwright, and Richard Cartwright. Letters from the Pacific: A Combat
Chaplain in World War II. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000).
Szpilman, Wladyslaw. The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw,
1939-45. (Thorndike, ME: Thorndike Press, 2000).
Thurston, Robert W., and Bernd Bonwetsch. The People's War: Responses to World War II in
the Soviet Union. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000).
Towne, Allen N. Doctor Danger Forward: A World War II Memoir ofa Combat Medical
Aidman, First Infantry Division. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2000).
United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on the Constitution.
Wartime Violation ofItalian American Civil Liberties Act: Hearing before the
.Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of
Representatives, One Hundred Sixth Congress, first session, on H.R. 2442, October 26,
l2.22, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 2000).
Virag, Terez. Children of Social Trauma: Hungarian Psychoanalytic Case Studies. (Philadelphia,
PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2000).
Wimmer, Adolf. Strangers at Home and Abroad: Recollections of Austrian Jews Who Escaped
Hitler. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000).
Winkler, Allan M. Home Front U.S.A.: America During World War II. (Wheeling, IL: Harlan
Davidson, 2000).
Wolff, Marion Freyer. The Expanding Circle: An Adoption Odyssey. (Santa Barbara, CA:
Fithian Press, 2000).
38
- Spring 2000
Wouk, Herman. The Will to Live On: This Is Our Herita~e. (New York: Harper Large Print,
2000).
Wright, Derrick. Battle for Two lima, 1945. (Sutton Publishing, 2000).