Born into one of 19th century Europe's more powerful families, Archduchess Marie Valerie was the favorite daughter of Austria's Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth.
When the Americans invaded the Japanese-controlled islands of Saipan and Tinian in 1944, civilians and combatants committed mass suicide to avoid being captured.
The mother of 11 year old Ilse Glaus turned down the last plane out of East Prussia ahead of the advancing Russians in order to stay back with her aged parents.
During World War II, an eccentric band of barnstormers, stunt flyers and commercial pilots joined military recruits to form the Pan American Air Ferries.
The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 abruptly ended author Jan Rosinski's student life, and propelled him into an activist role in the Polish resistance organization Armia Krajowa.
This detailed chronological analysis of British World War II movies from 1939 until the present explores how films projected recognizable stereotypes of British national character and how the times in which a film was made shaped its perspectives.
A former Harvard professor of decision science and game theory draws on those disciplines in this review of controversial strategic and tactical decisions of World War II.
As the United States began its campaign against numerous Japanese-held islands in the Pacific, Japanese tactics required them to develop new weapons and strategies.
Air warfare was a decisive component of World War II, especially in western Europe and over Japan, where Allied bombers damaged 66 of the country's largest cities.
Among the many German immigrants to the United States over the years, one group is unusual: former prisoners of war who had spent between one and three years on American soil and who returned voluntarily as immigrants after the war.
Profiling World War II veterans who became famous Hollywood personalities, this book presents biographical chapters on celebrities like Audie Murphy, "e;America's number one soldier"e;; Clark Gable, the "e;King of Hollywood"e;; Jimmy Stewart, combat pilot; Gene Autry, the "e;singing cowboy,"e; who flew the infamous Hump; the amorous Mickey Rooney; Jackie Coogan, "e;the Kid"e; who crashed gliders in the jungle; James Arness, who acquired his Gunsmoke limp in the mountains of Italy; Tony Bennett, who discovered his voice during the Battle of the Bulge; and Lee Marvin, a Marine NCO who invaded 29 islands.
World War II began for the United States with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, followed by the invasion of the Philippine Islands the next day.
The story of Hitler's Wehrmachtsgefolge (armed forces auxiliaries) is less well known than that of Germany's other armed forces in World War II, such as the panzer divisions, the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine.
In the five months after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy won a string of victories in a campaign to consolidate control of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
Creating a guerrilla movement to fight the Japanese occupation of the Philippines (1942-1945) presented Colonel Wendell Fertig with some formidable challenges.
In the many historical accounts of D-Day, the Navy, Coast Guard and merchant marine, who transported troops to the invasion beaches and supported the attack, are often given scant attention.
