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For the World War II readers
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Topic Started: Nov 16 2011, 12:29 AM (251 Views)
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ngc1514
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Nov 16 2011, 12:29 AM
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A couple new and noteworthy books on the war have just been published. Ian Kershaw, best known for his 2 volume biography of Hitler, just brought out The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945. It is an attempt to explain the cohesion of Germany as their world was collapsing around them. From the review in The Guardian:
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The End starts with a grim tale from the final seconds of the war. With allied troops at the gates, Robert Limpert, a young theology student from Ansbach, tries to hinder Wehrmacht efforts to defend the town by cutting the phone wires from the commandant's base. He is immediately sentenced to death by a kangaroo court. The crowd that watches makes no effort to help him even when he manages momentarily to run off. Five hours later, his body is removed by American soldiers.
The end of the Third Reich presents an enduring historical enigma. How can we explain the extraordinary cohesion of German society right up to the bitter end – the lack of rebellion or mutiny, the relatively low levels of desertion from the ranks of the army, and the tenacious hold of the National Socialist state over the lives of ordinary people until, very suddenly, it was all over? The most obvious explanation – that people really did believe in Him (a phrase from the reich brilliantly analysed at the time by Victor Klemperer) – raises a second puzzle: why, if German society remained basically Nazified, was there so little resistance to foreign occupation after "liberation"? These two riddles continue to preoccupy historians, and now Ian Kershaw, the doyen of English scholars of the Third Reich, seeks the answers.
Max Hastings' new work, Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 - a single volume history of World War II - has also garnered good press. Again, from The Guardian- Quote:
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For the generation that endured it, the second world war always looked likely to be the most significant event of their lives. Even those who experienced its privations and drama remotely, far from the theatre of conflict, found the peculiar flavour of those years irresistible when it came to memorial and contemplation. Those who experienced the white heat of the conflict may have found themselves unable to speak about it afterwards. My grandfather, who landed in Sicily and must have seen the liberation of Italy at close quarters, apparently never mentioned anything about it to his family once it was all over. Those who could write or speak about it were in no doubt that what they had seen and come through was not just the most important event of their lives, but probably the most important event in human history.
It's the significance of the individual witness that powers Max Hastings's new history of the second world war. He has written several books on the conflict, and his sometimes revisionist judgments on its conduct are well known. What is new and interesting here is the reliance on people who simply set out their own observations. The historical approach that fleshes out the larger narrative with worm's-eye viewpoints has grown in popularity recently. David Kynaston's excellent series about postwar Britain humanises a large social shift with individual voices of, sometimes, surreal inconsequence. The scale of suffering in the war is so colossal that deaths become, numbingly, mere statistics. About one German in 12 died, and one in four soldiers from the Japanese and Russian armies. If you want to know what death on that scale feels like, consider that around one American in 100,000 died on 9/11. Hastings's plan is to revitalise the sense of suffering and bravery by exploiting first-person accounts from every theatre of the vast war. The book was published in the UK as All Hell Let Loose.
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Pat
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Nov 16 2011, 02:34 AM
Post #2
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I'm more drawn to American historical novels than WWII. The History channel has a series going on about it.
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ngc1514
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Nov 16 2011, 03:10 AM
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I like historical novels, but usually placed earlier in time. Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death books are pretty good and set around the time of Henry I in the 11th/early 12th century. Going back either further, P. C. Doherty places his novels in ancient Egypt.
Too many books and not enough time!
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Pat
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Nov 16 2011, 04:28 AM
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I l liked General/President Grants self penned memoirs. Grant was not a good businessman, or president, but a hell of a commanding general. Grant had lost it all in a failed business and I believe it was Mark Twain came to his aid, and arranged for him to write this, his only book, as a means of setting him and his wife up in retirement.
Grant was living in a house for free, provided for by another friend. As he sat down to write the book he also came down with throat cancer due probably because of his life long habit of smoking cigars. Word got out that Grant was ill, and a steady stream of admirers and friends made a pilgrimage to his home. It's surprising how many famous confederate generals were among his closest friends there at the end. Longstreet among them. But of course they had all known each other for years and many served with him during the Mexican war. Grant penned the last chapter of his book just days before his death. If you have not read this classic, I recommend it to all. His life and family life embody the American spirit and culture.
Edited by Pat, Nov 16 2011, 04:30 AM.
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ngc1514
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Nov 16 2011, 04:44 AM
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I'll check it out, Pat. Autobiography/biography isn't one of my strong suits and I need to read the Isaacson bio of Einstein for my book club this month. Unfortunately, we selected the book just before Jobs died and Isaacson's bio of him was published.
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Pat
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Nov 16 2011, 05:08 AM
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I was thinking of reading Jobs biography too. Einstein would be interesting. As I understand it, his wife/former wife was quite the theoretical scientist and physicist herself. In fact, I don't know if it's true or not, but many of Einsteins greatest works might have been his wifes.
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ngc1514
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Nov 16 2011, 05:59 AM
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Probably not his wife according to the Wiki on Mileva Maric:
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The question whether (and if so, to what extent) Marić contributed to Einstein's early work, and to the Annus Mirabilis Papers in particular, has been the subject of some debate. However, the overwhelming consensus among professional historians of physics is that she did not. A few academics, outside the consensus among historians, have argued that she may have played some role.
The case which has been presented for Marić as a co-author of some of Einstein's early work, putatively culminating in the 1905 papers, mostly depends on the following evidence:
The testimony of the well known Russian physicist Abram Joffe, who gave the name of the author of the three Annus Mirabilis Papers as Einstein-Marity, erroneously attributing the addition of the name Marity, Marić's official name, to a non-existing Swiss custom.[30] However, in the paragraph in question, in which Joffe stated that Einstein's entrance into the arena of science in 1905 was "unforgettable", he described the author (singular) of the 1905 papers as "a bureaucrat at the Patent Office in Bern", i.e., Albert Einstein.
An alleged comment from Mileva to a Serbian friend, which, referring to 1905, said "we finished some important work that will make my husband world famous",[32] although this has been described as " unreliable third-hand gossip."
Letters in which Einstein referred to "our" theory and "our" work. John Stachel points out, that these letters were written in their student days, at least four years before the 1905 papers, and some of the instances in which Einstein used "our" in relation to scientific work refer to their diploma dissertations, for which they both chose the same topic (experimental studies of heat conduction), and that Einstein used "our" in rather general statements, while he invariably used "I" and "my" when he recounted specific ideas he was working on: "the letters to Marić show Einstein referring to his studies, his work on the electrodynamics of moving bodies over a dozen times... as compared to one reference to our work on the problem of relative motion." In two cases where there are surviving letters from Marić in direct reply to ones from Einstein in which he had recounted his latest ideas, she gives no response at all. Her letters, in contrast to Einstein's, contain only personal matters, or comments related to her Polytechnic coursework. Stachel writes: "In her case we have no published papers, no letters with a serious scientific content, either to Einstein nor to anyone else; nor any objective evidence of her supposed creative talents. We do not even have hearsay accounts of conversations she had with anyone else that have a specific, scientific content, let alone claiming to report her ideas."
The divorce agreement in which Einstein promised her his Nobel Prize money. However, Einstein made this proposal to persuade a reluctant Marić to agree to divorce him, and under the terms of the agreement the money was to be held in trust for their two boys, while she was able to draw on the interest. Based on newly released letters (sealed by Einstein's stepgranddaughter Margot Einstein until 20 years after her death), Walter Isaacson reported that Marić eventually invested the Nobel Prize money in three apartment buildings in Zurich.
There are no strong arguments to support the idea that Marić helped Einstein to develop his theories. Other Nobel winners, besides Einstein, have shared their prize money with their ex-wives as a part of their divorce settlements. The couple's own son, Hans Albert, stated that on marrying Einstein, his mother gave up her scientific ambitions. Einstein remained an extremely fruitful scientist well into the 1920s, producing work of the greatest importance long after separating from Marić in 1914. She, on the other hand, never published anything, and Marić was never mentioned as having been involved with his work by the friends and colleagues of Einstein, who engaged in countless discussions of his ideas with him. And perhaps most notably, Marić herself never claimed that she had ever played any role in Einstein's scientific work, nor even hinted at any such role in personal letters to her closest friend Helene Savić.
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