Author: Norm Haskett

  • World War II at Sea: A Global History

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    Author of Lincoln and His Admirals (winner of the Lincoln Prize), The Battle of Midway (Best Book of the Year, Military History Quarterly), and Operation Neptune, (winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature), Craig L. Symonds has established himself as one of the finest naval historians at work today. World War II at Sea represents his crowning achievement: a complete narrative of the naval war and all of its belligerents, on all of the world’s oceans and seas, between 1939 and 1945.

    Opening with the 1930 London Conference, Symonds shows how any limitations on naval warfare would become irrelevant before the decade was up, as Europe erupted into conflict once more and its navies were brought to bear against each other. World War II at Sea offers a global perspective, focusing on the major engagements and personalities and revealing both their scale and their interconnection: the U-boat attack on Scapa Flow and the Battle of the Atlantic; the “miracle” evacuation from Dunkirk and the pitched battles for control of Norway fjords; Mussolini’s Regia Marina-at the start of the war the fourth-largest navy in the world-and the dominance of the Kidö Butai and Japanese naval power in the Pacific; Pearl Harbor then Midway; the struggles of the Russian Navy and the scuttling of the French Fleet in Toulon in 1942; the landings in North Africa and then Normandy. Here as well are the notable naval leaders-FDR and Churchill, both self-proclaimed “Navy men,” Karl Dönitz, François Darlan, Ernest King, Isoroku Yamamoto, Erich Raeder, Inigo Campioni, Louis Mountbatten, William Halsey, as well as the hundreds of thousands of seamen and officers of all nationalities whose live were imperiled and lost during the greatest naval conflicts in history, from small-scale assaults and amphibious operations to the largest armadas ever assembled.

    Many have argued that World War II was dominated by naval operations; few have shown and how and why this was the case. Symonds combines precision with story-telling verve, expertly illuminating not only the mechanics of large-scale warfare on (and below) the sea but offering wisdom into the nature of the war itself.

  • The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    NATIONAL BESTSELLER

    NPR Best Book of 2017

    “Not all superheroes wear capes, and Elizebeth Smith Friedman should be the subject of a future Wonder Woman movie.” — The New York Times

    Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II.

    In 1916, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the “Adam and Eve” of the NSA, Elizebeth’s story, incredibly, has never been told.

    In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman, who played an integral role in our nation’s history for forty years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizebeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler’s Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Meanwhile, inside an Army vault in Washington, William worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma—and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life.

    Fagone unveils America’s code-breaking history through the prism of Smith’s life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence. Blending the lively pace and compelling detail that are the hallmarks of Erik Larson’s bestsellers with the atmosphere and intensity of The Imitation Game, The Woman Who Smashed Codes is page-turning popular history at its finest.

  • Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An irresistible history of the WWII Jewish refugees who returned to Europe to fight the Nazis.” —Newsday

    They were young Jewish boys who escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe and resettled in America. After the United States entered the war, they returned to fight for their adopted homeland and for the families they had left behind. Their stories tell the tale of one of the U.S. Army’s greatest secret weapons.

    Sons and Soldiers begins during the menacing rise of Hitler’s Nazi party, as Jewish families were trying des-perately to get out of Europe. Bestselling author Bruce Henderson captures the heartbreaking stories of parents choosing to send their young sons away to uncertain futures in America, perhaps never to see them again. As these boys became young men, they were determined to join the fight in Europe. Henderson describes how they were recruited into the U.S. Army and how their unique mastery of the German language and psychology was put to use to interrogate German prisoners of war.

    These young men—known as the Ritchie Boys, after the Maryland camp where they trained—knew what the Nazis would do to them if they were captured. Yet they leapt at the opportunity to be sent in small, elite teams to join every major combat unit in Europe, where they collected key tactical intelligence on enemy strength, troop and armored movements, and defensive positions that saved American lives and helped win the war. A postwar army report found that nearly 60 percent of the credible intelligence gathered in Europe came from the Ritchie Boys.

    Sons and Soldiers draws on original interviews and extensive archival research to vividly re-create the stories of six of these men, tracing their journeys from childhood through their escapes from Europe, their feats and sacri-fices during the war, and finally their desperate attempts to find their missing loved ones. Sons and Soldiers is an epic story of heroism, courage, and patriotism that will not soon be forgotten.

  • ROOSEVELT, CHURCHILL IN SECRET DISCUSSIONS

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Quebec, Canada • August 18, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Quebec, Canada, President Franklin D. Roose­velt, British Prime Minis­ter Winston Chur­chill, and Cana­dian Prime Minis­ter Mac­kenzie King, along with their Com­bined Chiefs of Staff, set to work plan­ning Opera­tion Over­lord, the 1944 inva­sion of German-occupied France. At this first of two Quebec con­ferences,…

  • Winston Churchill’s Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence (Research)

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    The inside story of one of the most famous of all the ‘back rooms’ of the Second World War – and of the men and women who worked for it. Conceived by Winston Churchill to circumvent the delays, frustrations and inefficiencies of the service ministries, Department M.D.1. earned from its detractors the soubriquet ‘Winston Churchill’s Toyshop’, yet from a tiny underground workshop housed in the cellars of the London offices of Radio Normandie in Portland Place, and subsequently from the ‘stockbroker Tudor’ of a millionaire’s country mansion in Buckinghamshire, came an astonishing array of secret weapons ranging from the ‘sticky bomb’ and ‘limpet mine’ to giant bridge-carrying assault tanks, as well as the PIAT, a tank-destroying, hand-held mortar. Written by Colonel Stuart Macrae, who helped found M.D.1. and was its second-in-command throughout its life, the story is told of this relatively unknown establishment and the weapons it developed which helped destroy innumerable enemy tanks, aircraft and ships.

  • The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Hunting Eichmann and The Perfect Mile, an epic adventure and spy story about the greatest act of sabotage in all of World War II.
     
    It’s 1942 and the Nazis are racing to be the first to build a weapon unlike any known before. They have the physicists, they have the uranium, and now all their plans depend on amassing a single ingredient: heavy water, which is produced in Norway’s Vemork, the lone plant in all the world that makes this rare substance. Under threat of death, Vemork’s engineers push production into overdrive.
     
    For the Allies, the plant must be destroyed. But how would they reach the castle fortress set on a precipitous gorge in one of the coldest, most inhospitable places on Earth?
     
    Based on a trove of top secret documents and never-before-seen diaries and letters of the saboteurs, The Winter Fortress is an arresting chronicle of a brilliant scientist, a band of spies on skies, perilous survival in the wild, sacrifice for one’s country, Gestapo manhunts, soul-crushing setbacks, and a last-minute operation that would end any chance Hitler could obtain the atomic bomb—and alter the course of the war.
     

  • With Hitler and Mussolini: Memoirs of a Nazi Interpreter

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute
    An insider’s view of Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, and Mussolini.

    In the years before World War II, Eugen Dollmann arrived in Rome on a scholarship, intending to write a history of the Catholic Church. Instead he joined the Nazi Party and became an interpreter to various members of the German and Italian Fascist hierarchy.

    In this capacity Dollmann attended the Munich Conference of 1938 and was present at most of the important meetings between Hitler and Mussolini, also witnessing many of the endless squabbles between Mussolini’s son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano and Hitler’s foreign secretary, Joachim von Ribbentrop. He interpreted for Heinrich Himmler during his visits to Rome and was, curiously for one of his temperament, appointed Obersturmführer in the Allgemeine SS. He played a considerable role in the surrender of the German Army in Italy, helping to prevent the execution of Hitler’s scorched-earth orders.

    The book is full of piquant anecdotes—Himmler’s excavations for the legendary treasure of King Alaric; the visit of Reinhard Heydrich to the House of the Provinces, a brothel frequented by officers and men of means; Hitler’s dread and annoyance at being piloted into his newly conquered Ukraine by Mussolini—to mention only a few.

    Throughout, Dollmann makes no attempt to conceal or exonerate his association with the Nazis. With Hitler and Mussolini is a fascinating memoir filled with political intrigue, undercover activity, and insights into the biggest personalities connected to the Second World War.

  • Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    A Smithsonian Top History Book of 2016
    A Japan Times Best Book About Japan of 2016

    A fascinating look at the twelve days leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—the warnings, clues and missteps—by a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter.

    In Washington, DC, in late November 1941, admirals compose the most ominous message in Navy history to warn Hawaii of possible danger, but they write it too vaguely. They think precautions are being taken, but never check to see if they are. A key intelligence officer wants more warnings sent, but he is on the losing end of a bureaucratic battle and can’t get the message out. American sleuths have pierced Japan’s most vital diplomatic code, and Washington believes it has a window on the enemy’s soul—but it does not.

    In a small office at Pearl Harbor, overlooking the battleships at the heart of America’s seafaring power, the Commander of the Pacific Fleet tries to figure out how much danger he really faces. His intelligence unit has lost track of Japan’s biggest aircraft carriers, but assumes they are resting in a port far away. The admiral thinks Pearl is too shallow for torpedoes, so he never puts up a barrier. As he frets, a Japanese spy is counting the warships in the harbor and reporting to Tokyo.

    There were false assumptions, and racist ones: The Japanese aren’t very good aviators and they don’t have the nerve or the skill to attempt a strike so far from their home. There were misunderstandings, conflicting desires, painful choices. And there was a naval officer who, on his very first mission as captain of his very first ship, did exactly the right thing. His warning could have averted disaster, but his superiors reacted too leisurely. Japanese planes arrived moments later.

    Twomey’s telescoping of the twelve days leading to the attack unravels the crucial characters and moments, and produces an edge-of-your seat drama with fascinating details about America at this moment in its history. By the end, the reader understands how assumption is the root of disaster, and how sometimes a gamble pays off.

  • Churchill, Roosevelt & Company: Studies in Character and Statecraft

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    During World War II the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain cemented the alliance that won the war in the West. But the ultimate victory of that partnership has obscured many of the conflicts behind Franklin Roosevelt’s charm and Winston Churchill’s victory signs—the clashes of principles and especially personalities between and within the leadership of the two nations.

    Synthesizing an impressive variety of sources from memoirs and letters to histories and biographies, Lewis E. Lehrman explains how the Anglo-American alliance worked—and occasionally did not work—by presenting portraits and case studies of the men who worked the back channels and back rooms, the generals and the admirals, the secretaries and under secretaries, ambassadors and ministers, responsible for carrying out Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s agendas while also pursuing their own. Such was the conduct of Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador to England often at odds with FDR; generals George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower; spymasters William Donovan and William Stephenson; Secretary of State Cordell Hull, whom FDR frequently bypassed in favor of Under Secretary Sumner Welles; the Soviet spy in the leadership cadre of the US Treasury, Harry Dexter White, and his struggle with Lord Keynes; British ambassadors Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax; and, above them all, Roosevelt and Churchill. The President and the Prime Minister had the difficult task, not always well-performed, of managing their subordinates. Churchill and Roosevelt frequently chose to conduct foreign policy directly between themselves, and with Stalin.

    Scrupulous in its research and fair in its judgments, Lehrman’s book reveals the personal diplomacy, the character and statecraft, at the core of the leadership of the Anglo-American alliance.

  • Hitler’s Interpreter

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    As the main interpreter for Adolf Hitler during the key prewar moments, such as the Munich Agreement, the British Declaration of War and the surrender of France, Paul-Otto Schmidt was well placed to record his impressions of events from 1935 up to 1945.

    He was an interpreter working in the German foreign ministry where he served from 1923 to 1945, and being fluent in English and French he gained respect and was Hitler’s usual first choice for the important meetings. During the war years he served as Hitler’s interpreter during his meetings with Marshal Philippe Pétain and Francisco Franco.

    After the 1942 Dieppe Raid resulted in thousands of Canadian soldiers captured, Schmidt was in charge of their interrogations. Schmidt’s book is helpful in gaining an insight into the minutiae of Third Reich thinking and planning―as much as planning went beyond Hitler’s will. One classic nugget is from the early morning of 3 September 1939 when Britain issued its ultimatum to Germany, for it was Schmidt who had to hand the translation to Hitler: ‘After an interval which seemed an age, he turned to Ribbentrop, who had remained standing by the window. “What now?” asked Hitler with a savage look, as though implying that his Foreign Minister had misled him about England’s probable reaction.’