Author: Norm Haskett

  • Deposition 1940-1944: A Secret Diary of Life in Vichy France

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    Historians agree: the diary of Léon Werth (1878-1955) is one of the most precious–and readable–pieces of testimony ever written about life in France under Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime. Werth was a free-spirited and unclassifiable writer. He is the author of eleven novels, art and dance criticism, acerbic political reporting, and memorable personal essays. He was Jewish, and left Paris in June 1940 to hide out in his wife’s country house in Saint-Amour, a small village in the Jura Mountains. His short memoir 33 Days recounts his struggle to get there. Deposition tells of daily life in the village, on nearby farms and towns, and finally back in Paris, where he draws the portrait of a Resistance network in his apartment and writes an eyewitness report of the insurrection that freed the city in August, 1944.

    From Saint-Amour, we see both the Resistance in the countryside, derailing troop trains, punishing notorious collaborators–and growing repression: arrests, torture, deportation, and executions. Above all, we see how Vichy and the Occupation affect the lives of farmers and villagers and how their often contradictory attitudes evolve from 1940-1944. Werth’s ear for dialogue and novelist’s gift for creating characters animate the diary: in the markets and in town, we meet real French peasants and shopkeepers, railroad men and the patronne of the café at the station, schoolteachers and gendarmes. They come off the page alive, and the countryside and villages come alive with them.

    With biting irony, Werth records, almost daily, what Vichy-German propaganda was saying on the radio and in the press. We follow the progress of the war as people did then, day by day. These entries make interesting, often amusing reading, a stark contrast with his gripping entries on the persecution and deportation of the Jews. Deposition is a varied and complex piece of living history, and a pleasure to read.

  • Case Red: The Collapse of France

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    Although the story of the German Fall Gelb offensive against France, Belgium, and Holland in May 1940 is well known, most accounts tend to stop with the conclusion of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from Dunkirk on June 4, 1940. The German operation that actually conquered metropolitan France, Fall Rot (Case Red), is usually glossed over in brief. Nor are many people aware today that there was a second BEF in France, which was also successfully evacuated by sea. The current literature on the Western campaign of 1940 essentially spotlights the German drive to the English Channel and the Dunkirk evacuation then skips ahead to the French armistice, skipping over the military, political, and human drama of France’s collapse in June 1940.

    Indeed, some of the most interesting military operations of the 1940 campaign were conducted in June 1940, as the Allies mounted a vigorous counterattack at Abbeville (including the British 1st Armoured Division–the first time that the British Army employed an armored division in combat) and then mounted a tough defense along the Somme River. Unlike the easy breakthrough at Sedan, the Germans had to fight hard to break through the Weygand Line. Churchill decided to send a second BEF to France to support the French, but the Germans finally achieved a decisive breakthrough before it could be effectively deployed. The British were forced to mount a second evacuation from the ports of Le Havre, Cherbourg, Brest, and St. Nazaire, which rescued over 200,000 troops, although the transport RMS Lancastria was sunk by German bombers, with the loss of over 4,000 troops. While France was in its death throes, politicians and soldiers debated what to do–flee to England or North Africa or to seek an armistice.

    The drama of the final three weeks of military operations in France in June 1940 has never effectively been captured on paper, but this is a story that needs to be told since it had great impact on the course of World War II and inter-Allied relations. This book will also address the initial German exploitation of France and how the windfall of captured military equipment, fuel and industrial resources enhanced the Third Reich’s ability to attack its next foe–the Soviet Union.

  • Burning Japan: Air Force Bombing Strategy Change in the Pacific

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    Between the grinding battles of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa and the finality of the atomic bomb strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. Air Force conducted a bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands that escalated to new levels of destruction.

     

    Burning Japan is an investigation of how and why the air force shifted its tactics against Japan from a precision bombing strategy to area attacks. The guiding doctrine of the 1930s and 1940s called for focused attacks on specific targets deep behind enemy lines. Eager to prove itself, the nascent Army Air Force at first lauded the indispensability of strategic bombardment in areas otherwise unreachable by the army or navy. But when strategic bombing failed to yield the desired results in Europe and in initial efforts against Japan, the United States switched tactics, a shift that culminated in the area firebombing of nearly every major Japanese metropolis and the burning of sixty-six cities to the ground.

     

    Daniel T. Schwabe closely examines the planning and implementation of these incendiary missions to determine how an organization dedicated to precision decided on such a dramatic change in tactics. Ultimately, Schwabe maintains, this strategic reimagining helped create a comprehensive offensive strategy that did immense amounts of destruction which crippled Japan and brought an end to World War II.

     

  • Prisoner of the Samurai: Surviving the Sinking of the USS Houston and the Death Railway

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    During World War II, Lt. Rosalie Hamric was an R.N., serving as Charge Nurse in the Psychiatric Ward of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Hospital. At the end of the war, a group of liberated prisoners of war from Southeast Asia, survivors of the sinking of the USS Houston in 1942, was sent to the ward for treatment. Many were encouraged to write down their experiences as part of their therapy. One, James Gee, PFC, USMC did a particularly detailed job. His account covers the sinking of the Houston, his rescue by a Japanese ship, and his experiences in Japanese camps over the next three years.

    Initially a prisoner in Java forced to load and unload enemy ships, then in Batavia, he was then transferred to Burma where he worked on the “death railway,” living on the banks of the River Kwai. Those who survived the hard labor and harsh conditions there would be sent onto Thailand, then Singapore before arriving in Japan in 1945, spending the last few months of the war working in coal mines just 40 miles outside Nagasaki. Rosalie worked his accounts into a manuscript, which following her sudden death, languished in an attic for over thirty years. Now rediscovered, James’s story can be told to a new generation.

  • Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    “Anne Sebba has the nearly miraculous gift of combining the vivid intimacy of the lives of women during The Occupation with the history of the time. This is a remarkable book.” ―Edmund de Waal, New York Times bestselling author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes

    New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba explores a devastating period in Paris’s history and tells the stories of how women survived―or didn’t―during the Nazi occupation.

    Paris in the 1940s was a place of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation, and secrets. During the occupation, the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower and danger lurked on every corner. While Parisian men were either fighting at the front or captured and forced to work in German factories, the women of Paris were left behind where they would come face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis, as waitresses, shop assistants, or wives and mothers, increasingly desperate to find food to feed their families as hunger became part of everyday life.

    When the Nazis and the puppet Vichy regime began rounding up Jews to ship east to concentration camps, the full horror of the war was brought home and the choice between collaboration and resistance became unavoidable. Sebba focuses on the role of women, many of whom faced life and death decisions every day. After the war ended, there would be a fierce settling of accounts between those who made peace with or, worse, helped the occupiers and those who fought the Nazis in any way they could.

  • Beneath a Scarlet Sky: A Novel

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    Soon to be a major motion picture from Pascal Pictures, starring Tom Holland.

    Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, the #1 Amazon Charts bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man’s incredible courage and resilience during one of history’s darkest hours.

    Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.

    In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.

    Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.

    Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.

  • A Train Near Magdeburg: A Teacher’s Journey into the Holocaust, and the reuniting of the survivors and liberators, 70…

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    What do you do if you are a reluctant soldier, having been shot at, seen your friends killed, and can no longer even remember what your own mother looks like? As a combat soldier fighting your way across Europe, what is the plan when you come across a Holocaust train full of suffering humanity that shocks you to your core, even after you think you have seen it all? And what happens when you get to meet the survivors face to face, two generations later?

    ~ ‘After I got home I cried a lot. My parents couldn’t understand why I couldn’t sleep at times.’-Walter ‘Babe’ Gantz, US Army medic  

    ~From the author of ‘The Things Our Fathers Saw’ World War II eyewitness history series~ 
    In this book, the true story behind an iconic photograph taken at the liberation of a DEATH TRAIN deep in the heart of Nazi Germany―brought to life by the history teacher who discovered it,  and went on to reunite HUNDREDS of Holocaust survivors with the actual American soldiers who saved them! 


    ~ ‘I grew up and spent all my years being angry. This means I don’t have to be angry anymore.’-Paul Arato, Holocaust Survivor

    ~THE HOLOCAUST was a watershed event in history. Drawing on never-before published eye-witness accounts, survivor testimony and memoirs, wartime reports and letters, Matthew Rozell takes us on his journey to uncover the stories behind the incredible 1945 liberation photographs taken by the soldiers who were there. He weaves togethera chronology of the Holocaust as it unfolds across Europe and goes to the authentic sites of the Holocaust to retrace the steps of the survivors and the American soldiers who freed them. His mission culminates in joyful reunions on three continents, seven decades later. Rozell offers his unique perspective on the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations, and the impact that one person, a teacher, can make.
    ~ ‘I survived because of many miracles. But for me to actually meet, shake hands, hug, and cry together with my liberators―the ‘angels of life’ who literally gave me back my life―was just beyond imagination.’-Leslie Meisels, Holocaust Survivor 
    -Featuring testimony from 15 American liberators and over 30 Holocaust survivors
    -73 photographs and illustrations, many never before published
    -10 custom maps
    -502 pages-extensive notes and bibliographical references

    ~ ‘People say it cannot happen here in this country; yes, it can happen here. I was 21 years old. I was there to see it happen!’-Luca Furnari, US Army 

    Included:
    BOOK ONE-THE HOLOCAUST
    BOOK TWO-THE AMERICANS
    BOOK THREE-LIBERATION
    BOOK FOUR-REUNION

    ~ ‘It’s not for my sake, it’s for the sake of humanity, that [you] will remember.’-Steve Barry, Holocaust Survivor
     
     
     
     
     
     

  • Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography

    A New York Times bestseller, this major new biography of Hitler puts an emphasis on the man himself: his personality, his temperament, and his beliefs.

    Volker Ullrich’s Hitler, the first in a two-volume biography, has changed the way scholars and laypeople alike understand the man who has become the personification of evil. Drawing on previously unseen papers and new scholarly research, Ullrich charts Hitler’s life from his childhood through his experiences in the First World War and his subsequent rise as a far-right leader. Focusing on the personality behind the policies, Ullrich creates a vivid portrait of a man and his megalomania, political skill, and horrifying worldview. Hitler is a landmark biography with unsettling resonance in these times.