Synopses & Reviews
An edited volume of primary sources from the Second World War,
The World in Flames: A World War II Sourcebook is the first of its kind to provide an ambitious and wide-ranging survey of the war in a convenient and comprehensive package. Conveying the sheer scale and reach of the conflict, the book's twelve chapters include sufficient narrative and analysis to enable students to grasp both the war's broad outlines and the context and significance of each particular source.
Beginning with the growing disenchantment over the World War I peace settlements and the determination of German, Italian, and Japanese leaders to revise the situation, the book traces the descent into open, armed conflict. It covers the spectacular early successes of the Germans and Japanese, the pivotal campaigns of 1942, and the Allied effort during the remaining three years to destroy the Axis' capacity to wage war. Drawing examples from a wide range of documents, the text also includes visual sources: propaganda posters, photos, and cartoons.
Review
The World in Flames will serve as a very useful guide for students to identify and locate useful primary documents (in English translation, and in published form), and would also serve as a springboard of ideas and issues that could be researched for an undergraduate project. Those of us who teach European (or other non-US fields) history are quite familiar with the inevitable challenges facing American undergraduates who wish to conduct primary research in non-US (or English-speaking) areas.
-Mark Gingerich, Ohio Wesleyan
"This is an imaginative, comprehensive, and urgently needed collection of primary sources relating to all aspects of the Second World War, ably selected by the authors of an equally valuable collection of World War I sources."--Paul Jankowski, Brandeis University
I enjoyed reading The World In Flames, and even learned some things myself. It is well written, and gives an uncommonly broad picture of the sweeping conflict. Students will certainly know after reading this book that there was more to the Second World War than they ever realized.
-John D. Long, Roanoke College
"This is a very well-crafted and comprehensive collection, a worthy successor to the Coetzee's volume on World War I. There is a good distribution of different kinds of documents, and the excerpts are well-chosen and succinct."--Leonard V. Smith, Oberlin College
"Overall, I am really favorably impressed by the depth of the coverage, the breadth of the scope, and the easy-to-use format. The best aspect of the work is its global coverage. . . . These sources can help students understand the war not simply as the European Theater and the Pacific Theater, but as an integrated global conflict the history of which continues to resound today."--Adam Seipp, Texas A&M University
About the Author
Both Frans Coetzee and Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee have taught at Yale and George Washington Universities and earned fellowships from the ACLS, Alexander von Humboldt, Fulbright and Mellon Foundations, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,and the NEH. They are the authors or editors of five books and numerous articles and maintain a website on world history, www.history4everyone.com.
Table of Contents
1. Seeds of TurmoilMussolini and the Masses
Abyssinia's Plight
Spain's Anguish
Japan's Outlook
Statement at Lushan
Rape of Nanking
Hossbach Memorandum
Appeasement
France Goes to War
2. "Only Movement Brings Victory": Blitzkrieg
Soviet-Finnish War
Rethinking Armored Warfare
Rotterdam in Flames
France's Collapse
Strange Defeat
A Certain Eventuality
De Gaulle's Appeal to France
French Collaboration
Occupied Poland
Air Raid on Southampton
London is Burning
3. The Widening War
A War for Freedom?
Warning Signs from Japan
Japan's Decision for War
Avenging Western Imperialism
Yamamoto's Strategy
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Plan Dog
Forging Allied Strategy
Allied Grand Strategy
Desert War
Survival in North Africa
Germany Strikes East
"The Criminal Orders"
Saving Moscow
Combat on the Russian Front
Hitler's Obstinance
4. Mobilizing For War
Arsenal of Democracy
Mexican-American Discrimination
Factories on Rails
Producing for Victory
Ford's Willow Run
Germany's Delayed Mobilization
German Forced Labor
Chicanas in the Factory
Navajo Code Talkers
An Anthropologist Gathers Intelligence
Photo Intelligence
The Role of Science
5. The Tide Turns: June-December 1942
The Mood in America
Rommel Reflects on the Desert War
Breakthrough at El Alamein
Eisenhower Reflects on Operation Torch
Stalingrad: The Rat's War
Admiral Ugaki Reflects on Midway
The Strain of Jungle Warfare
Winning the Solomons
Why Japan Lost Guadalcanal
6. The European Theater
Bombing Ploesti
Flying a B-17
Area Bombing
Massacre by Bombing
U-Boat Peril
Germany's U-Boat Strategy
The Fall of Mussolini
The Polish Resistance
Greece at War
Yugoslavia's Partisans
Siege of Leningrad
Panzer Warfare in the East
Soviet Tactical Doctrine
Battle of Kursk
Eisenhower and Overlord
D-Day
Ernie Pyle's War
7. The Asian Theater
Bataan Death March
"Vinegar Joe" and China
The British Army in Burma
Japanese Operations in Burma
Marxism and Burmese Resistance
The Indian Situation
Marines on Peleliu
Kamikaze Attack
The Decision to Use the Bomb
Preparing to Invade Japan
Hiroshima
8. The War At Home in America
The Rabbis March on Washington
To Undo a Mistake
The Internment of German-Americans
Why Should We March?
New World a-Coming
The Zoot Suiters
Discrimination against Mexican-Americans
The Stocking Panic
Prayer at Iwo Jima
Readjusting to Family Life
9. The Culture and Psychology of War
The Nazi New Order
The Four Freedoms
The Atlantic Charter
The GI's Perspective
Japan and Greater East Asia
The Anthropology of Japanese Conduct
Soldiers Under Stress
Civilians Under Stress
Religion in the Skies
Revival of Russian Orthodoxy
Christian Morality in Wartime
'Muscular Christianity'
Gandhi and Non-Violence
The New Imperatives of Education
Radio on the Home front
Film and Propaganda
War Bonds and Mass Persuasion
The Welfare State
10. The Inhumanity of Man: The Holocaust
Defining Genocide
Euthanasia
Atrocities in Kamenets-Podolsky
The Youngest Victims
Wannsee Conference
A Polish Witness to Massacre
Lidice
The Warsaw Ghetto
Himmler and the Final Solution
The Holocaust in Greece
Von Moltke's Thoughts on Resistance
Treblinka
11. Out of the "Dark and Deadly Valley"
Nazis to the Bitter End?
Liberating the Death Camps
A Mother Ponders the War's End
The German Problem
America's Plans for Postwar Germany
The Nuremberg Trials
Displaced Jews in Occupied Germany
Japanese Biological Warfare
The Tokyo War Trials
American Policy for Postwar Japan
Japan Adjusts to Occupation
Revolution and Liberation in Indo-China
Ho Chi Minh Appeals to Truman
Africa Speaks
"The Long Telegram" and Containment
The Iron Curtain
The American Century
12. Commemorating WWII: Confronting the Past, Writing the Future
Remembering D-Day and the Boys of Pointe du Hoc
Germany Commemorates the Fortieth Anniversary of Defeat
The Soviet Union and the Uses of Victory
The Holocaust Museum
Japan and the War's Contested Memory
Japan's Comfort Women
Hiroshima, Culture Wars, and the Enola Gay
World War II Timeline
World War II Bibliography
Index