World War 2

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• SOURCE: Woodrow Wilson Center and National History Center
  10/15/2021
  

  Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America’s World War II Military (Washington History Seminar, Mon. Oct. 18)

  Thomas Guglielmo joins the Washington History Seminar to discuss his new history of resistance to racism within the military during the second world war. Monday, October 18, 4:00 PM eastern. 

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• 10/17/2021
  

  “Some of Our Superpatriots are Simply Going Crazy”: America's Response to the Fall of France

  by Michael S. Neiberg

  The fall of France in 1940 disrupted Americans' understandings of their stable and secure place in the world. One response was intense nativism and paranoia about spies and subversives that resonate with today's pandemic response.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/6/2021
  

  Germany to Dedicate Additional $767M for Holocaust Survivors

  Russian Jews who were subjected to the brutal siege of Leningrad, and subjected to Nazi propaganda that encouraged other Russians to blame them for the city's suffering, are among those offered new pensions. 

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• 10/10/2021
  

  Tracing World War 2's Impact on Sicily's Cultural Heritage Sites and Museums

  by Antonino Crisà

  World War II profoundly affected museums and antiquities in Sicily; a new research project is examining this underappreciated destructive consequence of war.

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• 9/26/2021
  

  The Japanese Surrender in 1945 is Still Poorly Understood

  by Jeremy Kuzmarov and Roger Peace

  American diplomats and military leadership in 1945 believed Japan was close to a negotiated surrender without the use of the atomic bomb, a history that has since been replaced by the myth that the bomb saved lives. 

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• SOURCE: Democracy
  8/31/2021
  

  Wartime Wisdom to Combat Inflation

  by David Stein

  Today, monetary policy controlled by the Federal Reserve is the only tool commonly used to control inflation, pitting controlling prices against full employment and wage growth. The history of the World War II Office of Price Administration reveals other possibilities. 

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• SOURCE: Times of Israel
  8/27/2021
  

  Researchers Work on Mystery Uranium Cubes to Better Understand Nazi Progress on Atomic Bomb

  New forensic research techniques could fill in missing details of the progress of Nazi nuclear weapons programs and improve contemporary efforts to enforce nuclear nonproliferation. 

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• SOURCE: Substack
  8/26/2021
  

  75 Years Ago: Did Truman Read John Hersey's "Hiroshima"?

  by Greg Mitchell

  "My research yielded amazing letters between "New Yorker" editor and the White House following publication of one of the most heralded and important articles of the century."

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  8/21/2021
  

  Professor’s ‘Comfort-Women’ Lecture Gets Him Indicted—And Sparks Debate on Academic Freedom

  "In an interview, Mr. Lew said he had given that same lecture for more than a decade. Students always pushed back and they debated. But the discourse had never before become public."

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• SOURCE: Sydney Morning Herald
  7/9/2021
  

  Review: The Bomber Mafia

  by Paul Ham

  If Curtis LeMay's firebombing broke the will of the Japanese public, nobody remembered to tell the Japanese. Malcolm Gladwell's praise of LeMay suffers from overlooking the Japanese side of the bombing campaign.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/9/2021
  

  A Black Reporter Exposed Official Lies about the Atomic Bomb

  Charles Loeb's reporting defied the official government line that radiation from the atomic bombs dropped on Japan was harmless, and resonated with Black readers who suspected a racist motive in dropping the new weapons on Japanese cities. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/9/2021
  

  A Star Times Reporter was Paid by Government Agencies He Covered

  Historian Alex Wellerstein's book is one of two that exposes the self-dealing of reporter William Laurence and his complicity with propaganda about the effects of nuclear weapons. 

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• 8/8/2021
  

  What Can We Learn from Historians vs. Malcolm Gladwell?

  by Gregory A. Daddis

  As the discipline's claims to authority are under attack, it would be a mistake for historians to sacrifice rigorous pursuit of truth to be "interesting."

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  7/21/2021
  

  Why Japan Forfeited Hosting the 1940 Games

  by Paul Droubie

  Japan's forfeiture of the games amid rising international and internal tensions shows that the Olympics have always been a vehicle for the promotion of national elites' agendas, often at the expense of popular domestic concerns. 

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• 7/11/2021
  

  Reflecting on the 80th Anniversary of the Nazi Invasion of Russia

  by Rick Halperin

  The Nazi invasion of Russia unleashed unprecedented brutality against civilians along the eastern front; those horrors should reinforce a commitment to human rights.

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• SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  7/8/2021
  

  Obituary: Henry Parham, Last of A Black Unit that Fought at D-Day, Dies at 99

  “'We landed in water up to our necks,' Mr. Parham said, recalling a shorter man in his unit who had to be carried onto the beach because the water was over his head and he couldn’t swim."

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• SOURCE: NPR
  7/5/2021
  

  A Story Of War, Theft And A Beautiful Woman, Back In The U.S. After 70+ Years

  Botticelli's portrait of Simonetta Vespucci had a wild ride through World War II, including being stored in a Nazi salt mine. 

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• 6/27/2021
  

  Ambitious for War: How German-Soviet Collaboration Set the Course for WWII

  by Ian Ona Johnson

  After the Treaty of Versailles and the Bolshevik Revolution, Germany and the Soviet Union forged a partnership of pariah governments to industrialize and arm their nations, and making inevitable the slaughter that unfolded in the eastern front of the second world war.

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• SOURCE: BBC
  6/14/2021
  

  Hideki Tojo's Ashes Scattered By US, Documents Reveal

  "Japanese lecturer Hiroaki Takazawa at Tokyo's Nijon University found the declassified documents at the US National Archives in Washington DC."

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/6/2021
  

  How a WWII Japanese Sub Commander Helped Exonerate a U.S. Navy Captain

  Captain Charles McVay took the fall for the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the last days of the second world war, finally taking his own life. An appeal by the Mochitsura Hashimoto, commander of the sub to US Senator John Warner cleared the way for a legislative exoneration.