World War II

2009

A Witness to Total War

Daniel Eagan : History

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the only neutral filmmaker in the country was Julien Bryan. His round-the-clock footage of Warsaw's destruction, assembled in Siege, is now again on view.

Burns's War: What Is It Good For?

Eric Alterman : Media Analysis

An increasingly bookless universe has become the wasteland so many have feared. In a perfect world, we'd have more Ken Burnses expressing a multiplicity of views.
Had She Lived

Byron Dobell : France

A painter explores love and loss in the iconic settings of postwar Paris.
The Terror America Wrought

Robert Scheer : Iraq War

Take a moment to remember the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, connecting the dots between that attack and US actions in Iraq sixty-two years later.
Why It Happened the Way It Did

Richard J. Evans : Germany

Ian Kershaw's latest work analyzes ten decisions that shaped the outcome of World War II.
Ill Will

Charles Taylor : Biography

The most durable piece of Nazi propaganda may yet turn out to be the belief that Leni Riefenstahl is an artistic genius.
Faraway, So Close

Omer Bartov : Germany

In his memoir Five Germanys I Have Known, Fritz Stern revisits his family's past and finds that he has never been quite at home.
Parasites of Plunder?

Richard J. Evans : Non-Fiction

Hitler's Beneficiaries advances a controversial, deeply flawed argument that Germans failed to revolt against the Nazis because Hitler established a welfare state built on plunder.

The Collaborator

David A. Bell : Biography

The Unfree French looks at the German occupation of Vichy; Bad Faith is a grim biography of a French collaborator.
Wartime Lies

Timothy Snyder : Cultural Criticism & Analysis

As Nazis dropped bombs in Warsaw, poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote a collection of literary criticism that sought to trace the rise of totalitarianism by deconstructing the mythologies of Western modernity.
Europa, Europa

Charles S. Maier : Europe

Tony Judt's Postwar, a massive summary of European public life since World War II, is a triumph of narrative that will allow readers familiar with the history to experience it again.

The Ring Cycle

Gerald Early : Sports

When Joe Louis defeated Nazi sympathizer Max Schmeling in 1938, it was the boxing match that reverberated across the world. Three new books chronicle the match and all the racial and political turmoil of which it was an emblem.
Nationalism's Psychotic Side

Robert Scheer : Germany

Even decent people can be swept along by barbarism when a nation gets sick.