This lively biography of the French military commander chronicles his legendary and controversial career through WWI, WWII, and beyond. The extraordinary life of General Maxime de Nimal Weygand offers a fascinating glimpse into the perils and politics of 20th century French military leadership. From obscure origins, Weygand rose to a distinguished career as chief of staff for Marshal Foch during World War I and continued to serve his country after the war in Poland and Syria. Alarmed by Nazi Germany’s prodigious rearmament, Weygand locked horns with politicians who were blind to the growing military threat. In fact, he faced accusations that his desire for a strong army was anti-democratic. With German invaders again threatening Paris, Weygand argued for armistice rather than face certain military defeat. During Nazi occupation, he was no friend of the newly-installed Vichy government, and was sent to North Africa. There, he plotted the army’s return to the Allied cause and was imprisoned. Released at wars end, he was rearrested on the orders of Charles de Gaulle and afterwards fought to restore his name. In this concise biography, Anthony Clayton traces the vertiginous changes in fortune of a soldier whose loyalty to France and to the French army was unwavering.

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum In December 2013, after years of exhaustive search, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum received more than four hundred pages of diary notes written by one of the most prominent Nazis, the Party’s chief ideologue and Reich minister for the occupied Soviet territories Alfred Rosenberg. By combining Rosenberg’s diary notes with additional key documents and in-depth analysis, this book shows Rosenberg’s crucial role in the Nazi regime’s anti-Jewish policy. In the second half of 1941 the territory administered by Rosenberg became the region where the mass murder of Jewish men, women, and children first became a systematic pattern. Indeed, months before the emergence of German death camps in Poland, Nazi leaders perceived the occupied Soviet Union as the area where the “final solution of the Jewish question” could be executed on a European scale. Covering almost the entire duration of the Third Reich, these previously inaccessible sources throw new light on the thoughts and actions of the leading men around Hitler during critical junctures that led to war, genocide, and Nazi Germany’s final defeat.

Consisting of twenty-three essays, The Decade of the Great War examines the 1910s as a pivotal period with deep connections both to the imperialist heyday of the 1880s‒1890s, and to the vibrant global politics, commercial expansion, and social movements of the 1920s. It critically reviews Japan’s diplomatic and military relations, offering both a reexamination of some of the issues addressed in the earlier scholarship on the war years and a needed sense of the breadth of Japan’s new international relations. It highlights the importance of transnational approaches to the study of Japan’s domestic, intra-imperial, and foreign affairs. Together, the essays in this volume provide a wide-range of perspectives on relations within Asia and between Asian, European, and North American states. Contributors are: Isao Chiba, Yuehtsen Juliette Chung, Evan Dawley, Martin Dusinberre, Bert Edström, Selçuk Esenbel, Rustin B. Gates, Tze-ki Hon, Masato Kimura, Chaisung Lim, John D. Meehan, SJ, Tosh Minohara, Hiromi Mizuno, Tadashi Nakatani, Sochi Naraoka, Yoshiko Okamoto, Sumiko Otsubo, Ewa Pałasz-Rutkowska, Caroline Rose, J. Charles Schencking, Chika Shinohara, Shusuke Takahara, and Sue C. Townsend.

In addition, as an avid player of golf and bridge, he had an active social life that was interconnected with a large circle of influential friends in the United States."--Jacket.

A mystery of the Nazi occupation of France is at last explained by new research.

The diary of the 17th Earl of Derby, once thought to have been lost, provides a detailed and important account of the last months of the First World War as seen through the eyes of the British Ambassador in Paris. Derby was in many ways an unlikely choice as ambassador. He was not a diplomat and could not, on his arrival, speak French. His appointment owed much to Lloyd George’s determination to remove him from his previous post as Secretary of State for War. But, after a somewhat uncertain start, he proved to be a very successful ambassador upon whom successive Foreign Secretaries, Arthur Balfour and Lord Curzon, relied heavily for their appreciation of the situation on the other side of the Channel. Derby took up his appointment at a crucial period of the war when military victory still seemed some way off. He became an assiduous collector of information which he dictated into his diary on a daily basis. Derby’s embassy became renowned for its lavish hospitality. But this was far from being self-indulgence, for he firmly believed that entertaining was the best way to win the confidence of his French associates and therefore to obtain information that would be of use in London. Derby’s diary provides important insights into the state of the war, the often strained relationship between Britain and France and the intrigues of French domestic politics.

The diary of the 17th Earl of Derby, once thought to have been lost, provides a detailed and important account of the last months of the First World War as seen through the eyes of the British Ambassador in Paris. Derby was in many ways an unlikely choice as ambassador. He was not a diplomat and could not, on his arrival, speak French. His appointment owed much to Lloyd George’s determination to remove him from his previous post as Secretary of State for War. But, after a somewhat uncertain start, he proved to be a very successful ambassador upon whom successive Foreign Secretaries, Arthur Balfour and Lord Curzon, relied heavily for their appreciation of the situation on the other side of the Channel. Derby took up his appointment at a crucial period of the war when military victory still seemed some way off. He became an assiduous collector of information which he dictated into his diary on a daily basis. Derby’s embassy became renowned for its lavish hospitality. But this was far from being self-indulgence, for he firmly believed that entertaining was the best way to win the confidence of his French associates and therefore to obtain information that would be of use in London. Derby’s diary provides important insights into the state of the war, the often strained relationship between Britain and France and the intrigues of French domestic politics.

Poland, 1918-1945 is a challenging, revisionist analysis and interpretation, supported by documentary evidence, of a crucial and controversial period in Poland's recent history

Based on extensive range of Polish, British, German, Jewish and Ukranian primary and secondary sources, this work provides an objective appraisal of the inter-war period. Peter Stachura demonstrates how the Republic overcame giant obstacles at home and abroad to achieve consolidation as an independent state in the early 1920s, made relative economic progress, created a coherent social order, produced an outstanding cultural scene, advanced educational opportunity, and adopted constructive and even-handed policies towards its ethnic minorities. Without denying the defeats suffered by the Republic, Peter Stachura demonstrates that the fate of Poland after 1945, with the imposition of an unwanted, Soviet-dominated Communist system, was thoroughly undeserved.

Tension and rivalry between France and Germany shaped the history of Western Europe in the century from 1860. Three times that hostility led to war and the invasion of France - in 1870, 1914 and 1940. The outcomes of the battles that followed reset the balance of power across the continent. Yet the German invasions tend to be viewed as separate events, in isolation, rather than as connected episodes in the confrontation between the two nations. Douglas Fermer's fresh account of the military campaigns and the preparations for them treats them as part of a cycle of fear, suspicion, animosity and conflicting ambitions extending across several generations. In a clear, concise account of the decisive opening phase of each campaign, he describes the critical decision-making, the manoeuvres and clashes of arms in eastern France as German forces advanced westwards. As the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War approaches, this is a fitting moment to reconsider these momentous events and how they fit into the broad sweep of European history.